Clash of Cultures & the Discovery of Gold      123456

El Salvador — Ripped Apart by Civil War and Repression

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s the nation of El Salvador was ripped apart by civil war. The war was a direct result of more than half a century of repressive military dictatorships, poverty, and human rights abuses.

The Salvadoran government, backed by the United States, ruthlessly repressed dissent through a network of military-sponsored death squads. Activists, peasants, religious leaders, and everyday citizens were killed in broad daylight. Their bodies lined the streets, sending a message of fear throughout the population. By the end of the war in 1992, 75,000 people had lost their lives in this small country about the size of Massachusetts. Most of the dead were civilians killed by the army and the death squads.

International Attention for Human Rights Abuses

In 1980, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a leading voice for peace in El Salvador, was shot in the heart while saying Mass. Romero was a 1979 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and had recently written to American President Jimmy Carter, asking him to stop supplying military aid to the ruling junta. Eight months later, an American lay missionary, Sister Jean Donovan, and three nuns volunteering alongside Romero were raped and murdered by the death squads. The murders of Romero and the four churchwomen garnered international attention for the human rights crisis in El Salvador and for the plight of those fleeing the country for safety.