Page 76 - History of War - Issue 29-16

BRIEFING

sporadically with volcanoes where lush valleys “NO ONE CAN BRING JUSTICE
coast of the Paci c Ocean, a place dotted
But the indigenous Pipil Indians, led by the TO THE MUTILATED AND
perceived tropical splendour.
their auxiliaries. It took successive invasions DISEMBOWELLED BODIES THAT
chieftain Atlacatl, repulsed the Spaniards and
before the conquest subdued the indigenous LITTERED THE FOOTHILLS”
people. Once a permanent settlement
was established beneath the volcano, San
Salvador, the new territory, was placed under imposed himself on El Salvador in 1898 and
the Captaincy General of Guatemala. The was just as quickly deposed several years
original Spanish settlers, who lorded over the later. In typical caudillo fashion he never
Pipil Indians, grew wealthy from the export of accomplished lasting social change and died
indigofera suffruticosa, or the Indigo plant as it in exile loathed by his countrymen in 1906. If
is better known to Europe. Guatemala and its supplication to the United
The market for indigo collapsed by the Fruit Company made it the quintessential
19th century and El Salvador emerged from banana republic, El Salvador was hardly
the chaos of civil war. These circumstances different. It was a giant coffee plantation run by
stemmed from the political divisions that a cartel of aristocratic soldiers.
ripped apart the Federal Republic of Central Regalado is recognised as the last of the
America. What began as a visionary attempt 19th century caudillos, although, the archetype
at consolidating an entire region didn’t would surface once more in the 20th with
survive the caudillo (a military land-owner), individuals such as Fidel Castro in Cuba,
the stereotypical Hispanic strongmen who put Augusto Pinochet in Chile, various menacing
more faith in violent action than the rhetoric of juntas in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, even
nascent democracy. including the late Hugo Chavez. Years of enforcing Mano
It can be argued the caudillo is the cog Dura against thousands
turning the wheels of Latin America from March of the death squads of gang members has
Mexico (Antonio López de Santa Anna) all the Regalado’s brief tenure preserved El militarised El Salvador’s
civilian police force
way down to Argentina (Juan Manuel de Rosas). Salvador’s oligarchic class, who grew rich
They are the martial gures with an inordinate from coffee exports, while leaving nothing
belief in themselves over accountable for the campesinos trapped in gut-wrenching
institutions. The Federal Republic of Central squalor. It wasn’t until the Great Depression
America was undone by caudilloism, not the and the resulting ebb in commodity exports
excesses of a single bloodthirsty tyrant but that a revolution broke out. This produced El
many tyrants acting from parochial interests. Salvador’s rst ideological martyr, Farabundo
The resulting maelstrom broke away part Marti, and the return of the Salvadoran armed
of Nicaragua and Honduras, and in 1841 El forces in national life to preserve the oligarchs’
Salvador, the nation of Jesus Christ, rose. grip on power.
It was in the middle of the 19th century when The army prevailed in 1932 by slaughtering
coffee emerged as the next viable export for up to 40,000 peasants, many of whom were
El Salvador’s landed gentry. It was a fortuitous Pipil Indians. They then used the presidential
time for its cultivation, as waves of immigrants of ce as a vehicle for different leaders vetted
from Western Europe, along with Palestine and by the armed forces. It was a curious 50-year
Syria, were arriving. These weren’t the poor charade that helped maintain El Salvador’s
and hungry from blighted nations searching for internal cohesion. The stage was now set for
better lives. The in ux brought skilled traders the dark ages of Central America.
and entrepreneurs into an agrarian society Untangling the beginning of the civil war,
blessed with surplus manpower and access to that gutted El Salvador from 1980 until 1992,
large foreign markets. exposes a twisted saga involving John F
The coffee renaissance didn’t elevate El Kennedy, the CIA, the School of the Americas,
Salvador above its neighbours – it served to cookie-cutter dictators, Israel, Cuba, the
worsen a social divide between land-owning Sandinistas and the Contras, the Roman
families who extracted ceaseless toil from the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council,
campesinos (peasant farmers), the browbeaten and Marxism-Leninism.
peasantry who have been exploited since Not one of these subjects is useful for
the Spanish raised their encomiendas (a revisiting the sheer horror the civil war
dependency relation system that sees the unleashed on the campesinos who suffered the
stronger members supporting the weak), or the most. It was their children, boys and girls, who During the civil war
vast estates where Indians laboured for the were sucked into the ranks of the armed forces both the government
bene t of a Don. and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation and the FMLN had
Power was once again in the hands of a Front (FMLN). No one can bring justice to the no qualms about
caudillo, General Tomás Regalado, when he mutilated and disembowelled bodies that recruiting children

1841 1880 1932 1969 1979
Internal divisions cause the Republic Tiny El Salvador emerges as a The shock of the Great Depression Honduras and El Salvador After 50 years of de facto military
to fall apart. Secessionists plunge leading coffee exporter in the collapses world coffee prices. ght the so-called ‘Soccer rule, public dissatisfaction causes a
the federation into civil war. To world commodities market. Its Dissatisfaction leads to the peasant War’ to no avail. Waged in the left-wing underground movement to
resolve the crisis Costa Rica, economic life now comes under uprising led by Agustin Farabundo span of four days the con ict ourish. On 9 May, a protest organised
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the control of land-owning families Marti. The Salvadoran armed forces achieves nothing and has by the Popular Revolutionary Bloc
and newly minted El Salvador are and enterprising immigrants from intervene and slaughter up to 30,000 little impact on the domestic outside the Metropolitan Cathedral is
granted independence. Europe and the Middle East. peasants, mostly Pipil Indians. politics of either country. met with gun re.

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