El Salvador's brutal civil war: What we still don't know

Post by Kathryn Hovington

From 1980 to 1992, civil war ravaged the Central American state of El Salvador, claiming the lives of approximately 75,000 Salvadorans. The two primary actors were the government of El Salvador, which received support from the United States, and a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group called the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was supported by Nicaragua, Cuba, and indirectly the Soviet government. The Salvadoran armed forces were responsible for the majority of human rights violations committed during the conflict, including a number of massacres during the early 1980s. El Salvador's President, Mauricio Funes, recently apologised for one such well-known massacre, carried out in El Mozote in December 1981 by the military. President Funes has recently created a military commission to investigate the history of the armed forces, although the commission is to be comprised of military officers which may call its independence into question. The extent of the FMLN's use of violence during the civil war requires further investigation. During the 1980s, the FMLN killed several mayors, informants and traitors, all crimes under the rules of war. There are also strong indications that the guerrillas began to rely more on terrorist tactics during the late 1980s.

Twenty years after the signing of the peace accords which marked the end of the conflict, many aspects of El Salvador's civil war remain murky. In February, the Unit of Investigations about the Salvadoran Civil War (UIGCS) of the Universidad de El Salvador organized the largest meeting of researchers on the civil war in El Salvador, entitled, "History, Society and Memories: the armed conflict on the 20th anniversary of the Peace Accords". According to Jorge Juárez of UIGCS, the seminar's goal was to "make known to the public a version [of the war's history] without passions, without ideology, that presents the simple truth of the facts".

To read the Aljazeera article in full, please click here.