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| Pre-Columbian | |
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In pre-Columbian times the territory was inhabited by various Native American peoples, including the Pipil, a Nahuatl-speaking population that occupied the central and western regions of the territory, and the Lenca, who settled in the east of the country. The larger domain until the Spanish conquest of the kingdom was Cuzcatlán. The Mayan civilization which inhabited El Salvador has left ruins such as those at Tazumal, Joya De Ceren, San Andres, Casa Blanca, Cihuatan, and Chalchuapa.
[edit] Tags:Pipil,Nahuatl-speaking,Spanish Conquest,Mayan Civilization,Tazumal,Cuzcatlán,American, | |
| Discovery | |
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In 1520 the indigenous population of the territory had been reduced by 80% due to the smallpox epidemic that affected the Mesoamerican area. The Spanish Admiral Andrés Niño led an expedition to Central America and disembarked on Meanguera island, which he named Petronila, in the Gulf of Fonseca, on May 31, 1522. Thereafter he discovered Jiquilisco Bay on the mouth of Lempa River. This was the first known visit by Spaniards to what is now Salvadoran territory.
[edit] Tags:Central America,Gulf Of Fonseca,Mesoamerican,Andrés Niño,Jiquilisco Bay,Lempa River, | |
| Conquest of Cuzcatlán | |
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The ruins of Tazumal of the Maya civilizationin El Salvador.
The Maya ruins of San Andrés
The Spanish Conquistadors led by Pedro de Alvarado and his brother Gonzalo arrived between 1524 and 1525 from the area comprising the present Republic of Guatemala, after participating in the conquest of Mexico and crossing the Rio Paz (Peace River) into what is now the Republic of El Salvador. The Pipil had no treasure but held land with rich and fertile soil, good for farming. The Spaniards were disappointed not to find gold or jewels in El Salvador as they had in other places like Guatemala or Mexico, but recognized the richness of the verdant land's volcanic soil.
Pedro de Alvarado led the first incursion by Spanish forces to extend their dominion to the nation of Cuzcatlán (El Salvador), in June 1524. On June 8, 1524, the conquerors arrived in the neighborhood of Acajutla at a village called Acaxual. There, according to records, a battle ensued between the opposing armies, with the Pipils wearing cotton armor (of three fingers' thickness according to Alvarado) and carrying long lances. This circumstance would be crucial in the progression of the battle. Alvarado approached the Pipil lines with his archers' showers of crossbow arrows, but the natives did not retreat. The conquistador noticed the proximity of a nearby hill and knew that it could be a convenient hiding place for his opponents. Alvarado pretended that his army had given up the battle and had retreated. The Pipils then suddenly rushed the invaders giving Alvarado an opportunity to inflict massive losses. The Pipils that fell to the ground could not get back on their feet, hindered by the weight of their cotton armor, which enabled the Spanish to slaughter them.
In the words of Alvarado: "...the destruction was so great that in just a short time there were none which were left alive...". However, Alvarado's army were not completely unscathed. In the battle Alvarado himself was struck by a sling shot to his thigh which fractured his femur bone. According to local tradition the stone that hit the conquistador was hurled by a Pipil "Tatoni" (a prince), called Atonal. The resultant infection lasted about eight months and left Alvarado partially crippled. In spite of this wound, he continued the conquest campaign with relish.
The Spanish efforts were firmly resisted by the indigenous people, including the Pipil and their Mayan speaking neighbors. Despite Alvarado's initial success in the Battle of Acajutla, the people of Cuzcatlán, who according to tradition were led by a warlord called Atlacatl, defeated the Spaniards and forced them to withdraw to Guatemala. There Pedro de Alvarado was again wounded, this time on his left thigh, which left him handicapped for the rest of his life. He abandoned the war and appointed his brother, Gonzalo de Alvarado, to continue the task. Two subsequent expeditions were required (the first in 1525, followed by a smaller group in 1528) to bring the Pipil under Spanish control. In 1525 the conquest of Cuzcatlán was completed and the city of San Salvador was established. They faced much resistance from the Pipils and were not able to reach eastern El Salvador, the area of the Lencas.
Finally, with reinforcements, the Spanish established the garrison town of San Miguel, headed by Luis de Moscoso, explorer and conquistador, in 1526. A Maya-Lenca woman, crown Princess Antu Silan Ulap I, daughter of Asisilcan Nachan I and Lady Omomatku, Monarch of the Lencas, organized resistance to the domination of the gold- and profit-hungry Conquistadors. The Lenca kingdom was alarmed by de Moscoso's invasion, and Antu Silan dealt with it by going from village to village, uniting all the Lenca towns in present day El Salvador and Honduras against the Spaniards. Through surprise attacks and their overwhelming numbers they were able to drive the Spanish out of San Miguel and destroy the garrison.
