POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SALVADORAN GUERRILLA ARMY John L. Hammond Jan 1994 Hunter College and Graduate Center, City University of New York Sociology Department Hunter College 695 Park Avenue New York, New York 10021 212-663-1358 fax: 212-772-5645 e-mail: jlhhc@cunyvm.cuny.edu I welcome any comments. This is a draft and may not be cited or quoted. It may be freely downloaded for individual use but not for further redistribution by any physical or electronic means, specifically including electronic conferences, newsgroups, or mailing lists. Surgeon General's warning: young soldiers frequently use language which some middle-aged academics find unseemly, especially in scholarly discourse. If you are likely to be offended by a few examples of vulgar or heterosexist language, DO NOT READ THIS PAPER. Abstract During its eleven-year guerrilla war, the Farabundo Marti' National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador attempted to educate its troops, most of whom, recruited from the peasantry, were illiterate or barely literate. There were three main areas of education: basic literacy, technical training--both of which gave combatants skills necessary to the war effort--and political orientation, regarded as reinforcing their motivation to fight. The FMLN worked with the techniques and assumptions of popular education, according to which many teachers are only slightly more educated than their pupils, political content and pedagogy are combined, and everyone is urged to learn and assumed to be capable of learning, regardless of background. Educating peasant combatants was an expression of the FMLN's egalitarian ideology but at the same time highlighted differences due to social origin and between men and women. The educational process contributed importantly to the FMLN's relative military success and had a major impact on the combatants. Popular Education in the Salvadoran Guerrilla Army John L. Hammond During its eleven-year guerrilla war, the Farabundo Marti' National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador attempted to educate its mostly illiterate or barely literate troops. The organization invested a lot of time and energy in the process, and called on combatants who themselves had very little education to be teachers. Education served both practical and ideological ends. Soldiers of the guerrilla army were educated despite a severe shortage of material goods and the constant presence or threat of combat. They received basic education and technical training--both of which gave combatants skills necessary to the war effort--and political orientation, regarded as reinforcing their motivation to fight. The FMLN's ideology, moreover, called for the elimination of inequalities. Educating its troops put that ideology into practice but at the same time revealed its limits by underscoring differences between people of higher- and lower-level social backgrounds, and between men and women. In this paper I examine the educational process, the conditions under which it was carried out. and the purposes for which it was promoted. The twentieth century has been a century of peasant wars (see, e.g., Wolf, 1969; Paige, 1975; Skocpol, 1982; Wickham-Crowley, 1992). The term "peasant war" normally connotes not only a particular social base but also certain patterns of recruitment and tactics. Its fighters, in their large majority, are rural cultivators who are poorly educated and exploited--that is, consigned to poverty by coercive and/or market mechanisms which prevent them from enjoying significant surplus from their production (Wolf, 1966: 9-10). They are not conscripts, but are recruited through solidary communities. They espouse--or at least their leaders espouse--an egalitarian ideology which promises triumph over exploitation. In other words, a peasant war is fought not just _by_ peasants (by social origins, after all, the tsar's army was a peasant army; so is the Salvadoran government army) but in defense of their interests. And they fight a guerrilla war, emphasizing small, mobile units, lightning actions rather than engagements between concentrated troops, and close contact with a civilian community which keeps them supplied. In several peasant wars recruitment from an uneducated population and an egalitarian ideology have inspired efforts to educate the troops (Barndt, 1985: 320-22; Carnoy and Samoff, 1990: 114-15, 280-82). This was especially true in the Salvadoran war. On eight field trips to El Salvador between 1988 and 1993, I conducted forty open-ended interviews with guerrilla combatants and had informal conversations with many others in the course of field work. My informants include women and men and range from foot soldiers to _comandantes_.(1) They represent a variety of military specialties and three of the five political-military organizations which make up the FMLN, including the two largest, the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL) and the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP).(2) During the war the FMLN attempted to teach all of its troops to read and write. The army was composed overwhelmingly of peasants. Many of them had never been to school, whether because there was no school close enough, because they had to go to work in the fields at a very early age, or because without a culture of literacy parents saw no need to send them to school. Combatants who had studied were mobilized as teachers: some from urban areas had had access to secondary education, and a few had been professional teachers or university students. But many peasants taught others to read even though they themselves had only had a few years of schooling. The process was somewhat haphazard; education was always subordinate to military needs. But the FMLN educated its troops for two reasons: first, to cultivate the skills needed for warfare; second, to put into practice its ideology, according to which all people are capable of learning and entitled to the opportunity. These two motives were not independent. Underlying the practice was a theory of popular education one of whose tenets is that the learning of specific skills must be part of the integral development of human capacities, the creation of a "new person." This interdependence was felt even in a case of such direct military necessity as weapons training. The FMLN was somewhat haphazardly armed early in the war (later, rifles were more uniform), so combatants had to be trained to use any weapon. M2, a peasant from Moraza'n, was a combatant at the beginning of the war. Years later, at my home in New York, thumbing through a book of reproductions of murals of the Mexican revolution, he pointed to a rifle and said, "that's a FAL." I cannot recognize rifles but I knew that the FAL was widely used in the 1980s, so I said I didn't think so, that the Mexican revolution had begun in 1910. He looked again, and corrected himself: "No, it's a mauser." He went on: "In the FMLN they taught us all the weapons. That's the difference from the Salvadoran army. They give you one weapon and you learn it. In the FMLN, you learn everything: you know how to take any rifle apart and put it back together." Combatants had to be prepared to use any weapon that might fall into their hands, even of World War I vintage. But in M2's telling there was clearly also pride that his superiors recognized him and his _compan~eros_(3) as people who could learn. Militarily, the FMLN would never be better equipped or armed than the enemy army; to triumph it would have to count on superior use of human resources. Acting on the slogan "_Lograr mucho con poco_" ("achieve a lot with a little"; Lo'pez Vigil, 1991: 359), therefore, required people to learn and to use all of their abilities. But achieving a lot with a little was not only a slogan or a means to military advantage, but an anticipation of a new society which would recognize the worth of all its members. The commanders of the guerrilla army, moreover, were convinced that their success depended on the morale and commitment of the fighters.