Indigenous Rights in El Salvador: Prospects for Change Lyana Patrick Introduction In 1997, the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) party received 53% of E1 Salvador's popular vote in that year's presidential elections. 1 There was great significance in the party's success as only five years prior E1 Salvador was embroiled in one of the most vicious civil wars in Central America, one that pitted a United States-backed military regime against a campesino-based army. The FMLN is poised to take control of the country but it has many obstacles to contend with, including the lingering effects of a "coffee oligarchy" that effectively ruled El Sal- vador for nearly a century. While some communities have managed to re-establish themselves with a measure of success, notably Ciudad Segundo Montes, others have struggled to pick up the pieces of lives shattered by the civil war and begin the process of legitimizing their struggles at the national level. Embedded in the history of El Salvador is a myth of large proportions. It is a story of the 1932 matanza (massacre) that virtually wiped out El Salvador's indig- enous population and created, for the most part, a mestizo (mixed-blood) country. While the matanza did take place, the belief that indigenous peoples were assimi- lated in toto as a result does not mesh with developments later in the century. During the 1980s, several organizations claiming to represent El Salvador's in- digenous peoples gained national and international prominence. They called for international condemnation of the human rights abuses that occurred during the civil war, and more specifically sought recognition of the rights of E1 Salvador's indigenous peoples. Recent discussions at the United Nations have raised the pro- file of the indigenous rights movement as a global discourse. Given E1 Salvador's insistence that the indigenous peoples in that country are in fact mestizo and that those who are "purely" indigenous constitute a tiny minority, the Salvadoran indig- enous movement does not have the same legitimacy other indigenous groups take for granted. This paper will examine the rise of an indigenous consciousness in El Salvador and look at how the recent focus on indigenous rights in the context of international human rights may ultimately be the venue in which Salvadoran Indi- ans find justice. 92