Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9201020090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS GRANT MINE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR LENGTH: Medium
SALVADORANS AT EDGE OF A NEW SOCIETY
The agreement to end El Salvador's civil war - if it holds - will resolve the biggest armed conflict bedeviling Central America. It represents the passing of an era in which regional conflicts were painted in ideological colors.Regional conflicts came and went the past decade but the agonies of El Salvador dragged on, representing a major proxy battle in the now-defunct Cold War.
Today, after 12 years of death and destruction, El Salvador is a different place.
The war for all intents ended with the attainment of a peace accord in New York late Tuesday. Twenty months of U.N.-mediated negotiations produced a pact that will profoundly transform Salvadoran society - if the agreement works as implemented.
As the accord was announced in the capital, a bomb destroyed a car of the Reuters news agency, a sign the agreement is not universally popular.
The extreme right has pledged to oppose any negotiated peace with the rebels.
Historians will decide the significance of this small Central American country's fratricidal war.
The end of the Cold War is a major factor in why El Salvador now differs so markedly from the country when civil war began.
More than $1 billion in U.S. military aid bankrolled government war efforts in the 1980s. The rebels got by with less, but would not have made such a showing without support from Soviet-backed Cuba and Sandinista Nicaragua.
Though isolated political killings continue, the space for democratic political activity is much greater than in 1979.
Leftist politician Ruben Zamora, who for a decade kept ties with the rebels, is vice president of the national legislature.
Guerrillas have revised their ideology. They concede the failure of Marxism-Leninism, and say their thinking now resembles Europe's Social Democrats more than Fidel Castro.
October 1979 is the conventional date for the war's beginning, but its conception began in the months after a 1972 electoral fraud orchestrated by the military and the landed oligarchy it served the previous half-century.
A center-left coalition headed by Jose Napoleon Duarte was robbed of victory in presidential and legislative elections. Duarte was arrested, beaten and exiled. Leftists driven underground helped form the nuclei of armed revolutionary organizations.
The status quo kept the vast majority of Salvadorans ignorant and miserable while providing luxurious lives for a tiny minority. When the military again resorted to fraud in 1977 elections, many of those opposed to the status quo decided they had no choice but to take up arms.
The progressive officers staged a coup in October 1979. They pledged land reform and political and economic modernization.
But leftists and most centrists brought into the post-coup government quit within a year as rightist death squads imposed a reign of terror. Death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people from 1980 to 1983.
"The war has cost what none of us would have wanted to pay. But it was imposed upon us and necessary. By any other way, the changes that are now drawing near would not have been possible," rebel commander Facundo Guardado said.