Oligarchy and US-Sponsored War in El Salvador

With journalist Daniel Alvarenga

Earlier this week, President Biden closed the border to asylum seekers, many of whom are Salvadoran. To learn about their history and how it “ties into a bigger picture of U.S. imperialism in the hemisphere,” I spoke with Daniel Alvarenga, a Salvadoran journalist and the host of HUMO: Murder and Silence in El Salvador. As Daniel reveals, the U.S. doesn’t have the best track record of dealing with the problems it helped create in Central America. 

A condensed transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity, is below. You can also listen to the audio, which includes more on the Indigenous history of El Salvador, how La Matanza continues to shape Salvadoran life, the ad hoc formation of policies for unaccompanied children at the border, and more:

The kids say United Statesian now

Ben: To begin, can you talk about the history of oligarchy in El Salvador? 

DA: Sure. Let’s go back to the end of Spanish colonization when there were independence movements across Latin America.

El Salvador was part of the Federation of Central America. After winning independence, the federation broke down, partly because of competing oligarchies from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. By the 1840s they broke off into countries, which became little fiefdoms for powerful European-descended families. 

In El Salvador, the oligarchy was tied to monocrop agriculture. Indigo was El Salvador’s first cash crop (hence the blue on the Salvadoran flag), and later El Salvador shifted to coffee.

Ben: Blue is definitely a nicer color on a flag than brown.

DA: Ha, yes. But the coffee plantations were brutal. Social conflict grew between the masses and the handful of coffee plantation-owning families. 

Ben: Let's get to some of the social conflicts. Can you talk about what happened in 1931?

DA: A new dictator came to power through a military coup: General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. An open Nazi sympathizer, Hernández Martínez passed a series of laws that restricted Asian, Arab, and Black immigration. El Salvador was very much in its Blanqueamiento period — the whitening period.

The biggest sort of example of this was La Matanza in January 1932. The Communist Party, a majority of whose members were Indigenous, led an uprising against exploitation on coffee plantations and the very discriminatory practices of the president. In a matter of a couple of days, the Salvadoran government responded by massacring up to an estimated 30,000 people. 

La Matanza solidified the military dictatorship, which operated at the behest of the oligarchy, and it pushed leftist organizing in the country underground. It also pushed Indigenous and Afro-Salvadoran identity underground. People stopped speaking their languages out in the open, hiding their dress, and assimilating to survive. 

Hernández Martínez left power in the `40s, but there were still military dictatorships through the `70s. My parents grew up in that era. I often hear stories about secret police or the lights going off during elections.

Ben: That brings us to Oscar Romero. How and why did he begin to speak up about growing brutality?

DA: In the `70s, we saw a lot of organizing among teachers and students. More and more people were trying to take the reins of Salvadoran society through activism and on behalf of the proletariat working class. Their actions led to a lot of deaths and the persecution of campesinos (workers in the agricultural sector).

This was the environment that Archbishop Oscar Romero found himself in. Romero was conservative-leaning at first — you kind of had to be to become archbishop — but he was radicalized by the shooting of another priest. Romero soon started using his sermons, broadcasted on the radio, to document the government's killing. 

In one of his last sermons, he appealed to death squad members’ humanity. He said, do not kill your fellow Salvadorans. This enraged the military dictator at the time, Roberto D'Aubuisson, and Romero was soon shot in the middle of mass. It was egregious, sort of the JFK moment in Salvadoran history.

Ben: It’s scary to think we haven’t even discussed the role the U.S. would begin to play in Salvadoran affairs. Can you talk about how the Carter administration was supportive of the dictatorship?

DA: Yes. Everyone talks about Reagan's involvement in Central America, and he definitely escalated things in El Salvador, but it’s interesting that Jimmy Carter’s legacy is a little bit... let’s say gentler than Reagan’s.

People don’t hold Carter accountable for helping to set off horrific things for El Salvador. Monsignor Romero wrote to Carter before his death, asking him to please stop sending military aid to the government.

Ben: I noted that under the Carter administration, American money went toward gas masks, bulletproof vests, and other supplies, which Carter rationalized as forms of “nonlethal aid.”¹ That’s a little like calling an accessory to murder merely “an accessory.”

DA: Absolutely. Romero was assassinated by death squads while Carter was still in power. Fed up, five guerrilla groups came together to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), named after a revolutionary leader killed in La Matanza.

Of course, Reagan pushed the brewing civil war into overdrive. Some say that his administration sent up to a million dollars a day for the better part of the `80s to El Salvador. There’s a forgotten history, too, of organizing in the U.S. against the war. Washington, D.C.’s Mount Pleasant Library has a punk rock archive where you'll find posters saying solidarity against the war in El Salvador. 

The civil war didn't end until 1992, during which the mass exodus from El Salvador to the U.S. began.

Ben: Which, unfortunately for your sake, kind of led to you having a conversation with me right now.

DA: Yes. I was born in the States, but my siblings and parents were born in El Salvador, and they all fled in the `80s. During that time, we saw a lot of things we see today, like unaccompanied children migrating. 

The Flores settlement, which determines the treatment of children in immigration custody today, came out of a case where Salvadoran children were detained and abused in immigration detention. When the war ended, there were all these refugee children here, many of whom had witnessed atrocities. Still, the Clinton administration increased mass deportations, exporting a problem the U.S. had helped create back to Central America.

Fast forward to today, El Salvador is repeating its own history. HUMO, my podcast, talks about a new oligarchy cropping up behind Nayib Bukele, the current president. Supposedly El Salvador is now a safe country under Bukele. A lot of foreigners are starting to visit. Bukele is courting a type of person — usually white with a Bitcoin wallet.

Ben: The exact person I would never want to vacation with. 

DA: Yes. But in reality, he's jailing a lot of the local population without trial or due process. Bukele, who’s right-wing, is bringing back all the things we talked about: iron fist rule with widespread empowerment of the police and the armed forces. 

My podcast goes into some of the cover-ups that make the country look safer all while homicides and disappearances are still happening. That's why it's called HUMO, meaning smoke, because it gets to the smoke and mirrors of this new administration. 

Part of the reason, too, that we made the podcast is so that Americans can see what's going on in El Salvador and how it ties into the bigger picture of U.S. imperialism in the hemisphere. The American press doesn’t really know how to write about us. I’ve seen cases where we’re labeled El Salvadorans, rather than just Salvadorans.

Ben: I guess I should apologize to all of my Eastern European friends whom I’ve called Czech Republicans.

DA: Sometimes the kids say “United Statesian,” which I kind of like.

But Salvadorans are everywhere in the States. We’re now the third-largest Latino group, after Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. And there’s a whole lot that leads Salvadorans to the U.S. All of this stuff goes back to the `80s, which goes back to the `30s, which goes back to when colonization began in the 1600s.

Ben: Speaking my language.

Daniel — Salvadoran, United Statesian — thanks so much for coming on.

DA: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

1. Quote from Everyone Who is Gone is Here by Jonathan Blitzer