The Revolutionary Government Junta (Spanish: Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno, JRG) was the name of three consecutive joint civilian-military dictatorships that ruled El Salvador between 15 October 1979 and 2 May 1982.
In March 1979, President Carlos Humberto Romero had soldiers crush protests and strikes against his government to prevent a revolution in El Salvador from starting, similar to the revolution in Nicaragua which had begun the previous year.[7] The eventual overthrow of Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle in September 1979 prompted many military officers to remove Romero and replace him with a stronger government which was able to prevent such a revolution.[8] The military gained the support of the US government and organized itself under Colonels Adolfo Arnoldo Majano and Jaime Abdul Gutiérrez.[9]
The military launched a coup d'état on 15 October 1979 and forced Romero to resign and go into exile.[10] Many high-ranking military officials who were loyal to Romero, such as the Minister of National Defense and the Director of the National Guard, also resigned and went into exile.[11][12] The coup is often cited as the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War.[13]
The junta styled itself as a "reformist junta" which rose to power via a "reformist coup" led by "reformist officers" in the military.[3] The junta promised to redistribute wealth and implement several nation-wide reforms, including economic, political, and agrarian reforms.[7] Promises to end human rights violations and political oppression were also made.[7] The first reform put into place was the abolition of the National Democratic Organization (ORDEN), an organization composed of several right-wing paramilitaries that tortured political opponents, intimidated voters, rigged elections, and killed peasants.[5][6][10][18] During the abolition of ORDEN, the paramilitaries themselves were not dissolved, however, and they operated independently and committed various atrocities during the civil war.[5][10] The "reformist junta," meanwhile, utilized its own death squads to commit human rights violations during the civil war.[19] Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez cautiously endorsed the coup and the junta stating that the goals and reforms were good-willed.[20][21]
The junta immediately faced problems from both the political right and left.[7] In the weeks following the coup, thousands of civilians and members of the Unified Popular Action Front (FAPU), Popular Leagues "February 28" (LP-28), and People's Revolutionary Bloc (BRP), marched in the streets of San Salvador demanding the release of all the information on the victims of the military regime.[7][14][22] They also demanded that the junta follow through with their promises of reform and also include wage increases, lower consumer prices, and public trials of military officers who had previously committed human rights abuses against the people.[14][22] Meanwhile, wealthy landowners and businessmen, most of whom had affiliations with the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), opposed the proposed reforms the junta promised to implement.[7][23]
The leaders of the junta attempted to cater to the left to prevent an uprising by raising wages by 30% and attempting to implement agrarian reforms, however, the attempt failed.[14] Meanwhile, the Army and National Guard continued to kill anyone suspected of being a leftist militant.[14] By the end of October 1979, over 100 civilians had been killed by the Army and the National Guard, but the junta claimed that the acts were committed by forces that were not under its control.[14]
From 2–5 January 1980, the three civilian members of the junta resigned. The entire cabinet, except the Minister of National Defense, Brigadier General José Guillermo García, also resigned.[12] Majano and Gutiérrez remained in place and organized the creation of a second junta.[24]
On 22 January 1980, the 48th anniversary of La Matanza, the massacre of 10,000–40,000 indigenous and communist rebels by the government of President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, around 80,000 to 200,000 people marched in the streets of San Salvador.[14][27] According to the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission, the National Guard killed 67 people and injured 250.[14] On 8 March 1980, the junta approved the new agrarian reforms and nationalized the national bank.[24]
