Liberal reform and conservative counter-reaction in El Salvador

William Stanley's The Protection Racket State: Elite Politics, Military Extortion, and Civil War in El Salvador is probably the most respected (English language at least) book on the role of the elites and military in 20th century El Salvador. I skimmed the book in graduate school but never actually sat down to read it cover the cover which I just started to do yesterday. While I read just about every assigned book and article while in grad school, I can't say that that left much time to read other books in their entirety. I decided to read the book before the spring semester begins in two weeks.

I just finished reading the first two chapters of the book and I now have a much better understanding of Salvadoran history and US-Salvadoran relations during the first few decades of the twentieth century. In the first half of the twentieth century, US foreign policy did not allow the government to recognize governments that came to power via coup. That created problems for the US when General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez came to power via coup in El Salvador in 1931, Senior levels of the US State Department intended to apply pressure to prevent Martinez from remaining in power following the coup. However, the US minister in El Salvador, Charles Curtis, favored Martinez because he did not trust the junior officers of the Military Directorate. Curtis believed that they were just using "Martinez as a figurehead merely to satisfy domestic and international opinion, while continuing to exercise power themselves" (50).

Instead of recommending that Martinez resign in order to receive US recognition, Curtis convinced the Military Directorate to resign and then recommended back to State that they recognize Martinez. The US then sent a special envoy to El Salvador to evaluate the situation in the country. The envoy recommended that the US pressure Martinez to resign and when that didn't work, they pressured the junior officers to get Martinez to resign and then to appoint another official who was not directly involved in the coup. As it looked that the US was making progress on having Martinez removed, communist uprisings occurred throughout the country, the Military Directorate transferred full executive authority to him. The US then gave up its efforts to push for a different president. The US did not recognize Martinez until 1934 after he had been elected.

While reading the first few chapters, I could not help but think how many of the same dynamics seem to have played out fifty years later (1979-1981 especially but really throughout the entire war) with US officials in Washington and in El Salvador pursuing often contradictory agendas.

There's also some good coverage of the lack of a national oligarchy in El Salvador. There were some wealthy individuals and families, of course, but they had little involvement in national politics and simply stayed in their home departments. They never did get along with Martinez but the final straw only came when he sought to prolong his term in office.

We then enter the 1940s where the cycle of moderate reform followed by a conservative counter-reaction begins and helps to describe Salvadoran politics for the next forty years.