The Salvadoran Civil War was a civil war in El Salvador which was fought between the military-led junta government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) (a coalition of left-wing groups) from 15 October 1979 to 16 January 1992. A coup on October 15, 1979, was followed by killings of anti-coup protesters by the government and of anti-disorder protesters by the guerrillas, and is widely seen as the start of civil war.

The fully-fledged civil war lasted for more than 12 years and included the deliberate terrorizing and targeting of civilians by US-trained government death squads including prominent clergy from the Catholic Church, the recruitment of child soldiers and other human rights violations, by the military. An unknown number of people disappeared while the UN reports that the war killed more than 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992.

During the Carter and Reagan administrations, the US provided 1–2 million dollars per day in economic aid to the Salvadoran government and by 1984, 1 billion dollars had been given. The US also provided significant training and equipment to the military. The Salvadoran government was considered "friendly" and an ally by the U.S. in the context of the Cold War. In May 1983, it was reported that US military officers were working within the Salvadoran High Command and making important decisions.

Counterinsurgency tactics implemented often targeted civilians with the United Nations estimating that the FMLN guerrillas were responsible for 5% of the acts of violence of civilians during the civil war, while 85% were committed by the Salvadoran armed forces and death squads.

The war ended in 1992 when the combatants of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), made up of five leftist groups, and the right-wing government of then-President Alfredo Cristiani, signed the Peace Accords on January 16, 1992 in Chapultepec. , Mexico, which ensured political and military reforms, but did not deepen the social or economic aspects, definitively postponing any improvement or progress on both issues.

Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation

It was founded on October 10, 1980 by the Popular Liberation Forces "Farabundo Martí" (FPL), the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), the National Resistance (RN), the Central American Workers' Revolutionary Party (PRTC) and the Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS). There was several antecedents of guerrilla unity with the FMLN.

The first weighty action of the FMLN was the launching, on January 10, 1981, of a final offensive against the Salvadoran civic-military dictatorship, made up of the so-called "Revolutionary" Government Junta, an alliance of military and civilians that It lasted from October 1979 to early 1982, in three stages. The offensive did not achieve its objective and - although along with it the height of the mass struggle that the country was experiencing disappeared - the FMLN was strengthened militarily and conducted the war, from the side of the left, until the signing of the Accords of Peace of January 1992.

The FMLN took its name from the communist leader Farabundo Martí (shot in the peasant uprising of 1932 by the National Police led by Osmín Aguirre Salinas during the dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez), delegate of the Socorro Rojo Internacional, and one of the organizers of the Peasant and indigenous insurrection of 1932. The uprising was controlled by the National Guard, a body of internal repression created in 1912, under the dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. During repression operations, thousands of peasants and indigenous people were shot.

Salvadorian Jesuits Murdered

On this day in 1989, during the Salvadoran Civil War, Salvadoran soldiers killed six Jesuits and two others on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador and attempted to frame the act on rebel groups. The Jesuits were advocates of a negotiated settlement between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and their murders prompted international outrage.

The Atlacatl Battalion (trained at the U.S. "School of the Americas") was an elite unit of the Salvadoran Army responsible for the violence. The Jesuits were deemed "subversives" that needed to be eliminated, and officers attempted to disguise the operation as a rebel attack, using an AK-47 rifle that had been captured from the FMLN.

After storming their residence and killing the priests, soldiers also executed housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos and her 16-year-old daughter, Celina Mariceth Ramos. The murders increased international pressure for a cease-fire and became one of the key turning points that led toward a negotiated settlement to the war.

El Salvador Today

Neoliberal policies continued to deepen the social deterioration of the country with governments very close to the United States. On the other hand, the last presidential elections, held on March 15, 2009, won the journalist Mauricio Funes of the FMLN party, who reestablished relations with Cuba and promoted policies of social benefit.

The FMLN from power promotes a government program that is based on the redistribution of national wealth. Since coming to power, the left has proposed a new fiscal pact that will shift the burden of taxes to the richest and free the poor and the middle class of their burden. In El Salvador until February 2011, the highest income sectors received from the state almost twice as many subsidies as the poorest. This plan pitted the government against the business sectors, refusing to pay more taxes and redistribute income.

Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion :feminism:

Resources for Organizing your workplace/community :sabo:

Resources for Palestine :palestine-heart:

Buy coffee and learn more about the Zapatistas in Chiapas here :EZLN:

Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:

Foundations of Leninism :USSR:

:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:

Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:

Remember, sort by new you :LIB:

Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:

THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:

COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af: