The opposition's victory came at a high price for the Nicaraguan people: thirty thousand dead; fifty thousand wounded; and three hundred thousand left homeless. And over half a million Nicaraguans remained outside their country, the majority of them in the United States, waiting to see what type of society would evolve in their homeland.
DEATH SQUADS AND GUERRILLAS: THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL CONTROL IN EL SALVADOR
As in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador was rooted in the unequal distribution of power. An oligarchy of landed elites known as the Fourteen Families controlled 60 percent of the farmland, the entire banking system, and most of the nation's industry.31 Eight percent of the nation's five million people controlled half of the nation's income, while over onequarter of the rural population was poor and had been pushed off their land to make room for agricultural estates dedicated to the production of coffee, the country's principal export.32 Since 1932, the country was ruled by a series of generals with close ties to the oligarchy, whose interests they protected, and they were equally zealous in weeding out any challenges to their authority. A peasant uprising in 1932, for example, led to la matanza: the murder of over thirty thousand Salvadorans by the army and vigilante groups.33
Nineteen seventy-two proved to be a landmark year in Salvadoran politics, as it was for Nicaragua. After the fraudulent elections of 1972, more and more Salvadorans engaged in strikes, demonstrations, and other acts of civil disobedience against the government of Fidel Sánchez Hernández. The Catholic Church played an indirect role in catalyzing such behavior. As one of the principal institutions in El Salvador (and Latin America), the Catholic Church had historically helped to maintain the unequal power relationships by encouraging the poor and the oppressed to passively accept their fate on earth in hopes of greater glories in heaven. However, by the 1960s, a more radical wing of the Catholic Church preached what it called a “theology of liberation”: the fundamental idea that poverty and oppression were not God's will, and that God's children had the right to challenge oppressive institutions, structures, and conditions in every sector of society.34 Moreover, according to liberation theology, the Catholic Church was obligated to condemn these unjust institutions and assist the faithful in their struggle for liberation. Across El Salvador, and throughout Latin America, the more radical nuns and clergy organized comunidades de base (faith communities) that encouraged villagers and townspeople to meet weekly for a closer reading of the Bible and particularly the social justice teachings of Jesus's New Testament.This theology was not new or radical, they argued, but rather a return to the original teachings of Christ.35 To those who held power in Salvadoran society, this theology—whether new or not—was certainly radical enough to threaten their positions of privilege. Particularly worrisome was the fact that this theology was preached by even the highest-ranking clergyman of their society, the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who used his weekly radio sermons to condemn the abuses in Salvadoran society and to urge President Carter to withdraw military aid.36
Whether influenced by liberation theology or the Sandinista and Cuban revolutions, a number of groups emerged in El Salvador to demand social justice: organizations such as the People's Revolutionary Block, the Front of United Popular Action, and the Popular League of February 28. Each drew its rapidly growing membership from different segments of Salvadoran society—university students, teachers, trade unionists, as well as the urban and rural poor—and used a variety of tactics to challenge the authority of the elites, from traditional forms of civil disobedience to guerrilla warfare.37 A number of guerrilla armies also emerged, such as the Popular Liberation Forces, the People's Revolutionary Army, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party, and the Armed Forces of Liberation.38
The protests continued even after October 1979, when a new militarycivilian junta overthrew the violent government of General Carlos Humberto Romero. The junta, comprised of junior and somewhat progressive military officers as well as civilian representatives and church leaders, passed a number of modest reforms, including an agrarian reform program, a minimum daily wage, a ban on paramilitary groups, and tax and banking reforms. However, few of these reforms were ever enforced. Within months, the civilian and church representatives had resigned from the junta in protest, and the power continued to rest with the old guard. From 1979 to 1982, three junta governments attempted to enact modest reforms, with very limited success.
The principal agencies of Salvadoran national security tried to eliminate the rebels and dissenters. The centralized intelligence agency known as ANSESAL and its affiliate, the Democratic Nationalist Organization (ORDEN), a nationwide network of government informants and paramilitary groups founded in 1968,39 used violent measures to control the civilian population. Protesters were arrested and beaten, expelled from the country, or murdered. The armed forces were assisted in these efforts by privately funded paramilitary groups such as the White Warriors Union, the White Hand, the Anti-Communist Forces for Liberation, and the Organization for the Liberation from Communism, among many others, whose interlocking membership consisted of soldiers, off-duty police officers, and “the sick young sons of affluent Salvadorans.”40 Indeed, the paramilitary groups received their funding from members of the oligarchy, some of them living in Miami.41 These groups, appropriately nicknamed the escuadrones de la muerte, or “death squads,” employed particularly gruesome tactics. Those believed to have ties to insurgent groups or who challenged the established order in any way—through labor organizing, sermons and public speaking, classroom instruction, publications and journalism—were tortured, raped, and killed. Thousands of mutilated corpses appeared in town sewers, garbage dumps, street gutters, and shallow graves, left by their torturers as a warning to others: eyes gouged, tongues and limbs severed, breasts, genitalia, and throats slashed. One group's signature method of assassination was twelve gunshots in the face at point-blank range.42 So many Salvadorans were found dead or missing that the Catholic Church's Legal Office, the principal agency that documented the abuses, could not keep up with all the reports of the missing and killed. A favorite target of these death squads were nuns and priests, especially those affiliated with the more liberal Maryknoll and Jesuit orders that preached liberation theology.43 Flyers circulated throughout the capital city of San Salvador, urging the population: “Be a patriot, kill a priest!”44 According to Americas Watch, eighteen priests were killed in El Salvador from 1972 to 1989.45
Nineteen eighty was a particularly violent year: over eight thousand civilians were killed, and yet no one was arrested for the murders. Among the victims were some very prominent leaders whose violent deaths were meant to intimidate the opposition. In February, one of the more progressive civilian members of the government, Attorney General Mario Zamora, was assassinated during a dinner party at his own home, shot a dozen times in the face.46 In March, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot and killed while saying mass at the cathedral. At his funeral procession, the military fired into the crowd of thirty thousand mourners, killing thirty and wounding hundreds. In December, four US church workers, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan, were kidnapped and murdered. Their raped and mutilated bodies were later found half buried in shallow graves. Throughout 1980, the military purged itself of its most progressive members to silence dissent: officers were demoted, reassigned to diplomatic posts, exiled, or assassinated.47
As in Nicaragua, the assassination of prominent leaders—in this case Zamora and Romero—served to unite reformers and revolutionaries. After the government failed to properly investigate death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson, believed