Black September

In May 1979, a small number of Salvadoran officers began to meet secretly to discuss pressing matters. They saw a growing internal leftist revolutionary movement that not only was raising large sums of money from kidnapping wealthy Salvadorans or foreign businessmen but also could put 200,000 demonstrators in the streets at one time via the allied mass organizations. They also looked at Nicaragua, where the Somoza dynasty was in its death throes, and saw the Carter administration was not rescuing the Nicaraguan National Guard, a rough equivalent to their own armed forces. They also believed that ruling strongman General Romero was fatally isolated from senior army officers as well as out of favor with the Carter administration because of what an American journalist called the “growing number of bodies turning up in trash cans and along the roads.” These officers soberly concluded that the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas and their supporting organizations could overthrow the Romero regime by the end of the year, so they decided to act before this “nightmare became a reality.”

Writing for the U.S. magazine Newsweek in late September 1979, journalists Steven Strasser and Stryker McGuire provided a sense of El Salvador's dire situation. The country had marked its independence day only a week before, but there “was little to celebrate” due to the widespread violence and fear. Leftist opponents of the General Romero dictatorship promised that the month would be “Black September,” during which the agitation against the regime would swell. This is some of what journalists reported:

“The United States Would Not Abandon El Salvador”

As we saw, the FMLN's stunning November 1989 military offensive led many observers to conclude, not illogically, that the FAES was in dire straits. Less reported, though, was that Washington's restoration of tens of millions of dollars in military aid amid the fallout from the Sandinista-delivered SAM revelations proved to be a blow to the FMLN's chest. What is more, the Pentagon displayed some saber rattling in an attempt to disabuse the Salvadoran rebels from any notion that Washington had forsaken its client military in El Salvador. According to the U.S. Southern Command commander General George Joulwan, the renewed aid transformed the FAES into a different fighting force: “[From January 1991] they went to the field, and stayed in the field. They took the fight to the enemy but did it right, to include respect for human rights.” Moreover, Joulwan contended that the FMLN's increasingly lethal use of sophisticated weaponry – especially the SA-14 man-portable air defense missiles (MANPADs) – was now effectively countered by the expedited delivery of replacement aircraft and materiel. At one equipment transfer ceremony at Ilopango Air Base, Joulwan even publicly warned the FMLN that each FAES aircraft they destroyed would be replaced. Joulwan also sent training teams to El Salvador to teach maneuvers on evading ground-launched missiles. The net effect, Joulwan contended, was to show the FMLN that “the United States…would not abandon El Salvador, and would support the democratic government of Cristiani.”

Joulwan's sense of the FAES's improving combat abilities despite the 1989 guerrilla offensive debacle was coupled with the Sandinista's largely unexpected electoral defeat in 1990 that removed the FMLN's closest ally from power in Managua.

Tubeless Artillery and Planeless Bombs

With its sophisticated tactical and strategic doctrine and prodigious armaments acquired largely from sympathetic Marxist governments – largely via Cuba and Nicaragua – the FMLN was quickly becoming the largest and strongest insurgency in Latin American history. A few years into the war, the guerrillas were now benefiting from finally being able to overcome their factional rivalries to launch coordinated strikes and share intelligence and resources. This allowed the rebels to launch operations that at times involved thousands of soldiers, a stunning level of strength and sophistication for a guerrilla movement in Latin America.

In 1982, the FAES captured a large cache of documents from an FMLN safe house in San Salvador. The secret documents revealed that Cayetano Carpio's FPL faction had identified the use of elite commando units as a key element of the insurgent strategy. The guerrillas believed that these crack troops would serve as the “tubeless artillery” and “planeless bombs” needed to carry out the stunning raids that would humiliate the Salvadoran military and remind the country of the guerrillas’ invincibility. FMLN soldiers had in fact started receiving training in Cuba as early as 1980. By 1983 these units were ready to go into action to strike at the heart of the FAES.

“Taken a Shine to the Kid from El Salvador”

In late 1986 the New York Review of Books published a profile of José Napoleón Duarte. It described the Salvadoran president to its American readers as “the son of a politically progressive tailor and a seamstress, a thoroughly middle-class boy.” Duarte's parents were indeed “moderately comfortable” – with the help of a lucky lottery ticket, they were able to send him and his brother to Notre Dame University in Indiana, although the future president spoke little English. The capable Duarte studied civil engineering and graduated in 1948. He returned to El Salvador, got married, and joined his father-in-law's thriving construction company. Before leaving for Notre Dame, Duarte had joined in political movements that helped overthrow the General Hernández Martínez dictatorship in 1944; a year later a military regime's ascension forced him into exile in Guatemala where he briefly worked in an opposition cell.

Duarte's first real interest in politics took off after Notre Dame when he successfully ran for mayor of San Salvador in 1964 and subsequently served two more terms. His protests against the military regime in the aftermath of the stolen 1972 elections led to his arrest at the National Police headquarters, where he suffered a smashed cheekbone, a black eye, and charges of treason. International pressure, including from Notre Dame president Reverend Theodore Hesburgh – “who had taken a shine to the kid from El Salvador” – helped ensure Duarte's exile to Venezuela. While in exile, Duarte severed three of his fingers in an industrial accident, an injury that would later be misconstrued as the work of police torturers. During his years in Venezuela, Duarte worked as a civil engineer while he “awaited the call home that was sure to come.”

“He Was Like Anwar Sadat”

Duarte's role as a moderate but decidedly anti-communist democratic reformer was essential for the evolution of El Salvador's conflict. Most critically, he influenced the international community's perception of the Salvadoran government's commitment to reform. Duarte's impeccable democratic bona fides gave him a credibility that no other Salvadoran politician could even begin to match.

As part of the Reagan administration's military assistance to train rapid response units, the Atlacatl Battalion was activated in March 1, 1981, under the command of the daring and ambitious Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios. Monterrosa had been in the same tanda class at the Salvadoran military academy as Roberto D'Aubuisson and had taken courses at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in 1966. The Atlacatl was the first specialty battalion trained for counterinsurgency warfare in the Salvadoran armed forces. Under the watch of U.S. Army Special Forces advisors in El Salvador, the battalion completed its training in early 1981. The battalion grew to around 1,000 soldiers and became notorious for its violence and lack of discipline. U.S. trainers were privately enthusiastic about its combat potential. In early December of this same year, the battalion participated in Operación Rescate (Operation Rescue), an attempt to corner and annihilate the FMLN training camp at a locale called La Guacamaya.

Almost a year before Rescate took place, a company of the Atlacatl Battalion, commanded by Captain Juan Ernesto Méndez, had initiated a counterinsurgency mission in the northern zone of Morazán – the base of operations of Joaquín Villalobos's formidable ERP wing of the now united FMLN. The unit came under heavy guerrilla attack and quickly retreated. This deeply embarrassing setback for the brand new “Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion” elicited jokes by officers of other units who nicknamed it the “Rapid Retreat Infantry Battalion.” The ignominious retreat might help explain at least some of the fury that accompanied Atlacatl's Rescate operation in December.

Revenge Would Be Enacted

On December 9, 1981, skirmishes took place between FAES forces and FMLN guerrillas in the village of Arambala, deep in the Morazán Department. That same day, a company of the Atlacatl Battalion entered Arambala and rounded up the population in the town square, separating the men from the women and children. Accused of being rebel collaborators, several villagers were blindfolded, tortured, and killed. Atlacatl was smelling blood and its revenge against leftist insurgents would be enacted on the villages and villagers whom they believed were abetting the enemy.

“Just as It Did in Southeast Asia”

Following the series of successful elections – and in particular the ascension of José Napoleón Duarte to the presidency – U.S. policy toward El Salvador became less controversial back in Washington. But in the mid-1980s, a disagreement broke out as to whether American aid and training were making the war worse. This referred to the so-called air war that critics alleged the Salvadoran Air Force was waging against civilians in FMLN-controlled areas. One critic received international attention when he described the air war as “indiscriminate attacks” on “defenseless civilians,” a war being waged by the Salvadoran military against villages “suspected of being sympathetic” to the guerrillas. “Just as it did in Southeast Asia, terror from the air has created vast numbers of refugees in El Salvador.”

