El Salvador REPRESSION AND REFORM UNDER MILITARY RULE
Revolution Monument, San Salvador
The assumption of power by Martinez initiated an extended
period of rule by a military institution that continued to
struggle with its own conception of its role as director of the
country's political process. Older, more conservative officers
were pushed by their younger subordinates to loosen up the system
and institute at least some limited reforms in order to minimize
the likelihood of another violent disruption like that of 1932.
The notion of guided reform, instituted and controlled from
above, generally came to be accepted as the best course for the
military to steer between the twin shoals of heavy-handed
repression and radical revolution. That is not to say, however,
that repression was abandoned as a tool of political control. In
fact, it alternated with guided reform depending on the
prevailing socioeconomic pressures of the time. This process of
limited liberalization combined with firm control characterized
the political order of El Salvador for some five decades.
The first of many military presidents to come, Martinez was
an autocrat who enjoyed the longest tenure in office of any
Salvadoran president. His anticommunist fervor, so amply
demonstrated by la matanza, has made him an enduring hero
of the political right (a right-wing death squad of the 1970s
would bear his name). His personal quirks are also legendary. A
believer in spiritualism and other mystic creeds, he is most
frequently remembered for having strung colored lights throughout
San Salvador in an effort to ward off a smallpox epidemic.
Martinez was confirmed as president by the legislature in
1932. He was elected to a four-year term of office in 1935 and a
six-year term in 1939. Although it was marked by
institutionalized repression of dissent, Martinez's tenure was
not altogether a negative period for the country. It provided a
stability and continuity that contributed to a general
improvement in the national economy. Like other Salvadoran
presidents before him, Martinez did not interfere greatly with
the elite-dominated economic system. He did, however, make some
minor concessions to the poor, establishing a government welfare
institution known as Social Improvement (Mejoramiento Social),
continuing a very limited land redistribution program begun under
Araujo, and attempting to protect the domestic handicraft
industry. Although he was personally drawn to the fascist
movements in Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany, Martinez
committed El Salvador to the Allied effort during World War II.
This pragmatic move apparently bought El Salvador a fair amount
of goodwill in Washington. Despite the length of his rule,
relations between the general and the oligarchy were uneasy, in
part because of Martinez's humble origins, but also because of
his personal eccentricities and the unpredictability that they
seemed to reflect. This vague distrust of Martinez was
transformed into active elite opposition by his decision in 1943
to raise more revenue through an increase in the export tax.
The last straw for the general's detractors was his effort to
extend his term beyond 1944 by means of legislative fiat rather
than direct election. The coalition that united in support of his
overthrow was a somewhat eclectic one: civilian politicians, pro-
Axis military officers, businessmen and bankers (who objected to
the government's limited economic restrictions), and irate coffee
producers. An initial attempt to oust Martinez by force was
unsuccessful, but subsequent unrest in the capital, including a
general strike, moved him to resign his office in May 1944. His
successor, General Andres Ignacio Menendez, called for political
liberalization and free elections; the sincerity of his appeal
was never tested, however, as he was turned out of office by the
military in October.
Menendez's replacement was Colonel Osmin Aguirre y Salinas,
the director of the PN and a former follower of the deposed
Martinez. The Aguirre regime went ahead with elections scheduled
for January 1945 but manipulated the results to ensure the
victory of its candidate, General Salvador Castaneda Castro.
Castaneda's rule was unremarkable. The events of 1944 had
left the country in an unresolved state of political uncertainty.
Fearing some action against him and his conservative followers,
Castaneda sought to weed out young reform-minded officers by
dispatching them abroad for training. This sector of the officer
corps, however, was substantial, and its members could not be
excluded indefinitely from the political process. They made their
influence felt in 1948, when Castaneda made his own attempt to
extend his term in office by way of legislative maneuvering
without recourse to the ballot box. The movement that ousted him
from power on December 14, 1948, referred to itself as the
Military Youth (Juventud Militar). For as long as its members
exerted control in El Salvador, they would refer to their action
as the Revolution of 1948.
