tributed to tensions with neighboring Honduras, as land-poor Salvadorans emigrated to less densely populated Honduras and established themselves as squatters on unused or underused land. This phenomenon was a major cause of the 1969 Football War between the two countries. As many as 130,000 Salvadorans had been forcibly expelled or had fled from Honduras.
The PDC and the PCN parties
In 1960 two political parties were born and are still active in El Salvadoran politics: the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the National Conciliation Party (PCN). Both share common ideals, but one represents the middle class and the latter the interests of the Salvadoran military.
Opposition leader José Napoleón Duarte from the PDC was the mayor of San Salvador from 1964 to 1970, winning three elections during the regime of President Jose Adalberto Rivera (who allowed free elections for mayors and the National Assembly). Duarte later ran for president with a political grouping called the National Opposition Union (UNO) but was defeated in the 1972 presidential elections. He lost to the ex-Minister of Interior, Col. Arturo Armando Molina, in an election that was widely viewed as fraudulent; Molina was declared the winner even though Duarte was said to have received a majority of the votes. Duarte, at some army officers' request, supported a revolt to protest the election fraud, but was captured, tortured and later exiled. Duarte returned to the country in 1979 to enter politics after working on projects in Venezuela as an engineer.
The October 1979 coup d'état
In October 1979 a coup d'état brought the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador to power. It nationalized many private companies and took over much privately owned land. The purpose of this new junta was to stop the revolutionary movement already underway in response to Duarte's stolen election. Nevertheless, the oligarchy opposed agrarian reform, and a junta formed