For ten years, the Lencas prevented the Spanish from building a permanent settlement. Then the Spanish returned with more soldiers, including about 2,000 forced conscripts from indigenous communities in Mexico and Guatemala. They pursued the Lenca leaders further up into the mountains of Intibucá. Antu Silan Ulap continued leading the united forces until, late in pregnancy, she slipped out of the conflicted area to a safe haven, Tihuilotal, where she gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy. Their father was Prince Salaiki Kanul from Sesori. The daughter became Atonim Silan I – she and her twin and another brother lived in the mountains near the lake Olomega and Maquigue – in this way they escaped the Spanish and their allies who were hunting them. Tihuilotal is a little southwest of the present city of La Unión, near the source of the sacred Managuara River.
Antu Silan Ulap eventually handed over control of the Lenca resistance to Lempira (also called Empira). Lempira was noteworthy among indigenous leaders in that he mocked the Spanish by wearing their clothes after capturing them and using their weapons captured in battle. Lempira fought in command of thousands of Lenca forces for six more years in El Salvador and Honduras until finally he was killed in battle and the remaining Lenca forces retreated into the hills. The Spanish were then able to rebuild their garrison town of San Miguel in 1537.
[edit] Tags:San Salvador,Guatemala,Honduras,Maya Civilizationin,Conquistadors,Pedro De Alvarado,Acajutla,Pipils,Battle Of Acajutla,Atlacatl,Gonzalo De Alvarado,Luis De Moscoso, | |
| Spanish rule (colonization) and independence | |
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Dios, Union, Libertad (God, Unity, Liberty) El Salvador 1912 Flag
Painting of the First Independence Movement celebration in San Salvador. At the center, José MatÃas Delgado.
Spanish built Santa Ana Cathedral
In the early sixteenth century, the Spanish conquistadors ventured into the natural harbors to extend their dominion to the area. They called the land "Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesus Cristo, El Salvador Del Mundo" ("Province of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World"), which was subsequently abbreviated to "El Salvador (The Savior)".
During the colonial period, El Salvador was part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, created as an administrative division of the Spanish Empire also known as the Kingdom of Guatemala (Spanish: Reino de Guatemala). The Salvadoran territory was administered as the Mayor of Sonsonate, with San Salvador being established as an intendancia in 1786.
Towards the end of 1811, a combination of internal and external factors motivated Central American elites to attempt to gain independence from the Spanish Crown. The most important internal factors were the desire of local elites to control the country's affairs free of involvement from Spanish authorities, and the Creoles' long-standing aspiration for independence. The main external factors motivating the independence movement were the success of the French and American revolutions in the eighteenth century, and the weakening of the Spanish Crown's military power as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, with the resulting inability to control its colonies effectively.
On 5 November 1811, Salvadoran priest José MatÃas Delgado rang the bells of Iglesia La Merced in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement. This insurrection was suppressed and many of its leaders were arrested and served sentences in jail. Another insurrection was launched in 1814, and again it was suppressed. Finally, on September 15, 1821, in light of unrest in Guatemala, Spanish authorities capitulated and signed the Acta de Independencia (Deed of Independence) which released all of the Captaincy of Guatemala (comprising current territories of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas) from Spanish rule and declared its Independence.
In early 1822, the authorities of the newly independent Central American provinces, meeting in Guatemala City, voted to join the newly constituted First Mexican Empire under AgustÃn de Iturbide. El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. A Mexican military detachment marched to San Salvador and suppressed dissent, but with the fall of Iturbide on 19 March 1823, the army decamped back to Mexico. Shortly thereafter, the authorities of the provinces revoked the vote for joining Mexico, deciding instead to form a federal union of the five remaining provinces (Chiapas permanently joined Mexico at this juncture).
The enormous profits that coffee yielded as a monoculture export served as an impetus for the concentration of land in the hands of an oligarchy of just a few families.[6][citation needed] A succession of presidents from the ranks of the Salvadoran oligarchy, nominally both conservative and liberal, throughout the last half of the nineteenth century generally agreed on the promotion of coffee as the predominant cash crop, on the development of infrastructure (railroads and port facilities) primarily in support of the coffee trade, on the elimination of communal landholdings to facilitate further coffee production, on the passage of anti-vagrancy laws to ensure that displaced campesinos and other rural residents provided sufficient labor for the coffee fincas (plantations), and on the suppression of rural discontent. In 1912, the national guard was created as a rural police force.
