March 20, 1989 |
As widespread fighting Sunday between the army and Marxist guerrillas plus continuing intimidation by the rebels held down voter participation, Alfredo Cristiani--the candidate for an ultra-right wing, anti-American party--swept to a stunning and easy presidential victory.
March 17, 1989 |
A political party with a history of anti-Americanism and a reputation for homicide is the likely winner of El Salvador's presidential election Sunday, marking a critical turn in the fortunes of a country tortured by civil war and economic hardship.
January 25, 1989 |
Government officials of El Salvador on Tuesday rejected as "unconstitutional" a key demand by the country's Marxist guerrillas for a six-month postponement of an upcoming presidential election as a condition for rebel participation in the balloting and their acceptance of its results.
March 13, 1989 |
A dead dog lay on top of a political slogan still wet from having been sprayed in the middle of the street. The mixture of gore and blue paint smeared the message, just as a blend of war and peace has obscured the point of El Salvador's presidential election campaign. After months of campaigning--and with next Sunday's first round of balloting now less than a week away--there is "no focus, no interest," in the words of a European diplomat.
November 18, 1989 |
After a week of intense guerrilla warfare and the murders of six Jesuit priests, hundreds of opposition political activists have gone into hiding or taken up arms in a severe and perhaps fatal blow to El Salvador's "democratic opening."
March 21, 1989 |
The crowd was on the edge of bedlam, a politician's delight of screams, tears of joy and a crescendo of chants, first for the party, then for its founder. As the shouting died down, as more of an afterthought than anything else, a single voice cried out the name of the candidate.
October 31, 1993 |
These are heady times for the Salvadoran left as the March, 1994, presidential elections draw nearer. For Ruben Zamora, they are times of personal and political vindication. Like so many Salvadorans, the founder of the Social Christian Popular Movement and long-time leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Front lived the conflict. His brother was killed by death squads in 1980, and he lived in exile until 1987, when he returned to help found the Democratic Convergence.
February 8, 1987 |
These are among the important events that occurred in Central America during the last week of January, emphasizing the endless and deepening contradictions tearing asunder the nations of the isthmus: --Off the coast of Honduras, as eight Latin American foreign ministers and the secretaries general of the United Nations and the Organization of American States visited the region's capitals in search of peaceful solutions for Central America, the battleship Iowa steamed on maneuvers, firing its
February 21, 1994 |
The television commercial begins with scenes of maimed children and burning buses. "Suspend the past!" the announcer says sarcastically, suggesting it is impossible to forget the civil war that this country lived for more than a decade. As El Salvador prepares to vote in historic presidential elections next month, the past is very much present. The elections are seen here as a crucial test of El Salvador's troubled efforts to restore peace and build democracy after 12 years of war.
February 24, 1990 |
Jose Napoleon Duarte, who became El Salvador's first democratically elected president in half a century but who was not able to end the civil war that still afflicts this tiny Central American nation, died Friday after a long fight against cancer. He was 64. Doctors had given Duarte only six months to live after they diagnosed his condition as untreatable liver cancer in May, 1988.