A reconciliation that never arrives  and the amnesty law that entombed it
2020 Diciembre El Salvador
The Peace Accords ­that brought El Salvador’s civil war to an end in 1992 contained a series of momentous measures, including demobilization of both...

What does Bukele represent? What do people see in him?
2020 Agosto El Salvador
The polarizing political confrontation that is making El Salvador so tense is being played out between the legislative branch, which wants to govern,...

Authoritarian rule in times of coronavirus
2020 Abril El Salvador
On February 9, Salvadorans watched in shock at what appeared to be a coup by the executive branch against the legislative branch, a sequence of events...

Seven months of Bukele with the FMLN and ARENA in crisis
2020 Febrero El Salvador
The New Year rang in with both of El Salvador’s two major parties, the leftwing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and rightwing National...

Nayib Bukele kicks off his term to massive approval
2019 Noviembre El Salvador
According to public opinion polling first by La Prensa Gráfica and followed by the Institute of Public Opinion at El Salvador’s Central American...

The FMLN’s debts at a time of transition rife with questions
2019 Mayo El Salvador
The February 3, 2019, elections brought an end to the FMLN’s decade in El Salvador’s presidency. Its victory in the 2009 presidential elections and...

The end of two-party dominance... and the beginning of a seismic shock?
2019 Marzo El Salvador
Breaking the two-party dominance that has prevailed in El Salvador for over three decades, Nayib Bukele won the presidential elections with 53.1% of...

A shift to the right in this year’s legislative elections
2018 Abril El Salvador
Rightwing parties won more congressional seats and municipal governments in the legislative and municipal elections this past March 4 than the Farabundo...

Veterans with disabilities still fighting battles in peacetime
2018 Febrero El Salvador
The Chapultepec Accords that put an end to a dozen years of war were signed 26 years ago this January 16. As a result of that war, the Salvadoran people...

Water for everyone: A struggle for life
2017 Octubre El Salvador
In 1576, Spanish chronicler Juan López de Velasco wrote this about the Río Acelhuate, whose basin contains San Salvador, the capital: “It is said that...

The death of a CIA man
2017 Septiembre El Salvador
Salvadoran Colonel Nicolás Carranza lived for 84 years, dying of natural causes on August 2, 2017, supported by his community in Memphis that appreciated...

Impunity finally stands trial: The case of Herbert Anaya Sanabria
2017 Julio El Salvador
On October 26, 1987, Herbert Anaya Sanabria, president of the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES), was killed by three people...

The anti-mining law is a historic victory over the “dazzle of gold”
2017 Junio El Salvador
On March 29, 70 legislators from all political stripes in El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly passed the Law to Prohibit Metal Mining. The vote was unanimous...

Supreme Electoral Tribunal under siege
2017 Abril El Salvador
The struggle between those wanting to maintain El Salvador’s social structure and those wanting to transform it has gone through different moments and...

Fiscal Crisis: Between dangers and opportunities
2017 Febrero El Salvador
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) leader Lorena Peña currently chairs the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly’s Financial Commission after...

The repeal of the Amnesty Law: A bittersweet ruling
2016 Octubre El Salvador
On July 13, the Supreme Court of Justice’s Constitutional Bench announced four rulings of unconstitutionality on its Twitter account, demonstrating...

Political prisoners: “The Fifth Front” 36 years later
2016 Agosto El Salvador
The Political Prisoners’ Committee of El Salvador (COPPES) was formed in September 1980 with a hunger strike in the Santa Tecla prison grounds and in...

The pension system reform is a reversal for the neoliberal model
2016 Mayo El Salvador
If everything was paid, and the pensioner’s card opened all doors, getting old would be real progress, a good ending, a finish with a kiss, sang Joan...

Minimum wage history, struggles, maneuvers and proposals
2016 Marzo El Salvador
When Karl Marx wrote 172 years ago that “Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker,” it was one of the most...

“El Buen Vivir” and the “Laudato Si’”
2015 Diciembre El Salvador
In 2012, while a presidential candidate, Salvador Sánchez Cerén published his book El país que quiero (The country I want), in which he declared...

The steep road to gender equity
2015 Octubre El Salvador
The achievements around women’s rights and gender equality in this country are the fruit of women’s arduous and self-sacrificing struggles throughout...

