International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) was founded in October 1980 by the Farabundo Martí Popular Liberation Forces (FPL-Farabundo Martí), the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), the National Resistance (RN), the Central American Revolutionary Workers Party (PRTC), and the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS). Between 1980 and 1991 the FMLN fought a revolutionary war against counterinsurgent regimes firmly backed by two consecutive US administrations under Ronald Reagan. On January 16, 1992 the FMLN and the government of Alfredo F. Cristiani, a leader of the right-wing party ARENA, signed a peace accord that put an end to the civil war. As a result of the peace process the FMLN became a legal political party in 1993 and remains to this day the main opposition party in El Salvador. The FMLN is named after Agustin Farabundo Martí (1893–1932), a leading founder of the Salvadoran Communist Party, who in 1932 was a strategist in a mass peasant insurgency. The Salvadoran military captured and executed Martí in January 1932 as it crushed the rebellion, popularly known as La Matanza (the Massacre). An estimated 30,000 Salvadoran peasants, primarily of indigenous descent, were massacred by government forces in retribution for the uprising. The historical roots of the Salvadoran civil war can be traced to four decades of oligarchic-military rule (1932–79) and to the abysmal ... log in or subscribe to read full text