The power of example

Cuba's involvement on behalf of the FMLN during the Salvadoran civil war is comparable only to that of the United States. Evidently, Havana and Washington acted as champions of opposing camps and their involvement was, at times, mutually constitutive. Cuba's unrivalled impact on the FMLN was twofold. First, it had a profound resonance throughout the Salvadoran organisation on account of its demonstration effect: the subjective impact of its revolution on the Latin American left and particularly, for the purposes of this work, on the FMLN leadership. Second, the Castro administration provided direct and extensive support to the Salvadoran revolutionaries throughout the duration of the civil war.

The Cuban revolution of 1959 changed the continental axiom: it was now possible to alter the political power structures in the area of utmost US influence against the interests of this hegemonic power. For the first time in many years, social revolution seemed possible and Fidel Castro's Cuba became the obvious referent for Latin Americans aspiring to a radically different society. With the exception of Mexico's revolution in 1910, the option of revolution was not on the Latin American table before 1959. Communist parties in the region had adhered to pursuing change through elections and refused to adopt the mantle of revolutionary vanguards. In El Salvador, the Communist Party as such did not endorse revolution until the creation of the FMLN in 1980. In the 1970s the party would in fact split between those who continued to oppose revolution and those who became disillusioned with the electoral avenue and joined the guerrillas. In this context, Cuba came to embody the possibility of political transformations through revolutionary means.

The Cuban revolution also presented individual revolutionaries in the region with something tangible. The men and women who overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista appeared to have surged from the ashes. In the initial stages of the Salvadoran war, when idealism reigned and the human fallibility of individual revolutionaries was disregarded, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara provided the FMLN leadership with the embodiment of the ideal revolutionary man. While Che was immortalised as such, Fidel Castro was the real-life example. More than any other figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara offered the Salvadoran youth of the 1960s and 1970s, who would form the cadres of the FMLN in the 1980s, human examples of the possibility of demanding the impossible: the world could in fact be theirs. The world, however, came at a price. The success of the Cuban revolution had taught a consequential lesson: radical transformations were possible, but only through armed insurgency.

Despite the hardships endured in the Sierra Maestra, the speed and relative ease with which the Cuban revolution succeeded gave many in the region the impression that revolution was not only possible but also that it was simple. Despite apparent commonalities across the region, many of the conditions in pre-revolutionary Cuba were an anomaly. Although unequally distributed, the island's economic prosperity was unique, as was its predominantly urban character and its geographic isolation. These exceptional qualities, which many would overlook or refuse to acknowledge, were evidently consequential to the success of revolution in Cuba, a success which, with the transient exception of Nicaragua, was unobtainable anywhere else in the region.

The ideology, leadership, and concrete accomplishments of the Cuban revolution resulted in its unprecedented impact upon the Latin American left. According to former FMLN leader Facundo Guardado, in El Salvador ‘the Cuba factor permeated the entire FMLN leadership … there was not a single leader that did not find in Cuba a symbolic referent’. Admiration did not result in imitation. The FMLN looked to Cuba more for what it destroyed with its revolution than for what it established in place of the status quo ante. Notwithstanding, Salvadoran insurgents, like many before them, found in Cuba not only an inspiration but also a powerful ally. Havana's internationalist goals led it to throw its full support behind the FMLN's efforts. As will be demonstrated in the following pages, Cuban support for the FMLN was profound, extensive and enormously consequential.

The FMLN is born … and the affair begins

Ana Guadalupe Martínez made her way through Managua in an old Nicaraguan taxi. It was 15 October 1979 and the political representative of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) was headed for the Cuban embassy. She was to speak to Cuban officials and persuade them to incorporate the ERP into the discussions taking place in Havana. For months, the Cuban administration had been mediating talks between the groups that it considered to be the strongest revolutionary forces in El Salvador: the Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS), the National Resistance (RN), and the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL). The ERP accurately concluded that these meetings were intended to cement Salvadoran revolutionary unity under Cuban auspice. A year earlier, the Cuban government struck a similar arrangement with Nicaraguan rebel forces. The subsequent triumph of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) had a deep impact on the Cuban administration and on the Salvadoran guerrillas. The ERP leadership knew full well that if its group were excluded from a unified opposition force backed by Cuba, it would be on the sidelines of the revolutionary effort. Consequently, Ana Guadalupe found herself knocking on Havana's door in Managua.