The air war quickly turned from a military tactic to a political controversy. Solidarity groups opposed to the U.S.-backed Duarte government and their allies on Capitol Hill were focusing on the issue. Here is how one critic described the scorched-earth strategy in a letter to the New York Times:

“Those Plans Have Gone Nowhere”

During the early years, American policymakers tended to be pessimistic on the Salvadoran government's chances to win the war. These fears largely ebbed during the middle of the decade when it appeared that, through vigorous U.S. support, the government and FAES had the upper hand. Yet the outlook changed again by the late 1980s when even some of the most fervent supporters of U.S. engagement were concluding that it had failed. In November 1989, for example, a former Salvadoran official surveyed the 10 years of American involvement in his country and concluded that “the U.S. wanted to achieve three things: a measure of peace, the respect for human rights, and the institutionalization of democratic processes. All three objectives have failed.” Speaking a year earlier, California congressman George Miller echoed a similar sentiment, observing:

In 1988, a widely distributed evaluation based on field reporting by four U.S. military officers concluded that “unhappily, the United States finds itself stuck with that war.”

“Strong and Legitimate Social and Political Order”

U.S. engagement in El Salvador was predicated on the awareness that Salvadoran society was one of the “sickest and most repressive” in the region. As a retrospective study noted, U.S. military advisors, diplomats, and policymakers needed to both professionalize the Salvadoran armed forces to wear down the guerrillas and strengthen democracy “so as to weaken the rebels’ claim to political legitimacy.” The approach got a big political boost on January 10, 1984, with the publication of the Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, soon called the Kissinger Report because former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was chairman.

Pleasing to critics of U.S. policies, the report recognized that poverty, injustice, and a closed political system were key factors that had led Salvadorans to take up arms. It added, though, that these domestic causes had been taken advantage of by external forces. Thus, what was at stake was not simply El Salvador's future, but in an echo of American presidents throughout the Cold War, “our [U.S.] credibility world-wide.…The triumph of hostile forces in what the Soviets call the ‘strategic rear’ of the United States would be read as a sign of impotence.”

What was necessary, therefore, was for the United States to see the effort through, even though progress to date had been disappointing and government abuses were still prevalent. The commission described the war as presently “stalemated,” a condition that favored the FMLN. To remedy the situation, the commission recommended “sizeable levels of military aid as quickly as possible” for better training, mobility, and firepower.

“Their Message Is No to Elections”

In a notable development in the lead-up to the March 1989 presidential vote, FDR members Guillermo Ungo and Rubén Zamora returned to their country after eight years of self-imposed exile to run in the elections, which they did as part of the Democratic Convergence (Convergencia Democrática, CD), an alliance of leftist groups. Interestingly, the FMLN's increasingly aggressive tactics – including the escalated kidnapping of Christian Democratic mayors across the countryside – forced a rift with the nascent Convergence movement. The redoubtable Zamora commented, “We believe the FMLN, the same as the Army, is obligated to abide by certain rules, such as the Geneva convention, to protect civilians. Car bombs, attacks on houses of officials and killing mayors are not acceptable.”

Convergence leaders also contended that the guerrillas’ efforts to disrupt the presidential elections were not effective, as evidenced by Salvadorans in recent history coming out to vote despite turmoil. For Convergence organizer Hector Silva, the FMLN was paying an enormous political price for targeting the elections. “Their [guerrillas’] message is no to elections. They are talking insurrection, but the elections are going to take place. The FMLN must find meaning for what the vast majority of Salvadorans will be doing in two months – voting.” In a sobering reminder of how the election was unfolding amid the ongoing war, the Convergence presidential candidate Guillermo Ungo campaigned wearing a bulletproof vest.

Rattled by the Convergence's participation in the elections, in late January the FMLN released a new peace plan that indicated the rebels would take part in the vote if it was postponed for six months and they were provided security guarantees. The deft plan put the Duarte administration in a bind since rejecting it would be categorically difficult now that the FMLN appeared to have dropped its demands for a power sharing government. As one Christian Democrat operative quipped, “The proposal is politically brilliant.

Sandinista Support for Armed Struggle

El Salvador in 1980 had guerrillas but no guerrilla war – at least not in the formal sense of an organized insurgency. Thus, paradoxically, the “civil war” likely started earlier than we have often imagined despite the fact that the formal guerrilla insurgency began in early 1981. Indeed, until this point the revolutionary forces were eager but “fragmented into competing factions.” And they still lacked a unified command and heavier, more lethal weaponry. This was all about to change. In fact, at least according to inherently biased U.S. intelligence reports written in the mid-1980s, captured FMLN documents revealed that only days after Somoza's ouster in July 1979, Salvadoran guerrilla representatives met in Managua to discuss Sandinista support for armed struggle in El Salvador. Yet it apparently took over a year for external support to get fully under way, something expedited by the Havana-led unification of the disparate Salvadoran guerrilla factions into the FMLN in late 1979 and early 1980.