Resuscitated or newly assassinated in his beatification?
2015 Junio El Salvador
May 23, 35 years after his assassination by a death squad ordered by Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, the founder of the National Republican Alliance (ARENA),...

The Right is trying to use the elections for its claim of a “failed State”
2015 Abril El Salvador
After a three-month campaign, elections were held on March 1 for representatives to the Legislative Assembly and Central American Parliament (Parlacen)...

Progress, but still unpaid debts to the country’s indigenous peoples
2015 Febrero El Salvador
January 22 marked the 83rd anniversary of the 1932 uprising and massacre of indigenous people and peasants. That year, three days after the capture...

Community Policing: A strategic leap for the PNC
2014 Octubre El Salvador
The concept of “community policing” is being presented as a logical police response to the problems of violence and crime affecting many communities...

“We must remove the tattoo from this country’s soul”
2014 Septiembre El Salvador
The social work done by religious workers who belong to Servicio Social Pasionista SSPAS, a nonprofit civil society peace organization of the Corporación...

The second FMLN government gets off to a good start
2014 Julio El Salvador
Salvador Sánchez Cerén, former teachers’ union leader and guerrilla commander during the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Movement’s war of liberation,...

The FMLN won
2014 Abril El Salvador
By 9 pm on election day, March 9, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had already announced that the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)...

First reflections on the first round of elections
2014 Enero El Salvador
For the first time in the country’s history, the elections on February 2 were to decide whether to reelect the Left or return the Right to government....

Why have the lights been turned off at the Archbishopric’s Legal Protection Office?
2013 Noviembre El Salvador
What did José Luis Escobar Alas, the archbishop of San Salvador, close off when he locked the door of the Archbishopric’s Legal Protection Office and...

Has the FMLN government been an economic failure?
2013 Septiembre El Salvador
Just months shy of the March 2014 presidential elections, every topic that appears in the public arena is quickly pounced on as an electoral campaign...

The case of Beatriz: Who gets to decide?
2013 Julio El Salvador
When the issue of abortion and the right to decide are put on the table, everyone turns into a philosopher, theologian, scientist or lawyer, experts...

Thirteen years of joint Venezuela-El Salvador history
2013 Mayo El Salvador
On March 5, at 3 pm local time in El Salvador, we received the news that Latin American leader Hugo Chávez had succumbed to cancer. Four days later...

LaGeo-Enel: Chronicle of an energy highjacking
2013 Marzo El Salvador
The New Year ushered in bad news for El Salvador: on January 8, the Paris Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling in favor of the Italian company Enel-Green...

Young people who want to transform the country
2012 Diciembre El Salvador
A national youth movement rooted in the grassroots sectors and able to spark the active participation of young people in the struggle to resolve their...

A reflection on the institutional crisis
2012 Septiembre El Salvador
El Salvador went through an “institutional crisis” between June and August over the makeup of the new Supreme Court of Justice. A third of its 15 members...

Public-private partnerships: Another disguise for privatization
2012 Junio El Salvador
Public-private Partnership schemes “are what we need to push our country forward and overcome the crisis we’re facing,” said President Mauricio Funes...

A reading of the elections
2012 Abril El Salvador
Legislative and municipal elections have a low profile in El Salvador, given that the country is governed by a constitutionally presidentialist tradition...

Mapping the Salvadoran media
2012 Enero El Salvador
An April 1999 study by the Veritas Project to evaluate the media’s participation in that year’s presidential campaign in El Salvador concluded that “the...

The Jesuit case is an issue of justice, not of honor
2011 Octubre El Salvador
On May 30, Judge Eloy Velasco of Spain’s National High Court indicted* 20 members of El Salvador’s Armed Forces for the massacre of six Jesuit priests...

The case of the murdered Jesuits: An un-extraditable crime
2011 Septiembre El Salvador
Dictators use selective repressionas an instrument not so so much to eliminate someone deemed particularly dangerous, but rather for the psychological...

What’s behind Decree 743?
2011 Julio El Salvador
The leitmotif of the following story is Decree 743, which the rightwing parties passed on June 2 in a clumsily transparent effort to hobble the actions...

The lights of ALBA on El Salvador’s horizon
2011 Mayo El Salvador
In the first discussions in 1993-1994 to organize an alternative integration project for Latin America—originally called the Bolivarian Alternative for...