Her task was complicated. With the murder of communist poet Roque Dalton in 1975, the ERP and Cuba had severed ties and entered into a relationship characterised by hostility and mistrust. Ana Guadalupe was not deterred by the Cuban embassy's reluctance to see her. Some ERP members had fought with the Sandinistas and remained in Nicaragua. Through these contacts, Ana Guadalupe secured a meeting with the Sandinista Army Chief of Staff, Joaquín Cuadra, who persuaded two Cuban agents in Managua to meet with the ERP representative.

The Cuban deputies were persuaded by the young guerrillera but, being part of a regime in which practically all decisions were made directly by Fidel Castro, Ana Guadalupe was told to speak directly to the Directorate in Cuba. The next day, Ana Guadalupe flew to the Caribbean bastion of revolution. Her first meeting on the island was with the head of the America Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party (Departamento América) and the Cuban most actively involved in Havana's revolutionary efforts elsewhere in the continent: Manuel Piñeiro (better known as Barbaroja – ‘red beard’). Thus began the ERP's integration into the organisation that would become the FMLN. This inclusion would indeed prove decisive due to the ERP's military strength and the close personal relationship that developed between its leader Joaquín Villalobos and Fidel Castro.

Ana Guadalupe's crusade to re-establish relations with Havana elucidates the first decisive chapter of Cuba's affair with the Salvadoran revolutionary movement: the Cuban administration's involvement in the union of the guerrilla factions as a collective opposition force. The alliance of the four primary guerrilla organisations and the Communist Party into the FMLN, proclaimed on 10 October 1980, was a momentous accomplishment. Throughout the 1970s, disagreement over insurgent strategies, and rivalry to achieve hegemony of the revolution by winning the support of the workers and peasants, had kept the groups at odds and unwilling to compromise with each other. While the intellectual basis of most rested predominantly on liberation theology, orthodox Communist Party members had a deeper Marxist basis. The very emergence of the guerrilla groups in the early 1970s implied a rejection of the Communist Party as a viable means for change. The party itself was split between those in favour of armed insurgency and those still wishing to work through the electoral avenue. Besides the Salvadoran organisations themselves, no party to the negotiations for union was as decisive as Cuba.

The alliance of these disparate elements raises three key questions: Why did these groups decide to set aside their differences and coordinate their efforts? Why did they do so in Cuba? And why did their unification occur at this particular point in history?

The revolutionary leaders' agreement to come to terms with each other after years of enmity was driven by three decisive factors. The first entailed the repression in El Salvador that followed the triumph of the Sandinistas and the debilitating effect that this had on the Salvadoran guerrillas. Fearing that El Salvador would follow in Nicaragua's footsteps, the army and security forces intensified their efforts to destroy the insurgency and violence became more indiscriminate. In this climate, unity seemed to offer the Salvadoran opposition the only means by which to avoid individual annihilation. The second decisive instigator was the exemplary role of the Nicaraguan revolution. The FSLN's origins as a group of disparate organisations closely paralleled the state of the Salvadoran guerrillas before they united. After years of insurgency as individual factions, the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship only after coming together in 1978 and staging a coordinated offensive. Thus, recent events in Nicaragua favoured Salvadoran revolutionary cohesion.

These two factors do not account for why the ERP sought inclusion into the FMLN through Cuba, or explain why the terms of revolutionary unity were predominantly convened at meetings in Havana, throughout the end of 1979 and 1980. These facets of the FMLN's creation can only be understood when Cuba's role as promoter and enabler of unification is factored into the Salvadoran revolutionary equation.