In mid-October 1980, Havana was the site where alleged representatives of communist parties in Central American and Mexico met and agreed to establish a network to control the provision of materiel for the Salvadoran insurgency. The rendezvous, originally slated for Managua, was moved to Havana at the request of the Sandinistas to obscure their involvement in the transhipments. During this same month, U.S. intelligence observed a sharp increase in flight frequencies that suggested a marked rise in the flow of military equipment into Nicaragua from Cuba. Augusto C. Sandino international airport was closed for regular flights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. for several weeks to allegedly “accommodate cargo planes ferrying arms and other equipment from Cuba” – and thus possibly onward to El Salvador.

These sorts of reports prompted an exasperated Carter administration to send a demarche [formal diplomatic representation of the official position] to the Sandinista government indicating that arms shipments to El Salvador would jeopardize the recently approved $75 million in economic development funds from the United States. The Sandinistas responded that while some Nicaraguans might have been involved in such activity, it was not government policy. The Sandinistas held up transhipments for roughly a month despite FMLN requests to keep the arms flowing.

“The Revolution Had Begun”

At the time of the fraudulent presidential election in 1972 that denied the presidency to José Napoleón Duarte, the only guerrilla organization was the Popular Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Populares de Liberación “Farabundo Martí,” FPL), which limited their operations to kidnappings. Thus, while there were formidable Cuba-style focos next door in Guatemala and Nicaragua, for most of the 1970s El Salvador was devoid of these insurgent forces – at least in their more formal role as armed guerrilla groups. A dozen young communists, including former seminarian Salvador Cayetano Carpio, founded the FPL in 1970 as a breakaway revolutionary faction of the Communist Party. Carpio went on to become the group's top commander.

The doctrinaire Carpio (or Commander Marcial, his assumed name) enjoyed being referred to as the Ho Chi Minh of Central America. While other radicals were focused on an insurrection-style effort similar to the successful Cuban revolution in 1959, Carpio opted for a Ho-style “prolonged struggle” in order to win a war of attrition against the despised military. By 1980, the FPL had swelled to around 2,000 troops operating in the single mountain province of Chalatenango, a locale where they remained for the war's duration. For Carpio, El Salvador's revolution would have to be Marxist-Leninist and represent the “triumph of the worker-campesino alliance.

Under Fire

On Sunday, October 5, 1986, a C-123K cargo plane took off from Ilopango, El Salvador, and was flying low into Nicaraguan airspace, only 700 meters off the ground to elude Sandinista radar. José Fernando Canales and Byron Montiel, two young soldiers just five months into their mandatory service in the Sandinista military had set up a portable land-air rocket deep in the jungle of the Chontales Department. When they heard the engines of the unmarked cargo plane, José Fernando received the order to shoot. He aimed, fired, and within seconds the plane exploded in the air and fell to earth in pieces; only the tail section remained intact. Twenty-four hours later, the Sandinista mouthpiece La Voz de Nicaragua (The Voice of Nicaragua) broke into its regular programming with a special bulletin that a plane belonging to the “counterrevolution” had been hit by an “arrow,” and perhaps more important, that “North Americans” were among the crew. When Sandinista troops reached the crash site, they found 13,000 pounds of weaponry: 50,000 AK-47 rifle cartridges, 60 collapsible AK-47s, a similar number of RPG-7 grenade launchers, and 150 pairs of jungle boots.

The C-123K carried three Americans and one Nicaraguan. The pilot William Cooper, co-pilot Wallace Blaine Sawyer, and radio operator Freddy Vilches died in the crash. Eugene Hasenfus, in charge of dropping the cargo, had been able to see the incoming rocket in time and jumped from the plane with a parachute given to him by his brother before leaving the United States.

“Give up, gringo, or we'll blow you to hell!” reportedly shouted the pursuing soldier Rafael Antonio Acevedo, when he found Hasenfus in an abandoned hut, eating a squash and lying in a hammock he had made from his parachute. The American was armed with a pistol and a pocketknife, but immediately surrendered to the twenty-year-old Sandinista conscript. Days later Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega decorated the Sandinista soldiers involved with gold medals.