(4) Enhancing combatants' understanding of and belief in the ideology which underlay the struggle, the commanders believed, would inspire them to work to their utmost and to "achieve a lot with a little." To this end the FMLN made politics and ideology an integral part of its educational process. Combatants, furthermore, were called upon to spread the message in their contacts with civilians. Che Guevara once allegedly said to Roque Dalton, a Salvadoran poet and revolutionary, that there could be no guerrilla war in El Salvador because there were no mountains. Dalton replied, "The people are our mountains"--the guerrilla army depended on them for intelligence, supplies, and recruits. Political and ideological education prepared combatants to arouse civilian support in controlled and contested zones. The practice of popular education was brought to El Salvador during the 1970s by church workers inspired by liberation theology. Sanctioned by the Latin American bishops' conference at Medelli'n, Colombia, in 1968, liberation theology teaches that all human beings share a dignity which deserves to be nourished in the present life, and especially called on the church to recognize the needs of the continent's poor majority. Priests, nuns, and laypeople began organizing Christian base communities, especially in rural areas (Berryman, 1984; Ca'ceres Prendes, 1989). Confronting high rates of illiteracy, they imported popular education methods which had been developed by church workers elsewhere in Latin America. _Educacio'n popular_ means education of, by, and for the _pueblo_--organized by people in their own community, outside of the control of the official education system. In societies where literacy is at a premium, many teach even though they are hardly better educated than their pupils. The efforts of Christians inspired by liberation theology fit well with the strategic orientation of the political-military organizations which arose at the same time and which formed the FMLN in 1980. They rejected Che Guevara's _foco_ strategy (as did the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua), considering it too exclusively military. With some differences of emphasis among them, they called for organizing support widely among sectors of the civilian population (Chinchilla, 1980; Pearce, 1986: 122-34). Popular education became one of their organizing tools and the practice was an important antecedent to its adoption by the guerrilla army. The church-based movement and the political-military organizations worked together and spawned a strong political challenge to the Salvadoran regime, which responded with a massive wave of repression throughout the countryside, largely carried out by members of the Army and security forces acting as anonymous death squads. (Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered while saying mass in 1980, was but the most famous of tens of thousands of victims.) Overt community organization was completely repressed with the outbreak of full-scale war in 1980, but education could continue in places that were protected from government repression. The most important sites were refugee camps in Honduras and refugee communities elsewhere in Central America; but popular education also continued among political prisoners and in the guerrilla army itself (Armstrong and Shenk, 1982; Hammond, 1993; Montgomery, 1982). It might seem paradoxical to regard combat zones as safe areas where the popular education which was repressed elsewhere could continue, for the fighting forces were subject to the most direct and intense attack. The presence or threat of combat brought constant interruptions. But, ideologically, the war fronts were free spaces. The government could bomb and attack but it could not interfere directly in education or single out those who participated in it for punishment. Teaching on the Battlefield As the FMLN's army got organized it discovered that the high rates of illiteracy meant that combatants could not perform key military tasks as first aid paramedics, radio operators, or munitions makers. F1, A foreign health worker, encountered this problem in training people to care for patients in a hospital for wounded combatants: We were teaching fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids, with maybe second or third grade education at most. Something was going wrong: people who were having IVs were getting infections in their arms. We would write out all the orders for the day in a little book in the morning: "At nine o'clock, this one needs penicillin, that one needs such and such." I wrote it out as did the nurse who had been working there before me, only she read it over to them. I couldn't figure out why things weren't getting done on time and then I realized they couldn't read--they had to memorize the stuff. Similarly, radio operators had to be able to interpret codes; those making explosives had to compute percentages so as to mix the chemicals correctly. These tasks required literacy, at a minimum, and sometimes the skills ordinarily learned in higher grades. But most of those being trained for these specialties hardly had basic education. M13, a combatant who worked in radio communication, had to teach reading as well as radio operation, encoding, and decoding, "because reading included how to get a message right." Education was always intended to serve practical ends, but political education, too, was regarded as an essential part of the process. On the one hand, conviction was what motivated the combatants, if anything, and their conviction was intensified by discussions of the political situation emphasizing the aims of the war. On the other hand, many of the combatants carried out propaganda and organizing among civilians (increasingly so as the war progressed, as discussed below), so their education was to be put immediately to political uses. So political and pedagogical practices were inextricably linked, giving a political content to the training in basic skills. But if war imposed the need for educated combatants, it also made educating them very difficult. Combatants camped out in the open country. Classes too were taught in the open, without benefit of schoolhouses or desks. Instead of blackboards, "we used old metal roofing sheets. If you carried chalk it crumbled, so we used charcoal." (M3) Having to dodge bullets was distracting. "Sometimes you could be teaching, and the Air Force came.(5) Or troops could attack by land. So you had to have your pencil and paper, and at the same time be ready for combat. It's pretty hard to be doing two things, prepare and then teach class and also be on the alert for whatever might happen." "You had to have the chalk in one hand, and your knapsack ready, and your rifle right next to you, because if you didn't, the enemy could capture you. You had to be ready for anything." (M5) These uncertainties caused stress which interfered with learning. But as in most armies, life alternated between overstimulation and tedium. When combat lightened up the dead time would be devoted to study. "Sometimes we had six or eight months when there were no enemy operations. That's when we could teach the most because the kids calmed down and learned a lot." (M5) Most combatants were in the equivalent of the infantry-- frontline combat troops--but many were in what were called "structures" with special tasks: clinics, logistics, radio communications, munitions, etc. These structures were based in rearguard areas in more or less permanent camps. Though they were vulnerable to bombing raids, the pace of life was calmer than on the front lines, and the troops' specialties generally required greater academic skills. For more than two years, M5 taught combatants in three structures located with a two-kilometer radius in Moraza'n: a logistics unit, an explosives unit, and a clinic. Initially, soldiers from all the structures converged every day to attend his class, and at times he had as many as fifty students. But when security considerations dictated against movement of so many people each day, he met a smaller group at each location daily. Like many combatant-teachers, M5 took great pleasure in his students' eagerness to learn. In the clinic where he taught health workers and patients, "there were _compas_ who were wounded, and learning always drove [_impulsaba_] them. How could they do it? Even on their crutches they always showed up for class." But his own enthusiasm convinces a listener that, while he drew inspiration from them, he must also have offered it. Throughout the war, material resources were scarce, combat occurred unpredictably and absorbed everyone's full attention when it came, and the learners had little background. So the basic process of popular education was the same wherever it was carried out. But the details of occasion, personnel, and organization varied from place to place and over the course of the war. Several who participated told me that there was a "system" of education among the troops, but they described rather different systems. Despite efforts to regularize the process, each experience had an element of spontaneity and varied with the particular conditions of the military unit in which it occurred. There was a major difference, however, between the two main periods of the war. Until 1984, military engagements were very much like those of a conventional war. Controlling approximately one- third of the national territory, the FMLN waged large-scale battles from fixed positions. Most combatants were quartered in camps of several hundred people. Slow periods in those camps provided opportunities for relatively well-organized classes meeting for an hour or more a day along with military training. Then, in a major strategic shift beginning in 1984, the FMLN reorganized its army. The controlled zones, the northern and eastern departments, were the poorest and least populated regions to begin with and beginning in 1984 Air Force bombing raids drove most of the population out. The camps were vulnerable to bombing raids and maintaining them was costly in resources. Moreover, the strategy was almost exclusively military, neglecting political work among civilians, just when the Salvadoran army, with the guidance