Salvadoran Civil War
The history
From 1979 to 1992 a brutal civil war between the U.S.-backed military government and the FMLN guerrillas killed some 75,000 people. Its images — the murdered Romero, the refugees, the mountain fighters — defined a generation of photojournalism.
In brief
The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador that was backed by the United States, against the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups that was backed by Cuba under Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of the civil war. The war did not formally end until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when, on 16 January 1992 the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Mexico City.
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