ABSTRACT
The Republic of El Salvador is located on the Pacific side of the Central American isthmus, and has frontiers with Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Area: 21,041sq km (8,124sq miles); capital: San Salvador; population: 6,517,800 (2002 estimate), comprising mestizos (90%), Amerindian, European (mainly Spanish); official language: Spanish; religion: Roman Catholic 78%, evangelical Protestant sects. Constitution: The 1983 Constitution provides for a democratic, presidential republic. Legislative power is vested in a single chamber, the National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional), elected for three years. Executive power is vested in a President elected by the people for a five-year term. Voting is both a right and a duty of all citizens of 18 years of age and over. The country is committed to the reconstitution of the Republic of Central America. History: Until the outbreak of civil war in 1980 El Salvador was dominated by a closed oligarchy, the so-called ‘Fourteen Families’. Soon after the seizure of power by Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (President 1930-44), an outbreak of agrarian unrest in 1932, forcibly put down by the massacre known as La Matanza, had panicked them into accepting his dictatorship. Then, in 1944, as in neighbouring Guatemala, a popular uprising had caught the dictator unawares, and in 1948 a coup by junior officers cut short a possible transition to democracy, but installed a modernizing military regime. This was ousted in 1960, when José María Lemus attempted to prolong his rule, by another junior officers’ revolt, rejected, in turn, by more conservative elements in the armed forces, fearful of a Cuban-style revolution.