A death squad, acting under the orders of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, assassinated Archbishop Romero while giving mass on 24 March.[28] Around 250,000 people attended his funeral on 30 March and around 40 were killed by gunfire which is believed to have come from the National Guard.[29][30] Majano, gave press statements stating that Interpol had the list of suspects in Romero's murder and that he would give that report to the judge assigned to the case, the Fourth Judge of Criminal Atilio Ramírez Amaya.[31] The judge was nearly assassinated when armed men arrived to kill him at his residence.[31] On 8 May, the army arrested D'Aubuisson during a meeting in which information allegedly related to the assassination of Romero was seized.[32] An agenda of Captain Álvaro Saravia was seized under the name "Operation Pineapple."[32] D'Aubuisson was not tried for the murder, nor for treason, despite him attempting to overthrow the junta on 30 April, and he was released from prison in May 1980.[14][32] He later founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) in September 1981.[23]
Majano resigned as Chairman of the Junta and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on 14 May and gave the positions to Gutiérrez, but he remained as a member of the junta.[35][36][37] However, due to pressure from Gutiérrez and the United States to step down, Majano resigned from the junta entirely on 13 December 1980, effectively ending the second junta.[35][38] The junta then filed a warrant for Majano's arrest.[35] He was arrested by army on 20 February 1981 on charges of military disobedience, released on 20 March, and left for exile in Panama.[35][39]
After the resignation of Majano on 13 December 1980, the Third Revolutionary Government Junta was formed.[40] It consisted of the members of the previous junta: Gutiérrez, Duarte, Morales Ehrlich, and Ávalos Navarrete.[40] Duarte served as the President of the junta while Gutiérrez served as vice president.[40] The third junta continued the implementation of the agrarian reforms and promised democratization.[41] The United States, under President Ronald Reagan, continued economic aid and diplomatic support to the junta.[42][43][44]
The FMLN launched the "Final Offensive" to overthrow the government and take control of the country on 10 January 1981.[14][45] The junta contained the offensive, and by the end of January, the offensive ended in a strategic failure for the FMLN, but they did prove that they were a capable fighting force.[14] The junta responded to the offensive by launching their own scorched-earth offensive in March 1981 in northern El Salvador.[46]
On 17 March 1982, 4 Dutch journalists and 5 FMLN guerrillas were ambushed by the army near the town of Santa Rita, Chalatenango, with 8 being killed in the attack.[47] The attack outraged many, especially in the Netherlands, where people demanded the removal of the junta from power.[48] Duarte stated that it was not an attack but instead simply an accident and that the journalists were caught in the crossfire between army soldiers and FMLN guerrillas.[48]
Democratization
In order to democratize the country, the junta scheduled a legislative election for 28 March 1982 and a presidential election for 29 April 1982.[2][23] The legislative election resulted in the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) gaining the most seats at 24.[2] The Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) gained 19, the National Conciliation Party (PCN) gained 14, and other minor parties gained the final 3 seats.[2] During the presidential election, only members of the Constitutional Assembly were allowed to vote.[49] The PDC, PCN, and minor Democratic Action (AD) joined in a coalition and elected Álvaro Magaña as president, defeating ARENA candidate, Hugo César Barrera, by a margin of 36 to 17 with 7 abstentions.[49] D'Aubuisson accused Gutiérrez of fixing the election in Magaña's favor.[14] Magaña was inaugurated as president of El Salvador on 2 May 1982, the first civilian president since Arturo Araujo in 1931.[50][51]
The assumption of Magaña ended the rule of the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador.[14] Duarte continued to serve in politics and became president in 1984 while Gutiérrez retired from military life.[23]
From 1979 to 1982, the juntas committed various human rights violations and war crimes. Several deaths squads and paramilitaries were formed by junta soldiers and officers that attacked leftist militants and civilians.[52][53] Because the death squads were made up of army soldiers and the United States was funding the army, the United States was indirectly funding the death squads as well.[52][53]
The most notorious US-trained army battalion was the Atlácatl Battalion.[54] The battalion committed two of the deadliest massacres during the civil war: the El Calabozo massacre and the El Mozote massacre.[54][55][56] Meanwhile, the National Guard, the No. 1 Military Detachment, and paramilitaries that were formerly a part of ORDEN committed the Sumpul River massacre on the Honduran border.[57]
The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front is a Salvadoran political party and former guerrilla rebel group.
