In El Salvador, various human rights organisations are trying to uncover the truth and are fighting for the right to reparation of the victims of the armed conflict that took place between 1980 and 1992. The passage of time and the lack of cooperation from the authorities only make it harder to reach new findings that would shed light on the violence suffered by the Salvadoran population, which was caught up in the conflict between the Government and the left-wing guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The defender from this organisation, who has extensive experience accompanying survivors of the conflict, explains the arduous efforts that people have made, and continue to make, through the organisations. “The base of our organisations is the families of the disappeared and murdered. So that gives us an identity; it generates a stance from the technical side and also from the personal side,” stresses the defender, who prefers to remain anonymous for security reasons.
According to the United Nations Truth Commission, during the conflict in El Salvador there were more than 22,000 violent incidents in which more than 75,000 people were tortured, executed or forcibly disappeared. The commission put the number of disappeared at 5,500, a figure that unofficial estimates raised to 9,000. In most cases, the crimes were committed by the Army and allied paramilitary groups seeking to eradicate the influence of the FMLN, whose main support came from the historically forgotten peasant population of the country’s interior. That is why most human rights violations occurred in the rural areas of El Salvador.
Once the conflict ended in 1992, the warring parties reached a peace agreement that would end up ignoring the recommendations made by the Truth Commission in 1993: five days after the report was published, the Salvadoran Parliament passed an amnesty law contrary to international law that left thousands of victims of the conflict with no possibility of justice. “That law wiped out any hope of punishment for those who committed crimes during the armed conflict. Neither side wanted to be tried,” laments this representative.
In 2016, in an attempt to correct the error, the Supreme Court declared the amnesty law unconstitutional, emphasising that crimes against humanity are not subject to a statute of limitations, and stipulated the need to develop a new legal provision. Since then, the organisations have worked without success on a law that would expose the crimes committed during the war: in 2020, Parliament passed the National Reconciliation Law which, regarded as a de facto amnesty, did not have the approval of the victims and which the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, later refused to sign. Thus, without a specific law guaranteeing reparation for the victims, the entire process of historical memory remains to be done in El Salvador.
El Salvador: without violence or freedom
El Salvador is a Central American country of 20,041 square kilometres that faces the Pacific Ocean and borders Guatemala and Honduras. As throughout the region, nature displays itself in all its exuberance, which is why a large part of the population works in primary activities such as agriculture. An idyllic place that has been marked by violence: first that of the civil war, then that led by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs.
In 2019, Nayib Bukele became president with the promise of eradicating this violence. With an iron fist and illegal methods, the president is succeeding. However, the cost is very high: while society appreciates the improvement in security, which is undeniable and which other regional leaders therefore want to emulate, a State of Emergency has been in force since March 2022 that has eradicated people’s basic freedoms.
The scale of the Government’s illegal actions is frightening, and a reflection of it is the modern prisons in which groups of criminals lie crammed together awaiting a justice that will never come. The hegemony of violence now belongs solely to the State. Since 2022, more than 90,000 people have been arrested, 8,000 of them by mistake, as Bukele himself has acknowledged, and there are reports of systematic human rights violations: torture, abuse, hundreds of enforced disappearances, murders, deaths in police custody, crimes against humanity. At least that is the view of a recent report by the Group of Experts for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations under the State of Emergency in El Salvador (GIPES), which will present the results of its investigation to the UN.
El Salvador lives under an autocracy in which Bukele controls the main spheres of power. He has progressively eliminated opposition voices. In 2025, he managed to pass the Foreign Agents Law, which allows him to control human rights organisations, and ended up amending the Constitution so that he could run again in the presidential elections and perpetuate himself in power. Objective voices no longer harbour illusions of change and, fearing the president, have taken the path of exile: a representative case is that of the journalists from the newspaper El Faro who exposed behind-the-scenes deals between gang leaders and Nayib Bukele.
How do you assess the process of justice and reparation after the conflict in El Salvador?
