Anatomy of a Failure. The consequences of the liberal peace paradigm through the Salvadoran experience

As consequências do paradigma de paz liberal através da experiência salvadorenha.

Abstract

The peacebuilding processes developed throughout the 1990s have shown themselves to lack the necessary tools to ensure peaceful realities wherever intervention has taken place; and in this order, the internal challenges of the intervened countries have, in most cases, surpassed the conflict resolution capacity of the agreements reached. This, indeed, is the case of the Central American isthmus, where the models of peaceful intervention conducted in countries such as Nicaragua, Guatemala and, in our case, El Salvador, have posed serious difficulties from the outset in terms of assuming national management in accordance with the postulates of positive peace. On the contrary, most of them still present situations of institutional weakness, corruption, authoritarian tendencies, and extreme social inequality. In this context, the following article aims to review and evaluate compliance with the Chapultepec Peace Accords, which put an end to the Salvadoran civil war in January 1992. With this objective in mind, the research will be based on two axes: on the one hand, the influence of the neoliberal paradigm when it comes to the peaceful intervention projects directed by the United Nations; and on the other, the historical experience that El Salvador has undergone after the signing of the Agreements.