of US advisors, was initiating civic action as part of its counterinsurgency campaign. So the FMLN abandoned much of the territory it had controlled. Troops were now deployed in small, mobile squadrons, usually of seven to ten members, over a much wider area. These squadrons carried out lightning attacks on military bases and other strategic targets. In military terms, this meant a more purely guerrilla strategy. Troops were still massed for occasional major operations, notably the 1989 offensive, but most actions were small in scale. The small units also reached out to the population, attempting to penetrate and organize in areas where the FMLN had until then had less popular support. (The military and political dimensions of the change in strategy are discussed by FMLN, 1985; Harnecker, 1993, 242-274; Lo'pez Vigil, 1991: 339-44; Mena Sandoval, 1991: 333-52.) The abandonment of large fixed bases made it more difficult to have teachers available to all the illiterate soldiers. But education continued in the smaller units. According to M3, teaching any illiterate members was one of the duties of the squadron leader ("who necessarily knew how to read"). But others said that a unit normally included a literacy teacher along with a radio operator, someone trained in first aid, and other specialists. The teacher often had very little education, but worked regularly with those who were completely illiterate. The ideal was to hold class for an hour or more a day, but military conditions did not always allow it, units moved more frequently, and the discipline of study was not as strong in the small squadrons as it had been in the camps. In addition to the combatants in the large camps of the early years of the war and those in the small mobile squadrons of the later years, there was a third group of fighters: the nonpermanent forces, at different times known as the militia or the territorial defense forces. Members of the militia spent most of their time at home, but joined the guerrilla army for brief periods to perform special missions, when action heated up near their home villages, or during regional or nationwide offensives which required large numbers of fighters. Almost all the militia members were illiterate, and because they were only present irregularly, their education did not proceed very far. M3, who supervised education in the area around Nueva Granada, anticipated as the war was ending that the gathering of combatants into camps as part of the peace settlement would finally offer an opportunity to work more intensively with them. Education for Basic Literacy Education began with the basics. As one combatant-teacher, a high school graduate, described it, that meant that "You have to start like with a little kid, picking up a pencil: 'you hold the pencil here. Practice! Loosen your fingers, you're squeezing them.'" (M3) When possible, combatants were divided into groups according to how much education they had. M4, who grew up in a village without a school, and so had no education when he joined up at twenty, was taught in a group of "us dummies [_brutitos_] who couldn't do anything, and some others who knew a little [were taught] separately." Beginning readers were taught a set of words chosen, first, for their phonetic simplicity, but also because they represented objects which were part of the learner's everyday life and would stimulate discussions on politically relevant themes. The methods were derived from the principles of popular education of the Brazilian literacy pioneer Paulo Freire, which had been introduced in El Salvador before the war as part of the awakening in the church influenced by liberation theology. Freire argues that the teaching of adults must use participatory teaching methods and unite the learning of specific skills with _concientizacio'n_ (consciousness-raising). His assumption is that for poor and oppressed people to learn effectively, they must identify and combat their oppression (Freire, 1970 and 1973). M6 had been a teacher before the war, and then organized literacy programs for combatants in the eastern part of the country. As he explained the process, he condensed peasant life before and during the war into six words: We proceeded just like in grade school, teaching the words that were most ordinary and common: papa, mama, _cuma_ [sickle], which is a work tool; _pala_ [shovel], which we used for military engineering; _fusil_ [rifle], _bala_ [bullet]. Or, as M5 put it, we always taught class based on the situation we were living in. _What aspects of the situation did you pay most attention to?_ Well, the course of the war, more than anything. For example, we could use the word _pala_, and we had a short dialogue about what a shovel was for: to dig trenches to fight the enemy. Reading material was scarce. Those in charge of education tried to provide each teacher with a dictionary. But books were not only hard to come by--they added a lot of weight to a knapsack; and when combat fell suddenly, soldiers had to evacuate without warning. The FMLN produced political pamphlets with simple lessons, usually in comic book form. These pamphlets, duplicated in the field by silk screen, were light and could be carried conveniently. In Chalatenango a regular bulletin circulated, carrying news, analysis, and a cultural section including poems and short stories by combatants themselves.(6) Most combatants were provided with notebooks (leaving them not much worse off than many Salvadoran students in rural areas, even in government schools, for whom a notebook was often the only school supply). If there were not enough to go around, "we would split a notebook in half" (Mariana Chicas). Civilian collaborators in the combat zones supplied notebooks which they bought in towns; but they were often confiscated at the army's roadblocks, along with other goods which the army suspected might be destined for the guerrilla army. A teacher would write out the lesson for each combatant: "he would go notebook by notebook and write the letters, and they would copy." (M3) Soldiers would sit on the ground hunched over their notebooks, painstakingly practicing letter by letter. Proudly displaying their work to a teacher, they would say, "'look, my handwriting is improving,' [and I would say] 'you're writing better. Do it this way.'" (M5) Some peasants rose to become _comandantes_ (although most _comandantes_ came from urban and intellectual backgrounds.) Though promotion was based primarily on their military and leadership skills, they also had to master literacy; at a minimum, they had to be able to read and write messages. Sometimes a literacy teacher was assigned to a _comandante_ full-time: "there were people who became masters of military strategy, and became _comandantes_, but didn't know how to read, and to be a _comandante_ and not know how to read is pretty difficult. So I was teaching just one _compan~ero_ to read, who was a _comandante_. I worked with him for about four months, and he learned." (M5) Major Fabricio Herna'ndez (only at the end of the war did the FMLN army, now called the National Army for Democracy, adopt formal ranks) grew up a peasant and only had two years of school. He rose to command troops around Nueva Granada in northern Usuluta'n department. "You learn from practice. I've been a teacher at times, teaching the vowels to people who never learned them." But even now, "when I pick up a newspaper or read a document or pamphlet I ask people to explain words that I don't understand. That way I've continued improving." But some resisted. According to F2, who oversaw education in Chalatenango, "set a teenager to learn to read and you had to fight with him, because he didn't think it was very important." Some responded to peer pressure, according to M7, a combatant-teacher: You didn't force them. You couldn't force them if they didn't want to study. _But you didn't try to appeal to their consciousness either?