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El Salvador The Military in Power, 1931-84
A group of young officers--angered by Araujo and concerned
about the increasingly organized peasant activism--overthrew the
democratically elected president in December 1931 and promptly
turned over power to General Martinez. The cohesiveness of the
regular conscript-based army was adversely affected by the coup,
and army units therefore played little part in la matanza
of January 1932, which was attributed to the security forces
(see The Security Forces
, this ch.). Although the scale of the
massacre would not be repeated, the use of indiscriminate
violence as exemplified by la matanza nonetheless became
part of Salvadoran military legend and was invoked by right-wing
extremists in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a model for
dealing with leftists.
By mid-1932 Martinez was in complete control of the army, the
National Police (Policia Nacional--PN), and the National Guard
(Guardia Nacional--GN). During his rule as absolute dictator
(1932-44), the army remained subordinate to the more elite
security services (the PN and GN). Under Martinez's system, the
army answered to the minister of war, and the security services
answered to the minister of government. After the 1944 coup, the
minister of war assumed authority over all the security services,
as well as the army.
Beginning with the Martinez regime, an almost unbroken
succession of military governments ruled for five decades
(see Repression and Reform under Military Rule
, ch. 1). On December
14, 1948, a group of army majors belonging to the Military Youth
(Juventud Militar) carried out what came to be known as
the Revolution of 1948, also known as the "majors' coup." The
young officers formed a corporate-style junta and forced all
officers above the rank of lieutenant colonel to retire. After
the coup, which was more concerned with establishing order than
implementing reforms, the military established itself as a
somewhat more independent force in politics by distancing itself
from the oligarchy. The officers' movement also changed the
army's own perception of its role in society by adopting new
missions to uphold national law and safeguard the country's
sovereignty. Thereafter, the military considered itself no longer
merely the oligarchy's private army but rather the guardian of
the people and the constitution. As such, it saw itself playing a
legitimate role in virtually all aspects of government. It failed
totally, however, to legitimize this role, because it did not
challenge the oligarchy, implement reforms, or turn the control
of the government over to civilians. Instead, it merely changed
the pattern of military control of the political process by
reaching a new accommodation with the oligarchy; establishing its
own party, the Revolutionary Party of Democratic Unification
(Partido Revolucionario de Unificacion Democratica--PRUD); and
ensuring that PRUD candidates took power, usually through
fraudulent elections. The military's continuance in power
appeared to violate the 1950 constitution, which stipulated that
the armed forces were to be nonpolitical and obedient to the
government in power.
By the mid-1960s, another major shift had occurred in the
Salvadoran military's perception of its own role in society and
its view of civilian involvement in the security system.
Beginning in 1961, United States military and civilian law
enforcement advisers had encouraged the Salvadoran military, not
entirely successfully, to abandon the traditional concepts of
military professionalism that had guided it since 1941 and to
adopt some elements of a counterinsurgency doctrine. Whereas in
the 1940s and 1950s the United States had taught Salvadoran Army
officers to resist civilian attempts to interfere with military
prerogatives, counterinsurgency doctrine in the 1960s encouraged
the expansion of the traditional military role to include
nonmilitary tasks, such as civic action projects, and the
establishment of semiautonomous, politically oriented
paramilitary organizations
(see The Security Forces
, this ch.).
At the same time, a reformist Military Youth faction in the
Salvadoran military led by Colonel Adolfo Arnoldo Majano Ramos
also became increasingly critical of the old authoritarian model
favored by the military traditionalists.
The surge of patriotic fervor aroused by the 1969 war with
Honduras focused a new public attitude of respect and esteem on
the Salvadoran armed forces, especially the ground forces, which
performed well during the brief confrontation
(see The 1969 War with Honduras
, ch. 1). Salvadoran troops, supported by an
overwhelming superiority in artillery, penetrated up to twenty-
nine kilometers into Honduran territory during the five-day
conflict, in which 2,000 to 4,000 soldiers and civilians were
killed. The ill-equipped Salvadoran Air Force, however, was no
match for the Honduran Air Force, Central America's best. Within
months after the end of hostilities, therefore, the Salvadoran
Air Force began to acquire new aircraft. El Salvador's seventeen-
year-old navy, not having participated in the war with Honduras,
benefited little from the postwar expansion and reequipment of
the Salvadoran armed forces.
In the mid-1970s, as left-wing guerrilla and terrorist
activities escalated, the military began to focus more on
internal security than on political manipulation. Consequently,
elements of the military adopted the doctrine of national
security, emphasizing anticommunism, state autonomy, and limits
on the exercise of civil liberties through heavy reliance on the
state of siege and other security decree powers. Civil-military
relations changed accordingly. In an attempt to reassert its
control and protect its own institutional integrity from leftist
subversion and rightist attempts to take power, the military
tried to increase the distance between itself and civil society.
