El Salvador Civil War

801 Words2 Pages

Stephen Blasy

Professor Volker Frank

SOC 357

30 July 2014

The Inevitability of Civil War in El Salvador

Throughout history, countries in Central and South America have proven to be amorphous in terms of political, social, and economic development. Time and time again, military regimes have formed and held power in Latin-American countries and have subsequently influenced social and economic development in these countries. Military dictatorships often (if not always) produce opposition forces and/or political parties, and it is with these oppositions to military regimes that we see enormous change and transformation. El Salvador is no exception to this phenomenon. Due to enormous wealth deficits between the rich and the poor, economic …show more content…

It can be argued that the United States facilitated this civil war, and that may very well be the case. However, upon deeper investigation it appears that civil war was inevitable, and though the United States may have sped up the process I believe that the wealth deficit, economic struggle, and political corruption would have inevitably led El Salvador to a civil war with or without the influence of the United States. When El Salvador began it's “colonization,” the Spanish sought the reap the land of it's gold and silver reserves. Once the Spanish realized that there was little to no gold and silver to be mined, they began to utilize the country's sole exploitable resource: land. The Spanish appropriation of the land (and inter-racial marrying of whites and indigenous peoples) eventually led to a rapid decline in the …show more content…

The military killed 30,000 people, targeting those that wore traditional dress or spoke an indigenous language. Thus began a fifty year period where every president that came into power was a military officer; the military was the commanding power in El Salvador. The economy was controlled by the rich and the majority of the country lived in poverty. The military dictatorship caused opposition forced to organize and grow stronger. This caused the government to hire groups of people called “death squads” whose sole purpose was to assassinate “submersives,” or people who opposed government authority. As the opposition grew stronger, the government grew more corrupt and practiced flagrant ballot manipulation, stealing multiple elections. By the 1970's, small guerrilla groups had formed out of the opposition forces. After the election of 1977 was manipulated in favor of the military, people began to gather in the main square in San Salvador and protest. The government responded by firing into the crowd of people and assassinating a rural priest named Father Rutilio Grande. In response to the assassination, Monsignor Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, led a memorial mass attended by 100,000 people. This drew plenty of international attention. At this time, the United States president was Jimmy Carter whose platform was

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