The first truth commission in El Salvador

The Central American civil wars of the 20th century, the conflicts in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, cannot be seen separately from one another in terms of their global embedding in the East-West conflict. In each case, the starting point was an increasingly precarious economic and social situation of a predominantly peasant majority of the population, while a few families controlled almost all of the fertile land and supported authoritarian regimes that met reform efforts with repression and violence from the outset and sought to nip any attempts at political participation by the majority of the population in the bud.

From the 1930s onwards, economic and technical modernisation led to a further deterioration in work opportunities in the agricultural sector, the livelihood of the majority of the population, without any economic alternatives being developed for the rural population. The traditional ruling elites reacted by intensifying their policy of repression[1].

While an intertwining of economic and political polarisation formed the starting point for the civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua and these conflicts were instrumentalised in parallel in the ‚Cold War‘, the respective conflicts took very different forms in their course.

After El Slavador gained its independence from the Spanish colonial power in 1821, the tendency to concentrate large estates in the hands of a few continued with the expansion of coffee cultivation. In 1882, the rest of the indigenous communal land was expropriated by law, and by the transition to the 20th century, 90 per cent of the arable land was already owned by 0.01 per cent of the total population[2].

The global economic crisis at the end of the 1920s also caused severe turbulence in the economy of the small country, which had always been and still is heavily dependent on the US economy. During this period of instability, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez seized power in a coup d’état in 1931, ushering in an uninterrupted series of military dictatorships that lasted until 1979[3].

An uprising in January 1932, led by Augustín Farabundo Martí, leader of the recently founded Communist Party of El Salvador, was quickly suppressed. At least 10,000 actual and alleged insurgents were subsequently murdered. The brutal suppression of the uprising, which went down in national memory as a ‚matanza‘ (massacre), went hand in hand with an act of genocide: the ‚matanza‘ also marked the end of indigenous life in El Salvador. Any left-wing or social reform-oriented movement was marginalised for over 40 years.

Martínez, known for his interest in the occult and his endeavours to emulate the fascist dictators of Europe, was forced to resign in 1948 when a general strike paralysed the country. However, there was no fundamental change in the policy of repression under the subsequent military dictatorships.

In the 1970s, however, organisations of agricultural workers increasingly formed, and social protest was increasingly expressed in strikes and demonstrations despite ongoing repression and increasing human rights violations.

The situation came to a head when the ‚Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno‘ took power in October 1979. While the junta initially included civilians and moderate military officers who were in favour of agrarian reform, this ‚faction‘ was soon pushed back. The junta, which was now made up exclusively of military officers with close ties to the coffee oligarchy and business leaders, responded to social protests with terror, while various guerrilla organisations began to become active in the country.[4] Even before the junta took power, death squads (escuadrones de la muerte ) had been deployed to secure the status quo of the ruling elite, which encouraged the formation of armed guerrilla groups. Under the new military junta, they now acted with extreme brutality against any form of opposition and often also against innocent bystanders. All that was needed was an occasion that would trigger the final stage in the escalation spiral towards civil war.

The assassination of Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador, was this decisive turning point. The internationally renowned liberation theologian, who had campaigned for social justice and political reform in opposition to the military dictatorship[5], was shot dead by death squads on 24 March 1980 during a church service he was celebrating. The murder of the archbishop, who was beatified by Pope Francis in 2015, is exemplary of the paramilitary units‘ approach to eliminating figures of integration in the opposition and silencing voices that criticise the oligarchic order and the repressive measures to maintain it. Romero had increasingly denounced the financial and military involvement of the Reagan administration in favour of the Salvadoran junta, but had always campaigned for a peaceful transformation of the social and political structures of his homeland.[6] Not least through Romero, the part of the Catholic Church in El Salvador that was oriented towards liberation theology played a much more significant role in the internal conflict than in the neighbouring states. The archbishop, an eloquent critic of the prevailing social conditions and accuser of the country’s ruling class, had become a figure of integration for the opposition movement within a few years following a political, theological and spiritual turnaround and had gained great international recognition, much to the displeasure of the regime.

The civil war in El Salvador, which lasted almost 12 years and was one of the cruellest in the history of Latin America, was the consequence of numerous failed attempts by the Salvadoran people since the country’s independence to defend themselves against political and social marginalisation by a thin layer of a land and resource-owning oligarchy. The peasant uprisings of the twentieth century, the efforts of the trade union movement to improve social conditions, but also for political participation, the rule of law and democracy, were always met with repression and increasingly with excessive violence against any form of opposition. The increasing use of death squads in particular ultimately forced the arming of opposition groups and encouraged them to join forces. The guerrilla organisation Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), named after the aforementioned first leader of the Communist Party of El Salvador and thus also with reference to the massacre of 1932, was made up of Christians, trade unionists and communists.