The oligarchy encouraged the government's efforts to reinstate
policies that characterized the traditional authoritarian model.
In 1979 a group of junior and field-grade military officers
staged a successful coup and ousted the regime of General Romero.
These officers quickly forced sixty senior officers to retire and
temporarily exiled all of the generals and most of the colonels.
Recognizing the need for social, political, and economic reforms,
they formed the left-of-center, civilian-military Revolutionary
Governing Junta (Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno--JRG), which
included two army officers: Colonel Jaime Abdul Gutierrez and
Colonel Majano. The JRG then formed a largely civilian cabinet
that included, as defense minister, Colonel Guillermo Garcia, a
participant in the coup. The junior and field-grade officers who
constituted the Military Youth also created the Permanent Council
of the Armed Forces (Consejo Permanente de las Fuerzas Armadas--
Copefa) to ensure that the proclaimed objectives of the reformist
coup were not subverted and to serve as a policy consultative
body for officers. The younger Copefa members distrusted the
older commanders--particularly Garcia and his deputy, Colonel
Nicolas Carranza--whom they viewed as corrupt, reactionary, and
more interested in the political loyalty of key military officers
than their military competence. Nevertheless, it soon became
apparent that the real power lay in the military High Command
(Alto Mando), not in the governing Civil-Military Directorate
(Directorio Civico-Militar). Garcia and the High Command
consolidated power by purging the young reformist officers from
Copefa on December 18, 1979, and replacing them with old-guard
loyalists. After another junta reorganization in December 1980,
which resulted in Majano's exile, Gutierrez retained sole command
of the armed forces, and junta member Jose Napoleon Duarte
Fuentes became provisional president.
Before the 1982 election for the
Constituent Assembly (see Glossary)
Defense Minister Garcia issued a public order requiring
the military to defend the voting process. Thus, in an important
break with the past, the military protected rather than
manipulated an election. The High Command reportedly used its
influence to prevent the right-wing Nationalist Republican
Alliance (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista--Arena) from excluding
the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Democrata Cristiano--PDC)
from the provisional government headed by Alvaro Magana Borja, a
political centrist, who succeeded Duarte as interim president.
Nevertheless, the prospect of civilian government disturbed many
in the military, including senior army officers. Although Garcia
forestalled a coup in early November 1982 by transferring or
dismissing dissident senior army officers, criticism of him among
the military hierarchy eventually turned into open rebellion.
Garcia's most vocal military critic was Lieutenant Colonel
Sigifredo Ochoa Perez, military commander of Cabanas Department.
On January 6, 1983, a day after being ordered by Garcia to leave
his command to serve as military attache in Uruguay, Ochoa began
a six-day mutiny, placing his troops on alert. Ochoa accused
Garcia of corruption and called for his resignation. Part of the
conflict between Ochoa and Garcia stemmed from differences over
counterinsurgency strategy. Ochoa and his supporters advocated a
more professional approach, emphasizing aggressive, small-unit
actions and patrolling combined with political pacification
(civic action projects). In response, the defense minister
required all senior officers to sign a document condemning
Ochoa's action as a violation of "the principles of discipline
and obedience which men of the armed forces must observe at all
times." Twenty-eight senior officers signed. Ochoa ended his
rebellion after six days and accepted the president's offer of an
assistant defense attache post in Washington. Under increasing
pressure from within the officer corps, Garcia finally resigned
on April 18, 1983, and was succeeded by General Carlos Eugenio
Vides Casanova, the GN director general since October 1979. Ochoa
eventually resigned from the army in June 1987, in part to
protest what he viewed as interference in military affairs by the
Duarte government and the United States but also to join Arena
and serve as a deputy (diputado) in the Legislative
Assembly.
In a major military reorganization in November 1983, Vides,
the new minister of defense and public security, reassigned many
commanders and reorganized the army in an effort to enhance its
professionalism; his action also rendered the army's leadership
more politically conservative. Until the reorganization, twenty-
six separate commands had reported directly to the defense
minister. The appointment of six brigade commanders reduced the
number of subordinate commands significantly. One of Vides's key
appointments was that of Colonel Adolfo Onecifero Blandon Mejia
as army chief of staff. By the time the elected Constituent
Assembly completed the new Constitution in late 1983, a military
code of conduct had also been drafted
(see Military Justice
, this
ch.).
The inauguration of Duarte as president on June 1, 1984,
ushered in a new era of elected civilian rule. On taking office,
Duarte promoted Blandon to brigadier general and made him chief
of staff of the Joint General Staff (Estado Mayor Conjunto--EMC).
Data as of November 1988
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