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Chapter 7 analyzes the external validity of the argument by using a large-N cross-national analysis combining fuzzy-set analyses with simple econometric models. The descriptive and explanatory framework is extended to four comparative vignettes, testing the framework’s suitability for cases lacking the structural and historical conditions found in Chile and Uruguay. This exercise complements the most-similar systems design applied in the book with a most-different systems exploration, analyzing the segmentation of electoral appeals in the following cases: the PT(Brazil), the MAS in Bolivia, ARENA in El Salvador, and the BJP in India. In addition to permitting the testing of specific propositions identified in Chapter 6, the four shadow cases also support a crucial causal claim made in the book: in unequal societies, parties can prosper by simultaneously segmenting and strategically harmonizing diversified appeals to socially distinct constituencies.

Chapter 6 tells the story of Rodríguez’s move to democratic political leadership. Victory for the FMLN meant that they could now finally participate politically and bring necessary changes via the ballot box. Rodríguez tried to return to the church but conditions were placed on his that he found unacceptable and thus he returned to the FMLN to help establish it as a legal political party. Owing to his popularity and his longstanding struggles representing the interests of the campesinos, Rodríguez was nominated as a candidate for a legislative seat in the Department of La Paz, which was part of the diocese of San Vicente, a region in which he was well-known. He was elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2000; and then again in 2009 and in 2012, meaning that he will serve as a legislator until 2015. This chapter will highlight the difficulties in trying to bring structural changes to El Salvador via the electoral process. Part of the problem lies in the leaders themselves, who often become complacent once they win political office.

This chapter describes the filing of the legal case against Alvaro Saravia as well as several unnamed “Doe” defendants, designations intended to be filled with the identities of death squad financiers with connections to the United States. The chapter presents the documentation and evidence that describes the alleged funding of the death squads, including the Saravia Diary and a U.S. embassy cable about a group called the “Miami Six”. It transitions to a discussion of how, as a full-scale civil war raged, many of the Salvadoran oligarchs teamed up with Roberto D’Aubuisson to create the ARENA political party while the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan greatly increased economic assistance to the Salvadoran military responsible for so much of the repression.

The legal team returns to El Salvador for interviews crucial for gathering evidence about the death squad financiers and understanding further details of the Romero assassination. A worker for the ARENA party in the early 1980s discloses significant information about party members and their links to violence. She confirms testimony that she previously provided to the Truth Commission and provides a new statement for the legal team detailing payments made by party faithful and insider information about the facts of Romero’s murder.

The chapter illustrates the fundamental roles that peasant leaders played in the transformation of the relatively small urban insurgency in the early 1970s into a massive rural insurgency by the end of the decade. It examines the political crisis that fueled the intensification of state terror, militant activism, and insurgency that led to the civil war. The chapter also describes a major realignment that took place within the left and right between 1979 and 1981. It considers the foundation of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) as an historical convergence between the Old and New Left that articulated the grievances and demands of vast urban and rural sectors. A new right-wing coalition made up of businessmen, middle-class activists, military officers, and paramilitaries formed the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), displacing the Party of National Conciliation (PCN), the official party created in 1962, as the main political force of Salvadoran conservatives, and becoming a key player in Salvadoran politics during the civil war and beyond. The chapter analyzes the transformation of the peasant movement into a massive rural insurgency in Chalatenango.

This chapter examines ARENA in El Salvador and argues that, like the UDI in Chile, its success was the product of authoritarian inheritance and counterrevolutionary struggle. The first section discusses El Salvador’s long history of right-wing military rule. The second section examines the October 1979 coup and the resulting establishment of a left-wing Revolutionary Governing Junta. The third section discusses the intense counterrevolutionary response that the junta triggered. This included large-scale death squad violence, with future ARENA founder Roberto D’Aubuisson playing a key role. The fourth section examines the formation of ARENA in response to an impending transition to competitive elections. The fifth section shows how D’Aubuisson’s role as a high-level official in the pre-1979 military regime endowed ARENA with several valuable resources. The final section discusses how ARENA’s origins in counterrevolutionary struggle served as a powerful source of cohesion.