Springtime Innocence Lost
2011 Marzo El Salvador
I served as executive director of IDSEMU between June 17, 2009, and December 22, 2010. During that time I learned firsthand that in politics there is...

Medicines: A Struggle between Rich and Poor
2011 Marzo El Salvador
When any older Salvadoran is asked “How are you?” the most common response is “Fine, because I’m well.” This answer shows that one of the most fundamental...

Who’s Behind the “Lawlessness”?
2010 Noviembre El Salvador
Responsibility for the three-day bus strike that paralyzed El Salvador in early September was jointly claimed by the Mara Salvatrucha and La Pandilla...

Funes’ Dangerous Liaisons With the Business Class
2010 Septiembre El Salvador
The crisis between business leaders and the government in El Salvador has been overcome, declared Carlos Enrique Araujo, president of the National Association...

Mauricio Funes’ Successful Balancing Act
2010 Agosto El Salvador
The country awoke on June 21 to the shocking news that a collective microbus had been doused with gas and set afire in the low-income barrio of Mejicanos...

The Labor Movement: Who’s Winning So Far?
2010 Junio El Salvador
May always reminds us of the martyred workers in Haymarket Square who were victims of repression and gave their lives fighting for the 8-hour workday...

The Right to Memory
2010 Mayo El Salvador
The first enormous task of the Museum of the Word and Image was to safeguard documentary records from different origins and in a variety of formats (audiovisuals,...

Monsignor Romero’s Murder: Thirty Years of Impunity
2010 Abril El Salvador
In his homily of October 27, 1978, Monsignor Romero stated that “only justice can be the root of peace.” Nine months later, in June 1979, in light...

Pacific Rim Mining Company: The Kraken of Cabañas
2010 Enero El Salvador
El Salvador lies along Central America’s Gold Belt. According to First Point Minerals Corp., this valuable belt, which runs from Guatemala down into...

“In the Name of the Salvadoran State, I Ask for Forgiveness”
2010 Enero El Salvador
On this the 18th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords, we recover its celebration as an act recognizing its historic importance. It is...

GANA’s Birth Is ARENA’s Loss
2009 Diciembre El Salvador
The problems inside the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) were already quite evident in its widely publicized presidential candidate selection...

“We’re Against Impunity, Against Forgetting”
2009 Noviembre El Salvador
Dear compañeras and compañeros: In our America, memory is subversive. In each of our nations, we struggle against impunity, against forgetting. Here,...

“Our Party Won the Elections, But It’s Not the Government”
2009 Noviembre El Salvador
Divide and conquer, goes the ancient, well worn political adage. Ever since Mauricio Funes won the presidency in March, the National Republican Alliance...

The First 100 Days: Successes, Silences, Threats, Blackmail… and Challenges
2009 Octubre El Salvador
They say that the tradition of analyzing a new President’s first 100 days in office began—like many traditions—in the United States, with Franklin Delano...

Aftershocks from Honduras’ Political Earthquake
2009 Agosto El Salvador
The very day after Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was pulled out of bed at machinegun point and sent into exile in Costa Rica, the legislative bench...

Do the “14 Families” Still Exist? Is There Even Still an Oligarchy?
2009 Julio El Salvador
Abysmal inequalities in social relations and in the structure of power have always marked the history of the republic of El Salvador. The term “oligarchy”...

And the Amnesty Law?
2009 Julio El Salvador
In his inaugural speech, President Mauricio Funes’ only mention of the long war his people lived through until 1992 was this stylized reference: “The...

Disputing the Underpinnings of Impunity
2009 Junio El Salvador
The fight against corruption was one of the most attractive election promises made by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and its candidate...

“We’re Going to Govern for the Whole Country, Not Just the FMLN”
2009 Mayo El Salvador
In this interview, Salvador Sánchez Cerén could disappoint both followers and detractors who see the future Vice President as a straightjacket the FMLN...

A Grassroots Drive Pushes ARENA out of Government
2009 Abril El Salvador
On Sunday, March 15, 50,000 Salvadorans poured into the streets surrounding the Alberto Masferrer Plaza of San Salvador to celebrate the electoral triumph...

The Crystal Ball Is Still Cloudy
2009 Enero El Salvador
As a result of negotiations among the smaller political parties led by the National Conciliation Party (PCN) and Walter Araujo, former ARENA National...