At least 75,000 people lost their lives during the war, many of them through extrajudicial executions, massacres by death squads, ‚disappearances‘, kidnappings and torture. Around 1.2 million people, mainly from rural areas, became internally displaced persons or fled abroad.[7] These figures should be seen against the background that El Salvador, which is roughly the size of Hesse, had a population of only around 4.6 million in 1981. The warring parties regarded the population of the areas controlled by the opposing side as enemies, especially as the civilian population had been forced by both sides to provide support services. In accordance with the principle often heard in El Salvador in the 1980s that ‚whoever is not in our favour is our enemy‘, neutrality was ignored, murders of journalists and priests (including foreign ones) were justified and murders of civilians were regarded as ’normal‘ acts of war. The murders committed by death squads were categorised in the same way by the regime[8].

After the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, the USA increasingly focussed on a policy of military containment of communist forces in its ‚backyard‘. President Carter was determined not to allow the establishment of another left-wing revolutionary government in Central America. Initially, the US administration favoured social reforms that excluded communist forces, but this failed due to the influence they had gained in El Salvador in the meantime, as well as the junta’s unwillingness to reform and increasing human rights violations. Nevertheless, Carter pushed through military aid for the regime on the grounds that the left-wing Salvadoran guerrillas were receiving arms supplies from the Soviet Union and Cuba, despite resistance within the government due to the continuing precarious human rights situation in El Salvador[9].

Economic and military aid was massively expanded by the USA during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose administration favoured the military crushing of the revolutionary left from the outset.[10] Between 1980 and 1984, US military aid rose from a nominal US$ 5.9 million to US$ 196.6 million, i.e. more than 30 times as much, only to be reduced to US$ 11.3 million by 1993, especially after the end of the systemic conflict. The USA also massively expanded economic aid to the country in the 1980s[11] In the 1980s, El Salvador was at times completely economically dependent on Washington. Although this dependence was able to force the military to make some concessions, the generals were not prepared to submit to a civilian government and humanitarian crimes continued to be committed. As the USA stuck to its strategy of crushing the guerrillas militarily until the end of the East-West polarisation, the pressure for reform on the regime remained largely ineffective. Due to the US’s military objectives and increasing military aid, Washington’s demands for reform also lacked credibility.

In 1989, peace negotiations began between the rebels and the Salvadoran military government, especially as it was foreseeable that after the end of the respective military, logistical and financial support, none of the parties to the conflict would be in a position to achieve a military victory. Under the auspices of the UN and in co-operation with the governments of Spain, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia, the regime and the FMLN signed a series of individual agreements on military and police reform, changes to the legal and electoral system and the recognition of human rights up until 1992. The partial agreements finally came into force on 16 January 1992 with the signing of the „Acuerdos de Chapultepec“ (Chapultepec Accords) in Mexico[12].

Coming to terms with the past is an intergenerational process that is only just beginning in Central America. The establishment of a truth commission is an essential piece of the mosaic in the multi-layered process towards peace and national reconciliation; it is the decision to create a basis for a subsequent political, social and judicial confrontation with the past through factual documentation by an officially legitimised, independent body that is recognised by the parties to the conflict. The researched and documented facts, which can no longer be denied by either side, also provide a basis for official recognition of the crimes committed against the victims.[13] This is a fundamental starting point for the (re)establishment of legal peace in a society – provided that the offences are subsequently prosecuted by a judiciary (reformed in accordance with the rule of law). However, the latter has not yet happened in El Salvador.

El Salvador is the first Central American country to set up a truth commission. Unlike a few years later in Guatemala, the main impetus for its establishment did not come from society or from human rights or victims‘ groups; instead, the peace agreement and the establishment of a truth commission were the result of external factors. The war was unwinnable for both sides and could no longer be financed after the conflict had lost relevance for the USA with the end of the ‚Cold War‘, the superpower had reduced its extensive military and financial support and support for the rebels from Cuba and the Soviet Union had ceased.

The establishment of a truth commission had already been decided as part of several partial agreements, the ‚Acuerdos de México‘ (Mexico Accords), which were signed by the government of El Salvador and the FMLN in Mexico City on 27 April 1991. This agreement was eventually incorporated into the peace treaty (Acuerdo de Chapultepec )[15].

