El Salvador and the involvement of the FMLN Strategies

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        Lisa Kirk

April 19, 2005

Professor Thurner

El Salvador and the involvement of the FMLN Strategies

El Salvador is often referred to as “Savior of the World.”  The story of the guerrilla forces of El Salvador began in 1932.  After an uprising of the Indian peasants, the first revolt for the country occurred. By the late 1970’s, El Salvador was in another revolutionary crisis that was putting the country’s economic and political order in a critical situation.   An executive decision needed to be made which led to the formation of the Alliance of Progress.  El Salvador was to be helped by the United States and with this came the mix of five guerrilla groups named the FMLN who had different strategies and tactics that included acts of sabotage and damage.

After Cuba had already exploded, countries such as El Salvador were left in a state of upheaval.  President Kennedy decided to put up a ten-year alliance for progress program. Kennedy wanted 100 billion dollars to be pumped into the Latin American development.  With this money, they were supposed to invest it into their own resources to enact taxes on land and other economic reforms.  Contrary to initial intentions, this alliance turned into a revolutionary rather than simply a beneficial alliance.

 Kennedy made a decade long pledge to commit government plans in an orderly fashion.  He wanted to establish Latin American reforms as well as a bureaucracy to operate the program.  “…the Alliance focused at least as much on antirevolutionary as on developmental activity”  This alliance was viewed as a weapon to fight revolution in the Latin Americas and the success of this alliance was looking promising.  Even though the United States still remained the world’s greatest economic and military power, the alliance had hope.  For Kennedy, the main allies in the alliance would be Coasta Rica, El Salvador and Honduras.  

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After officers over threw a more liberal government in El Salvador, President Kennedy approved that governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing the communist penetration in Latin America.  El Salvador was the country that was the pride of the alliance.  This was shown by its grants of a greater amount of funds then any other Central American country. Above all else, the most challenging dilemma was the question that even if the real growth occurred, would the poor or the rich parts of the population receive the benefits from everything?  The alliance was ...

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