The fact that the ERP sought inclusion through Cuba reflects that, at this point, relations between the individual Salvadoran organisations were still dominated by wariness. In this atmosphere, the island provided a safe heaven for the unfolding of negotiations and its mediation induced groups to set aside differences that they otherwise would not have. In effect, the disparate groups envisaged Cuba as a Hobbesian Leviathan that they trusted to ensure parity between them in the united organisation by drawing on the strength of its reputation. Commensurate leadership was indispensable for the Salvadoran groups to agree to come together and it was institutionalised through the creation of the ‘Comandancia General’ – the FMLN's commanding body, where each group was equally represented. Notwithstanding this de jure parity, throughout the duration of the civil war certain FMLN members came to have privileged relationships with Cuban officials – most notably with Fidel Castro – and this influenced the assistance and attention conferred by Havana.

Beyond its provision of a space for discussion and its role as guarantor that no group was marginalised, the Cuban administration provided the most alluring incentive for unity: extensive Cuban support contingent on this unity. Throughout the meetings in Havana, the Cuban administration made its position clear: it would provide large-scale aid through armaments, financial backing, and military training if, and only if, the groups agreed to unite and coordinate their efforts. Above all else, the prospect of receiving weapons – at a time in which their scarcity was proving detrimental – led the Salvadorans to agree to launch a coordinated offensive. Rumour had it that in one of these meeting Manuel Piñeiro symbolically placed a machine gun on the table and told the Salvadorans: ‘It's yours if you are together’. When in early 2007 I asked Joaquín Villalobos about the veracity of this rumour during an interview in Oxford he replied with a smirk: ‘We weren't idiots; it was blatantly clear that Cuba wanted us to unite and that if we did we would count on the island's full backing. There was no need for such insinuations; Cuba's stance was explicit’. In addition to practical considerations, Cuba's interest in the efforts of Salvadoran revolutionaries, and Castro's personal offer to endorse and assist them, had a subjective allure for the FMLN leadership.

The alliance of the Salvadoran left was therefore not the result of a mutually agreed strategy between the different groups, but rather the product of the convergence of two interests: to overthrow the oligarchy and to do so with Castro's support. The ERP's initial integration via Cuban officials is revealing. First, it discloses that the Cuban administration played a role in determining who would form the FMLN. In fact, RN leader Eduardo Sancho recalls that in the initial stages of unification it was the Cubans that largely pushed for the inclusion of the Communist Party in the revolutionary alliance. More importantly, it elucidates an important facet of the coalition that formed in these meetings in Havana: Cuban assistance was not independent of Cuban influence on the course of the Salvadoran revolutionary movement.

It would be myopic to deny Salvadoran agency in the creation of the FMLN. The process was by no means a Cuban imposition. A better conceptualisation is that by offering arms and support, Cuba made the guerrillas an offer that they could not, or did not, refuse. Crucial to this acceptance was that Cuba never sought ideological uniformity between the groups. Some of Barbarroja's first words upon meeting Ana Guadalupe Martínez were: ‘we are not here to impose relations between the groups, but we can discuss the importance of your union and collective coordination, independently of your ideological differences’. The Cuban leadership was not dogmatic, but practical. While it sought a strategically united front, it understood that the different ideological positions of the Salvadoran groups were impossible to reconcile. In turn, the Salvadorans' willingness to ignore ideological opacity in their revolution can best be attributed to fear of individual annihilation. This concern, coupled with the prospect of victory with the promised weapons and support, underlined Salvadoran motivation for cohesion. Ideological differences, and for that matter hegemonic control of the revolution, were meaningless if the movement failed and in 1979 it looked as though it might unless radical changes were adopted. These factors led to an implicit acceptance by the Salvadorans that ideology and control would be resolved once victory was secured. In turn, Cuba perhaps presumed that when the time came to settle these differences, Havana would have the political capital to influence the power struggle.