The commission was under the auspices of the UN; the United Nations had both accompanied the peace negotiations and signed each partial agreement and was tasked with monitoring compliance with the peace agreement. The Truth Commission was endowed with international funds and also worked with international staff. While a corresponding commission in Guatemala was staffed almost five years later by the German international law expert Christian Tomuschat and two universally respected, respected Guatemalan citizens, including Otilia Lux de Cotí, who as a woman and Maya represented two groups that had suffered the most in the civil war, El Salvador’s commission consisted of three foreign members designated by the UN Secretary-General – the conflict situation was so muddled that it was impossible to staff the commission with citizens of El Salvador[16].

Unlike in Guatemala, where the commission carried out a comprehensive investigation into the war and produced documentation on the overall context of the civil war and institutional responsibility for war crimes, the mandate for the Salvadoran Truth Commission was more narrowly focussed. According to the ‚Acuerdos de México‘, the commission was tasked in its final report „De la Locura a la Esperanza“ with limiting its investigation to „serious acts of violence“ that had been committed after 1980 and had such a serious impact on society that public knowledge of the truth was essential for a national reconciliation process[17].

This vague formulation led the Commission to apply international law, even though the FMLN did not have the status of a state. However, as the guerrillas had territories under their control and exercised quasi-governmental power over them, compliance with basic human rights in these territories was made the benchmark. The Commission complied with the postulated focus on „serious acts of violence“ by limiting the scope to crimes in connection with inviolable rights, in particular the right to life and physical integrity.

In this context, the Truth Commission investigated extrajudicial executions, massacres and murders committed by death squads and the ‚enforced disappearances‘ practised by both parties to the civil war. The commission was also tasked with drawing up recommendations for the legal, political and administrative levels to stabilise the subsequent peace process[18].

Around 25,000 cases of human rights violations were recorded. 96.5 per cent of the human rights violations were attributed to members of the military, police or death squads, 3.5 per cent to members of the FMLN – a ratio comparable to the Guatemalan results.

40 cases were selected as examples for presentation in the final report, which may be representative of the patterns and common practices in the commission of crimes and human rights violations. In addition to the assassination of Archbishop Romero, these cases include the extrajudicial executions of opposition leaders, US-American church activists, Dutch journalists and the execution of a nurse during an attack on an FMLN hospital. Furthermore, four massacres committed by the junta, several murders by death squads, seven executions of mayors and two kidnappings by the FMLN are documented by way of example.[19] The Salvadoran commission did not produce a profound analysis of the overall context of the war, as was to be carried out by the truth commission in Guatemala. Such an analysis was not part of its mandate.

Instead, the report lists a number of principles that form the basis for its specific recommendations:

Indispensable, according to the commission, are

– a return to democratic structures, the fundamental decisions on the direction and future of society must be in the hands of the people, dialogue and negotiation must be the central instruments of political action;

– social and political participation of minorities on the basis of respect for individuality, but also for different forms of human coexistence; it is important to promote solidarity and respect among people;

– Furthermore, constitutional structures within which legal certainty and respect for the law form the cultural basis and guarantee for freedom, equality and the prohibition of arbitrariness.

Furthermore, the Commission calls for unconditional respect for human rights as an essential basis for the recommendations.

After years of rule by military regimes, it is essential for the consolidation of the prerogative of civilian power to subordinate the military to democratic and constitutional structures and to bind it to the overriding validity of human rights and unconditional respect for them.[20] The Commission calls for a standardised system for the protection of human rights and a strong, efficient and independent judiciary. The lack of such a system during the military dictatorships made the systematic, serious human rights violations possible in the first place. In particular, the report criticises the heavy concentration of powers in the country’s Supreme Court and the president as the court’s authority. This concentration undermines the independence of subordinate courts and the entire judicial system. This should be changed at constitutional level. Furthermore, the Supreme Court should no longer be responsible for appointing and dismissing judges; in future, this should be reserved for a national assembly of the judiciary. In future, every judge should be responsible to this assembly alone. The Commission also calls for a review of all judges with regard to their role during the civil war and, if necessary, their dismissal. The Commission asks for help from the European Union for the reorganisation of the judiciary – the Commission does not recommend a judicial review by the judicial apparatus existing at the time the report was written[21].

