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Introduction
On 4 September 1912, thousands of people defied a fierce rainstorm to gather in Plaza Bolívar in downtown San Salvador. They had assembled to protest the invasion of Nicaragua by US marines. From that moment until the United States and Nicaragua signed a treaty in August 1914, Salvadoreans, alarmed by the powerful empire that seemed to be closing in, organised and demonstrated in cities and small towns across their country. Historians have virtually ignored how the anti-imperialist movement dominated Salvadorean politics early in the twentieth century. Standard works on the history of US–Central American relations completely ignore the movement.1 Yet, the powerful grassroots activism kindled by news of the invasion of Nicaragua and the policies of William Howard Taft (1909–13) and Woodrow Wilson (1913–21) shook El Salvador.
Major groups in the political coalition of presidents Manuel Enrique Araujo (1911–13) and Carlos Meléndez (1913–18), artisans, workers, students, intellectuals and some members of the elite harboured strong anti-imperialist sentiments. They could not be ignored. The political system may not have been democratic, but it was competitive. As Erik Ching has demonstrated, it was a system organised around political clientelism. Competition between elite-led patronage networks determined who would wield political power.2 The fear of losing power forced Araujo and Meléndez to adopt an independent attitude towards US imperial ambitions. Their policies would have been inconceivable without the pressure from urban subaltern groups. Even if they had reservations about US activities in the region, the two presidents understood the geopolitical realities. As the evidence shows, without outside pressure, their instinct was to cooperate with the empire.
Grassroots activists had a different approach in mind. They understood the disproportionate power of their foe and sought allies in other Central American countries to put together a transnational anti-imperialist network. In addition, they recognised a common agenda with groups and politicians in the United States that since 1898 had become increasingly nervous about the expansionist policies of Theodore Roosevelt and his successors. A key component of the anti-imperialist strategy in El Salvador was to identify potential allies in the United States and influence them. Their actions of forging transnational alliances, pressuring Araujo and Meléndez and lobbying the US Senate were so successful that they helped to stop some of...