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introduction xvii erik ching Introduction Peasant Insurgency and Guerrilla Radio in Northern Morazán, El Salvador What follows is the story of a rebellion by poor peasants against the government of El Salvador and its benefactor, the United States. The peasant rebels were outgunned, outmanned, and outfinanced, and they ultimately failed to achieve their goal of overthrowing the Salvadoran state. But, remarkably, they fought the Salvadoran Army to a draw over eleven years of war (1981–1992), and they had enough bargaining power at the negotiating table to achieve some of their key objectives, including democratic reforms and an overhaul of the Salvadoran security forces. The author of the memoir is Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, more commonly known by his nom de guerre, “Santiago.” He was a central figure in El Salvador’s civil war, although he was neither a peasant nor a Salvadoran. He was a Venezuelan who came to El Salvador to support the rebel cause and who lived and worked for the entire eleven years of war in the remote northeast of the country, in Morazán department. Throughout the war, northern Morazán was the stronghold of the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP). It was one of the five guerrilla factions that made up the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN), the guerrilla army that formed in October 1980 to fight the Salvadoran government. Santiago was not a fighter, although he did sometimes carry a gun and he lived through numerous battles and aerial bombardments. Rather, he was a radio announcer, the main voice for the FMLN’s clandestine radio station, Radio Venceremos (Radio We Will Win). For eleven years, he and his fellow team members broadcast news and variety shows from a mobile radio transmitter in Moraz án, oftentimes on the run or under bombardment. The Salvadoran Army and its U.S. ally called Radio Venceremos a propaganda tool and a weapon of war, and, indeed, sometimes it was. But it also provided the primary alternative to the mainstream media sources, which provided an unvarying progovernment viewpoint . Radio Venceremos became one of the army’s highest priority targets. What you are about to read is Santiago’s journal of his first four years of xviii broadcasting the civil war in el salvador the war, beginning with his arrival in Morazán in December 1980 and ending in late 1984, when the FMLN guerrillas reached a military stalemate with the army. After reading his account of the harrowing first four years under fire, it is remarkable to think that the war lasted yet another seven years. Santiago’s story is very personal and provides the insights of one man working and surviving in an intense war zone. In that regard, the journal reveals deeply individual emotions of love and loss, happiness and tragedy. But Santiago ’s memoir also tells a broader story, of the nationwide rebellion and its international context, particularly the intensifying cold war and the heavy involvement of the United States under Pres. Ronald Reagan. El Salvador’s civil war 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. Such heavy costs do not occur without intense disagreement over why the fight happened. Subject to acrimonious debate were such issues as the cause of the war, the goals of the rebels, the quality and character of the Salvadoran government and army, and the wisdom of U.S. policy. In a 1984 address to the nation, Pres. Ronald Reagan told his listeners that “El Salvador [has] become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere.”1 He said the United States would do everything in its power to stop the spread of communism in Central America and therein defend the United States. As is evident from his speech, Reagan believed, or at least wanted his listeners to believe, that El Salvador was the new front line in the cold war. Suddenly, the small and previously insignificant country of El Salvador assumed center stage in the international drama of cold war politics. Hawkish anticommunists like Reagan found themselves throwing their lot in with El Salvador’s elites, army, and government, with their abysmal track record on...

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