Benjamin Cuellar, Director of the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University and member of one of the organisations consulted by the United Nations during the drafting of the report, assesses it positively:

„We had great expectations and it was a good report. Despite the fact that, due to logistical problems, it did not include all the cases, the report documented what had happened, the disappearances, the extrajudicial executions, massacres and torture,“ he said. „But the main recommendations regarding national reconciliation and the recognition of material and moral reparations were never fulfilled. There were general apologies, but nothing else. […] “ According to Cuellar, there is no justice in „El Salvador because there is no political will […].“ El Salvador is a monument „to impunity.“[22]

In March 1993, five days after the publication of the Commission’s report, the Salvadoran government issued a general amnesty for all crimes committed during the civil war. As almost 96 per cent of the crimes against humanity had been committed by members of the army or death squads, they were also the main beneficiaries of the law, which was only declared unconstitutional more than 30 years later, on 13 July 2016, by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of El Salvador.[23]

The central conflict potentials were not resolved by the peace treaty. Although neither party to the conflict had managed to achieve a military victory, this meant that both sides were now claiming that they had not lost the war. Both the right-wing conservative, nationalist party ARENA, which had been founded in 1981 as a political action committee of the regime[24] and the FMLN, attributed the consensus reached in Mexico to their respective willingness to compromise, retreated to their irreconcilable positions and tried to salvage what could be salvaged from them.

Around ninety per cent of the 174 individual points of the Chapultepec peace treaty concern the army. After decades of military dictatorship, it is crucial that the army was not a „supra-institution“ above the state, but was subordinated to civilian rule. From then on, it was only responsible for national defence. External and internal security were separated for the first time.

Contrary to the ideas of the FMLN, which wanted to abolish it completely, the army had prevailed and asserted itself as a permanent institution in the state, but had to lose ground: The number of troops was almost halved, the number of military personnel was reduced from over 63,000 to 31,500 and special units were disbanded[25] Following a reorganisation, 87 senior officers guilty of crimes against humanity were dismissed, in some cases after considerable international and above all US pressure. Due to the general amnesty, however, they were spared prosecution.[26] In return, the FMLN handed over most of its weapons and disbanded its military structures, knowing full well that it was decisively weakening its negotiating position in an extremely fragile situation. The elimination or mitigation of distributional inequality and the implementation of agrarian reform had been central concerns and motivations for the confrontation with the oligarchy and the military and, although now expected by broad sections of the population, were now all the more difficult to realise, especially as these critical points had been excluded as a precaution in the peace negotiations and not mentioned in the Treaty of Chapultepec. The post-war government and society were caught between the oligarchic elite in conjunction with the military, who opposed demilitarisation to the best of their ability, and the FMLN, which was pushing for socio-structural changes and, as the political action committee of its clientele, could not return to the status quo ante.

If it was possible to successively democratise political and social processes, almost halve the number of military personnel, place the army under civilian control after decades of military dictatorship and push it back as a power factor in terms of internal security, and at the same time anchor the disarmed FMLN as a political party in the post-war system, this can be attributed not only to international monitoring and UN control, but also to the care of the „elites“ of the former civil war parties and their integration into offices and institutions.[27] The civilian post-war society and the judiciary were not stable enough for consistent criminal prosecution. The FMLN was also not interested in a judicial confrontation with the past due to human rights violations by its own officials. The recommendations of the Truth Commission soon disappeared from the political agenda.[28] The tangible result of the Commission’s work was the downsizing of the military and its subordination to civilian control.

The major social differences in Salvadoran society remain. Although infant mortality and the extent of poverty have been reduced since the early 1990s, large sections of the population, particularly in rural areas, still lack medical care and access to clean drinking water. The problem of unequal land distribution in favour of a few large landowners has also still not been solved, nor has the problem of rising violent crime[29].

After the 1993 amnesty law was declared unconstitutional in 2016, there is a glimmer of hope for late justice.

[1] In detail Sabine Kurtenbach, „Ende gut, alles gut? From War to Peace in Central America“, in: Dies. et al. (eds.), Central America Today. Politics, Economy, Culture . Frankfurt/M. 2008, pp. 253-278, here p. 255.

[2] Cf. Goruma, information on the topics „Countries, cities, travel, culture, religions, education, science and teaching“, article on El Salvador , (last accessed on 04.10.2018).

[3] Cf. „El Salvador – Military Dictatorships“, in: Britannica (last consulted on 4 October 2018).

[4] In 1975, at least 12 students were shot dead during a peaceful protest. https://www.britannica.com/place/El-Salvador/Military-dictatorships#ref468011.

[5] Cf. James R. Brockman, Oscar Romero, Advocate of the Poor. A biography . Kevelaer 2015; Martin Maier, Oscar Romero, Prophet of a Church of the Poor . Freiburg/Br. 2015 with further reading on liberation theology and Romero.

