Broadcasting the Civil War in El Salvador: A Memoir of Guerrilla Radio (review)

Carlos Henríquez Consalvi is a Venezuelan activist who became an announcer for Radio Venceremos, the clandestine radio of the rebel organization Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN), during the Salvadoran civil war. Henríquez Consalvi (nom de guerre: Santiago) "lived and worked for the entire eleven years of war in the remote northeast of the country, in Morazán department" (p. xvii). The memoir covers a period of about four years, from his arrival in Morazán in December 1980 to late 1984. Those were the bloodiest years of a civil war that "killed as many as 75,000 people, wounded another 350,000 or more, sent at least one million into exile, and cost billions of dollars, all in a tiny nation about the size of Massachusetts with a population of around 5 million" (p. xviii).

Originally published in 1992 as La terquedad del izote (2003), this edition includes an introduction by Erik Ching, associate professor of History at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, as well three short epilogues by the author, written in 1992, 2003, and 2009. We learn that the original journal "was destroyed by the army in early 1984" (p. xi). With some help from his radio teammates, Santiago rewrote the manuscript and, according to Ching, "the text you have before you is as true to the original as Santiago felt he was able to achieve, but it is also a necessarily collective effort grown out of the reality of loss" (p. xii). Ching reckons that the document cannot really be considered a "testimonial," though it remains a valuable account of the rebels' day-to-day activities in the mountains. The many brief entries (often just one paragraph) are presented chronologically, with emphasis on years, special events (with Goya-like headings like "Off to War with a Priest," "Damn! La Guacamaya Never Gives Up!" and "We Captured the Butcher"), or simply on days.

The work exemplifies the mindsets of internacionalistas who came to Central America during the 1980s to embrace the poetry of action. This is a self-aggrandizing book, almost a nonpolitical one. Opportunities are met to celebrate the compañeros' humanistic abnegation, determination, and courage in the pursuit of eternal values. One would look in vain in this book for comments or interpretations that either challenge or nuance the romantic tale (narrated in the introduction) of the "peasant rebellion" fighting for democratic change in El Salvador. And yet, there is plenty of evidence that the Frente was essentially a Leninist or Blanquist coalition of guerrilla groups with limited popular support. It was led primarily by middle-class youths like Santiago, who had been politicized on university campuses and who took the revolution to the countryside from the academic centers. At long last, the civil war ended with negotiations that made democratic changes possible in this small but vibrant nation. Why? For numerous reasons, most having to do with general exhaustion and effective pressure, domestic and foreign, to quit the messianic and bloody zero-sum game of revolution versus counter-revolution. Before one credits the FMLN for the democratization of the country after 1992, it is worth remembering that goals like the establishment of free and fair elections, due process of law, or the provision of transitional justice were nowhere to be found in the FMLN's agenda during the civil war, least of all during the years covered by this book.

The epilogues are thin and mostly insignificant, with one possible exception: in 2003, the author lamented that Radio Venceremos "faded away" because "those who took over the Radio dismissed those of us who were directly involved with it and converted it into 'the only English-Spanish radio station." The epilogue of 2009 celebrates the author's "new utopia": his Museum of Word and...