The rebellion and its bloody aftermath ushered in a era of
military rule as the oligarchy, desperate to defend its
interests, handed political power to the army while retaining
economic control. For the next fifty years the two groups worked
together in a symbiotic relationship. Successive groups of
tandas - cliques of military officers - assumed power,
felled by coups and counter-coups as factions within the military
itself fought for supremacy. The economic business of state was
handled by the oligarchy, who relied on the army to protect its
interests. Depending on the faction in power, occasional limited
social reforms were made, although leaving the fundamental
structures unchanged. A number of political parties were allowed to
operate, but elections were widely perceived as a sham.
After World War II , economic interests diversified into
production of sugar, cotton and beef for export. During the 1960s
and 1970s, some limited industrialization also occurred. Needless
to say, the profits and benefits deriving from this expansion
remained firmly in the hands of the oligarchy, with social
inequalities unchanged. The vast majority of the population had no
access to land and - at best - only tenuous means of survival. The
census of 1971 recorded that 64 percent of agricultural land was
held by 4 percent of landowners, while two-thirds of rural families
had either no land or worked plots that were insufficient to
provide daily needs.
A downturn in export markets in the 1970s again led to a steep
deterioration in conditions, with a subsequent increase in militant
pressure for change. The elections of 1972, won by the Christian
Democratic Party (PDC) led by José Napoleón Duarte , should
have signalled a mandate for democratic change. The PDC advocated a
peaceful road to reform, but following the election the army
installed its own candidate, Colonel Arturo Molina , as
president. Duarte and other opposition leaders were exiled, the
National University closed down and trade union and reform
activists persecuted and killed.
The cycle of repression continued throughout the 1970s as
Molina's successor, Carlos Humberto Romero , took power in
elections, again rigged, in 1977. Shortly after Romero took office,
news programmes around the world showed footage of the army firing
upon unarmed civilians during a protest in front of the cathedral
in central San Salvador on February 28 - as many as three hundred
people died. In 1979 the ineffectual Romero was himself deposed in
a coup, replaced initially by a civilian military junta and then by
a group of hard-line army officers in January 1980. The army
accepted an offer from Duarte to form a provisional government on
condition that certain reforms be introduced, yet repression
continued, culminating in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar
Romero on March 24, 1980 - a murder planned by serving army
officer Roberto D'Aubuisson. Though preliminary reforms were
implemented and agreement secured for a transfer of power from
military to civilian hands, these were insufficient to halt a
deepening cycle of extra-judicial violence.
The developments of the 1970s and continuing military domination
had convinced many that change could only come through violence.
Far-right paramilitary death squads waged campaigns of terror in
the countryside and against those advocating reform. At the
opposite end of the spectrum, left-wing guerrilla groups were
mobilizing and advocating radical change. Archbishop Romero's
assassination signalled the point from where descent into civil war
became inevitable