FMLN

The FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) formed as an organized guerrilla movement in 1980, in response to years of repression by the Salvadoran government. Largely due to international assistance and local support, the FMLN posed a credible threat to the Salvadoran military during the civil war that lasted more than a decade. In 1992, the FMLN became a legal political party at the Chapultepec Peace Accords and has remained a major party ever since.

The FMLN was named after Augustín Farabundo Martí, a Marxist political leader who led a peasant insurrection in 1932 that turned into a notorious massacre known as la matanza. Soldiers and vigilantes killed more than 30,000 peasants. It is estimated that only 10% of those killed had participated in the uprising.

The years preceding the civil war (1940s–1980) were plagued by election fraud, voter intimidation, and violence. Political demonstrators were regularly repressed, disappearances were frequent, and death squads targeted dissidents and others, including Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated on March 24, 1980. Later that year, five separate active guerrilla groups with varying ideologies formed a coalition to create the FMLN: the Popular Forces for Liberation (FPL), the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP), the National Resistance (FARN), the Worker's Revolutionary Party (PRTC), and the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), which was founded by Farabundo Martí in 1930. Each kept its own leadership structure and maintained its own ideologies but cooperated to resist military repression and, ultimately, to take over power.

The FMLN had numerous international ties, including with Nicaragua, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the Peruvian guerrilla movement, the Shining Path. These alliances provided the FMLN with military and political training, weapons, and ammunition. (They also captured weapons and ammunition from the Salvadoran military and manufactured their own land mines.) The FMLN enjoyed the support of 25% of the Salvadoran population, thanks in part to the pro-guerrilla clandestine radio stations, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Martí. The FMLN also received support from solidarity groups in the United States and Europe (while the U.S. government financially and militarily supported the Salvadoran government).

On January 16, 1992, after more than 75,000 Salvadorans were killed, the FMLN and the Salvadoran government agreed to end the war at the U.N.-sponsored peace accords in Chapultepec, Mexico. Numerous Salvadoran soldiers were dismissed, and the FMLN surrendered weapons and became a legal political party. While the FMLN has yet to win a presidential election, in 2003 they won numerous seats in the Legislative Assembly, half of the departmental capitals, and the third consecutive mayoralty of San Salvador.