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El Salvador Peace Talks
In 1983 the interim government, led by Magana, created a
Peace Commission and began meeting privately with FMLN-FDR
representatives. Continued military stalemate led to direct
public talks for the first time between the government and the
FMLN-FDR in the town of La Palma on October 15, 1984. Duarte and
Vides, representing the government at the talks, offered an
amnesty to any guerrillas who laid down their arms and urged them
to participate in the elections that year. The two parties
reached some agreements on the conduct of the war and the
evacuation of guerrilla prisoners, but they made no progress
toward achieving a negotiated solution to the insurgency. The
FMLN-FDR restated its longstanding demands. It wanted a powersharing arrangement whereby a certain number of its
representatives would be included in an interim government to be
established before the holding of elections, and it wanted to
maintain its own armed forces after the cessation of active
hostilities. The guerrilla representatives insisted that these
were nonnegotiable elements of their position.
The Duarte government lost the initiative in the war in part
as a result of the FMLN's kidnapping in September 1985 of the
president's daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, an action that
totally preoccupied Duarte and virtually paralyzed his government
for almost two months. Duarte lost considerable influence and
credibility with the military and the public by ignoring El
Salvador's policy against complying with the demands of
kidnappers and releasing 126 FMLN prisoners in exchange for his
daughter and 33 municipal officials (mainly mayors) previously
taken hostage by the guerrillas. The agreement did not include a
monetary ransom. Although the FMLN pledged as part of the
agreement not to kidnap relatives of government officials, it
verbally reneged on this promise a few months later.
The FMLN-FDR took advantage of Duarte's political weakness by
rejecting his amnesty offer at the second meeting, held at
Ayagualo, on November 30, 1985. The rebels countered with a tough
three-phase peace plan calling for the creation of a new,
transitional government of national consensus, with FMLN-FDR
participation, that would hold national elections. Bitter over
his daughter's kidnapping, Duarte postponed the scheduled third
round of talks and rejected the FMLN proposal as contrary to the
1983 Constitution.
The FMLN boycotted the session scheduled for September 1986
in the Salvadoran town of Sesori after the government refused an
FMLN demand that army troops be cleared out of a 650-squarekilometer area around the meeting place. Between the breakdown of
the Sesori dialogue and the signing of the Central American Peace
Agreement in August 1987, no formal talks were held for the
purpose of achieving a negotiated solution between the FMLN and
the government.
Some observers characterized the FMLN-FDR's proposals made in
May 1987 as a formula for the "Cubanization" of El Salvador,
citing the rebels' demands for nonalignment; formation of an
extra constitutional transitional government, without elections,
to include members of the FMLN-FDR; maintenance of guerrilla
armed forces until the government was reorganized; imposition of
a socialist economy; dismantling of the police forces; and
nonintervention of foreign governments. Duarte rejected the
proposal in a May 1987 speech, calling it a formula to weaken the
government militarily and politically.
There was no further movement on dialogue until the five
Central American presidents, at the initiative of Costa Rican
president Oscar Arias Sanchez, met in Guatemala in early August
1987 and signed the Central American Peace Agreement, charting a
peaceful resolution of regional conflicts through national
reconciliation, cease-fires, democratization, and free elections
(see The Crisis in Central America
, ch. 4). Although the socalled Arias plan did not require dialogue with armed insurgent
groups unless they accepted amnesty, the Duarte government called
on the FMLN-FDR leaders to accept the peace plan as the framework
for negotiations and dialogue. Duarte also persuaded the military
High Command to endorse the Central American peace document,
although several officers voiced doubts about it. Guided by the
agreement, Duarte reopened a dialogue with the guerrillas,
promulgated a broad amnesty, ordered the military to undertake a
unilateral cease-fire after the FMLN broke off cease-fire talks,
and permitted the self-exiled FDR leaders--Ruben Zamora Rivas and
Ungo--to return to El Salvador.
In early October 1987, two days of talks were held between
government and rebel leaders. The representatives--who included
President Duarte, four FMLN military commanders, and four FDR
leaders--agreed to establish two commissions that would include
government and rebel leaders, one commission responsible for
negotiating a cease-fire, the other for addressing other measures
of the peace plan. A second round of talks, held in Caracas on
October 22, became deadlocked, with the participants merely
pledging to continue the dialogue in Mexico City. The FMLN
subsequently suspended the Mexico City dialogue, however, and
unilateral cease-fires in November 1987 were unsuccessful. The
guerrillas continued to demand a power-sharing arrangement and
the maintenance of their own military force as conditions for a
settlement. Rejecting a cease-fire, the FMLN-FDR proposed a
"moratorium" on arms deliveries, an end to recruitment on both
sides, and the withdrawal of foreign military advisers. According
to United States press reports, however, the FMLN agreed at toplevel FMLN-FDR meetings held in Managua in July 1988 not to
oppose the FDR's participation in the 1989 presidential
elections. The FMLN escalated its military and terrorist
activities in the San Salvador area in the fall of 1988 and
commenced a policy of seeking to cause civilian casualties by
these actions. The FMLN also embarked on a campaign to
assassinate democratically elected mayors. The guerrillas
executed seven survivoring mayors, one former mayor, and one
government official between March and November 1988. They
threatened to kill more than twenty others.
Data as of November 1988
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