Evictions and Megaprojects: Two Sides of the Same Coin
2008 Noviembre El Salvador
Carmelo Cabrera, president of the Association of United Peoples, has endured 36 trials, 6 arrests and 28 days in prison, always under the same charges,...

An Educational Adventure Loses Its Midwife
2008 Septiembre El Salvador
That Tuesday dawned with the threat of rain in Morazán, the northeastern department of El Salvador. As it does every winter, the area’s cool, damp climate...

How to Read ARENA’s Electoral Campaign
2008 Julio El Salvador
In El Salvador, the municipal, legislative and presidential elections only coincide every 15 years. March 2009 will be one such occasion. The electoral...

A Penitentiary Crisis That Refuses to Go Hawai
2008 Mayo El Salvador
During the first half of March eight prisoners were reported murdered in the Chalatenango and Ciudad Barrios penitentiary centers. Public Security and...

Who’s Defending Monsignor Romero?
2008 Enero El Salvador
In March 1983, Brazilian bishop Pedro Casaldaliga wrote in his diary, “There is no way I can understand it, or rather I understand it too well: the photograph...

Business Social Responsibility: Poisoned by Lead and Vested Interests
2007 Noviembre El Salvador
According to the impact evaluations of the free trade agreement known as CAFTA-DR, signed by the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic...

The Democratic Facade Has Fallen Away
2007 Septiembre El Salvador
President Elías Antonio Saca, in a speech on June 1 marking three years in office, vowed that “if they block us, we’ll find another road. If they want...

Beware the President’s Inner Soldier
2007 Julio El Salvador
During his Soldiers’ Day speech on May 7, President Elías Antonio Saca warned representatives from the three branches of the country’s armed forces of...

The 2006 Elections: A Contradictory Outcome
2006 Abril El Salvador
The results of the March 12 legislative and municipal elections can be interpreted in many ways. None of the six contending political parties was able...

In Memory of Schafik Handal: A Leftist Leader Faithful to the Poor
2006 Enero El Salvador
In their desire to live the moment and even reveal the future before it appens, many Salvadoran journalists asked what future there was for the Left...

The Death of Schafik Handal: Challenges Facing the FMLN
2006 Enero El Salvador
Beyond the pain it has brought so many poor Salvadorans, Schafik Handal’s death could represent an extraordinary opportunity for the Farabundo Martí...

Corruption Exposes the Free Market Myth
2005 Junio El Salvador
ARENA governments have always boasted about transparency, so much so that the concept now forms part of the established political discourse. Nontheless,...

The FMLN and the FSLN Are Brothers, Not Twins
2004 Mayo El Salvador
New hope begins to blossom every five years in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The public squares in different Salvadoran towns and cities fill with the...

Did the FMLN Lose, Or Did Fear Win the Day?
2004 Abril El Salvador
The March 2004 general elections will be remembered in El Salvador for many reasons, including the setting of three new records: the highest voter turnout...

ARENA’s 15-Year Legacy in the Transition
2003 Noviembre El Salvador
Contrary to the repeated official discourse that El Salvador is in wonderful shape, the conditions inherited by the successor to the third ARENA government...

A “Hard Hand”: State Violence Against Youth Gangs
2003 Septiembre El Salvador
On July 22, in a show mounted for the media, President Francisco Flores announced what he has labeled the “Hard Hand” plan to fight the youth gangs,...

Did the FMLN Win, Or ARENA Lose?
2003 Abril El Salvador
Elections for President and Vice President do not always mirror elections for Legislative Assembly representatives, mayors and municipal council members...

Could the Community “Over There” Depolarize Politics “Over Here”?
2003 Marzo El Salvador
Although there has been no formal census, it is commonly accepted that 25% of the Salvadoran population lives abroad. It is similarly, accepted that...

President Flores and the Magic Mountain
2002 Julio El Salvador
President Francisco Flores’ two previous reports to the Legislative Assembly to mark the anniversary of taking office have been characterized by a great...

Elections in Sight and Diplomacy Activated
2002 Mayo El Salvador
In the next two years El Salvador will hold two elections, choosing municipal mayors and parliamentarians in March 2003 and the country’s new President...

Images and Realities as the FTA Approaches
2002 Marzo El Salvador
March promised to be a busy time in El Salvador. First, the Salvadoran government was planning a ceremony for the 16th, in which United Nations Secretary...

