El Salvador at War

TO UNDERSTAND INSURGENT conflict in the Third World, Americans must recognize the nature of the struggle between totalitarianism and democracy. The insurgency in El Salvador in the 1980s is not a mass movement, but a carefully scripted strategy executed by an educated and disciplined elite. This insurgent group is not in revolt against a government or its military, per se. Rather it is reacting against corruption, racial and religious discrimination, foreign intervention, and inability or unwillingness of a government to protect and be responsible to the general population. The revolutionary elite uses political, economic, and social grievances as justification for its actions. This struggle between insurgent and incumbent is over who has the moral right to govern. Such is the probable nature of future conflict, and it is with that understanding that any appropriate response must begin.

El Salvador at War is an oral history of the Salvadoran struggle. In an illuminating departure from conventional histories of war, Max Manwaring and Court Prisk trace the major contours of the conflict. Their book tells what key individuals think about the war, what the really important lessons are, and what the participants should have learned. It is their perspective, their truth, recorded here—what a number of the key participants see as historical fact and a basis for action.

Studying the fundamental nature of insurgent conflict is key to understanding this most prevalent form of twentieth-century conventional war. In examining insurgent conflict, El Salvador at War offers some new insights into our role in contemporary international security.