_ Sometimes you might tell them, "look, you have an opportunity to learn." "But I'm old," some said, "nothing goes into my head anymore." Then you would say to them, "No, man, it's not too late." Sometimes someone who knew how to write said to someone who couldn't, "Look, man, learn. Then you'll be able to write to your girlfriend." This made him eager to write a letter to his girlfriend, who maybe was in another camp. Specialized Training Beyond basic education, many who had gone to school, or who became literate in the guerrilla army, were trained in special skills, ranging from first aid to explosives to propaganda. Their training was usually brief, and most of their knowledge came from practice. But training was more systematic than literacy education: trainees were often withdrawn from combat to relatively safe rearguard areas for courses lasting several days. Among the most important specialties was the paramedic (also called _sanitario_ or _brigadista_). F3, one of the first paramedics, was introduced to her work in a three-day training course taught by two doctors in Chalatenango just before the 1981 offensive: "all they taught us was how to make cotton swabs, to treat wounds, to use direct pressure on a hemorrhage, and to apply a tourniquet if the hemorrhage was serious." Later the training became more systematic, according to M8, a physician who trained paramedics in Chalatenango. In a six-day course, trainees learned enough to do resuscitation, treat fractures, and move patients. They then joined a combat unit and treated the emergencies of all the combatants in the unit. The lessons have to be presented in the clearest and simplest manner possible, even when the knowledge acquired is complicated. When they learn anatomy, and also when they are going to learn to suture wounds, we try to get an animal and explain where is the heart, the lungs, the intestines etc., and have them practice suturing. Actually, that's just the way I learned in medical school. Most of the paramedics were women (as were nearly a third of all combatants). Those who took to it well went on to learn more advanced specialties: anesthetist, surgical instrumentist, dentist-- some even did minor surgery and amputations. As M8 explained, We started doing advanced training pretty spontaneously in each hospital, explaining what to do and how to keep records of what they did. But it soon became clear that we had to give specific courses for that. So we started giving paramedics advanced training in patient care: nursing, administration, etc. Each course was a prerequisite for the next; those who took the course to become surgical instrumentists were selected from the ones who had already learned patient care, "because we don't do operations every day, and when there are no operations they take part in the everyday work." Those who worked as literacy teachers in their units were also trained, but less systematically. Most of them were ordinary combatants. Many were chosen for the task because they had a third or fourth grade education. This put them ahead of most of their _compan~eros_ in arms, but they had no formal knowledge of teaching methods. The commanders of the guerrilla army believed that every combatant should learn to read and write--which meant that people with only a few years' education would have to become educators. It is a common conviction in the FMLN, shared by people of all levels of education, that _conciencia_--consciousness, conscience, dedication-- is more important than training in an educator; one who recognizes the obligation to teach will figure out how. According to one platoon leader (who went into the guerrilla army with a third-grade education but became a volunteer schoolteacher in his community after the war), combatants who had been to at least fifth or sixth grade taught because "their consciences moved them." (M9) For a combatant- teacher, "you educated others as a part of your brotherly affection for your _compan~ero_. You didn't want to see him not learn." (M7) So people taught whose own preparation was limited but who acted from a strong dose of commitment and affection. Nor could they be very demanding of their pupils, for several reasons: learning was essentially voluntary; learners lacked confidence in their abilities and were sometimes resistant; besides, classes were constantly interrupted. So the emphasis on commitment and the difficult combat conditions reinforced each other to produce a pedagogy which relied less on academic rigor than on moral incentives in the form of steady encouragement and invocations of the political obligation to learn. But the teachers' good will had to be fortified with at least some technical knowledge. Some middle-level people were assigned to education as their primary task, and their duties included training and assisting the combatant-teachers. Those who supervised education were usually people from urban areas who had studied in teacher training school or university. From time to time they held intensive courses of a few days' duration for the combatant-teachers. "We made it simple," said M6, a normal school graduate and a public school teacher before the war: "how to hold a pencil, how to develop dexterity with a pencil, then the vowels and then the structure of words and sentences." They also spent time traveling among the camps, observing the work of the combatant-teachers and giving them advice. In this rudimentary training, combatant-teachers were introduced to the possibility of making _concientizacio'n_ part of literacy teaching. But at the beginning of the war, according to M6, "we didn't connect it to political discussion much. It's not like popular education now [1993], where at the same time as teaching to read, you do consciousness-raising." Though they learned methods which drew on Paulo Freire's "pedagogy of the oppressed," most combatant-teachers had no firsthand knowledge of it. When M7, a combatant-teacher, spoke of "popular education," I asked him what he meant by the phrase. He replied, "we didn't use the term in the war. It was more like, 'I'm going to teach you to read and write.'" Advanced training was offered in other skills as well. Newly literate peasants learned to operate microcomputers (with which, astonishingly, the command centers in the mountains were equipped). Others were trained in world geography and global politics so that they could intelligently monitor short-wave radio transmissions. The FMLN's clandestine radio stations, Radio Farabundo Marti' in the middle of the country and Radio Venceremos in the east, trained announcers, journalists, and technicians. Some solidary foreigners were invited to the front to give special courses; Jose' Ignacio Lo'pez Vigil, an Ecuadoran whose book about Radio Venceremos (1991) is in addition a fascinating account of guerrilla life, went to Moraza'n to teach a course in radio production. Political Education All combatants took part in political education. In addition to _concientizacio'n_ as part of literacy instruction, there were general political discussions. They were conducted not by specialized personnel but by the unit leader, whose role was supposed to combine political and military leadership. The time and frequency varied, but political discussions occurred more regularly than basic education (normally every day), and the whole unit took part. The leader gathered the troops to discuss political issues--current events, the nature of the new society for which they were fighting, and the need to propagandize civilian communities. The entire unit or camp would discuss the news they heard every day on the two radio stations. The leaders of the FMLN were persuaded that political education was essential to consolidate the combatants' commitment. A volunteer army travels less on its stomach than on its hearts and minds, and combatants' recruitment and morale depend mainly on their belief in the cause for which they are fighting. Some scholars deny that ideology contributes much to combat morale, whether among soldiers in general (Keegan, 46-52) or among peasant combatants in particular (Scott, 1976; Wickham-Crowley, 1992). It is true that some combatants found political education an unnecessary diversion from military tasks. According to F4, a combatant from Chalatenango who became a unit leader, they said, "we don't want anything to do with politics." They had a certain consciousness, they knew why they had taken up a rifle to fight injustice, but if you came and talked to them about historical materialism, or dialectical materialism, they would say, "don't give us anything about politics. Here we talk about rifles, how many battles we're going to fight, and what matters to us is how many soldiers we're going to kill." A marching song brought humor to this ambivalence: _Para ser buen guerrillero solamente necesitas estar claro por que' luchas y trotar las man~anitas_ (To be a good fighter You only need To be sure of why you're fighting And jog every morning) (Henri'quez Consalvi, 1992: 198). But the FMLN viewed ideological education as essential to the military effort. This conviction is clear from the testimony of several people from different levels of the guerrilla army. M11, a combatant: "The life of the guerrilla combatant was full of enormous sacrifices. You had to have a high level of consciousness and be clear about why all this sacrifice was necessary. Otherwise you wouldn't put up with it." F2, who oversaw education in Chalatenango: "Political- ideological education is like the assurance that the militant is going to stick with the process." M8, a doctor who worked behind FMLN lines: "Ideological strength is what makes someone voluntarily decide to risk life in combat. Life is the most precious thing we have! To say 'OK, I'll go. Give me a rifle. Train me,' and to go fight the government army, one has to have tremendous ideological support." They claimed that political education was meant to encourage independent thought, not just parroting of a line. According to _comandante_ Nidia Di'az, combatants had gut feelings about injustice and oppression from their own experience--"on the coffee plantations they saw that the master's dog had meat and they were dying of starvation. Then there were the massacres and the repression." But, she continued, their political education led them beyond the raw sense of oppression to