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Civil War In El Salvador

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El Salvador is a country in Central America, a region of that connects Mexico to the South American continent. With a land mass of about 13,000 square miles, the country is considered to be one of the geographically smallest inhabiting the Americas (Arsdale 88), and holds a population of around 6.5 million (Martínez). In 1980, El Salvador was not on the list of top 25 sending countries to the United States. Just 20 years later, the country would be number 8 on that same list. From 1970 to 2000, the number of Salvadorans in the United States increased by a little over 240% (Menjívar 413). Academic studies in political science often play an important role in figuring out situations that affect the world, and the statistics that deal with El …show more content…

Second, the topic of an insensitive Salvadoran government toward its people will be introduced in the discussion of the civil war, and will be emphasized in the recent increases of gang violence. Third, an alternate theory towards answering the migration question will be presented: income inequality. However, I will break from the singular point of this hypothesis. I will argue that the rising prevalence of gangs in El Salvador and the government’s failed responses to them is the cause of mass migration out of El …show more content…

Considered “one of the most devastating conflicts in modern Latin American history” (Chávez 1784), the civil war took place in the 1980’s and lasted for over a decade. It was a conflict that was essentially between the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the government of El Salvador in the form of a military regime, a fight between democratic revolution and authoritarian military order. Albeit the end the war led to the first ever democratic transition in the country’s history, it should be noted that the end of the war was not an outright overthrow of President Alfredo Cristiani and the military regime. Instead, a negotiation that was mediated by the United Nations took place between the FMLN and President Cristiani, ultimately including the interests of the oligarchy (Chávez 1784). The military regime was dismantled, but President Cristiani nevertheless played a major role in overseeing post-war reconstruction, which clearly showed that even though the civil war was brought to a close by the negotiated peace accords, justice was not truly delivered to the citizens of El Salvador (Chávez

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