As we conclude our story of a searing episode of Cold War–era U.S. foreign policy in America's geopolitical backyard, it is worth considering the relevance today of the Salvador Option that was a remarkable case of nation-building by proxy before nation-building became the overriding aim in two protracted American wars – Iraq and Afghanistan. It could well be that the Salvador Option's significance will loom larger in the years ahead, simply because the United States endured long, unsatisfying wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans thus may be less likely to support major, boots-on-the-ground commitments, even as their nation continues to face threats from unstable societies. So figuring out the truth of this seemingly paradigmatic case of the light footprint approach is all the more important.

This study leads us to a set of essential related questions from the reality of the Salvador Option, questions that can be applied to other complicated counterinsurgency and nation-building situations. For starters, how does a powerful country balance out the broad geostrategic imperatives with the often shorter-term suffering caused by the policies being implemented? An effective answer requires an accurate sense of the means behind those policies and what they led to – something that is extraordinarily difficult to find in murky conflicts like El Salvador's civil war. The declassification of tens of thousands of pages of documents and the enviable advantage of hindsight has allowed us to consider the Salvador Option with a perspective and depth unavailable to those trying to make sense of this wrenching episode as it was unfolding.

U.S. foreign policy is, of course, not solely what is uttered publicly or described in newspaper accounts – and this was true in El Salvador; it also included the day-in-day-out churn of diplomatic cables, senior level officials’ talking points for meetings with Salvadoran counterparts, and other documents and conversations that were private in that period.

Given their mutual hostility and suspicions, one might have assumed that the FMLN and incoming rightist Cristiani administration would not have talked peace. Yet it appeared that both sides still saw the value of at least sitting down at the negotiating table with their sworn enemy. In fact, the two ideologically polar sides agreed on church-moderated talks – the first since discussions broke down in 1987. The negotiations concerned an FMLN proposal that called for a permanent cessation of hostilities within three months, predicated on “sweeping political reforms,” the demobilization of the rebel army, and the establishment of the FMLN as a legal party. The rebel proposal even called on the U.S. Congress to transform military aid to El Salvador into an assistance plan aimed at the “economic and social recovery of the country.” The first meeting took place in September 1989 in Mexico City, followed by a second meeting a month later in Costa Rica, where talks failed to produce a ceasefire but both sides agreed to continue the meeting in late November in Caracas, Venezuela. Any prospects of peace, however, were abruptly disrupted by renewed warfare.

In June 1989, U.S. Army officer Larry Cline arrived in El Salvador as part of an assignment with the 7th Special Forces Group to work with the FAES General Staff on communications issues. As Cline settled into his new position, he and some of his fellow American officers noticed that the FMLN had ratcheted up the snatching of teenage boys to add needed foot soldiers to the depleted guerrilla ranks, a practice that often began in the weeks and months before large rebel offensives. What Cline did not fully realize at the time, however, was that the FMLN was on the verge of launching a massive operation with far more fury than had been attempted in the vaunted final offensive in January 1981.

Reflecting months of planning in consultation with Havana and relying on key logistical support from the Sandinistas, the FMLN's second “final offensive” dubbed Al Tope y Punto (“all at once to the maximum”) began on the morning of November 11 when urban commandos launched mortar attacks against National Guard installations and FAES General Staff headquarters in the capital.

“This Hemisphere Intends to Remain the Master of Its Own House”

It was perhaps inevitable that Cuba would be at the center of this dramatic scaling up of low impact counterinsurgency. A classified SECRET U.S government intelligence report published in 1961 highlighted the perception of Cuba's key role as an incubator for revolution in the region:

Indeed, by 1962 Cuba had become the primary source of manpower and resources for igniting insurgencies throughout the Western Hemisphere. As stated in a 1964 State Department report, “The primary danger we face in Castro is…the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries.…The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the U.S., a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half.”

In principle, the core of the U.S. response to guerrilla insurgencies during the Cold War involved three wide-ranging objectives for “client” (or target) countries: democratization, economic development, and security. This three-pronged approach began during the Kennedy administration and endured as the primary model in U.S. policy, military doctrine, and practice, although U.S. responses at different times often emphasized one objective over the others. Most of the time security was the priority, but this is not to say that the pro-democracy and economic modernization goals were cut out of the picture.