consider alternatives: "what kind of project of society did you want to create--what do you want to achieve in education, in health, in the economy, in democracy? What do you want to achieve in the country? Ideological and political training was basic to be able to survive the most difficult periods of the war." So they discussed political themes: the conflict between rich and poor, the one-crop export economy as the basis of exploitation, and inequality as the main cause of the war. The process of open discussion and exchange, moreover, made combatants aware that their talents and contributions were recognized, according to _comandante_ Mariana Chicas: "they develop their capacity for political analysis. They don't just take orders, they have to be able to analyze and develop their thinking." M8 argued that while the process might be dismissed as "indoctrination or brainwashing," it was real and essential: "It's not that someone comes from outside to tell us, or to force us, because these are things that come from the actual needs of people and can't be imported from somewhere else." Still, some may doubt that these combatants' beliefs ran very deep. It is possible to dismiss an ideological statement as mere rhetoric, especially when it is made by people of little intellectual sophistication, and argue that they speak from a script rather than from conviction. If they do speak from conviction, the ideology should have some observable effect on their behavior. For these combatants, one can observe such effects, for they frequently illustrated abstractions by their own experience. This was especially the case when they discussed their relations with civilian communities--which, as we shall see, were a major objective of ideological education. M9, a platoon leader, spoke of the obligation to share medicine, if they had it, with sick civilians, to win their sympathy for the guerrilla cause. "But we didn't just do it to make them know we were fighting for them, but because we could see that they were suffering; we were all poor." M10, speaking of conducting meetings to persuade villagers to support the cause, said, "anyone can do it, because everyone who joins the people's struggle knows the ideals he is fighting for." One might also be skeptical of the claim that political education significantly increased the troops' morale and commitment, because those making that claim had a vested interest in believing it. But some of their opponents agreed, including at least one with direct knowledge of guerrilla life. Miguel Castellanos, _comandante_ of the FPL, was captured by the Salvadoran army in 1985, subsequently renounced the FMLN, and supported the government when I interviewed him in 1988. (In 1989 he was murdered by FMLN urban commandos.) In his view, "it's a life of great sacrifice. What keeps you going is the ideological and political aspect, the struggle for an ideal." He was quick to add that its utility was running out and that as the war dragged on, many FMLN combatants were deserting. But four former US military advisors to the Salvadoran armed forces, writing in the same year, disagreed and said that the FMLN's "commitment to victory is absolute and unbending" (Bacavich et al., 1988: 93). Apart from political education, lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic were also promoted in part for their ideological effects: to keep combatants from developing an excessively militarist mentality. People from a variety of social origins believed that educating mitigated the psychological effects of a decade of war. M11, a combatant in Chalatenango: "we weren't guerrilla fighters just to fight, but to elevate ourselves, develop ourselves culturally. The purpose wasn't just to spew bullets, but to learn." F4, a squadron leader: "we always said we don't want to create an army that just thinks about taking up a rifle and killing, with a militarist attitude." M12, who directed the production of propaganda and educational materials in a clandestine print shop in Chalatenango: the FMLN educated "so that the _compan~ero_ would not be a war machine, who joins up and his task is to shoot, shoot, and shoot, but rather that he would go though a process of growth." Combatants received political education throughout the war. But it became more important with the change in strategy of 1984-85, which meant that the war would last longer than had been anticipated and that political work with civilians would be intensified, both of which put a premium on ideological work. Both also made new demands which troubled many combatants. The anticipated long haul demanded ideological reinforcement. The truth is that all this [strategic reorientation] created problems within the fighting forces, because people joined up in hot pursuit of victory. Then when they were told that the victory was far away, and no one knew when, lots of them deserted. So we decided that all the internal education should have a clarity about purposes, and about the causes which produced the struggle, and the need to keep going forward until we achieve the goal. (M6) A main task of the newly formed smaller units, especially those outside of the controlled zones, was to spread the FMLN's message and organize in civilian communities, a task known as expansion. According to an FMLN peasant organizing manual, apparently from 1985, this meant a return to the kind of organizing that had gone on during what the manual called "the first stage of the war, 1975-80," the phase of organizing which had preceded the actual outbreak of armed hostilities.(7) But expansion also raised new problems. Even though the combatants came from communities very much like those in which they now undertook propaganda and organizing campaigns, guerrilla life had made them less capable of relating to civilians. They had to be reminded that "they are not superior to the civilian population; they are equal, and those people are their reason for being there. This fundamental reorientation (_readecuacio'n orga'nica_) of the FMLN was really very difficult." (F2) Political education courses were developed to prepare combatants to relate effectively to civilian communities. The first issue was that expansion by definition occurred in communities under control of the army, many of which the FMLN had attacked, "so they were somewhat uncertain and afraid of the FMLN." (F2) Combatants had to overcome suspicion in these communities: they had to ask permission to sleep under the eaves of houses, to buy food rather than taking it (unless it was offered), and not to insist when people did not want even to sell it. Most important, the combatants had to learn the attitude of the organizer who came to talk to people in their language about their problems, and help find solutions. Combatants had to be able to present the FMLN's political position persuasively. This meant that they had to be sure of the message and be trained in propaganda and organizing techniques so that they would know how to communicate it. If they had a strong gut feeling of oppression from their own experience, they still had to learn to articulate it and communicate it in the communities. Their goal was to bring the population into legal, open organizations such as cooperatives and peasant organizations which would both promote their own demands and support the FMLN's struggle. To train the combatants for these new tasks, military and political training had to be combined. Squadron leaders were trained to be combatants/popular organizers (_combatientes organizadores del pueblo_ or COPs). Special schools which had offered courses in advanced military skills lasting weeks or months now broadened their curriculum. At the Comandante Clelia school, founded in 1985 in Moraza'n, whose namesake had died in combat in 1983, soldiers-- sometimes as many as 500 at a time--took courses which combined military training, intensive instruction in specialties, and propaganda work. They also received basic instruction, intended to bring them up to fourth grade level (Mena Sandoval, 1991: 333-39). At the Ada'n Di'az school in San Vicente and the Jose' Dimas Alas school in Chalatenango, squadron leaders were brought together with peasant leaders from civilian communities for political training. According to F2, in Chalatenango "we worked out a very nice campaign with techniques of popular education to work on these things with the _compan~eros_." Squadron leaders passed their political training on to the combatants in their units, giving them both political education and training in organizing skills. This training thus became part of many combatants' experience, and they were expected to be able to conduct meetings with the civilian population and give speeches. The trainers, many of whom were relatively well educated city people, often commented that the combatants receiving the training were shy about addressing public meetings: They are very shy, but with time they break down the shyness. It's not the same to communicate with your family or your friends at home, as to show up in a community and bring together two or three hundred people you don't know and try to get everyone to