External Influences on the Negotiations to End the War in El Salvador

Abstract

Despite protestations from the leadership of the Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) that the decade-long civil war in El Salvador was an internal struggle with only external ramifications,1 both the Salvadoran government and the FMLN and its partner, the Frente Democrática Revolucionario (FDR) recognized that U.S. support for the former, as well as Cuban and Soviet support for the latter played significant roles in the generation and, later, the ending of that conflict. Salvador Samayoa, the leader of the FMLN’s comisión negociadora (diplomatic and political commission) emphasized the internal nature of Salvador’s conflict, but he was also cognizant of the Cold War’s impact on Latin America. In Samayoa’s opinion, El Salvador had become a pawn in the geopolitical contest between the superpowers. “Los Estados Unidos estaban viendo a América Latina como una pieza del ajedrez geopolitico en su confrontación global con la Unión Soviética …”2 (The United States was viewing Latin America as a geopolitical pawn in its global confrontation with the Soviet Union.)