Can the FMLN Win the Elections?
2001 Noviembre El Salvador
On Tuesday, November 6, the headlines of El Salvador’s two morning papers announced that Enrique Bolaños had won the Nicaraguan elections. Salvadoran...

Dollarization, Two Earthquakes and Now War
2001 Octubre El Salvador
The morning of September 11, what should have been an average Tuesday in an average week, many Salvadorans flipped on the TV as they ate breakfast. The...

A Small Town with Big Hopes Wants to Change Business as Usual
2001 Mayo El Salvador
Now, four months after the first earthquake and three months after the second, one thing is tragically clear in El Salvador. The lives of all the people...

Santa María Ostuma: The Voice of the Earthquake Victims
2001 Marzo El Salvador
In search of the epicenter of El Salvador’s February 13 earthquake, which, exactly a month after the one on January 13, kicked a country that was already...

Dollarization and the Earthquake: Two Manmade Disasters
2001 Enero El Salvador
Salvadoran society woke up uneasy on New Year’s Day. From that day forth, people would have to get used to making purchases with dollars as well as their...

San Salvador’s Government Goes After Garbage
2000 Noviembre El Salvador
All over the globe, garbage is a growing daily problem. No individual, social sector or institution that wants to be taken seriously can ignore it. The...

The Mayor of San Salvador Dares to Be Supported by the People
2000 Septiembre El Salvador
San Salvador’s municipal government is among 25 in the world recognized for the most efficient urban development. It has been awarded prizes by the United...

A Government Tough on the Weak And Weak with the Strong
2000 Julio El Salvador
A poll done in early June by San Salvador’s Central American University (UCA), marking the end of the first year of Francisco Flores’ government, revealed...

The FMLN’s relative victory
2000 Abril El Salvador
Although the Salvadoran left is still in a state of euphoria following the March 12 elections, the results leave it facing many more challenges and dilemmas...

Election Results: The Cost of Government Intransigence
2000 Marzo El Salvador
At the beginning of this year, the governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) was sure that it would defeat the FMLN by a landslide all around...

Monsignor Romero: Impunity in a Still-Open Case
2000 Marzo El Salvador
The events recounted here are based largely on the conclusions of the investigation the United Nations carried out through the Truth Commission for El...

The Subversive Memory Of a Country’s Martyrs
1999 Diciembre El Salvador
A decade ago, in the early hours of November 16, officers and troops of a special Salvadoran army squad entered the Jesuit Central American University...

Absent Government and Opposition
1999 Octubre El Salvador
A “switched off” performanceAccording to recent surveys, Flores is supported by just 5.3% of the population, and even the archbishop of San...

Finding Children: Working for Peace
1999 Septiembre El Salvador
“Usually when someone dies,” explains María Juana Benavides in a testimony quoted in Probúsqueda's April 1999 report, “the family members know they can...

A Tough New Government And a Lost Opposition
1999 Junio El Salvador
On June 1, addressing an audience of some 60 international delegations, Francisco Flores began his presidential term by expressing his appreciation and...

Reflections After the Electoral Hurricane
1999 Abril El Salvador
On June 1, Armando Calderón Sol will place the presidential sash on his successor, Francisco Flores, signifying the beginning of ARENA's third consecutive...

ARENA's Victory and the Predictable Disenchantment
1999 Marzo El Salvador
Salvadorans awoke on Election Day, Sunday, March 7, filled with doubts about the country's future. They were sure of only two things. First, however...

How Do We Make a Country Self-Supporting?
1998 Diciembre El Salvador
El Salvador cannot support itself as a country. Our years as a society are numbered. In an exercise we did we found that El Salvador has environmental...

Double-Edged Presidential Ticket
1998 Octubre El Salvador
In a society that is in constant ferment, El Salvador's Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) is still the most promising left expression...

FMLN Fails to Elect Candidate
1998 Septiembre El Salvador
On August 15 the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) held an extraordinary National Convention to select its presidential candidate for...

Left and Right in the Pre-Electoral Winds
1998 Junio El Salvador
Salvadoran political parties and their leaders know precisely where the horizon ends: the presidential elections of March 7, 1999. President Armando...

The Environmental Law In the Eye of The Political Storm
1998 Abril El Salvador
At the end of February, with the debate about the environmental bill in the eye of the storm, the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology (CESTA)...

