El Salvador's failed October 1979 coup

In chapter 3-5 of The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador, William Stanley tackles Salvadoran politics between 1948 and 1979. Throughout the entire thirty year period, one gets a better understanding of the shifting fortunes of various groups within the country - the opposition (political parties, popular organizations, and guerrilla groups), the military (senior hardliners and junior reformers), security forces (Treasury, Housing, National Guard) and the elites (agrarian elites and nascent industrialists).

There's a bit on the US but, as we know, the US did not have that much involvement in the country until really the 1980s. While the US had intervened historically in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Salvadorans took pride in the fact that they had been able to take care of matters without the US. That's not to say that the US didn't have any involvement in the country, just somewhat limited.

What I really enjoyed was the discussion of the October 1979 coup. Everyone knew that a coup against President Romero was coming, they just didn't know which faction of the military was going to carry it out - reformers or hardliners, which tandona class. In the end, observers were surprised that the coup was carried out by junior officers located throughout the entire country with the support of the UCA and Oscar Romero, technocrats, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Communists. The US was not involved in the coup and initially didn't know how to respond.

Instead of beating back the coup, the hard-line military forces successfully installed their men on the junta  by fortune and smart politics and then destroyed it from within [technically one man on the junta, Gutierrez; however, Guillermo Garcia was named minister of defense and Nicolas Carranza deputy minister of defense]. The economic elites were against any and all reform, no matter how small and inconsequential, as it always smacked of communism. While the National Resistance (RN) and the Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS) wanted to give the moderate first junta a chance, ERP and FPL thought that successful reforms would thwart revolution. The BPR and other popular movements gave the junta a limited amount of time to demonstrate some results but were not overly supportive of the coup.

Right-wing violence from hard-line members of the military, former military who had been purged because of human rights violations, the security forces, an intransigent elite, US Ambassador Devine, and a radical left that would not give reform a chance doomed October 1979's relatively bloodless coup and first junta.

See also Liberal reform and conservative counter-reaction in El Salvador.