José Napoleon Duarte

President of El Salvador (1984-1989)

• Born: November 23, 1925
• Birthplace: San Salvador, El Salvador
• Died: February 23, 1990
• Place of death: San Salvador, El Salvador

Duarte won the presidency of El Salvador in 1984 in what was perhaps the most democratic election in the country’s history. As president, he attempted moderate reforms and sought to open up dialogue with El Salvador’s armed opposition but had limited success in meeting both of these goals. His time in office saw the country ravaged by intense civil war and military corruption.

Early Life

The family of José Napoleon Duarte (DWAR-tay) moved to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, from the rural countryside, looking for economic opportunities. Initially, Duarte’s father worked as a tailor and his mother as a domestic worker. Eventually, his father started a confectionary business and soon made a comfortable living. He sent the young Duarte to the capital’s Salvadoran Grammar School for both his secondary and baccalaureate certification.

Duarte’s entry into political life was in 1944, the year he graduated from grammar school. He participated in student protests against the central government of El Salvador, headed by military dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. Although Hernández Martínez was forced from office, he was replaced by another hard-line military government that repressed opposition leaders who were behind Hernández Martínez’s ouster. Duarte believed it would be expedient to leave for Guatemala to join the opposition in exile.

At around this time, according to some sources, Duarte’s father won a substantial sum in a local lottery and sent him to the United States for college. Duarte arrived at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana without being able to speak English. Soon, however, he developed a working knowledge of English and began studying engineering. During his studies Duarte worked as a dishwasher and in a laundry to help cover his expenses. He received his degree as a civil engineer in 1948.

Upon his return to El Salvador, he married Inés Durán, a daughter of a friend of his family. The couple would raise six children. Duarte’s father-in-law headed a company involved in both real estate and construction, and the firm had space for another young engineer. Duarte was invited to join the Durán firm. Duarte also taught engineering courses at the national university.

Life’s Work

In 1960, Duarte moved into politics when he helped form the Partido Demócrata Cristiano, or PDC (Christian Democratic Party). The PDC was in the middle ideologically, situated between the country’s ultraconservative and military right and militant procommunist left. Its initial membership depended on a religious constituency, including college students from Catholic Action, members of the liberal Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, and representatives of the National Union of Catholic Workers. Duarte became the new party’s first secretary-general.

In 1964, with the backing of this new party, Duarte was elected mayor of San Salvador. During his three terms of office (1964-1970) he sought to expand the city’s infrastructure by improving lighting, the sewage system, and garbage collection. In 1972 he ran as the PDC candidate for the country’s presidency. It appeared that he had won the election, but again the military intervened. The military allowed civilians to become local elected officials, but they prohibited civilian control of the presidency. Duarte was kept from assuming the presidency (won through democratic means) because the military appointed Colonel Arturo Molina to the job. After the elections Duarte was imprisoned, tortured, and sent into exile for seven years. The military continued to dominate El Salvador’s national politics as it had for the past four or five decades.

In 1980, Duarte returned to El Salvador and served briefly as the nominal head of a negotiated military-civilian junta during the first year of civil war (1980-1992). However, he could not control the excesses of the military, and his quasi-democratic administration collapsed in 1982. In 1984 he won the presidency in perhaps the most democratic election in the country’s history up to that time. Aided by substantial support from the United States, he attempted to rebuild the economy, institute a land-reform program, curb military abuses, and seek an end to the civil war by negotiating with the armed leftist group Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, or FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). Civil war deaths had already reached an estimated seventy thousand persons. Despite the heavy U.S. investment in his government, Duarte was generally ineffective in accomplishing these goals.

The extremists of both political factions, the conservatives and the leftists, refused to work with Duarte to end the continuing bloody civil war. In 1989 the military became implicated in the murder of six liberal Jesuit priests and two of the priests’ lay employees, harming Duarte’s reputation internationally. Earlier, in 1985, the leftist guerrillas had kidnapped Duarte’s daughter, Inés Duarte, and a friend, Ana Cecilia Villeda, who were on their way to school. Through the process of negotiation, the rebels then secured the release of some twenty-two of their imprisoned comrades in exchange for the girls’ return. This acquiescence to the demands of the rebels on the part of the president to protect his own family member did little to enhance his reputation with the local electorate.

Significance

President Duarte failed in two major areas: He could not control the military, whose death squads continued to wreak havoc. He was unable to reach any meaningful agreement with the armed leftists to end their attacks on their conservative opposition. In 1989, his PDC party lost the national election to the conservative Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, or ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance). ARENA leader Alfredo Cristiani then assumed the presidency. This party, originally founded by hard-line military officer Roberto D’Aubuisson, had become the political vehicle of the economic oligarchy of the country as well.

Cristiani was successful in negotiating an end to the civil war. His own military followers were heavily pressured by the United States to accept a peace treaty. On the rebel side, the FMLN was, in turn, encouraged by Cuban and Nicaraguan political leaders to reach a workable conclusion to the conflict. The two leftist nations had grown tired of supporting the revolutionary efforts of the FMLN. Cuban and Nicaraguan officials believed the only answer to the conflict would be a peaceful settlement of the dispute and the recognition of the FMLN’s right to exist. On January 16, 1992, opposing parties signed the Chapultepec Accords in Mexico City, followed by a nine-month cease-fire and a ceremony to mark the end of the conflict on December 15.

The major benefits that evolved from the treaty were twofold. The agreement marked the departure of the traditional Salvadoran military from a direct role in the politics of the country. On the other side of the political equation, the FLMN gave up its arms and its hopes of winning the government by revolution. Instead, the FMLN restyled itself as a liberal democratic political party to rival the conservative ARENA party for political control. Democratic national and local elections have been held throughout the country since that time.

Duarte worked hard for peace throughout his own administration. However, he did not live long enough to see the new democratic process in action. He died of cancer before the conclusion of peace negotiations.

Bibliography

Duarte, Jóse Napoleon. Duarte, My Story. New York: Putnam’s, 1986. A modest narrative of Duarte’s accomplishment and goals, which gained for him some measure of support abroad if not in his own country.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Struggle for Democracy.” In Go Forth and Do Good: Memorable Notre Dame Commencement Addresses. Edited and introduced by Wilson D. Miscamble. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Duarte’s address to graduates of Notre Dame, his alma mater, in 1985.

Juhn, Tricia. Negotiating Peace in El Salvador: Civil-Military Relations and the Conspiracy to End the War. New York: Macmillan, 1998. An analysis of the final thirty months of the civil war in El Salvador and the events that led to the Chapultepec Accords.

Lungo Uclés, Mario. El Salvador in the Eighties: Counterinsurgency and Revolution. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Discusses the events that led to El Salvador’s civil war, the Chapultepec Accords, and the end of eleven years of heavy fighting.

Waller, J. Michael. The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the North American Front of El Salvador’s Guerrilla War. New York: University Press of America, 1991. The author describes a powerful liberal group in the United States that worked actively for the FMLN during the civil war and against the Duarte government, seeking to block aid to Duarte and provide support for the leftist revolutionaries.