El Salvadoran President Antonio Saca's right-wing government has proclaimed 2007 the "year of peace", inaugurating this move with an attempt to nominate the late Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of Saca's ARENA party, with the highest human rights award in the country.
D'Aubuisson, who died of throat cancer in 1992, was a central figure, along with US Special Forces and CIA operatives, in organising the right-wing death squads during the country's 1970-92 civil war. The death squads were responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder of tens of thousands of civilians.
Among the victims of these death squads was Archbishop Oscar Romero, one of the most prominent Catholic priests in Latin America. On May 7, 1980, six weeks after Romero was assassinated, D'Aubuisson was arrested on a farm, along with a group of civilians and soldiers. Documents found in the raid implicated the group in the assassination. The arrests triggered a wave of terrorist threats and institutional pressures that culminated in D'Aubuisson's release. A year later, D'Aubuisson founded ARENA.
He was accused by a UN truth commission of having ordered the killing of Romero, but an amnesty granted at the end of the civil war prevented D'Aubuisson from being tried for this crime.
Condemnation of ARENA's move to introduce into the country's parliament a resolution to name D'Aubuisson a "Son of Highest Merit" of the nation, led to swift protests including from the human rights office of the Catholic Church in El Salvador.
Protesters converged on the parliament on the morning the resolution was to be considered, many holding pictures of Romero. Confronted with these protests, the measure was withdrawn rather than facing a vote.
Amnesty for the death-squad killers and torturers may have been a price worth paying 15 years ago, in order to end one of the bloodiest, and dirtiest, civil wars the world had seen.
The civil war waged by the US-backed capitalist oligarchy against the country's workers' and peasants' movement, led by the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), directly caused the loss of at least 85,000 lives, led to hundreds of thousands of others being internally displaced and more than 1 million external refugees — all in a country whose population was then around 5 million.
According to the 1993 UN Truth Commission report, over 96% of the human rights violations carried out during the war were committed by the Salvadoran military or the paramilitary death squads.
By the end of the civil war, a third of the population lived in extreme poverty, and much of the population lived in extreme fear.
In achieving an end to this, the Chapultepec peace accords of January 16, 1992, between the FMLN and the ARENA government of President Alfredo Cristiani, were an undeniable success.
They were the results of incredibly difficult negotiations led by a seasoned Marxist, one of the revolutionary founders of the FMLN, Shafick Handal (Comandante Simon). Handal died in January 2006, on his return from the inauguration ceremony for President Evo Morales of Bolivia.
On February 1, 1992, the ceasefire officially began, and 1992 became the year of "peace making". The FMLN had been very clear in the terms of the accords — to consolidate its fullest participation in the country's political life, with the transition to be overseen by the UN.
The FMLN's fighters retained their arms until December 15 of that year, when they began handing them over to UN verification teams.
El Salvador's treasury police, national police and several special battalions of the armed forces were dismantled and the new National Civilian Police was created, integrating former combatants from the FMLN.
Structural reforms were guaranteed in the accords providing the political space that allowed the FMLN to convert itself from a clandestine guerrilla alliance to a legal political party. It has remained as the single strongest receiver of votes in national elections, only thwarted from taking government by the alliances formed between the other parties, particularly ARENA and the Christian Democrats.
The FMLN however governs much of the country at the provincial (departamentos) and municipal levels. The FMLN has repeatedly complained that local governments under its leadership do not get their fair share of the national budget or receive no funding at all, as in the case of international hurricane relief funds.
At the same time, the ARENA government is able to find the funds to maintain a contingent of 380 troops on the other side of the world, as part of the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Committed to developing the nation and overcoming the legacies of the civil war, the FMLN has formalised its assessments of the results of the peace accords and submitted this assessment to the UN late last year, seeking urgent assistance over increasing state repression of the popular movements by the national police and the military.
The civil war's extreme violence, torture, assassinations and massacres of entire populations, persecution and disappearances are never far from memory, as not one family remained unaffected by the war.
The murder last year of the parents of left-wing performer Paco Cutumay (who was assassinated in 1993), and of his surviving daughter Mariposa, the well-known spokesperson for Radio Venceremos throughout the civil war, has revived fears of a return of the death squads.
On February 7, 21-year-old student Edwar Francisco Contreras was kidnapped. Large protests have been held by the social movements in San Salvador holding Saca responsible Contreras' disappearance, demanding "You took him alive, we want him back alive".
The following appeal had been issued by the left-wing Popular Youth Bloc, of which Contreras was a member.
"The Popular Youth Bloc wishes to denounce before the various organisations of [Mesoamerica] the harassment that we are suffering at the hands of the present government of Elias Antonio Saca through the various state institutions and now also through private bodies. We wish to denounce the disappearance of 21-year-old comrade Edwar Francisco Contreras Bonifacio, who was last seen on Wednesday [February] 7th when he left college at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The comrade had already received death threats from Mr Catalino Miranda, owner of a minibus company. They had already tried to kill him once before but he managed to escape.
"We therefore:
"1. Make Mr. Catalino Miranda responsible for the well-being of our comrade.
"2. Demand that this individual frees our comrade Edwar Francisco Contreras.
"3. Demand that the government of Elías Antonio Saca investigates immediately this situation.
"4. And we call on the various organisations to be on guard against violations of human rights that are being carried out once again against social and youth organisations.
"And finally we call on the various revolutionary organisations to circulate this information in all their countries and that together we demand an end to this kind of action which is aimed at undermining the revolutionary process.
"Answer more repression with more struggle!"
Defenders of human rights are asked to send emails, fax messages or letters to the nearest El Salvador embassy or consulate protesting Contreras' abduction.