Zamora, Rubén (1942–)

Rubén Zamora is a Salvadoran political leader. Born on November 9, 1942, in Cojutepeque, Zamora received his law degree from the University of El Salvador in 1968; at about the same time, he joined the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). In 1969 he moved to England to pursue graduate studies in political science at the University of Essex. He returned to El Salvador after an army-led reformist coup d'état overthrew the repressive government of General Carlos Humberto Romero on October 15, 1979. Zamora was appointed secretary of the presidency (chief of staff) to the newly created civilian-military junta. When conservative army officers blocked political and economic reforms that the junta intended to implement, Zamora and most members of the junta and cabinet resigned on December 31, 1979. The PDC made a pact with the military and joined it in a second junta. Zamora's older brother, Mario, the attorney general for the poor, was assassinated by a death squad in late February 1980. Appalled by the increasing human rights violations and the PDC's insistence on continuing its coalition with the military, Zamora and several other leading Christian Democrats resigned from the party on March 9. Zamora and his family went into exile in Nicaragua.

In April 1980 Zamora helped found the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), a coalition of political parties, unions, and mass organizations. Together with an influential group of former PDC members, he founded the Popular Social Christian Movement (MPSC) in May 1980, and was its secretary-general until 1993. From January 1981 to December 1986 Zamora served as an MPSC member of the Political-Diplomatic Commission of the FDR and Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN). In October and November 1984 he returned to El Salvador as a member of the FDRFMLN negotiating team for the first two meetings between the government and revolutionary organizations.

In November 1987 Zamora returned to El Salvador to help build the MPSC. With Guillermo Manuel Ungo and Enrique Roldán, the leaders of the two social democratic parties, Zamora organized the Democratic Convergence on November 27, 1987, which began to participate in national elections with the 1989 presidential elections. Publicly threatened with death on armed forces radio during the 1989 FMLN offensive, Zamora remained in El Salvador. In 1993 he became the coalition candidate for president of the republic of the Democratic Convergence and the FMLN, which had become a legal political party following the 1992 Salvadoran peace accords that ended the eleven-year civil war. He lost the April 1994 election to ARENA candidate Armando Calderon Sol in a run-off. He served as a deputy in the legislative assembly (1997–2000) and ran for president in 2000, coming in third behind the ARENA and FMLN-USC candidates. Zamora has published numerous works on politics and government in El Salvador, including El Salvador, heridas que no cierran: Los partidos políticos en la post-guerra (1998) and La izquierda partidaria salvadoreña: Entre la identidad y el poder (2003). As of 2007 Zamora continues to live in El Salvador and owns a consulting firm. He has consistently described himself politically as a social Christian. In practice, this has meant embracing socioeconomic policies that are close to the Social Democrats but are informed by progressive, Roman Catholic theology.

See alsoEl Salvador, Political Parties: Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joseph S. Tulchin and Gary Bland, eds., Is There a Transition to Democracy in El Salvador? (1992).

Tommie Sue Montgomery, "El Salvador," in Political Parties of the Americas, 1980s to 1990s, edited by Charles Ameringer (1992); "Armed Struggle and Popular Resistance in El Salvador: The Struggle for Peace," in The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika (1993); and Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace, 2d ed. (1995).

Richard Stahler-Sholk, "El Salvador's Negotiated Transition: From Low-Intensity Conflict to Low-Intensity Democracy," in Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 36 (Winter 1994): 1-59.

Additional Bibliography

Byrne, Hugh. El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of Revolution. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996.

Peterson, Anna L. Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion: Progressive Catholicism in El Salvador's Civil War. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

                           Tommie Sue Montgomery