The Liberation Struggle in El Salvador: A Memoir

by Eduardo Espinoza

"This book, written with so much love, so much realism, so much honesty and so much literary beauty by my friend and comrade in the struggle, Dr Eduardo Espinoza, our beloved Felipe Dubón, is a living testimony to the great ideals that propelled the guerrilla struggle of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in the 1980s. It is also a splendid homage to the thousands of heroes and heroines, combatants in the FMLN's military health system, who saved lives, who treated the wounded, who were psychologists even though they never studied psychology and who were an enormous bastion of morale for all our forces and for the communities that supported us in the people's war against the oligarchy and imperialism." – Lorena Peña Mendoza, Frente Farabundo Marti Para la, Liberación Nacional and former member of El Salvador's Legislative Assembly

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2019

About the author

Eduardo Espinoza is a medical doctor with a Master's in Public Health, Professor of Health Systems and Health Policy in the Master's in Public Health programme at the University of El Salvador and a health sector reform researcher. He was active in the revolutionary forces from 1975 to 1992 during the civil war in El Salvador, in charge of medical services in battle zones and of training health activists for the rebels and the civilian population in these areas, which had been abandoned by government medical services. He was detained and tortured twice: in 1978 (two months) and in 1985 (eight months). With the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, he returned to the University of El Salvador to do research and teach public health. From 1995 to 1999, he was Dean of the Medical School at the University of El Salvador. He is a faculty member of the International People's Health University, a project of the People's Health Movement. In 2009, the government of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party drafted him to join the cabinet as Deputy Minister for Health Policy, where he continues, now with the second FMLN administration, elected in 2014.

Reviews

[Angel Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book hit hard as I am from El Salvador and makes me proud to be Salvadoran. It provides a very emotional glimpse into the struggle of revolutionaries fighting during the Civil War and the sacrifices they've had to endure. While they fought for love of their country/land, humanity, and one another, those sacrifices were also forced upon them by government soldiers backed and trained by the USA.

In one part of the memoir, Eduardo tells of the violence dished out against Salvadoran civilians as part of the government's strategy to prevent civilians from aiding the revolutionaries. As Mao advised guerrillas to move amongst the people as fish in the ocean, the counterinsurgent forces figured they could drain the ocean by massacring any village suspected of either being, or helping, the communist forces. This is typical of US strategy when dealing with insurgents as well, so no surprised the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion implemented the same strategy.

Eduardo saw firsthand the massacre of a whole town, with the corpses of children clinging to the bodies of their decapitated parents. These visions would haunt his dreams, until the death of Domingo Monterrosa (leader of the Atlacatl Battlion) in a battle for the base of Radio Venceremos. How could anyone help but to celebrate at the death of a monster? I know I'll be celebrating when one monster still living (Henry Kissinger) finally meets his end.

I'm lucky enough to have been born after the Peace Accords, but this history is still a part of all Salvadorans, whether they're aware of it or not.

[Adriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential read for those looking to understand the sheer bravery, tragedy, and beauty of being Salvadoran