El Salvador is a small Central American country located between Guatemala and Honduras, with a population of over 7 million people in 2009. In the 1970s and 1980s, El Salvador experienced a civil war that lasted 12 years and left 75,000 dead, sparked by economic and political problems between the ruling National Conciliation Party and the guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. A peace treaty was eventually brokered in 1992 by President Alfredo Cristiani of the ARENA party, ending the conflict.