understand you. We all learned this from practice during the war. (M3) _Comandante_ Mariana Chicas similarly noted that many seemed reluctant to participate actively in classes. But Freirean pedagogy provided techniques to break down their reserve and stimulate their participation: "We started with _dina'micas_, games to break the ice and get them over their inhibitions to participate more actively." But peasants are notoriously reticent in front of those they perceive as their superiors, and this reticence did not disappear automatically even when those "superiors" had shared the rigors of combat and guerrilla life. What the trainers attributed to shyness may have been due as much to having to perform in front of better educated members of the guerrilla army as to the large size of the community meetings. Many combatants, even new recruits with no special political training, spoke out at meetings. M10, quoted above as saying that "anyone can do it," had been to high school, but fought as an ordinary combatant. He claimed that addressing a meeting in a community required no special skill. "I admire those peasants who have an easy-going manner and know how to express themselves. They've broken down the barriers and said, 'I can do it!'" They were often recognized as more effective propagandists than their superiors, because the people of the communities they addressed felt the same distance from more educated combatants as the peasant combatants did but related more easily to less polished speakers. Education and Stratification among the Troops Teaching people was an expression of the FMLN's battle against inherited inequality. Yet it also reflected that inequality, for social origins made a difference even within the guerrilla army, with family status and gender both playing a role. Those who came from high-status backgrounds and had good educations were more likely to ascend in rank; they also shared some of their society's prejudices against peasants. Most of the highest command positions went to people from cities with some university education; relatively few peasants rose to be _comandantes_. Combatants with at least relatively high education levels (sixth grade or junior high school, for example) were more likely to receive training in specialties requiring intellectual skills. Some of them were peasants, but most peasants were foot soldiers. The FMLN made conscious efforts to overcome these differences, but they continued to tell. Even the commitment to educating the troops put the well educated in superordinate positions, as teachers sharing their wisdom with the ignorant. Although the theory of popular education, to which all participants subscribed, declared that all were equal, and that everyone was both teacher and learner (and those who offered education sincerely claimed that they got at least as much out of teaching as they gave), in practice the relation of teacher to student reflected their unequal social origins. Nor were the urbanites exempt from the disparaging attitudes toward peasants which prevailed in their culture, which underlay, for example, their perception of peasants' "shyness." Thus the very social inequalities which the FMLN's revolution aimed at destroying operated within the guerrilla army. Education may even have been a more important mark of social status within the guerrilla army than in civilian life because there were few material differences; for guerrilla fighters in the field, command and specialist positions did not necessarily bring material advantages. So Regis Debray's claim that in the mountains "class egoism does not long endure" (quoted in Ahmad, 1968: 81) is surely exaggerated. But that is not to say that inequalities in social background were rigidly reproduced. They were overcome to a significant degree (though they weigh heavily in this article because was they were particularly relevant to education). Nor does failure to overcome them completely mean that the claimed commitment to educating all combatants was not genuine. It was manifest not only abstractly in the FMLN's egalitarian ideology but concretely in its educational practice. The FMLN educated people, to repeat, for both practical and principled reasons: to provide trained personnel capable of performing military functions and to fulfill the revolutionary aspiration to a society of equality which would recognize and promote the full capacities of all members. But at the same time, a mystique of combat inverted the prevailing hierarchy by promoting respect for pure military skill and devaluing intellectual work. Peasants often excelled at combat: they were more familiar with the rural terrain, and they were tougher and better able to live off the land in the mountains. This inversion affected people of urban and rural origin alike. Some urban, well-educated combatants felt compelled to prove themselves in combat, like M12, who left his position directing the production of propaganda and educational materials in a clandestine print shop in Chalatenango: "I felt it was a moral duty to go fight. A peasant who had barely learned to read and write had no other choice but to fight. It would be very convenient to hide behind a typewriter when thousands and thousands are dying." Though he justified his decision in moral terms, we can infer that he also felt a desire to prove himself. Even some peasants who were no better educated than most combatants also felt inferior for not being on the front lines. F5, a young woman refugee who trained the youth in a Honduran refugee camp to return to El Salvador to join the guerrilla army, said, "I didn't feel I had much moral credit to be saying to those guys, 'look, this is what life is like at the front.'" At the same time, according to F4, "people from the mountains tended to put down those who came from the city, to say that they were queers [_maricones_], that they'd never been sleeping in the mountains or putting up with shit [_verga_]." Many combatants resisted political education because it was usually taught by city boys and seemed abstract and unrelated to the skills they prized. One of the limits to popular education during the conflict was the fact that many uneducated combatants saw no point to mastering intellectual skills when they wanted to excel at combat. Gender inequality also prevailed among the combatants. About 30% of them were women--their presence was a significant difference, shared with other Latin America guerrilla movements which arose in the 1970s (notably Nicaragua's Sandinistas and Uruguay's Tupamaros), from earlier guerrilla movements (Chinchilla, 1983; Mason, 1992: 64; Reif, 1986; Wickham-Crowley, 1992: 215). But inequality between women and men was confronted even less directly than class inequality. A few women became _comandantes_. But most women's assignments had them performing the traditional roles of their gender. Many were health workers. Another common women's specialization, as radio operators, demanded a technical training uncommon among women civilians, but the _radista's_ central position in military communications meant, as F2 observed, that she was essentially the squadron head's secretary.(8) Nor was education consciously deployed to combat gender- determined role assignments. But gender differences entered into popular education in a different way: gender education and consciousness-raising(9) were conducted for some women in the guerrilla forces. Speaking of health workers' training, F2 said, "since most of them were women, we introduced the theme of women-- without much vision of gender, because we hadn't even heard the word 'gender'--but to make them value their work [and reinforce] their self-esteem." Since "the fundamental thing was the armed struggle," and women doing health work were on the sidelines, a woman in a leadership position was regularly invited to health workers' training sessions to talk about their participation in the process [and tell them] that we are in a situation of equality with the _compan~eros_. We realized that the women devalued themselves, and so did the men [devalue the women]. The Frente [FMLN] has its macho side. So that was one aspect, directed at their self- esteem: "Your participation is just as important as the men's. That one may be a combatant, and you may be a health worker, but you're not worth less." Sessions in gender consciousness also addressed the predictable problems which arose in mixed units: The other issue was the dignity of the _compan~eras_. The war--separation from their parents, and from their children, the fact that you might die tomorrow--made you live relationships between couples very immediately. So you could have a very intense relationship with one man, and then the next day have one with someone else, because you didn't know if you were going to die the day after. This injured the women's dignity and created instability. So we tried to raise their dignity and--without imposing traditional rules, that this is the man for your whole life--encourage stability between couples. As with popular education generally, consciousness-raising among women combatants served several purposes combining military