Fuerza Armada de El Salvador

The Fuerza Armada de El Salvador (FAES) are the armed forces of the El Salvador government .

The 1982 Constitution of El Salvador lays down the task of defending the sovereignty and integrity of the republic. The Fuerza Armada de El Salvador is part of the executive branch and reports to the President of El Salvador.

General

The armed forces include 16,800 soldiers (15,000 in the army , 1,100 in the air force and 700 in the navy and marine infantry ).

The army has 79 wheeled armored vehicles and armored vehicles of the types Panhard AML , M113 , UR-416 , M-37B1 at their disposal.

The Air Force has 8 Cessna A-37 , 4 Douglas DC-47 , Cessna 0-2A , 21 Hughes 500 and 50 Bell UH- 1s , 10 of which are armed.

In November 2013 El Salvador ordered 10 Cessna A-37 B Dragonfly fighter aircraft worth around $ 8.6 million in Chile.

The navy has 15 speedboats .

history

The FAES was founded in 1824 by the Central American President Manuel José Arce y Fagoaga .

Escuela Politécnica

The Escuela Politécnica was founded in Guatemala in 1871 . From 1906 to 1922 there was an Escuela Politécnica in San Salvador in the Cuartel El Zapote north of the official residence of the President, later the Comando de Apoyo de Transmisiones de la Fuerza Armada (CATFA). Carlos Ibáñez del Campo was Dean until 1909 . On February 16, 1922, the cadets started an uprising, which was suppressed by the Primer Regimiento de Caballería in San Salvador and after which the school was closed.

Escuela Militar Capitán General Gerardo Barrios

On January 28, 1927, the Escuela Militar Capitán General Gerardo Barrios was opened. The regime in the school was brutal. The cadets were often locked naked in small punishment cells for two or three days, in which it was impossible to lie down and given only bread and water. The cadets were exposed to the arbitrariness of the officers , who had them do up to 1,500 squats due to alleged violations of the rules. Ernesto Bará, in command of the Sonsonate barracks in the 1932 massacre , was Dean of the Escuela Militar Capitán General Gerardo Barrios until 1938 . From 1938 to 1940 Martínez had set the Reichsluftwart Eberhardt Bohnstedt to this post. From 1940 to 1956 the school was run by US officers. In 1956 Colonel Manuel de Jesús Córdova became dean. From 1951 to the beginning of 1958, a Chilean military mission ran the Escuela de guerra . In 1953 a military agreement was signed with the USA , which included US training in artillery , infantry and air warfare . From 1946 onwards, the School of the Americas replaced previous training courses abroad, for example in Mexico .

Sal si puedes

Since the coup of the then Defense Minister Maximiliano Hernández Martínez on December 2, 1931, the army provided the presidents of El Salvador . In the failed uprising of 1932, which was followed by the matanza (butchery), the takeover of barracks by revolutionary soldiers also failed . On January 16, 1932 revealed a soldier of the 6th Machine Gun - regiment that a car should trigger a horn in front of the barracks, the arrest or killing of officers. Soldiers suspected of the rebellion were sent to places where they were arrested. The officers were assigned to reinforced guards. On the day of the strike, a car came and gave the agreed signal. It was taken under machine gun fire.

In the cavalry regiments of San Salvador, the automatic weapons were collected by the officers, ostensibly for a weapon cleaning. The officers positioned themselves with the automatic weapons at strategic points of the barracks, from which they defended the barracks and controlled the men in the barracks. The blood flowed freely from the barracks in Ahuachapán. A lieutenant reported how a group of campesinos who were about to be shot began to sing Corazón santo tú reinarás (Sacred Heart, Your Kingdom begins), a Catholic hymn . The firing squad recognized a picture of Christ in the stream of blood, whereupon they refused to continue with the shooting .

The FAES had its own parties: Partido Pro Patria (PPP), Frente Unido Democrático Independiente (FUDI) and the Partido de Conciliación Nacional . Hernández Martínez introduced a system of one year basic military service for recruits. The recruits then served in patrullas cantonales , where they were in local military structures on weekends. In 1955, for example, the company was militarized by an additional 3,500 new recruits. From 1961, the Organización Democrática Nacionalista belonged to these paramilitary structures . The FAES turned El Salvador into the Sal si puedes barracks! . Before the first president without a military background, José Napoleón Duarte , was allowed to take office on June 1, 1984 after 60 years , he was cheated of his victory in the presidential election in 1972 and had to serve as foreign minister in a military junta .

Tanda

Years of the military schools each form a rope team called a tanda . The graduating class of 1966 was called Tandona. René Emilio Ponce belonged to the Tandona .

BIRI

The Batallón de Infantería de Reacción Inmediata (BIRI) and the Atlacatl Battalion in the El Mozote massacre committed crimes against human rights . Their dissolution was agreed in the Chapultepec Peace Treaty .

Human rights violations

As the armed force of the government of El Salvador, the FAES committed a large part of the human rights violations in the armed conflict of the 1980s, according to the report of the Comisión de la Verdad para El Salvador .

Plus Ultra Brigade

As part of the Plus Ultra Brigade , El Salvador also participated in the occupation of Iraq with regular troops .

Web links

Commons : Fuerza Armada de El Salvador - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ site infodefensa.com
^ Robert H. Holden Armies without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821-1960 Oxford University Press, 2004.
↑ Philip J. Williams, Knut Walter Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy Oxford University Press, 2004.
^ Nizkor Notorious Salvadoran School of the Americas Graduates
↑ Roque Dalton The world is a limping centipede. The Century of Miguel Mármol , translated from Salvadoran Spanish by Michael Schwahn and Andreas Simmen, the original Spanish edition was published in 1972 under the title Miguel Mármol. Los sucedes de 1932 en El Salvador at EDUCA in San José, Costa Rica, Rotpunktverlag, Zurich March 1997, pp. 248, 312.

[1] site infodefensa.com

[Holden-2] Robert H. Holden Armies without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821-1960 Oxford University Press, 2004.

[Williams-3] Philip J. Williams, Knut Walter Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy Oxford University Press, 2004.

[SOA-4] Nizkor Notorious Salvadoran School of the Americas Graduates

[Dalton1997_248-5] Roque Dalton The world is a limping centipede. The Century of Miguel Mármol , translated from Salvadoran Spanish by Michael Schwahn and Andreas Simmen, the original Spanish edition was published in 1972 under the title Miguel Mármol. Los sucedes de 1932 en El Salvador at EDUCA in San José, Costa Rica, Rotpunktverlag, Zurich March 1997, pp. 248, 312.