[6] Cf. on this Jesús Delgado (ed.), Oscar A. Romero. Do not remain silent: From Stooge of Power to Advocate of the Poor . Stuttgart 2015.

[7] See also Katya Salazar, „ Die Wahrheitskommissionen in Argentinien, El Salvador und Guatemala „, p. 10. Other estimates (see Amerika 21 , 2016) assume up to 83,000 deaths (last consulted on 4 October 2018).

[8] According to the final report of the commission De la locura a la esperanza , summarised here according to the English translation by the United States Institute of Peace (last consulted on 04.20.2018).

[9] Michael Krennerich, Elections and anti-regime wars in Central America . Wiesbaden 1996, p. 294.

[10] Ibid. S. 295.

[11] Statistical Abstracts of Latin America , vol 28, 1990, cited in ibid., p. 296. Economic aid also rose from US$ 58.4 million to US$ 433.9 million between 1980 and 1985, but fell again to US$ 214.1 million by 1993. Cited in Krennerich, Wahlen und Antiregimekriege , ibid.

[12] The text: „Acuerdo de Paz (firmado en Chapultepc)“, in: Naciones Unidas (ed.), Acuerdos de El Salvador. En el camino de Paz . New York 1992.

[13] A „right to truth“ is postulated by Frank La Rue, „The Right to truth in Central America“, in: Rafael Sieder (ed.), Impunity in Latin America . London 1995, p. 71, which, in contrast to the right to justice, is closely linked to freedom of speech, thought and the press. Knowledge of the ‚truth‘ is also necessary for the psychological processing of human rights violations – for both perpetrators and victims.

[14] Logistical, ideological, but also financial and military aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba via Nicaragua took place, but probably to a lesser extent than assumed or claimed by the US administration. Cf. Krennerich, Wahlen und Antiregimekriege , p. 295f.

[15] For more details, see Salazar, „Truth Commissions“, p. 10.

[16] Ibid., p. 11. The composition of the Salvadoran commission: Belisario Betancur (former President of Colombia), Thomas Buergenthal (former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights), Reinaldo Figueredo (former Foreign Minister of Venezuela); see Anika Oettler, „Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft: Vergangenheitspolitik in Zentralamerika“, in: Sabine Kurtenbach et al. (eds.), Zentralamerika heute. Politics, Economy, Culture . Frankfurt/M. 2008, p. 279-298, here p. 293 ff.

[17] (…) „tendrá a su cargo la investigación de graves hechos de violencia ocuridos desde 1980, cuyo impacto sobre la sociedad reclama con mayor urgencia el conocimiento público de la verdad.“ De la Locura a la Esperanza. La guerra de 12 años en El Salvador. Informe de la comisión de la verdad para El Salvador (Report of the Truth Commission ) – (English translation of the report based on: UN Security Council, Annex, From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, S/25500, 1993, 5-8.) (last consulted on 4 October 2018).

[18] De la Locura, ibid.

[19] A list of the cases ibid, p. 41 ff.

[20] Cf. Report of the Truth Commission , p. 187. The following summary ibid.

[21] Cf. the English translation of the Truth Commission’s report , p. 170 ff.

[22] Truth Commission El Salvador – (last checked on 30 July 2017); cf. also the website of Amerika21 on the civil war in El Salvardor .

[23] Cf. on the website of amerika21.de/blog/2016/07/157089/menschenrechtsdiskurs (last accessed on 4 October 2018).

[24] The Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) was founded in 1981 by Roberto D’Aubuisson Arrieta, who had close ties to the death squads and was almost certainly involved in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Cynically, Izalco was chosen as the founding location, the place where the regime had committed the massacre, the „ mantanza „, in 1932. For an initial overview, see the article by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (last accessed on 04.10.2018).

[25] Cf. Kurtenbach, Ende gut, alles gut? , p. 263 ff.

[26] Cf. Margaret Popkin, Peace without Justice. Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador . Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, p. 151.

[27] Kurtenbach, Ende gut, alles gut? , p. 261, has already pointed out the fundamental problem of the „elite bias“ in all Central American peace agreements.

[28] On this, see Oettler, „Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft“, p. 284. Cf. also Heidrun Zinecker, El Salvador nach dem Bürgerkrieg: Ambivalenzen eines schwierigen Friedens . Frankfurt/M. et al. 2004.

[29] On this, Sonja Wolf, Mano Dura, The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador. Univ. of Texas-Press, 2017.