A Tiny Endangered Country
1998 Enero El Salvador
"We have the right to live in a clean country, one with cool, leafy forests and crystalline lakes and rivers. We have the right to clean beaches, to...

End of ARENA and Future of the FMLN
1997 Noviembre El Salvador
Everyone is in agreement, though no one will say it aloud, that Sunday, September 21, marked the end of the government of Armando Calderón Sol, though...

FMLN Congresswomen Speak
1997 Septiembre El Salvador
The morning at the end of June when envío had its first contact with the FMLN congresswomen seemed like a special day: the third floor of the Legislative...

A Leftwing Mayor In the Continent's Most Violent Capital
1997 Julio El Salvador
Many eyes are on Hector Silva. Particularly those in El Salvador's capital city follow his every step, and with good reason. Hector Silva is San Salvador's...

A Trial by Fire With Good Results
1997 Mayo El Salvador
The just-concluded off-year municipal and legislative elections in El Salvador were the second electoral event of the post-peace accords stage. They...

What Has Changed?
1996 Septiembre El Salvador
With some modifications in its formulation, El Salvador could be an exemplary case, the ideal reference to recover the theses of the ancient Greek philosopher...

We're in the Dark and Losing the Way
1996 Agosto El Salvador
Two years of the second ARENA government have passed. Many speeches have spoken of the two years of government in El Salvador and also of an era that...

The Challenge of Crime
1996 Junio El Salvador
One of the most serious problems facing El Salvador today is the disproportionate growth of criminal activity. In this sense, it is similar to its neighbors...

Four Visits, Four Messages
1996 Abril El Salvador
Last year was not a very good one for El Salvador's democratization process. Many trends verified during the year pointed to a progressive distancing...

Unemployment and Violence: A Dramatic Cycle
1996 Enero El Salvador
El Salvador reveals an alarming level of extreme poverty. The country ranks 115 out of 174 nations studied in the United Nations Development Program...

Democracy in El Salvador: A Difficult Birth
1996 Enero El Salvador
Until the March 1994 elections, El Salvador's political scene was monopolized by two of the fundamental political forces that made the Peace Accords...

Does this Economic Model have a Future?
1995 Diciembre El Salvador
Bad omens were in the Salvadoran air throughout October. Rising inflation, restricted credit and a drop in growth have submerged the government in a...

ARENA Remains United
1995 Noviembre El Salvador
Three days before September's independence celebrations began, the Salvadoran capital became the conflictive scene of a violent confrontation between...

Toward Democracy Or Authoritarianism?
1995 Octubre El Salvador
After the short vacations afforded by the August celebration honoring El Salvador's patron saint, the long heralded modernization of the state has finally...

Labor Unrest and Organized Crime
1995 Septiembre El Salvador
In its political transition from war to peace, El Salvador is swinging between authoritarianism and democracy. Labor problems and demands by workers...

The San Andrés Pact: Authoritarian or Democratizing?
1995 Agosto El Salvador
Armando Calderón Sol is entering his second year in government with a declining popularity rating. After his first 100 days, his government averaged...

Pact of the Nation Or Pact of the Ruins?
1995 Julio El Salvador
The second ARENA administration, under the baton of Armando Calderón Sol, is now a year old. That year ended with a heated debate over the government...

Glory and the Shame Of the Peace Accords
1995 Junio El Salvador
The presence of the United Nations verification mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) ended April 30. With its withdrawal, human rights follow up, legal advice...

Shots Fired Against The Peace Accords
1995 Mayo El Salvador
The month of March closed on a pathetic note in El Salvador. Wounded and disabled war veterans from both the armed forces and the FMLN were beaten in...

Peace Accords Victim of ARENA Contradictions
1995 Abril El Salvador
Land transfers and credits for former combatants in rural areas, new housing settlements for the demobilized and civilian reinsertion programs for former...

FMLN's Convention Resolutions
1995 Febrero El Salvador
In December, the People's Renovating Expression (ERP) and the National Resistance (RN) announced their definitive withdrawal from the FMLN. Despite...

Archbishop Rivera y Damas: Wit the Light of Bishop Romero
1995 Enero El Salvador
On November 26, 71 year old Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas died unexpectedly in San Salvador. A massive heart attack early that Saturday morning left...

Peace is Built of Many Pieces
1994 Diciembre El Salvador
In April 1993, police in El Salvador nabbed the highest level arms dealers ever in the country. But even though they had been caught in the act, a judge...

