ABSTRACT
After independence, members of El Salvador's landed elite competed for power with one another, usually resolving their conflicts by force of arms. In 1931 aristocratic President Pio Romero Bosque kept a campaign promise to allow El Salvador's first genuinely competitive election, and a host of ad hoc personalist parties arose to contest it. After ruling El Salvador from 1931 to 1944, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez was forced to resign because of US pressure and a general strike for democratic reforms involving the urban middle class and popular sector. After 1972, El Salvador's political situation deteriorated rapidly. The strongest domestic political actor in El Salvador is the armed forces. Political parties have never been actors of primary importance in El Salvador, and elections have seldom determined who will hold power. Nearly all of the other political groups united in the Democratic Revolutionary Front represent the wide array of radical Marxist factions of the Salvadoran left.