The coup leaders established a junta, which was referred to
as the Revolutionary Council; it included three mid-level
officers and two civilian professionals. The council ruled for
some twenty-one months and guided the country toward
comparatively open elections in March 1950. During this period,
it became clear that Major Oscar Osorio was the dominant force
within the junta and among the officer corps. Osorio was so sure
of his support that he resigned from the junta in order to run in
the elections as the candidate of the Revolutionary Party of
Democratic Unification (Partido Revolucionario de Unificacion
Democratica--PRUD).
Osorio eked out a victory over Colonel Jose Asencio Menendez
of the Renovating Action Party (Partido Accion Renovadora--PAR)
and went on to establish the PRUD as a quasi-official party
modeled roughly on the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido
Revolucionario Institucional--PRI) of Mexico. Although the PRUD
enjoyed some measure of support, it was never able to replicate
the broad base of the PRI, mainly because the process that
produced the PRUD--the so-called Revolution of 1948--was not
itself a mass movement.
The policies of Osorio and his successor, Lieutenant Colonel
Jose Maria Lemus, were distinctly different from those of
previous Salvadoran leaders. They emphasized economic
development, public works, the diversification of agriculture,
the establishment of such programs as social security (including
medical and hospital care), and improvements in sanitation and
housing. Union organization was encouraged, and collective
bargaining was instituted. All this was accomplished within the
boundaries of guided reform; no measures were taken that might
have threatened the elite-dominated system (agrarian reform, for
example, was never attempted), and radical elements were
discouraged or eliminated through repressive means.
The election of Lemus in 1956 did much to discourage the
notion of possible political pluralism in El Salvador. As the
candidate of the PRUD, Lemus initially was challenged by the
standard-bearers of three other ad hoc parties. The most popular
of the three appeared to be Roberto Canessa, a civilian who had
served as Osorio's foreign minister. A month before the election,
however, Canessa was disqualified by the government-controlled
Central Electoral Council on a technicality. Another opposition
candidate was barred from the race because of allegations of
fiscal impropriety during his tenure as ambassador to Guatemala.
Although the opposition attempted to unite behind the remaining
candidate, Lemus topped the official election returns with an
improbable 93 percent of the vote.
Perhaps in an effort to make amends for the means by which he
came to office, Lemus initially took some conciliatory steps,
such as declaring a general amnesty for political prisoners and
exiles, voiding a number of repressive laws left over from
previous regimes, and selecting men of recognized probity and
ability for his cabinet. The course of his administration,
however, was dominated by economic events. A decline in the
export prices of coffee and cotton and the resultant drop in
income and revenue exposed the weakness of the PRUD's limited
reforms. Heavy-handed political manipulations by the government
and the party, in particular the approval of a new electoral law
that all but precluded an effective opposition, exacerbated
widespread dissatisfaction with the Lemus government. After 1959
the influence of what then appeared to be a popular,
nationalistic revolutionary movement in Cuba was felt in El
Salvador as it was throughout Latin America. Student groups were
particularly inspired by the example of Fidel Castro Ruz and his
revolutionaries. Public demonstrations in San Salvador called for
Lemus's removal and the imposition of a truly democratic system.
The president responded by abandoning his earlier efforts at
reform in favor of heightened repression. Free expression and
assembly were banned, and political dissidents were detained
arbitrarily.
This instability provoked concern among important political
actors in El Salvador. For the elite, the government's emphasis
on economic development was pointless under such a climate; the
emerging middle class likewise felt a threat to its gains from
the specter of revolution; and the military reacted almost
reflexively to the spectacle of a president who had lost control.
Lemus was deposed in a bloodless coup on October 26, 1960.
Governmental authority again passed into the hands of a
military-civilian junta. The ranking military representative was
Lieutenant Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera. Aside from Rivera, the
junta member who drew the most attention was Fabio Castillo, a
university professor and known sympathizer with the Cuban
Revolution. Castillo's presence, along with the renewed reformist
policies of the junta, convinced the elite and the conservative
military officers that the government was influenced by
communism. Again, it was the military that acted to head off this
perceived threat to stability. A coup by young officers overthrew
the junta on January 25, 1961. The officers affirmed their
anticommunist and anti-Castro convictions, retained Rivera as
part of a new junta, and promised elections.
Data as of November 1988
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