So who were they before they were the FMLN?

Alberto Martin Alvarez and Eudald Cortina Orero have a interesting new paper on the origins of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), one of the FMLN's political-military organizations in the newest edition of the Journal of Latin American Studies. Here is the abstract for The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976:

Using interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

I think we all know the basic story that several former Communist Party supporters gave up on the electoral route to power and helped form the ERP (and the FPL) and that divisions within the ERP, made more than apparent by Roque Dalton's murder, led to a split within the organization which then led to the establishment of the FARN a few years later.

However, Martin and Cortina go into much greater detail on the origins of one of the major political-military groups that eventually comprised the FMLN. The founders of the ERP and its antecedent El Grupo were drawn more from certain social Christian-oriented groups particularly active at the UES and other academic institutions in the late 1960s / early 1970s. The youth group of the PCS that also contributed members was less important at least in terms of early leaders and recruits. The ERP in the first half of the 1970s "was not yet a unified organisation, but rather a sort of federation of small armed groups that acted in coordination with each other."

In 1973, a small group headed by Francisco Jovel and others split from the ERP because they believed the party should lead a broader-based coalition against the regime. The remaining ERP were more committed to a militaristic approach. The dissident group would form the Workers' Revolutionary Organisation which would eventually morph into the PRTC (another of the FMLN's organisations) a few years later.

In 1974, a similar division occurred between the Resistance (Eduardo Sancho and then Roque Dalton) and those who sought to militarize the organization in preparation for insurrection. When the leadership militarized the organization curtailing any possibility of dialogue between the two groups, Armando Arteaga and Dalton were arrested and executed in April 1975.

The Resistance leaders then met on May first at which point they decided to leave the organization. These individuals went on to establish the FARN. The ERP's murder of Dalton and Arteaga left it isolated from the other organizations and from Cuba for the rest of the 1970s. Only when the organizations were able to overcome their differences were they able to move in the direction of greater unity with the establishment of the FMLN in 1980.

There's a lot of interesting detail on the early insurgent movement in the article, particularly as it relates to the ERP. If you are interested in learning about Salvadoran history and one of the individual organisations that comprised the FMLN, I would strongly encourage you to take a look at the The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976.