necessity and principled struggle: sexual relations caused problems in combat units and also raised issues of equality between men and women. Gender education nevertheless barely addressed the substantial inequalities between men and women which prevailed among combatants as in civilian life. But incorporation into the guerrilla army put women into a new life situation which tended to break down prevailing norms, and thereby provided an opening for new ideas which had hardly been raised at any level of Salvadoran society previously. The Impact of Popular Education On January 16, 1992, the FMLN and the government of El Salvador signed an agreement to end more than eleven years of war without victory for either side. The FMLN was recognized as a legal political party; the government promised a land distribution program both for the combatants and for civilians in the formerly FMLN- controlled zones; and constitutional amendments had been negotiated which separated military and police functions and abolished the Treasury Police and National Guard--the purpose of these measures was to put an end to the massive state-sponsored repression which had prevailed during the war. Though the FMLN could not claim victory, it had held its own against the Salvadoran army, superior in numbers, weaponry, and external assistance. I argue that a major factor in its ability to do so was the close relation between the armed insurgents and their civilian base, and in particular the cultivation of combat ability and morale in the members of the guerrilla army. It is not possible to estimate education's contribution precisely. But I believe that, given the low educational and cultural level of most recruits, the FMLN could hardly have succeeded as it did without educating them under three conditions highlighted in this paper: the conviction that all people were capable of learning, regardless of their background; the successful creation of a trained corps of combatants with a variety of skills; and the cultivation of morale and dedication to the cause for which the FMLN fought. The contribution of education to the FMLN's negotiation of a relatively favorable outcome must remain speculative. Its impact on the troops themselves is clearer, though still mixed. Some _comandantes_ claimed that everyone learned to read, but they exaggerated. At the war's end there were still many, especially militia members and those who joined near the end of the war, who had not even gotten the rudiments of literacy. Some of this shortfall was due to material obstacles: resources were short, teachers were inexperienced, and fighting the war always came first. But not all the blame can be placed on objective factors. Some illiterate combatants simply resisted, immune to instrumental persuasion, moral incentives, and peer pressure. Nor were all _comandantes_ and unit leaders fully responsive. According to F2, sometimes even the squad leaders [_jefes_] were lazy. Generally squad leaders of peasant origin were less interested, because our peasantry, which never had a chance to study, grows up without education. Leaders who came from the cities were a little more aware of the need for literacy and political education. Asked what was the greatest difficulty she had encountered in ten years of supervising educational and cultural activities among the troops of Moraza'n, _comandante_ Mariana Chicas responded, Getting people to take it seriously. Not that they rejected it, but sometimes it was left as something secondary, and people didn't follow up. So we tried to get the person in charge to assure that people would be there on time, and on a regular basis, not do it one day and the next day not. Most in the command structure nevertheless did believe that education was necessary and promoted it seriously. The FMLN's commitment was demonstrated, for example, by its use of its own media to promote literacy, as in a "commercial" on Radio Venceremos in 1991, a dialogue between two very hip-sounding young men (my transcription, from memory): Did you check out what was in the paper today? How do you know what was in the paper? I thought you couldn't read. You're right that I _couldn't_. But now I've learned to read in the National Army for Democracy. Don't bullshit me! [_!!No joda's!_] It's true. Besides, I'm there with all my _compan~eros_ and we're fighting together for a more just society. Even prisoners of war were taught. Captured government soldiers were encouraged to remain voluntarily and join the guerrilla army (though they were normally returned in prisoner exchanges), and a school was created in Moraza'n for prisoners who were regarded as likely prospects. Conversely, Colonel Francisco Adolfo Castillo, Undersecretary of Defense, taught FMLN combatants to read during his two years as a prisoner of war (Mena Sandoval, 1991: 321-328; Lo'pez Vigil, 1991: 174-81, 288). Finally, education was important enough that the FMLN negotiated educational benefits for combatants as part of the peace settlement. During a yearlong demobilization period when combatants were quartered in camps with no military activity, full-time instructors conducted classes to enable them to consolidate what they had learned and receive equivalency certificates at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. (Though even then some combatants who had not learned to read during the war resisted attending classes.) If the commitment to educate was serious, it is still hard to evaluate the concrete results. Education always took second place to fighting the war. And it was most successful when it addressed the practical needs of combat or political organization. But the FMLN did turn its recruits, people with exceedingly limited backgrounds, into a corps of trained specialists able to perform on the battlefield and in staff positions. Any evaluation must recognize that education had several purposes, so its success is not reducible to the number who learned to read and write. There is in any case no systematic evidence to tell how many combatants learned or failed to learn. It is likely, however, that success among the guerrilla fighters would compare favorably to that of the Salvadoran public school system, especially if one considers not only the success rate among those who received education but also the coverage, for many learned in the FMLN who had never had access to school. Retention is a problem for those who have no regular need to use their skills. Some combatants who had had a year or two of school as children said that it hadn't taken, and that only when they studied in the guerrilla army had they really learned. There they immediately applied their newly acquired skills to practical tasks, and thereby received reinforcement that consolidated what they had learned. M7, a combatant-teacher, had students who were made radio operators as soon as they had learned the basics: "_compan~eros_ who had studied got their practice there with the radio, writing and decoding messages. The practice of spending 24 hours a day working with a pencil, writing messages, made them improve their writing, without having to be doing exercises in a notebook." Anecdotes of success abound. M13, the radio operator who explained that teaching others to read was part of teaching them how get a message right, was himself a product of guerrilla education: he completed first grade when he was twelve years old, in 1980, and immediately joined the guerrilla army because it was safer than his village. There he continued his education: he learned to type, to intercept and translate coded radio transmissions, and was trained in propaganda; he took the accelerated course offered at the end of the war and passed a ninth grade equivalency exam. "I did it little by little." He is almost astonished at the abilities he discovered in himself: "I began to feel confident with the little bit I had managed to learn, because now I could operate all the machines." Of his fellow workers in a communication center, "nobody had been to sixth grade. All of us had only been to first grade or second grade, but as time passed we caught up." Not everyone got so far, but even some who were less than star pupils felt the impact. M4, who called himself a dummy, learned a little in the war but admitted that when he wanted to write a letter he had to get someone to help him. But he still felt that his studies were important to him: "it makes you think more about your family; that you never learned anything, and what if your family didn't either? So you try to see to it that those kids do learn." Some shone. "We start teaching everyone to read, and some stand out--they have a certain vocation, and they get promoted to different specialties. There are _compan~eros_ who are radio operators, health workers, or even in charge of a structure who started out from nothing." (Mariana Chicas) M12, who ran a workshop which produced printed propaganda, had many opportunities to see newly literate people working at tasks that demanded well developed skills, "whether in communication, or in health, or in propaganda, or in international work. The result was excellent. Many _compan~eros_ learned to read and write there and now they can run computer systems." The teachers' stories of their pupils' progress and dedication convey their conviction that the process was effective. But their enthusiasm about their pupils is often modestly veiled delight at proving their own competence. The impact on the combatant-teachers themselves, few of whom had ever thought of themselves as intellectually skilled, must be counted as one of the educational process's important effects. "This thing of popular education has been like a discovery that it is possible to do it." (M7) But the purpose, in any case, was never merely to produce fighters with special skills. It was also to foster the analytical capacity and breadth of vision that would be necessary to run a new society. The FMLN educated to lay the basis for a society in which human abilities would be fully cultivated. According to _comandante_ He'ctor Marti'nez, who worked in Chalatenango, education was an expression of optimism that all those who learned would "participate in the social and economic development of society. With these people it will be possible to raise the social level." And for _comandante_ Nidia Di'az, "The _Frente_ [FMLN] has always sought the integral development of the human being. And education plays a crucial role, so that people can develop, not only to transform society, but to prepare themselves to run it." These claims about the purpose of general education, like the earlier ones about political and ideological education, may provoke some skepticism. But, as I have argued above, we can conclude that ideology is meaningful to those who espouse it if we can observe its influence on their behavior. Concretely, these expansive views about human development, I believe, are reflected in the process, scope, and effects of the FMLN's educational practice. Guerrilla warfare is fundamentally a political rather than a military phenomenon, and it was the FMLN's politics which determined the importance of education. Teaching was a concrete expression of the belief that people are equal by right and of the commitment to make them equal in fact. Though its effect was always limited by the war, members of the guerrilla army achieved remarkable growth in knowledge, skills, and consciousness. _Notes_ 1. Two of the forty informants were not technically members of the guerrilla army; they were unarmed health workers who formally maintained civilian status but worked directly with the FMLN. The interviews, averaging forty-five minutes to an hour in length, were taped and transcribed. I have identified _comandantes_ (with their permission) by the names by which they are widely known (usually in fact pseudonyms). Other informants are designated by code numbers, preceded by M for men and F for women. 2. The term "political-military organizations" by which they were called during the war is no longer appropriate because the FMLN has formally foresworn military struggle. In 1993 the ERP changed its name to _Expresio'n Renovadora del Pueblo_ (Renovative Expression of the People), preserving the acronym. 3. In a translation of his poetry, Ariel Dorfman says that the word _compan~ero_ "stubbornly resisted an English-language equivalent. . . . _Compan~ero_, a man, or _compan~era_, a woman, could be rendered as _mate_, _friend_, _comrade_, _companion_; but none of these has the unique resonance of the Spanish. If you look at the origins of the word, a _compan~ero_ is one with whom you share bread" (Dorfman, 1988: n.p.). In El Salvador its shortened form _compa_ refers specifically to members of the guerrilla army. 4. Some scholars dispute the relevance of morale and commitment--or indeed of any characteristic of a guerrilla army--to success or failure, arguing instead that the outcome of a guerrilla war depends on the structural and political characteristics of the society as a whole. I will return to this question below. 5. The unstated conclusion to this sentence is, "to bomb us." 6. Some of these guerrilla literary works have been collected in Huezo Mixco, 1989; Morel, 1993; and (in English translation) Alegri'a and Flakoll, 1989. 7. _El Trabajo de Organizacio'n Campesina F.M.L.N._ This manual was apparently in the possession of _comandante_ Nidia Di'az when she was captured in 1985. A copy was kindly provided to me by J. Michael Waller of the International Freedom Foundation, who will hardly want to be held responsible for any use to which I put it. 8. Compare the observation that many "jobs pegged as 'women's work'" in the United States "have revolved around the telephone. . . . In such jobs the female worker mediates--rather than initiates--communication" (Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, 1993). 9. The topics discussed among women combatants were similar to those raised in the US women's movement, so I use the term "consciousness-raising." But I never heard anyone use the term _concientizacio'n_ in reference to them. References Ahmad, Eqbal, Radical but Wrong. Pp. 70-83 in Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, ed., Regis Debray and the Latin American Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968. Alegri'a, Claribel, and D.J. Flakoll, No Me Agarran Viva: La Mujer Salvadoren~a en la Lucha. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1987. ___ eds., On the Front Lines: Guerrilla Poems of El Salvador. Willimantic: Curbstone Press, 1989. Armstrong, Robert, and Janet Shenk, El Salvador: The Face of Revolution. Boston: South End Press, 1982. Bacavich, A.J., et al., American Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador. Unpublished paper, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1988. Barndt, Deborah, Popular Education. Pp. 317-46 in Nicaragua: The First Five Years, Thomas W. Walker, ed. New York: Praeger, 1985. Berryman, Philip, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1984. Ca'ceres Prendes, Jorge, Political Radicalization and Popular Pastoral Practices in El Salvador, 1969-1985. Pp. 103-48 in The Progressive Church in Latin America. Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Alexander Wilde. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. Carnoy, Martin, and Joel Samoff, Education and Social Transition in the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Chinchilla, Norma Stoltz, Class Struggle in Central America. Latin American Perspectives 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1980), 2-23. , Women in Revolutionary Movements: The Case of Nicaragua. Michigan State University: Working Paper #27, 1983. Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office. Exhibit, 1993. Dorfman, Ariel, Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. FMLN, Comandancia General, El Salvador Vive una Prolongada Situacio'n Revolucionaria. Unpublished document, June 1985. Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970. , Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum, 1973 Hammond, John L., Popular Education in the Midst of Guerrilla War: An Interview with Julio Portillo, _Journal of Education_ 173 (1991), 91-106 , War-Uprooting and the Political Mobilization of Central American Refugees, _Journal of Refugee Studies_, forthcoming, 1993. Harnecker, Marta, Con la Mirada en Alto: Historia de las FPL Farabundo Marti' a trave's de entrevistas con sus dirigentes. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1993. Henri'quez Consalvi, Carlos (Santiago), La Terquedad del Izote: El Salvador: Cro'nica de un Victoria. Me'xico: Editorial Diana, 1992. Huezo Mixco, Miguel, ed., Pa'jaro y Volca'n. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1989. Keegan, John, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. New York: Vintage Cooks, 1976. Lo'pez Vigil, Jose' Ignacio, Las Mil y Una Historias de Radio Venceremos. San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1991. Mason, T. David, Women's Participation in Central American Revolutions: A Theoretical Perspective. Comparative Political Studies, 25, No. 1 (April, 1992), 63-89. Mena Sandoval, Francisco Emilio, Del Eje'rcito Nacional al Eje'rcito Guerrillero. San Salvador: Ediciones Arcoiris, 1991. Montgomery, Tommie Sue, Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution. Boulder: Westview Press, 1982. Morel, Augusto, ed., Este Lucero Chiquito: Poesi'a y Cuentos de la Montan~a. San Salvador: Editorial Sombrero Azul, 1993. Paige, Jeffery M., Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World. New York: Free Press, 1975. Pearce, Jenny, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador. London: Latin America Bureau, 1986. Reif, Linda L., Women in Latin American Guerrilla Movements: A Comparative Perspective. Comparative Politics 18, No. 2 (January, 1986), 147-69. Skocpol, Theda, What Makes Peasants Revolutionary? Comparative Politics 14, No. 3 (April, 1982), 351-75. Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P., Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956. Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1992. Wolf, Eric R., Peasants. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966. , Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York; Harper and Row, 1969.