Oscar romero biography facts of life

Background

Although El Salvador declared independence from Spain in 1821, the legacy of colonialism continued throughout the twentieth century. Near-absolute power merely shifted from the Spaniards to the Salvadorans of European ancestry. Mestizos and indigenous peoples—some  95 percent of the total population were virtually serfs. A tiny aristocracy—known  as “The 14 Families”—ruled  the nation through a military commanded by mercenaries selected and paid by the richest landowners and industrialists. From 1933 - 1980, all but one president was a military dictator. Their regimes staged fraudulent elections periodically, to maintain the external pretense of democracy, but their regimes were based on repression blended with occasional reforms intended to defuse potential revolutions.

This system began to unravel in the 1970s, when previously splintered opponents of military rule united behind Jose Napoleon Duarte, leader of the Christian Democratic Party. Duarte and his broad-based reform platform were defeated in one of the most fraudulent elections in recorded history. Subsequent protests were crushed, and Duarte was exiled. These events convinced many—peasants  and middle class alike—that reforms could not be achieved democratically when democ