The Chapultepec Peace Accords were a set of peace agreements signed on January 16, 1992, the day in which the Salvadoran Civil War ended. The treaty established peace between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). It was signed in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico.
The Nationalist Republican Alliance is a conservative, center-right to right-wing political party of El Salvador. It was founded on 30 September 1981 by retired Salvadoran Army Major Roberto D'Aubuisson. It defines itself as a political institution constituted to defend the democratic, republican, and representative system of government, the social market economy system and nationalism.
José Napoleón Duarte Fuentes was a Salvadoran politician who served as President of El Salvador from 1 June 1984 to 1 June 1989. He was mayor of San Salvador before running for president in 1972. He lost, but the election is widely viewed as fraudulent. Following a coup d'état in 1979, Duarte led the subsequent civil-military Junta from 1980 to 1982. He was then elected president in 1984, defeating ARENA party leader Roberto D'Aubuisson.
Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta was a Salvadoran military officer, neo-fascist politician, and death squad leader. In 1981, he co-founded and became the first leader of the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and served as president of the Legislative Assembly from 1982 to 1983. He was a presidential candidate for 1984 presidential election, losing in the second round to José Napoleón Duarte, the former president of the Revolutionary Government Junta. After ARENA's loss in the 1985 legislative elections, D'Aubuisson stepped down in favor of Alfredo Cristiani and was designated as the party's honorary president for life. D'Aubuisson was named by the United Nations' Truth Commission for El Salvador as having ordered the assassination of Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador in 1980.
The Christian Democratic Party is a Salvadoran political party. From 2011 to 2012, the party was renamed to Party of Hope before reverting to the Christian Democratic Party. The PDC has been led by Reinaldo Carballo since 2023.
The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or "umbrella organization" of left-wing groups backed by the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as well as the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of civil war. The war did not formally end until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when, on 16 January 1992 the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Mexico City.
The Atlácatl Battalion was a rapid-response, counter-insurgency battalion of the Salvadoran Army created in 1981. It was implicated in some of the most infamous massacres of the Salvadoran Civil War.
The current constitution of El Salvador was enacted in 1983 and amended in 2003. The 1983 constitution of El Salvador is similar to that of 1962, often incorporating verbatim passages from the earlier document. The constitution consists of 11 titles, subdivided into 274 articles.
The Salvadoran military dictatorship was the period of time in Salvadoran history where the Salvadoran Armed Forces governed the country for almost 48 years from 2 December 1931 until 15 October 1979. The authoritarian military dictatorship limited political rights throughout the country and maintained its governance through rigged and fixed elections.
The Truth Commission for El Salvador was a restorative justice truth commission approved by the United Nations to investigate the grave wrongdoings that occurred throughout the country's twelve year civil war. It is estimated that 1.4 percent of the Salvadoran population was killed during the war. The commission operated from July 1992 until March 1993, when its findings were published in the final report, From Madness to Hope. The eight-month period heard from over 2,000 witness testimonies and compiled information from an additional 20,000 witness statements.
Jaime Abdul Gutiérrez Avendaño was Salvadoran military officer, statesman, and engineer. He served as the chairman of the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) in 1980 and as the vice president of the JRG from 1980 to 1982. He also served as the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES) from 1980 to 1982.
The 1979 Salvadoran coup d'état was a military coup d'état that occurred in El Salvador on 15 October 1979. The coup, led by young military officers, bloodlessly overthrew military President Carlos Humberto Romero and sent him into exile. The National Conciliation Party's firm grasp on power was cut, and in its place, the military established the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador (JRG). The junta was composed of two military officers and three civilians.
Adolfo Arnoldo Majano Ramos is a former Salvadoran military and political figure. He was one of the leaders of the military coup on October 15, 1979, and the chairman of the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador from 1979 to 1980.
The Battle of Ilopango Airport was a military engagement fought at the Ilopango International Airport in El Salvador in late January 1981. The battle was a part of the Salvadoran Civil War. It was fought between soldiers of the Salvadoran Air Force and guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.