[edit] Tags:Federal,Nicaragua,Intendancia,French,Napoleonic Wars,José MatÃas Delgado,1811 Independence Movement,Chiapas, | |
| 20th century | |
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General Tomás Regalado was President of El Salvador from 14 November 1898 until 1 March 1903. He was a military ruler. After he left office, he remained active in the Army of El Salvador, and was killed July 11, 1906 at El Jicaro during a war against Guatemala.
The economy was based on coffee growing after the mid-19th century and, as the world market for indigo withered away, prospered or suffered as the world coffee price fluctuated. In 1898, General Tomas Regalado gained power by force, deposing Rafael Antonio Gutiérrez and ruling as president until 1903. He revived the practice of designating presidential successors. Until 1913 El Salvador was politically stable, but there were undercurrents of popular discontent as well. When President Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo was killed in 1913 there were many hypotheses advanced for the political motive of his murder.
Araujo's administration was followed by the Melendez-Quinonez dynasty that lasted from 1913 to 1927. Pio Romero Bosque, ex-Minister of the Government, and a trusted collaborator of the dynasty, succeeded president Jorge Melendez and in 1930 announced free elections in which Arturo Araujo came to power on March 1, 1931. His government lasted only nine months as his Labor Party lacked political and governmental experience and many party members used their government offices inefficiently. President Araujo faced general popular discontent as the people expected economic reforms and the redistribution of land. There were demonstrations in front of the National Palace since the first week of his administration. His vice-president and Minister of War was General Maximiliano Hernández MartÃnez and his National Police Director was Rochac, the president's brother-in-law.
A coup d'état was organized by young junior officers and led by General MartÃnez; the first strike started in the First Regiment of Infantry across from the National Palace in downtown San Salvador. Only the First Regiment of Calvary and the National Police were loyal to the president and defended him (the National Police had been paid its payroll), but later that night on December 1931, after hours of fighting and badly outnumbered, they surrendered to the military revolution.
The Directorate, composed of officers, hid behind a shadowy figure (as told by Thomas Anderson in his book Matanza), a rich anti-communist banker called Rodolfo Duke, and later installed the ardent fascist General MartÃnez as president of El Salvador. The causes of the revolt were mainly supposed to be due to the discontent of the army for not being paid by President Araujo for some months. Araujo left the National Palace and later unsuccessfully tried to organize forces to defeat the revolt.
The U.S. Minister in El Salvador met with the Directorate and later recognized the government of MartÃnez, who agreed to hold presidential elections later (MartÃnez resigned in 1934 six months before the presidential elections to run for the presidency and then won as the only candidate. He ruled from 1935 to 1939 and then from 1939 to 1943 and finally started his fourth term in 1944 but resigned in May after the general strike. MartÃnez had said he was going to respect the Constitution which stipulated he could not be reelected, but he refused to keep his promise).
From December 1931, the year of the coup in which MartÃnez came to power, there was brutal suppression of the rural resistance. The most notable event was the February 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising, led by Farabundo Martà and Abel Cuenca and the university students Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata. Only Cuenca survived, the other freedom fighters were killed by the government. It was later referred to as La Matanza (the massacre), because tens of thousands of peasants were slaughtered on the orders of President Martinez.
In the unstable political climate of the past few years the social activist and revolutionary leader Farabundo Martà had become involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Central America, and led a communist alternative to the Red Cross called International Red Aid, serving as one of its representatives. Their goal was to help poor and underprivileged Salvadorans through the use of Marxist-Leninist ideology (strongly rejecting Stalinism). In December 1930, at the height of the country's economic and social depression, Martà had been once again exiled due to his popularity among the nation's poor and rumors of his upcoming nomination for President the following year. Once the new president, Arturo Araujo, was elected in 1931, Martà returned to El Salvador, and along with Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata, began the movement that was later truncated by the military. They helped start a guerrilla revolt of indigenous farmers. The government responded by killing over 30,000 indigenous people at what was to be a 'peaceful meeting' in 1932; this became known as La Matanza (The Slaughter). The peasant uprising against the dictator MartÃnez was crushed by the Salvadoran military ten days after it had begun. The Communist-led rebellion, fomented by collapsing coffee prices, enjoyed some initial success, but was soon drowned in a bloodbath. President MartÃnez, who had himself toppled an elected government only weeks earlier, ordered the defeated Martà shot after a perfunctory hearing.
