Alfredo Cristiani
Alfredo Félix Cristiani Burkard (San Salvador, November 22, 1947) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman and was President of the Republic from June 1, 1989 to June 1, 1994. He belongs to the ARENA party. He is currently a refugee in Italy (allegedly) due to an arrest warrant against him for being one of those allegedly responsible for the murder of six Jesuits, an event that occurred when the country was in a civil war.
Trajectory
He was born into a land-owning, coffee-producing family and was educated at the American School of El Salvador, later graduating in Management Sciences at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. in the United States. [citation needed ] he Later he returned to El Salvador to dedicate himself to the family businesses, which also included pharmaceutical and cotton companies. He married Margarita Llach, with whom he had three children (Claudia Cristiani, Javier Cristiani, and Alejandro). Until the beginning of the 1980s he did not get involved in politics. He did it with the right-wing ARENA party, founded by military intelligence officer Roberto D'Aubuisson and businesswoman and landowner Gloria Salguero Gross.
In 1985 Roberto D'Aubuisson left his position at ARENA after losing the 1984 presidential elections to his opponent José Napoleón Duarte and Cristiani took command of the party. In the legislative and municipal elections of March 20, 1988, he obtained more than 45% of the votes and 31 seats out of 60 possible in the Legislative Assembly.
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In May 1988, the party chose him as a candidate for the 1989 presidential elections. He was elected President of the Republic with 53.8% of the vote. Upon taking office, he continued with the peace negotiations with the FMLN. These negotiations suffered a severe setback when the FMLN launched an armed offensive on San Salvador in November of that year in which hundreds of people died[citation required]. In response, the army intensified its fight against the guerrillas and four days later 6 Jesuit priests and their two cooks were murdered by members of the Atlácatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army, at the Central American University "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), among them the Rector Ignacio Ellacuría Beascoechea, a prominent theologian and philosopher of liberation theology and participant in the peace talks with the FMLN. This crime sparked huge protests around the world against Cristiani, which he tried to appease by vowing to bring those responsible to justice. A special commission was created that ended in January 1990 with the arrest of several officers and soldiers. The existence of death squads led by Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA political party, accused of leading the activities of these groups from his position as director of ANSESAL (Salvadoran National Security Agency) during the government, was also denounced. by Cristiani.
The investigation did not clarify the identity of the masterminds of those events; for which reason he and the high command of the Salvadoran army are still being linked to having given the order to commit the crime. Reports released by former US intelligence agents in mid-2013 state that one of the main torture centers used during the civil war was Isla de Los Patos in Lake Ilopango to the east of the capital city; It has also been known that the owner of such an island is former President Cristiani. Between 1991 and 1993 he implemented a plan to privatize commercial banks, which had been nationalized in 1980. In this process there were serious accusations of corruption against Cristiani and his state ministers. He was accused of having acquired control of Banco Cuscatlán, the second largest bank during the privatization process, through name lenders. [1] [2] [3]. In 2013 it was revealed that Cristiani showed no interest in recovering "the bags" (bordering areas that have traditionally been in dispute with Honduras) for "being inhabited by FMLN sympathizers)
On Thursday, January 16, 1992, he signed the Chapultepec Peace Accords that put an end to the civil war in El Salvador, after a long process of dialogue and negotiation with the armed group (now a political party) FMLN.
Close to the coffee business community, surrounded by neoliberal economists, he tries to renew ARENA by distancing himself from the death squads. His government receives $500 million in annual aid from the United States.
Cristiani was appointed president of ARENA in May 2009, after the party's defeat in the 2009 presidential election.
Controversies
On July 7, 2021, Cristiani was summoned before a special congressional commission investigating secret payments to officials.
In October 2021, his name was mentioned in the Pandora Papers. He had created at least 16 companies in tax havens in the year following his removal from power.
On February 26, 2022, the Attorney General's Office indicted Cristiani for the UCA massacre, in which 12 other people have also been criminally charged.