Alfredo Cristiani

Alfredo Cristiani, born in 1947, president of El Salvador (1989-1994), born in San Salvador and educated in the United States at Georgetown University. In 1980 Cristiani, then president of the coffee producers' association, was taken hostage along with other businessmen by antigovernment forces during El Salvador's civil war. The experience politicized him, and in 1984 he joined Roberto d'Aubuisson's Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). The party, headed by conservative extremists, was generally believed to spearhead terrorism against leftist civilians. After the United States supported the Christian Democrat José Napoleón Duarte for the presidency, d'Aubuisson stepped down as party leader in favor of Cristiani, who made efforts to broaden party aims by including middle-class businessmen.

In the 1988 elections ARENA won an absolute majority in the National Assembly and gained the leadership in many municipalities; Cristiani himself was elected to the legislature. Although ARENA's success placed him in a strong position for the 1989 presidential elections, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)—the left-wing rebel force—boycotted the election, which gave Cristiani 54 percent of the votes. Cristiani participated with four other Central American leaders in efforts to bring civil war to an end but did not hesitate to retaliate with force when fighting continued. Eventually, however, negotiations between the two sides, with United Nations mediation, were successful, and in early 1992 a peace agreement was signed. A border dispute between El Salvador and Honduras was settled peacefully in 1992 by Cristiani and Honduran president Rafael Leonardo Callejas. Constitutional law barred Cristiani from running for another presidential term in 1994.