Historically, the high Salvadoran population density has contributed to tensions with neighboring Honduras, as land-poor Salvadorans emigrated to less densely populated Honduras and established themselves as squatters on unused or underused land. This phenomenon was a major cause of the 1969 Football War between El Salvador and Honduras.[7] As many as 130,000 Salvadorans had been forcibly expelled or had fled from Honduras.[8]
[edit] Tags:Presidential, | |
| The PDC and the PCN parties | |
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FENADESAL train in Apopa.
In 1960, two political parties were born and are still active in El Salvadoran politics; the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the National Conciliation Party (PCN). Both share common ideals, but one represents the middle class and the latter the interests of the Salvadoran military.
Opposition leader José Napoleón Duarte from the PDC was the mayor of San Salvador from 1964 to 1970, winning three elections during the regime of President Jose Adalberto Rivera (who allowed free elections for mayors and the National Assembly). Duarte later ran for president with a political grouping called the National Opposition Union (UNO) but was defeated in the 1972 presidential elections. He lost to the ex-Minister of Interior, Colonel Arturo Arturo Armando Molina, in an election that was widely viewed as fraudulent, with Molina declared the winner even though Duarte was said to have received a majority of the votes. Duarte, at some Army officers' request, supported a revolt to protest the election fraud, but was captured, tortured and later exiled. Duarte returned to the country in 1979 to enter politics after working on projects in Venezuela as an engineer.
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| The October 1979 coup d'état | |
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In October 1979, a coup d'état brought the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador to power. It nationalized many private companies and took over much privately owned land. The purpose of this new junta was to stop the revolutionary movement already underway in response to Duarte's stolen election. Nevertheless, the oligarchy opposed agrarian reform and a junta formed with young liberal elements from the Army such as General Majano and General Gutierrez[citation needed] as well as progressives such as Ungo and Alvarez.
Owing to pressure from the staunch oligarchy, this Junta was soon dissolved because of its inability to control the Army in its repression of the people fighting for unionization rights, agrarian reform, better wages, accessible health care, and freedom of expression. In the meantime the guerrilla movement was spreading in all sectors of Salvadoran society. Middle and high school students were organized in MERS (Movimiento Estudiantil Revolucionario de Secundaria, Revolutionary Movement of Secondary Students); college students were involved with AGEUS (Asociacion de Estudiantes Universitarios Salvadorenos; Association of Salvadoran College Students); workers were organized in BPR (Bloque Popular Revolucionario, Popular Revolutionary Block).
The U.S. supported and financed the creation of a second Junta to change the political environment and stop the spread of a leftist insurrection. Napoleon Duarte was recalled from his exile in Venezuela to head this new Junta. However, a revolution was already underway and his new role as head of the Junta was seen as opportunistic by the general population. He was unable to influence the outcome of the insurrection movement and this resulted in the Salvadoran Civil War (1980–1992).
Mural in Perquin, former "guerrilla capital" and now a tourist destination.
On January 16, 1992 the government of El Salvador, represented by president Alfredo Cristiani, and the Frente Farabundo Martà para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), represented by the commanders of the five guerrilla groups – Shafick Handal, Joaquin Villalobos, Salvador Sánchez Ceren, Francisco Jovel and Eduardo Sancho, all signed the peace agreements brokered by the United Nations which ended the 12-year civil war. This event, held at the Chapultepec Castle in Mexico, was attended by U.N. dignitaries and other representatives of the international community. After signing the armistice the president stood up and shook hands with all the now ex-guerrilla commanders, an action which was widely admired. The so-called Mexico Peace Agreements mandated reductions in the size of the Army, and the dissolution of the National Police, the Treasury Police, the National Guard, and the Civilian Defense, a paramilitary group. A new Civil Police was to be organized and judicial immunity for crimes committed by the armed forces ended: the government agreed to submit to recommendations by a Commission on the Truth for El Salvador (Comisión de la Verdad Para El Salvador), which would "investigate serious acts of violence occurring since 1980 and the nature and effects of the violence and to recommend methods of promoting national reconciliation".
[edit] Tags:Utc, | |
| End of the 20th century | |
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From 1989 until 2004, Salvadorans favored the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, voting in ARENA presidents in every election (Alfredo Cristiani, Tags: | |
z³ote monety |