Death squads in El Salvador were far-right paramilitary groups acting in opposition to Marxist–Leninist guerrilla forces, most notably of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), and their allies among the civilian population before, during, and after the Salvadoran Civil War. The death squads committed the vast majority of the murders and massacres during the civil war from 1979 to 1992 and were heavily aligned with the United States-backed government.
The Santa Rita massacre occurred near the municipality of Santa Rita in Chalatenango, El Salvador, on 17 March 1982. During the massacre, soldiers from the Atonal Battalion attacked and killed four Dutch journalists and a disputed number of guerrillas from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The final offensive of 1981, also known as the general offensive of 1981, was the unsuccessful first military offensive conducted by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the Salvadoran Civil War. The objective of the offensive was to initiate a popular revolution to overthrow the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG), which had been ruling the country since the 1979 Salvadoran coup d'état. The FMLN hoped that the government would be overthrown by 20 January 1981; the date Ronald Reagan was to be inaugurated as president of the United States.
The 1972 Salvadoran coup d'état attempt occurred from 25 to 26 March 1972 when young military officers attempted to overthrow the government of Fidel Sánchez Hernández, prevent the presidency of Arturo Armando Molina, and proclaim José Napoleón Duarte as President of El Salvador. The coup was suppressed and its leaders were exiled from the country.
1 2 Herman, Edward S.; Brodhead, Frank (1984). Demonstration elections: U.S.-staged elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador. Boston: South End Press. p.94.
1 2 3 Popkin, Margaret (2000). "Peace without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador". 44 (1). Pennsylvania State University Press: 26–48.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
1 2 Stanley, William (1996). The Protection Racket State Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador. Temple University Press. pp.107–132. ISBN9781566393911. JSTORj.ctt14bswcg.
↑ Gleijeses, Piero (1983). "The Case for Power Sharing in El Salvador". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. 61 (5): 1048–1063. doi:10.2307/20041635. JSTOR20041635.
1 2 3 Pastor, Robert (1984). "Continuity and Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: Carter and Reagan on El Salvador". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. 3 (2): 170–190. doi:10.1002/pam.4050030202. JSTOR3323931.
↑ LeoGrande, William M.; Robbins, Carla Anne (1980). "Oligarchs and Officers: The Crisis in El Salvador". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. 58 (5): 1084–1103. doi:10.2307/20040583. JSTOR20040583.
↑ Williams, Philip; Walter, Knut (1997). Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy. University of Pittsburgh Pre. pp.99–100. ISBN0822971860.
1 2 Anderson, Thomas P. (1971). Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p.88.
↑ Wood, Elisabeth (2003). Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. pp.1–4, 14–15. ISBN0521010500.
↑ Karl, Terry Lynn (1992). "El Salvador's Negotiated Revolution". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. 71 (2): 147–164. doi:10.2307/20045130. JSTOR20045130.
↑ Jung, Harald (1982). "The Civil War in El Salvador". Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe. Centrum voor Studie en Documentatie van Latijns Amerika (CEDLA) (32): 5–13. JSTOR25675122.
↑ Rabe, Stephen (2016). The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.144–175. ISBN9780190216252.
↑ Pastor, Robert (Winter 1984). "Continuity and Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: Carter and Reagan on El Salvador". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 3 (2): 175–190. doi:10.1002/pam.4050030202.
↑ Belisario Betancur and Thomas Buergenthal (25 January 2001). "From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador". The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador. United States Institute of Peace.
↑ UN Truth Commission for El Salvador (1993). From Madness to Hope (Report). p.23.
1 2 Arnson, Cynthia J. (2000). Campbell, Bruce B.; Brenner, Arthur D. (eds.). "Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador". Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability. Palgrave Macmillan, New York: 85–124. doi:10.1057/9780230108141_4. ISBN9781403960948.
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