Salvadoran government officials Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, left in white, Minister of Defense General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, middle, and President José Napoleón Duarte, middle speaking in microphone, address the press during peace talks with the insurgency coalition FDR-FMLN in La Palma, El Salvador, October 15, 1984. A military stalemate led to direct public peace negotiations for the first time in the civil conflict between the Salvadoran government and members of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN, and their political counterpart the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, Revolutionary Democratic Front, FDR. The two sides would engage in peace talks intermittently throughout the country’s twelve-year civil war before the signing of the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords.
Salvadoran government officials Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, left in white, Minister of Defense General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, middle, and President José Napoleón Duarte, middle speaking in microphone, address the press during peace talks with the insurgency coalition FDR-FMLN in La Palma, El Salvador, October 15, 1984. A military stalemate led to direct public peace negotiations for the first time in the civil conflict between the Salvadoran government and members of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN, and their political counterpart the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, Revolutionary Democratic Front, FDR. The two sides would engage in peace talks intermittently throughout the country’s twelve-year civil war before the signing of the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords.
Salvadoran Minister of Defense General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, left, and the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, right, at the funeral procession with Monterrosa’s family and military officers following his death in a helicopter explosion in the Morazán department four days before, San Salvador, El Salvador, October 27, 1984. FMLN guerrillas led by Joaquín Villalobos, who had previously denounced Monterrosa and his command authority over the Atlacatl Battalion for carrying out the December 1981 civilian massacre in El Mozote, claimed responsibility for the helicopter crash. Monterrosa trained at the notorious School of the Americas and was hailed by American advisors as the army’s best field officer.