The Kennedy administration believed that America's mission included robust support for democracy across the globe. Americans had to oppose the “powerful destructive forces…challenging the universal values that for centuries have inspired men of good will in all parts of the world.” The hallmark of Kennedy's “peace revolution” strategy was the Alliance for Progress, a planned 10-year program of massive economic investment and assistance to promote sorely needed political, social, and economic reform in Latin America.

Over the first half of 1984 El Salvador once again braced for national elections, this time a historic presidential race under the new constitution promulgated a year earlier. The two main candidates were strangers to no one, the Christian Democrats’ José Napoleón Duarte and ARENA's Roberto D'Aubuisson. For the Reagan administration, the presidential elections were a critical marker in demonstrating El Salvador's progress as a democracy. On the heels of the stunning vote in 1982, there was much greater confidence that the 1984 vote would be successful. Yet, as in 1982, U.S. officials were deeply concerned that ARENA might win again – and this time “winning” meant D'Aubuisson taking the presidency – an unacceptable outcome for engagement.

U.S. diplomats also missed no opportunity to remind Salvadorans that the United States would only work with Duarte's party. As one official revealed, “Everyone in the [U.S.] Embassy knew that if Duarte didn't win that was the end of Reagan's policy in El Salvador. But everyone also knew we couldn't say that to the Salvadorans.” Despite this poorly kept secret about U.S. intentions, Secretary of State George Shultz told an audience that the United States would “maintain a neutral position regarding the results of the elections.”

Duarte's centrist candidacy was complicated from the onset given that the country's military brass was deeply skeptical of his commitment to adequately maintain the counterinsurgency effort.

On November 24, 1989, when the final offensive was still raging across El Salvador, Salvadoran police allegedly captured an FMLN gunrunner, Fausto Gallardo Valdez, who confessed to knowing of a weapons cache located in the walled courtyard of the house of American church worker Jennifer Casolo from Connecticut. Casolo had been working in El Salvador leading informational tours for Christian Education Seminars, a Texas-based ecumenical organization known for being nonpartisan. The authorities told the press that Gallardo did not name Casolo but instead described a foreign female that fit her description. The following night the police unearthed the trove of weapons and ammunition. The police initially claimed that the cache included 80,000 rounds of ammunition for assault rifles, but then cut the number to 22,000 along with 103 mortar grenades, 213 blocks of dynamite, 405 detonators, and 150 feet of slow-burning fuse.

Casolo was soon charged with terrorism and harboring arms and was held under a 90-day investigative statute. Casolo's lawyers, Ramsey Clark and Salvador Ibarra, contended that because she had only rented the house for six months and was frequently traveling that the weapons could have easily been buried without her knowledge. The case took another turn days later when the government released a 60-minute videotape taken during the raid showing police discovering a photograph of Casolo, a cassette of American folk singer Tracy Chapman, and various other materials buried along with the weapons.

On January 10, 1981, the recently united FMLN announced the launch of its “Final Offensive” that lasted over the next three weeks:

More than 2,500 poorly trained guerrillas and a few hundred Cubans initiated scores of attacks against FAES positions. This was roughly the same number of forces that the Sandinistas had when they unleashed their operation to oust Somoza. Swollen with optimism after witnessing their comrade Sandinistas’ dramatic victory in Nicaragua less than two years earlier, the FMLN scheduled the offensive for early January so that they would be able to seize power before the hawkish Reagan administration took office a few weeks later.

Bolstered by several months of receiving clandestine shipments from Nicaragua, the guerrillas were now employing a variety of arms “never before used in El Salvador,” including M-16 rifles and M-79 grenade launchers. According to the dubious State Department, “they were a far cry from handguns, hunting rifles, shotguns, and homemade explosives,” which before had supposedly been the base of the guerrilla arsenal.

Within the first hours of battle on January 10, four San Salvador radio stations had been captured; the guerrillas used them to broadcast a taped message to rally the Salvadoran people behind their revolution, announcing that junta leader José Napoleón Duarte would soon be assassinated. “Hit-and-run street actions” appeared to be “everywhere,” one witness recalled. In the cities, buses were burned; in the countryside, rebels stopped buses and exhorted passengers to join the revolution.