Rubén Zamora on the Political Crisis
1994 Noviembre El Salvador
The Christian Democratic Party's special convention, held in mid September to restructure its provisional political commission, ended ignominiously,...

Calderón Sol's First 100 Days
1994 Octubre El Salvador
It is not easy to discover where the new Salvadoran government is putting its emphasis, based on its first 100 days. There is a notable difference in...

All Roads Lead to Impunity
1994 Septiembre El Salvador
Several recent political events have forced the country to turn once again to the issues of security, impunity and the administration of justice. The...

Security, Impunity, Justice
1994 Agosto El Salvador
Two big problems have plagued the first 30 days of Armando Calderón Sol's presidency. One is the insecurity caused by the organized crime, embedded...

As President Premieres FMLN Debates its Unity
1994 Julio El Salvador
In January 1932, a massive peasant insurrection shook El Salvador. The United States stationed battleships off the country's Pacific coast, ready to...

New, Complex Challenges Every Day
1994 Junio El Salvador
The May 1 Labor Day celebrations this year coincided with the inauguration of El Salvador's new Legislative Assembly. That same day, 262 new mayors...

The Elections: A Post Game Analysis
1994 Mayo El Salvador
Making a clear prediction of what the results of the March 20 elections will mean for El Salvador is like trying to decipher the light and shadows in...

The left's response to two Historic Challenges
1994 Abril El Salvador
In my opinion, El Salvador is facing two key challenges with these elections. They are such enormous challenges that they will require all our creativity...

Ushering in the New Year
1994 Febrero El Salvador
How did Salvadorans welcome the new year in 1994? The majority received it terrified by a new outbreak of cholera, an epidemic that has come to the...

The Death Squads are Back
1993 Diciembre El Salvador
Since the signing of the Peace Accords in January 1992, 24 FMLN members have been assassinated without the government determining either cause or culprit....

A Revealing Health Workers's Trike
1993 Noviembre El Salvador
Just as the Cristiani government launched a huge pre election publicity campaign stressing its achievements with the slogan "We'll keep getting better,"...

Elections: Will all be Able to Vote?
1993 Octubre El Salvador
One of the key challenges in Salvador's democratization process is to assure that the March 1994 elections be genuinely different from the simulation...

On all Fronts: Indecision Winning
1993 Septiembre El Salvador
Salvadoran reality does not seem to vary substantially; two old issues are still the most relevant. One is the intensifying tendency to neglect the...

Repercussions of the Managua Arms Cache
1993 Agosto El Salvador
The partial explosion of an arms arsenal in Managua that some say was no accident, and the discovery that it belonged to the Popular Liberation Front...

Elections Ahead, Peace Accords Behind?
1993 Julio El Salvador
Since the signing of the January 1992 peace accords, two key phases have commanded El Salvador's political scenario. The first was dominated by the...

From Insanity to Hope?
1993 Mayo El Salvador
While people throughout El Salvador were commemorating the 13th anniversary of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero's assassination, the ARENA government pushed...

El Salvador On Amnesty
1993 Mayo El Salvador
In the wake of a civil war lasting more than a decade, few in El Salvador question the need for mechanisms providing for legal pardon. Yet the capricious,...

Bishop Romero's Baptism by the People
1993 Abril El Salvador
SAN SALVADOR, February 10, 1977. The media officially confirmed today that the Vatican named Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero Galdámez to preside...

The Apathetic are not Centrists; as the Left we Must win their Support
1993 Abril El Salvador
."The FMLN must continue to be, above all, the force that embodies this country's democratic transformations, the force that works for the interests...

Controversy Swirls Around Armed Forces
1993 Enero El Salvador
The issue of purging the Salvadoran armed forces has taken center stage for many Salvadorans. President Cristiani's non compliance with the recommendations...

The National Dialogue--What's in Store?
1993 Enero El Salvador
The January 16, 1992 peace accords commissioned the installation of an economic and social forum for dialogue known as the Concertación Forum. Its objective:...

El Salvador: Up Against the Calendar
1992 Diciembre El Salvador
On October 26, less than a week before the October 31 deadline, the United Nations proposed a recalendarization of the peace process in El Salvador,...

UN Urges Greater Progress in Peace Agreement
1992 Noviembre El Salvador
UN representative Marrack Goulding's visit to El Salvador in August was convincing: advances had to be made in complying with the accords according to...

