Human Rights Institute at the University of Central America (Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la UCA)
IIRAIRA
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act
ILO
International Labor Organization
IML
Institute of Forensic Medicine (Instituto de Medicina Legal)
INAZUCAR
National Sugar Institute (Instituto Nacional de Azúcar)
INCAFE
National Coffee Institute (Instituto Nacional del Café)
INS
Immigration and Naturalization Service
ISDEMU
Salvadoran Institute for the Advancement of Women (Instituto Salvadoreño para el Desarrollo de la Mujer)
ISI
import substitution industrialization
ISSS
Salvadoran Social Security Institute (Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social)
IUDOP
University of Central America Institute for Public Opinion (Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública Universidad Centroamericana, “José Simeón Cañas”)
IVA
value-added tax (impuesto al valor agregado)
JVE
Electoral Review Board (Junta de Revisión Electoral)
LAR
ARENA League to the Rescue (Liga Arenera al Rescate)
MAC
Authentic Christian Movement (Movimiento Auténtico Cristiano)
MCC
Millennium Challenge Corporation
MINUSAL
United Nations Mission in El Salvador (Misión de las Naciones Unidas en El Salvador)
MIPLAN
Ministry of Planning and Coordination of Economic and Social Development (Ministerio de Planificación y Coordinación del Desarrollo Económico y Social)
MNR
National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario)
MPR-12
Popular Resistance Movement of October 12 (Movimiento Popular de Resistencia 12 de Octubre)
MPSC
Popular Social Christian Movement (Movimiento Popular Social Cristiana)
MS-13
Mara Salvatrucha
NACLA
North American Congress on Latin America
NGO
nongovernmental organization
OAS
French Secret Army Organization (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète)
University of Central America (Universidad Centroamericano, “Jose Simeón Cañas”)
UDN
Nationalist Democratic Union (Unión Democráta Nacional)
UEA
Executive Anti–Drug Trafficking Unit of the National Police (Unidad Ejecutiva Antinarcotráfico)
UES
University of El Salvador (Universidad de El Salvador)
UNDP
United Nations Development Program
Unidos
United for Solidarity (Unidos por la Solidaridad)
UNO
National Opposition Union (Unión Oposición Nacional)
UNODC
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
USAID
U.S. Agency for International Development
Introduction
Peacebuilding, Elites, and the Problem of Capture
The population does not value peace as a synonym for progress. Peace for most people does not make sense because it has no social content, or the content lacks justice. The impact of the neoliberal transition of the past fifteen years has laid a foundation for society that trends toward authoritarianism rather than democracy.
—Salvador Sánchez Cerén, October 20061
ON OCTOBER 15, 1979, a group of junior officers overthrew El Salvador’s military government with the intent of forestalling a revolution. Decades of systematic repression, socioeconomic exclusion, and the collapse of legal political space in the early 1970s had resulted in the mobilization of guerrilla organizations and affiliated social groups that wished to dismantle the existing political and economic order in one of Central America’s most unequal and violent societies. The subsequent juntas, composed of military officers and civilians, had hoped to loosen the military’s grip on the state and the oligarchy’s grip on the economy. The successive juntas failed to achieve the reforms it deemed necessary to prevent the escalation of violence, reforms that threatened the country’s most powerful economic elites. The levels of state violence increased and, by 1980, El Salvador was a country at war with itself.
More than seventy-five thousand Salvadorans were killed and one million more displaced in the civil war, making it one of the most destructive in the region. Driven to the negotiating table by a military stalemate with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, the Salvadoran government under President Alfredo Cristiani invited the United Nations to mediate a settlement that would end the war. El Salvador’s civil war was to be the first in which the United Nations agreed to act as mediator in such negotiations. The negotiations began in April 1990 and continued for almost two years, during which the participation of the UN and mediation by the secretary general’s office were crucial to the successful negotiation of sensitive issues, particularly military reform. On January 16, 1992, representatives for the government of El Salvador (GOES) and the FMLN signed the peace accords that aimed not only to end the civil war but to build lasting peace. The Chapúltepec Peace Accords, named after the castle where they were signed in Mexico City, promised a new beginning for El Salvador. Hailed as a success story of United Nations peacebuilding efforts, the peace process transformed the country’s political landscape. The accords placed the military under civilian control for the first time in El Salvador’s history. State-sponsored terrorism ceased to be the modus operandi of the country’s various “security forces,” which were eliminated and replaced with a new civilian police force. Opposition parties and their affiliated organizations were legalized and, over time, functioned without fear of recrimination. The FMLN transitioned from a guerrilla movement to political party, becoming the largest party in the legislature and governing more than 50 percent of the population
