ABSTRACT
Control of El Salvador’s agricultural land has been the single most divisive issue in the country for the past two centuries. Revolts and insurgencies for which land was a dominant mobilizing narrative punctuated the time between the Salvadoran government’s abolition of corporatist landholding in 1881–1882 and the civil war that ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords on January 16, 1992. While there has been relatively little political violence directly associated with the land issue since 1992, the issue has not been resolved or removed from the public consciousness. The failure to address widespread rural landlessness and poverty is a lingering legacy of the post-accord period. However, instead of armed groups taking up these causes, civil society has emerged with more strength, thanks to the unprecedented opening of democratic space. The creation of such space through the peace accord and the United Nations–sponsored post-conflict peacebuilding is in itself revolutionary. Democratization has not ended rural poverty. But the peace agreement and post-conflict monitoring by the international community effectively demobilized the rebels and dismantled a notoriously repressive security apparatus—creating a new police force, reducing the size of the armed forces by more than half, and putting both under civilian control. The accord also was successful in transforming the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberacíon National, or FMLN) from a rebel military force into a viable political party.