Ending the Trauma of Terror
1992 Octubre El Salvador
El Salvador has more than 75,000 war dead and thousands of disappeared persons—the majority of them victims of a systematic violation of fundamental...

More Stops and Starts
1992 Octubre El Salvador
Despite high expectations for advances in fulfilling the new peace accord calendar in July, the FMLN's second round of demobilization did not take place...

Three Years of Arena Presidency
1992 Agosto El Salvador
On June 1, Alfredo Cristiani marked three years in his presidential term, having presided over two fundamental achievements for his country: the peace...

The FMLN from Within: Ideological Diversity, Political Unity
1992 Agosto El Salvador
In this interview conducted in El Salvador on April 24, Gerson Martínez, member of the Political Commission of the FMLN, discusses the future structure...

At a Snail's Pace
1992 Julio El Salvador
Amidst errors, the right's unwillingness, the left's justified distrust and even an assassination attempt, the Salvadoran peace process continues very...

The FMLN Taking Risks to Win
1992 Junio El Salvador
Once the Salvadoran peace accords began being put into effect, the big game in town for accord watchers became tallying non-compliances and calendar...

Land and Military to Center Stage
1992 Mayo El Salvador
If the Chapultepec accords did not imply profound transformations in El Salvador's traditional power structure, there would be no obstacles to their...

A New Chapter Begins
1992 Abril El Salvador
With the recent peace accords and the death of the far right's top leader, Roberto D' Aubuisson, one chapter of Salvadoran history ended and another...

The End of Fear
1992 Marzo El Salvador
In the course of activities by the FMLN High Command after their remarkable open return to the country, one event was the laying of flowers at the...

The Possibility That Top Officers Ordered the Crimes
1992 Enero El Salvador
Continuing our coverage of the outcome of the Jesuit case in El Salvador, which began last month with a report from the Institute of Human Rights...

The Jesuit Case: Still Plagued by Questions
1991 Diciembre El Salvador
November 16 marked two years since the massacre at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador. The legal phase, including a three-day public...

Salvadoran Peace Accords
1991 Noviembre El Salvador
On September 25, the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) signed a major agreement in New York that...

El Salvador: CHRONOLOGY
1990 Diciembre El Salvador
November 198911- At 8:00 pm the FMLN launches its most powerful military offensive in San Salvador and other cities in 10 years of war. Within...

The Murder of Six Jesuits One Year After: Interview with Father José Tojeira
1990 Diciembre El Salvador
A full year has passed since the assassination of six Jesuit priests at San Salvador's Central American University (UCA). Twelve months of investigations,...

SI Leader's Murder Remains Unsolved
1990 Diciembre El Salvador
The January 1990 murder of Hector Oquelí, deputy general secretary of El Salvador's National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) and secretary of the Socialist...

Forcing Negotiation
1990 Mayo El Salvador
Only a year ago the Duarte government, the army and the United States refused an FMLN proposal to postpone elections for six months to create more democratic...

The FMLN Offensive—Search for a Negotiated Solution
1990 Febrero El Salvador
Is an offensive of the caliber of the one begun on November 11 by the FMLN, El Salvador's guerrilla movement, merely an expression of militarism or an...

FMLN Proposals for Negotiating a Just and Lasting Peace in El Salvador
1990 Enero El Salvador
On September 13-15, 1989, in Mexico City, leaders of the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation met for the first time with representatives of...

El Salvador: Transition to ARENA
1989 Octubre El Salvador
As mid-September approached, Mexico City was making last-minute preparations to host the first talks between delegates of El Salvador's recently elected...

Time to Negotiate
1989 Mayo El Salvador
Although the civil war continued to be the single most determining factor of life in El Salvador, the electoral process (only indirectly related to the...

FMLN Proposal to Turn the Elections into a Contribution to Peace
1989 Abril El Salvador
The General Command of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) takes into account: 1. That the last five elections have not resolved...

Continue the Low-Intensity Conflict Or Go for Total War?
1989 Enero El Salvador
With the Reagan era winding down and the Bush presidency yet to gell, events in El Salvador are moving forward at a frantic pace that could well have...

Shifting Weight at the Two Poles
1987 Marzo El Salvador
Three factors have been crucial in determining the political-military balance of the Salvadoran conflict in 1986: the deepening of the economic crisis,...