Timeline: El Salvador

A chronology of key events

1524 - Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado conquers El Salvador.

Left-wing rebels, government forces fought for 12 years 2002: US role in Salvador's brutal war

1540

- Indigenous resistance finally crushed and El Salvador becomes a Spanish colony.

1821 - El Salvador gains independence from Spain. Conflict ensues over territory's incorporation into Mexican empire under Creole general Agustin de Iturbide.

1823 - El Salvador becomes part of the United Provinces of Central America, which also includes Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Independence

1840 - El Salvador becomes fully independent following the dissolution of the United Provinces of Central America.

1859-63 - President Gerardo Barrios introduces coffee growing.

1932 - Some 30,000 people are killed during the suppression of a peasant uprising led by Agustine Farabundo Marti.

Civil war

1961 - Right-wing National Conciliation Party (PCN) comes to power after a military coup.

Monument to civil war victims: More than 70,000 died, disappeared

1969

- El Salvador attacks and fights a brief war with Honduras following the eviction of thousands of Salvadoran illegal immigrants from Honduras.

1977 - Guerrilla activities by the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) intensify amid reports of increased human rights violations by government troops and death squads; General Carlos Romero elected president.

1979-81 - Around 30,000 people are killed by army-backed right-wing death squads.

1979 - General Romero ousted in coup by reformist officers who install a military-civilian junta, but this fails to curb army-backed political violence.

1980 - Archbishop of San Salvador and human rights campaigner Oscar Romero assassinated; Jose Napoleon Duarte becomes first civilian president since 1931.

Two massive quakes struck in 2001 2002: Salvador struggles with quake aftermath On This Day 2001: Earthquake devastates Salvador

1981

- France and Mexico recognise the FMLN as legitimate political force; US continues to assist El Salvadoran government whose army continues to back right-wing death squads.

1982 - Extreme right-wing National Republican Alliance (Arena) wins parliamentary elections marked by violence.

1984 - Duarte wins presidential election.

1986 - Duarte begins quest for negotiated settlement with FMLN.

1989 - FMLN attacks intensify; another Arena candidate, Alfredo Cristiani, voted president in elections widely believed to have been rigged.

Peace and natural disasters

1991 - FMLN recognised as political party; government and FMLN sign UN-sponsored peace accord.

1993 - Government declares amnesty for those implicated by UN-sponsored commission in human rights atrocities.

1994 - Arena candidate Armando Calderon Sol elected president.

1997 - FMLN makes progress in parliamentary elections; leftist Hector Silva elected mayor of San Salvador.

1999 - Arena candidate Francisco Flores beats former guerrilla Facundo Guardado in presidential election.

Protestors demand the return of Salvadoran troops from Iraq

2001

January, February - Massive earthquakes kill 1,200 people and render another one million homeless.

2002 July - US court holds two retired, US-based Salvadoran army generals responsible for civil war atrocities, orders them to compensate victims who brought case.

2003 August - 360 Salvadoran troops despatched to Iraq.

2003 December - El Salvador - along with Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala - agrees on a free-trade agreement with the US. The government ratifies the pact in December 2004.

Saca presidency

2004 March - Arena candidate Tony Saca wins presidential elections.

Former FMLN leader Schafik Handal died in 2006 El Salvador buries revolutionary

2005 March - OAS human rights court votes to re-open an investigation into the 1981 massacre of hundreds of peasant farmers in the village of El Mozote, regarded as one of the worst atrocities of the civil war.

2005 October - Thousands flee as the Ilamatepec volcano, also known as Santa Ana, erupts. Days later scores of people are killed as Tropical Storm Stan sweeps through.

2006 March - El Salvador is the first Central American country to implement a regional free trade agreement with the US.

2006 April - El Salvador and neighbouring Honduras inaugurate their newly-defined border. The countries fought over the disputed frontier in 1969.

2007 January - 21 inmates are killed in a riot at a maximum-security prison west of the capital.

2007 February - Three members of the governing Arena party are murdered in Guatemala. There are suspicions that an organised crime syndicate is behind the killings.

2008 January - More than 400 judges hold a street protest over corruption allegations made against four of their colleagues.

2009 January - Former FMLN rebel movement emerges as largest party in parliamentary elections, although short of a majority. Seen as preparation for presidential election in March.

2009 February - Ruling party Arena wins largest number of places in local elections despite polls favouring the opposition FMLN.

2009 March - Mauricio Funes of the FMLN party wins presidential elections, marking the first time in two decades that a leftist president has been voted in.

2009 June - Mauricio Funes sworn in as president.