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El Salvador THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS: A CENTRIST ALTERNATIVE?
The electoral preparations that had begun under the 1960
junta stimulated the mobilization of political parties of
moderate and leftist inclinations. These opposition parties were
unable to establish their organizations and followings
sufficiently to present any effective challenge to the 1962
election of Rivera to the presidency. Rivera ran as the candidate
of the National Conciliation Party (Partido de Conciliacion
Nacional--PCN), which would succeed the PRUD as the official
party in El Salvador. The PCN began as a splinter group from the
Christian Democratic Party (Partido Democrata Cristiano--PDC),
which eventually became the leading opponent of the PCN and a
major force for peaceful change in the Salvadoran system.
The PDC had been founded in November 1960. The party grew out
of informal meetings among middle- and upper-class activists who
sought to devise a vehicle to represent their interests in the
political arena. The concerns of the Salvadoran middle class by
and large revolved around economic progress and political
stability. It saw the prospects for both concerns threatened from
the political right and from the left. The Salvadoran right
stifled popular aspirations through its adamant opposition to
reform and its support for the elite-dominated economic system.
The left promised to abandon the capitalist model that had
created the middle class in favor of a communistic system. Fidel
Castro's communist leanings were confirmed in 1961 when he
declared that he was, and had been since his student days, a
Marxist-Leninist. From the perspective of the PDC's founders, the
only way to protect their gains and ensure their future and that
of the middle-class sectors as a whole was to achieve
representation within the governmental system. To reach this
goal, they saw the need to follow a centrist path that would
incorporate more Salvadorans into the political process without
exerting undue pressure on the prevailing economic order.
The ideologists of this new party, principally lawyers
Abraham Rodriguez and Roberto Lara Velado, saw Christian
democracy as the path they were seeking. The roots of Christian
democratic ideology extended back as far as Pope Leo XIII's
encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), which called on
Christians to work for social and economic reform. Its more
immediate influences, however, were found in the works of Pope
John XXIII and the French philosopher Jacques Maritain. The
Christian democratic movements in Chile and Venezuela also served
as role models. The founders of the PDC, including the civil
engineer Jose Napoleon Duarte Fuentes, emphasized the ideological
basis of the party--its support for reform, its call for the
application of moral principles to political and economic life,
and its rejection of extremist solutions such as those advocated
by Marxism--as a new development in Salvadoran politics. This was
true, but only to the extent that party members accepted that
ideology and acted upon it. Duarte himself came to the PDC
without a strong ideological grounding, but his belief in the
possibility of peaceful democratic change, as well as his
personal magnetism, made up for that initial shortcoming.
Duarte's practical political skills eventually made him the
PDC's leading figure. He was elected to the post of secretary
general at the party's first convention in May 1961. At the time,
his selection was a victory for those party members who referred
to themselves as "purists," eschewing collaboration with
nonelected governments. In order to legitimize its rule, the
ruling junta had approached the PDC membership about
participation in the government, and some early PDC adherents
responded favorably to this idea. After Duarte's election to
party leadership, this collaborationist faction split off to form
the PCN. Tied into the system, the PCN went on to sweep all the
available seats in the December 1961
Constituent Assembly (see Glossary)
elections and to serve as the vehicle for Rivera's
election to the presidency in April 1962.
Rivera was a proponent of the sort of guided reforms
initiated by the military's revolution of 1948. His
developmentalist economic policies received a boost from the
United States in the form of generous aid allocations under the
banner of United States president John F. Kennedy's Alliance for
Progress. Although he discussed publicly the need for economic
reforms, including agrarian reform, Rivera did nothing to further
them. Perhaps his major contribution to Salvadoran political life
was the decision to allow the participation of opposition parties
through a liberalized electoral system that called for
proportional representation in the country's Legislative
Assembly. Previously, the party that won the most votes in each
department (the equivalent of states under the Salvadoran system)
was awarded all the legislative seats allocated to that
department. The proportional allocation of seats based on each
party's departmental electoral showing represented a significant
step forward for the opposition, which obtained some voice in
government even if it was still denied any real power.
In March 1964, the first elections were held under the new
system. Although the PCN retained an unchallenged majority in the
Legislative Assembly, the PDC won fourteen seats in that body,
along with thirty-seven mayoralties. Perhaps the most significant
victory was Duarte's election as mayor of San Salvador. He built
a strong base of popular support in this post through
improvements in municipal services and the organization of local
self-help groups to promote small-scale civic improvements such
as school renovations, establishment and maintenance of parks,
and adult education programs. He was reelected in 1966 and 1968.
Leadership of the populous capital city heightened Duarte's
political profile and made him a national figure.
Strong economic growth in the early 1960s solidified the
position of the PCN as the official party. The leadership of the
party was drawn mainly from the ranks of middle-class
professionals. It cannot be said to have represented the
interests of that class, however. The most important constituency
of the PCN was the military; without its support and cooperation,
the party could not have governed. PCN governments protected the
political power and social and economic perquisites that the
officer corps had long enjoyed. They also preserved, at least for
a time, the domestic stability required for economic growth
within the prevailing elite-dominated system. Like many other
Latin American militaries, the Salvadoran armed forces saw the
maintenance of the societal status quo as serving their best
interests. The PCN shared this conservative viewpoint and worked
closely with the military leadership, seeking its advice and
support on policy initiatives and political issues. In essence,
under the PCN the military continued to rule El Salvador from
behind the scenes. The electoral base of the PCN was found among
the peasantry. Latin American peasants are on the whole a
politically conservative group; in rural El Salvador, this
natural tendency was reinforced by the ubiquitous presence of the
armed forces.
The political perceptions of certain Salvadoran sectors,
particularly agricultural and business interests, led them to
oppose the PDC and favor the PCN. Although it was a moderate
party by Latin American standards, the PDC was seen by the
Salvadoran right as a dangerously left-wing organization. The
Christian Democrats' occasional use of the words
revolution or revolutionary to describe their
vision of social reform invoked in the minds of large landowners
and businessmen images of Castro's Cuba, a prospect they would go
to any lengths to avoid in El Salvador.
The leading contenders in the elections of 1967 were the PCN,
the PDC, and the PAR. The PCN's candidate was Rivera's interior
minister, Colonel Fidel Sanchez Hernandez. The PDC nominated
Abraham Rodriguez, who proved to be a lackluster campaigner. The
PAR had undergone an internal dispute that led its more
conservative members to bolt and form a new party, the Salvadoran
Popular Party (Partido Popular Salvadoreno--PPS). The PPS chose
as its candidate a retired army major, Alvaro Martinez. The
remaining leftist members of the PAR nominated Fabio Castillo,
who had served on the 1960 junta. By the standards of the
Salvadoran right, Castillo was a communist.
The issue of the supposed communist nature of the PAR came to
dominate the 1967 campaign. By election day, the PAR had been
denied media access by broadcasters who either disagreed with the
party's political line or feared some retaliation from the
government if they granted air time to the PAR. The PDC condemned
the red-baiting engaged in by Sanchez and the PCN, even though
many Christian Democrats differed with some of the proposals made
by Castillo, such as establishing relations with Cuba and
broadening ties with other communist countries. In the balloting
on March 5, the PAR actually garnered more votes in San Salvador
than did the PDC, although the Christian Democrats had a better
showing in rural areas than they had anticipated. All of this was
academic in terms of the presidential race, however, since
Sanchez won an absolute majority. In general terms, though, the
1967 elections demonstrated increased voter participation and a
growing acceptance of the political process as a legitimate means
of popular expression.
Data as of November 1988
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