History of El Salvador - Military Dictatorships (1931-1979)

Military Dictatorships (1931-1979)

Between 1931, the year of Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez's coup, and 1944, when he was deposed, there was brutal suppression of rural resistance. The most notable event was the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising headed by Farabundo Martí and the government retaliation, commonly referred to as La Matanza (the 'slaughter'), which followed. In this 'Matanza', approximately 30,000 indigenous people and political opponents were murdered, imprisoned or exiled. Until 1980, all but one Salvadoran temporary president was an army officer. Periodic presidential elections were seldom free or fair.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, authoritarian governments employed political repression and limited reform to maintain power, despite the trappings of democracy. The National Conciliation Party was in power from the early 1960s until 1979. Fidel Sánchez Hernández was president from 1967 to 1972. In July 1969, El Salvador invaded Honduras in the short Football War related to the Honduran appropriation of land held by Salvadoran immigrants.

During the 1970s, there was great political instability. In the 1972 presidential election, opponents of military rule united under José Napoleón Duarte, leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Amid widespread fraud, Duarte's broad-based reform movement was defeated. Subsequent protests and an attempted coup were crushed and Duarte exiled. These events eroded hope of reform through democratic means and persuaded those opposed to the government that armed insurrection was the only way to achieve change. As a consequence of this social discontent, left-wing revolutionary groups began to gain strength.