Abstract
When does an intractable conflict become tractable? The civil war in El Salvador went on for 11 years, from 1981 to 1992. During that time, representatives of the warring sides met officially and unofficially on numerous occasions.1 By walking away from the negotiating table, and allowing the war to persist, each side implicitly expressed its preference for securing its agenda through military means. Or perhaps they were confronting something more intractable than they imagined.
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Notes and References
The most publicized attempts at negotiation took place under the administration of José Napoleón Duarte (1984–9) at La Palma (15 October 1984) and Ayagualo (30 November 1984).
The FMLN was a coalition of five guerrilla groups formed in late 1980. In the early years of the war, it formed an alliance with the Frente Democrático Revolucionario (FDR), an organization of Social and Christian Democrats and Marxist independents who had defected from the 1979 government. See also Baloyra, 1982, pp. 68 and 160–2; Dunkerley, 1988, pp. 398–9; Soberg Shugart, 1992; Moroni Bracamonte and Spencer, 1995.
Cristiani won by 54 per cent of the vote, 14 percentage points ahead of the Christian Democratic candidate. Latin American Weekly Review (LAWR) 12 (12 March 1989), p. 12.
Talks broke down in Costa Rica when a senior military officer expressed the opinion that the government had no reason to negotiate, only to wait three months for military victory. In his mind, the FMLN was ‘on its knees’, bereft of material or ideological support from its allies abroad. Salvadoran citizens had just expressed their solid approval of conservative ARENA policies. To a small group of commanding officers, this spelled freedom from the Christian Democrats’ refusal to sanction death squads. Finally, the superpower withdrawal from Central America was well underway, and the most reactionary elements anticipated this would leave them free rein to annihilate the FMLN. From the FMLN’s point of view, however, the primary goal of the offensive was to test the possibility of insurrection once and for all.
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, João Clemente Baena Soares, was taken out from another side of the hotel as the FMLN took over the VIP wing. The FMLN thought Baena Soares was at another hotel, the Presidente. Interview with Salvador Sanabria, formerly of the FMLN Political Directorate, 19 November 1995.
The victims were University of Central America Rector Ignacio EllacurÃa, SJ; Director of the Human Rights Institute Segundo Montes, SJ; Director of the Institute of Public Opinion Ignacio MartÃn-Baro, SJ; professors Amando López and Juan Ramón Moreno; Fe y AlegrÃa director JoaquÃn López y López; their cook, Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter Lisette. Baloyra, 1991, p. 124.
For example, the 1981 massacre at El Mozote. See Danner, 1994.
The original texts of the important agreements are available in ‘El Acuerdo de Paz de El Salvador’. Panorama Centroamericano 37, 1992, Jan.-Feb. The Act of New York was signed on 31 December 1991. The Act of New York II was signed on 13 January 1992. The Peace Accord of Chapultepec was signed on 16 January 1992.
Agriculture for export (EXA) in Central America refers to coffee, bananas, sugar, and cotton. Agriculture for domestic use (DUA) refers to fishing and agriculture less coffee, bananas, sugar, and cotton. Bulmer-Thomas, 1987.
A more radical view on the influence and impact of global elites is presented in Kowalewski (1996), who links the economic and political elites of developed and underdeveloped capitalist countries ‘into a web of mutual benefit’.
Charles Anderson, 1982, said that two fundamental rules governed access to political power and relations among those who controlled the political system. The first is that an actor display sufficient power capability to be a power contender. The second is that power contenders not use their power to destroy other players. Thus the number of actors can only grow because no player is permanently destroyed.
See, for example, Orme, Mason and Fett, and Zartman.
He and other negotiators make interesting subjects for leadership analysis, especially in the way they broke the rules.
Linz (1990) cites five reasons for the breakdown of democratic regimes as: crisis of legitimacy; crisis of efficacy; the disloyal opposition; elite response to violence; and regime effectiveness.
Morales and McMahon (1996) note that many first-term democratic governments fail to achieve macroeconomic stability, even without the additional duress of civil war, but note that the second-term democratic administration in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia influenced the direction of economic policy far beyond their limited tenures.
Huntington (1968), p. 194: ‘Military explanations do not explain military interventions … Society as a whole is out of joint, not just the military.’
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© 1998 Tricia Juhn
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Juhn, T. (1998). Rashomon. In: Negotiating Peace in El Salvador. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26810-8_1
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