EL SALVADOR 5 The pre-revolutionary situation in El Salvador in particular has been the most prominent. With the United States invoking the "Soviet expansionism - communist menace" syndrome to create yet another Vietnam in terms of lies, intervention, bloodshed and all the horrors of war, the guerrilla struggle, the protracted battles and the urge for liberation, in turn, have also evoked the memories of the Vietnamese revolutionaries. For over two years now the smallest and the most densely populated Central American republic — El Salvador — has been the flashpoint of violence, international tension and the scene of one of the most systematic and barbaric carnages. Over 32,000 people have been massacred by the right-wing, United States-backed Christian Democratic military junta that came to power after the collapse of the short-lived civilian-military coalition in January 1980. The coalition had assumed power following the ouster of the tyrant General Romero in October 1979. The mass upsurge of the people, the growing strength of the guerrillas and the urge for a change had led to Romero's fall, with the US acquiescence. The reforms promised by the post-Romero regimes, however, were never carried out and the stage was set for revolution. Historical Background The current revolutionary movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Honduras and Panama are the result of centuries of endemic poverty, hunger, predatory exploitation, denial of all civil rights, illiteracy, disease and mass injustice. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny oligarchy could hardly have gone on much longer. Two per cent of the population in El Salvador owns 60 per cent of the land, 2 per cent owns 72 per cent in Guatemala and 4 per cent owns 65 per cent in the Honduras. The strategies of modernization introduced in the 1960s under the Alliance for Progress to counter the growing revolutionary movements in the wake of the Cuban revolution promoted a more efficient and mechanized export - oriented agriculture and multinational corporation-led industrial development. Land reform, one of the professed aims of the Alliance programme, was never ^really carried out; the rural class structure was left untouched while the demands of the newly emergent working class and middle class were ruthlessly suppressed. For more than 150 years since its independence, over 80 per cent of the population of El Salvador has lived in conditions of "appalling" poverty. El Salvador's per capita income is the lowest in Latin America and along with the countries such as the Honduras and Bolivia it is the poorest of the developing countries. Besides the acute land concentration, 5 per cent of the population accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the national income and 95 per cent- of the