The root cause of the conflicts that occurred before, during and after the civil war in El Salvador is the disparity between the rich and the poor. Built upon the backs of the colonial system introduced by the Spaniards during the colonial period, the hacienda system, sustaining unequal distribution of wealth and land, polarized the country. While the Spaniards acquired labor through the economienda system in which the Spanish crown gave a set number of natives to Spanish elites, the elites acquired
America and violent revolutions sprang up in Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico, sometimes with the tacit blessing of important religious leaders. By the early 1990s, however, this aggressive brand of Liberation Theology and the political uprisings that often went hand in hand were more or less dead. Pope John Paul II had condemned the use of the pulpit for political purposes and many of the more virulent religious leaders had been forcibly removed by the Vatican from their respective posts