including the privatization of the financial sector and other state-owned entities, significant reduction in tariffs, and other policies designed to favor foreign investment.
The war was incompatible with Cristiani’s vision for the Salvadoran economy, as was ARENA’s increasingly uneasy alliance with the military. As Wood demonstrates, changes to the Salvadoran economy during the war had a profound impact on elite interests. The decline of the agro-export sector was altering the orientation of the Salvadoran economy, and many elites were changing in response to the fluctuations in the economy. The war had resulted in the diversification of their economic holdings, which made the repressive apparatus long used to maintain their interests unnecessary. Additionally, the growing electoral power of ARENA convinced many elites that their interests could be preserved through electoral politics.113 This is not to say that the far right had been vanquished by Cristiani, merely displaced by the face of moderation.114 While Cristiani proceeded with peace talks in September 1989, the military (which opposed the talks) sought to flex its muscle through a series of bombings the following month against allies of the FMLN, including FENASTRAS headquarters and the home of FDR leader Rubén Zamora, causing the FMLN to abruptly terminate them. On November 11, 1989, the FMLN staged its first offensive in the capital city, eventually occupying areas of elite neighborhoods to the shock of many residents. Indeed, the offensive took the Salvadoran government and army by total surprise.115 Both entities had spent years minimizing the size, effectiveness, and popular support of the guerrillas. Now it was overwhelmingly clear that the FMLN was not the poorly coordinated, rogue band of rebels the military had made them out to be. While the primary objective of the offensive (the overthrow of the government) failed, it succeeded in exposing the failure of U.S. and Salvadoran intelligence, the incompetence of the Salvadoran army, and the exposure of the failure of nine years of U.S. policy.116 But it was the military’s response to the offensive that would ultimately bring about the end of the war.
In the early morning hours of November 16, 1989, members of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion, the same one responsible for the El Mozote and other massacres, entered the grounds of the Universidad Centroamericana, “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA), and murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter.117 There were numerous attempts to deflect responsibility and conceal the military’s role in the crime. Soldiers attempted to frame the FMLN by scrawling FMLN propaganda at the scene, indicating that the Jesuits had been considered traitors by the organization. But a more insidious institutional cover-up by the High Command of the armed forces followed. Botched investigations—including the destruction and withholding of evidence, perjured testimony, and the refusal to testify—impeded the judicial process.118 The murders captured world attention and drew heightened scrutiny to the Salvadoran military and the inability of the new Cristiani government to control it. The murders clearly demonstrated that vast amounts of aid had failed to reform the military, which had operated with impunity throughout the war. The U.S. government, in turn, withheld $42.5 million in military aid promised to El Salvador, signaling its unwillingness to tolerate continuing egregious abuses.119 Without aid from the United States, the Salvadoran military could not defeat the FMLN. Both sides recognized that a military victory was no longer a possibility and agreed to pursue a negotiated settlement to end the war.120
Preserving Power: The Foundations and Legacy of a Century of Capture
El Salvador’s history has been defined by exclusionary politics, inequities, and military rule. To some extent, the phenomenon of capture has been omnipresent in El Salvador’s history as the country’s elites routinely combined the rhetoric of liberal democracy with distinctly illiberal practices to advance their own interests. The expansion of the coffee sector in the mid to late nineteenth century resulted in a series of policies that concentrated wealth in the hands of an increasingly powerful coffee oligarchy in which the economic and political liberties of elites were often guaranteed by force. When those interests were challenged, as in the case of the 1932 uprising, elites supported highly repressive measures to curtail popular mobilization. As we have seen, the narrative to explain La Matanza was key to shaping how elites interpreted subsequent events and justified their responses to those events. The subsequent alliance between landed elites and the military defined the Salvadoran state for decades. Even when elites did not formally hold power, they were able to advance their interests through the creation and control of various financial institutions.
Political participation was allowed, even encouraged, so long as it did not threaten elite interests. When political reforms in the 1960s resulted in the rising popularity of parties beyond the control of the oligarchy, most notably the PDC, elites and their partners in the military responded by closing avenues for mass participation and enforcing those closures through unrelenting violence. The 1979 reformist coup sought to forestall a bloody civil war by implementing social and economic programs to alleviate socioeconomic inequality and undercut support for guerrilla forces, but elites opposed those programs and continued to support repression by the military and by paramilitary death squads. The country soon descended into a civil war that would take the lives of more than seventy-five thousand Salvadorans, force 1 million (20 percent of the population) to flee the country, and displace an additional three-quarter million. While elites found a willing partner in the United States, assistance from the superpower was conditioned upon stemming abuses and the development of a democratic process. As they had done before, elites created a political party in the 1980s to serve as a vehicle for protecting their interests. Borne of an alliance between the oligarchy and the death squads, ARENA demonstrated itself to be particularly adept at evolving throughout the decade. The replacement of highly controversial D’Aubuisson with Cristiani reflected not only a growing rift within the Right but also signaled a changing philosophy within the Right and positioned ARENA to dominate the electoral system. With the continuation of the war at odds with ARENA’s new economic agenda, Cristiani proceeded with talks with the FMLN to end the war. As demonstrated in the next chapter, the historical patterns, networks, and institutions established by Salvadoran elites enabled them to exercise significant control over the peace negotiations and peacebuilding outcomes.
Chapter 2
Making the Captured Peace
People go [to the table] to negotiate, not to sacrifice themselves.
—Rubén Zamora, 19991
BY LATE 1989 it appeared that El Salvador’s decade-long civil war was ripe for negotiations. A mutually hurting stalemate coincided with the end of the Cold War, which contributed to an environment conducive for negotiations. For two years, the Cristiani administration and the FMLN hammered out the details on a plan to end the war and bring peace to El Salvador. The outcome of those negotiations, the Chapúltepec Accords, provided the foundation to dramatically transform the political landscape of the country while also preserving the interests of elites. As one of the United Nations’ first forays into postwar peacebuilding, the Salvadoran peace process was unprecedented in scope. Not only did the accords dismantle and redefine the country’s most notorious security organizations, but they also addressed electoral and judicial reforms, guarantees for human rights, and some socioeconomic issues. They also provided the basis for the FMLN’s incorporation into the country’s political life, which was realized in the 1994 elections. While the peace process in El Salvador is widely considered a success, it was certainly not without its problems. As detailed below, elite control over content and implementation of the peace accords facilitated a captured peace by undermining reforms set forth in the accords. Moreover, the lack of transitional justice and a controversial amnesty law, which was designed to protect elites, undermined prospects for reconciliation and sustained a war narrative that would come to define postwar society.
The Broker of Peace: The Participation of the United Nations
The peace process in El Salvador represents one of the United Nations’ first peacebuilding missions. While the UN had little prior experience in the region,