El Salvador is a small country, deeply rooted in its traditions, that lived through a very cruel war which, in reality, lasted more than 12 years. The war came about because of inequalities, injustices, the country’s economic situation, because there were powers that suppressed the rights of the population. After the war, change was expected: that the peace agreements would not just be a ceasefire but the start of measures that would benefit the population. We wanted structural change. Although there were important changes, under-the-table agreements integrated members of the police and the army into the new public and civilian security force. That was a first mistake: people stayed in their posts; the transition did not change the people who were in power. Nevertheless, I won’t deny the positive changes: repression fell and the Office of the Ombudsman for the Defence of Human Rights was created, which in some periods has been aligned with power and in others did its job. Its independence has depended on the alignment of powers, on what was convenient. Many ombudspersons have not been entirely impartial, but in some way they have responded in certain situations. The time when there was most access to justice was under the FMLN, during David Morales’s term as ombudsman.
In general, victims have not obtained reparation. Who watches over historical memory?
Normally it is the survivors’ organisations that have worked on transitional justice. Essentially, there has been no reparation. Some measures have come somewhat close to certain parameters of reparation, but they have not been effective or managed to satisfy the victims’ demands. There was compensation, but it did not repair what was substantial. Families who have suffered the disappearance of a loved one have waited for a process that leads to knowing the truth and having access to justice, which in El Salvador has not been possible for any victim.
For none?
No. There are proceedings that have been taken to court, for example the El Mozote case, but they have never tried the masterminds of the crimes. Responsibility has always been sought among mid-level commanders, among those who bore physical responsibility. There is a recent case of justice in this process that did not involve a Salvadoran: during the armed conflict four Dutch journalists were murdered and, last year, if I remember correctly, two soldiers were convicted. Their families have also gone through very hard times in which they felt that justice would never come. It is a success story, and the hope is that this process will open the door to other cases. Time will tell, although time is running out for us. The families are dying; recently a mother from one organisation died without knowing where her son ended up.
What has the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ruled?
El Salvador has IACHR judgments related to the armed conflict, such as the Massacres of El Mozote and Nearby Places v. El Salvador (2012), or Cuéllar Sandoval et al. v. El Salvador (2024). They are cases of disappearances in which the involvement of State agents was proven. Unfortunately, many crimes remain unsolved. After 40 years, much evidence has been destroyed or damaged or is hard to find. Although we know that everything was recorded, documentation is also becoming harder to obtain.
After the peace agreements, the FMLN became a dominant political force and went on to govern the country between 2009 and 2019. What remains of the FMLN of the 1980s?
When the Front took power there was hope for change, and some social programmes benefited the population, but real change never materialised. A positive step was the Executive decree that opened the way to working on reparation measures, but its scope was limited and not permanent. In addition, no work was done on historical memory to prevent the events from being repeated, and a society that forgets is bound to make the same mistakes again. Little by little, the FMLN adopted a position similar to that of the traditional parties and no structural changes were made. It moved closer and closer to the position of the right. So much so that new currents emerged. The discontent was incredible, because people felt deceived, frustrated, and Bukele emerged, who as mayor [of San Salvador] had carried out many initiatives and had a very good image. In 2019, people gave him their vote to punish the other parties.
What did Bukele promise the victims of the conflict before coming to power?
He made no direct promises, but there were signs that generated hope. He ordered the Monterrosa surname to be removed from a military barracks. At that point there was a lot of hope that there would finally be justice for the victims, access to the archives, which, to date, no government has been willing to share. And although the amnesty law was declared unconstitutional, justice officials have maintained silence and complicity with those who perpetrated the human rights violations.
Human rights organisations are afraid in El Salvador. Why?
Unfortunately, this transition period has brought us to a breaking point, and we are considered opponents. I won’t deny the positive changes in the country. The calm and peace in which we now live is palpable. Before, there were neighbourhoods you couldn’t enter. The problem is the price that has had to be paid to get here. The way, the methods by which it has been done. There is a state of exception that has brought the maras under control, and today people feel freer to walk the streets; they are no longer being extorted through violent means. The atmosphere is different, and we recognise that. Unfortunately, in El Salvador there are strategies of persecution against human rights defenders; we run the risk of being taken to prison just for telling the truth.
