First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
PEN AND SWORD MILITARY
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Pen and Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright Al J. Venter, 2017
ISBN 978 1 52670 814 4
eISBN 978 1 52670 816 8
Mobi ISBN 978 1 52670 815 1
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TIMELINE
1524
Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado conquers El Salvador.
1540
Indigenous resistance finally crushed and El Salvador becomes a Spanish colony.
1821
El Salvador gains independence from Spain. Conflict ensues over territorys incorporation into Mexican empire under Creole general Agustin de Iturbide.
1823
El Salvador becomes part of the United Provinces of Central America, which also includes Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
1840
El Salvador becomes fully independent, following the dissolution of the United Provinces of Central America.
185963
President Gerardo Barrios introduces coffee growing.
1932
Some 30,000 people are killed during the suppression of a peasant uprising led by Agustn Farabundo Mart Rodriguez.
Right-wing National Conciliation Party (PCN) comes to power after a military coup.
1969
El Salvador attacks and fights a brief war with Honduras following the eviction of thousands of illegal Salvadoran immigrants from Honduras.
Statue to national hero Gerardo Barrios, president of El Salvador, 185963. (Photo Brigadier044)
1970
The leftist Farabundo Mart Liberation Peoples Forces (Fuerzas Populares de Liberacin Farabundo Mart, or FPL) is formed on 1 April to take up arms against the El Salvador regime. Also formed this year is the Peoples Revolutionary Army (Ejrcito Revolucionario del Pueblo, or ERP), another militant leftist organization.
1977
Guerrilla activities by FPL and ERP intensify amid reports of increased human-rights violations by government troops and death squads. General Carlos Humberto Romero is elected president.
197981
Around 30,000 people are killed by army-backed, right-wing death squads.
1979
General Romero is ousted in a coup by reformist officers, who install a militarycivilian junta, but this fails to curb army-backed political violence.
1980
March Archbishop of San Salvador and human rights campaigner scar Romero is assassinated. Jos Napolen Duarte becomes the first civilian president since 1931.
October The left-wing Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Mart para la Liberacin Nacional, or FMLN), an umbrella group for five leftist guerrilla organizations, including ERP and FPL, is officially formed on the 10th of the month.
1981
France and Mexico recognize the FMLN as a legitimate political entity. The US continues to assist the El Salvadoran government, whose army continues to back right-wing death squads.
1982
The extreme right-wing National Republican Alliance, ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista) wins parliamentary elections that are marred by violence.
1984
Duarte wins the presidential election.
1986
Duarte begins his quest for a negotiated settlement with the FMLN.
1989
FMLN attacks intensify. Another ARENA candidate, Alfredo Cristiani, is voted president in elections, which are widely believed to have been rigged. A time of peace and natural disasters.
1991
The FMLN is recognized as a political party. The government and the FMLN sign a UN-sponsored peace accord.
1993
The government declares an amnesty for those implicated by a UN-sponsored commission into human rights atrocities.
1994
ARENA candidate Armando Caldern Sol is elected president.
1997
The FMLN makes progress in parliamentary elections. Leftist Hector Silva is elected mayor of San Salvador.
1999
ARENA candidate Francisco Flores beats former guerrilla Facundo Guardado in presidential elections.
2001
JanuaryFebruary Massive earthquakes kill 1,200 people and render another million homeless.
2002
July A US court holds two retired, US-based Salvadoran army generals responsible for civil war atrocities, ordering them to compensate the victims who had lodged the case.
2003
August 360 Salvadoran troops are despatched to Iraq.
December El Salvador, along with Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, agrees on a free-trade agreement with the US. The government ratifies the pact in December 2004.
2004
March ARENA candidate Elas Antonio Tony Saca wins the presidential elections.
2005
March An Organization of American States (OAS) human rights court votes to re-open an investigation into the 1981 massacre of hundreds of peasant farmers in the village of El Mozote, regarded as one of the worst atrocities of the civil war.
