The Civil War in El Salvador 1980-1992

In order to understand what led to the Civil War, if you haven't already checked out the section "Rich against Poor", please look here first.

By 1980 the five different guerilla groups started to agree to work together. They formed a grouip known as the FMLN. They got a lot help from outside the country from communist countries and were supported by the Soviet Union. They were able to get weapons and communication devices. However, they were not very well trained how to fight and many innocent people didn't really want the FMLN fighting in their neighborhood because they were afraid that the death squads or the army would come in and kill everyone in town.

The United States administration was upset that the communists were getting involved in Central America. So they started sending all kinds of weapons and advisors to help the Salvadoran Army.

They brought some army leaders to the "School of the Americas" in Georgia (USA) where they taught them how to torture people and how to use the weapons that they were sending over.

In the 12 years of the war, the United States sent 6 BILLION dollars worth of military aid to the government of El Salvador.

But even with all this aid, the war went on and on.

To get more soldiers, the army would stop buses and make everyone get out. They took the older boys and men away to a military camp in a different city and forced them to be part of the army. Anyone who wouldn't cooperate was killed.

The FMLN would do the same thing to get soldiers too.

If the army thought that some people in a town were helping the FMLN, they would drop bombs on the town or fly helicopters through the town and shoot people with machine guns.

Of course the people left the towns and lived outdoors in the mountains. The army then started bombing and shooting the mountain areas. If the FMLN thought that anyone was on the side of the army, they would kill them.

So, you see, over 75,000 people -- mostly women and children -- were killed in the war even though they were innocent. It was horrible. Could you imagine that happening here on Long Island? Well it DID happen in the neighborhoods of the people of El Salvador.

Then the Soviet Union fell apart. Communism was falling apart. So the United States didn't feel like it had to spend more money supporting El Salvador. They lost interest in El Salvador.

And then a bishop, some American religious sisters, and some priests were killed along with other people. This started to get the attention of people in Congress. They started an investigation and they found out that these religious people were killed (some were tortured too) by the army officers who were trained by the United States Government at the School of the Americas.

Many people in the United States got very upset that we had been supporting all this killing. And the United Nations started to get involved and worked to produce a peace agreement in 1992.

The FMLN agreed to give up their weapons. The government agreed to let people have free elections and to own some land.

Since the war, the United States government has given 500 million dollars to help the government of El Salvador put the country back together again. Some of that money has gove to the fourteen families, some to the army, and some to help the poor. Look below to see a picture of how much money was spent on El Salvador during and after the war.

Recently there was a TV program in the United States that told the story of the Civil War in El Salvador using news accounts of the wat.

You can go to the "Enemies of War" Web Site
to learn more.

You can see an outline of the army personnel who were trained at the School of the Americas