Salvadoran Civil War

The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year civil war in El Salvador between the government, which was backed by the United States, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups backed by Cuba under Fidel Castro and by 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 war. It did not formally end until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Chapultepec Peace Accords were signed in Mexico City on 16 January 1992. The United Nations reports that the war killed more than 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992, along with approximately 8,000 disappeared persons.