Throughout the duration of the civil war, Cuba consistently provided a forum for conflict resolution and helped mediate between disagreeing parties and individuals. Perhaps more importantly, Cuba never wavered from its initial position on the importance of revolutionary unity. Leaders were often willing to negotiate and compromise for the sake of the revolution and of continued Cuban aid. At key moments, Havana's interventions were vital in settling conflicts and rivalries between factions or individual leaders. The most evident illustration of this was their mediation between factions of the FPL after the mysterious suicide of its leader Cayetano Carpio ‘Marcial’. Cuba's ability to maintain the organisations united throughout the war was indispensable. The respect that Cuba commanded gave it the leverage to do so. Facundo Guardado retrospectively judges that this was possibly the most important function that Cuba played in El Salvador's revolutionary effort.

Whereas the factors that led the Salvadorans to unite are for the most part lucid, Cuba's motives are more obscure on account of the unavailability of Cuban sources to the general public, or at least to this author. Evidently, Cuba had much to gain from another victorious revolution in Central America and its own experience, as well as successful revolutions elsewhere, had demonstrated that cohesion and broad-based support were essential. The different organisations that formed the FMLN each had distinct and powerful support bases, both at home and abroad, and the Cubans understood that union would drastically augment their strength. Furthermore, the success of the Sandinistas after they united under Cuban auspices in late 1978 carried favour for reusing such a tactic.

While Cuba sought other successful revolutions in the region – both for altruistic and practical geopolitical considerations – the specifics of the revolutionary efforts and, above all, of their relationship to Havana mattered. Cuba wanted opposition movements, but opposition movements that were loyal. By offering and providing decisive support, the Cuban administration bolstered these loyalties and ensured that they transcended the purely emotive allegiances that permeated the entirety of the Latin American left. Beyond loyalties, Castro wanted to influence these movements. The close relationship that formed between the Castro administration and FMLN leaders, and Cuba's widespread involvement in the FMLN's activities, forged the type of opposition movement in El Salvador that Cuba considered most valuable.

A more polemic Cuban motivation was the political situation in the United States – unquestionably Cuba's greatest adversary and a key influence on Havana's foreign policy. When the Cuban administration lobbied for Salvadoran revolutionary cohesion, it was increasingly apparent that the Carter administration was on its way out and his successor was bound to be more prone to intervention in the region. Guided by his exceptional political cunning, Castro felt the need to act while the situation in the north was still predictable. A strengthened revolutionary effort in El Salvador could have one of two results. Optimally, the Salvadorans would overthrow the government and the new US administration would be presented with a fait accompli that it would have to acknowledge. If the general offensive failed, Carter's successor would face a Salvadoran leftist opposition movement that was organised, funded, trained, and armed. Consequently, the Cubans foresaw that the incoming US administration would prioritise preventing another revolution in Central America and that this would give Fidel Castro and Cuba some breathing space.

With the most important dissident organisations in El Salvador united, and extensive Cuban assistance secured, the FMLN came into existence as the vanguard of the opposition fronts in the country. The FMLN's creation resulted from a confluence of circumstances and interests. While the revolutionaries' decision to pursue such a union was ultimately why it occurred, their willingness to do so, at that point in time, was indissolubly tied to Cuban incentives. The establishment of the FMLN was simultaneous and directly related to the inception of an extensive relationship with Cuba. The two parties immediately began preparations for the general offensive of January 1981. Until the last day of the war in El Salvador, Castro kept his end of the bargain, providing the FMLN with extensive assistance in practically all spheres of its activity.

Forming revolutionaries

Relations between the FMLN and Havana were directed by two Cuban agencies: the Departamento América and the Departamento de Operaciones Especiales (DOE). The former managed all the key strategic and political decisions of the Cuban–FMLN alliance, while its leader, Manuel Piñeiro, was the Cuban official with whom FMLN leaders had the broadest relations. The first order of business for revolutionary leaders upon reaching Havana was to meet with Piñeiro. RN leader Eduardo Sancho recalls that these meetings – referred to by the revolutionaries as ‘the bilaterals with Piñeiro’ – were practically obligatory. Although the DOE handled military training and operational aspects, these undertakings had to be discussed and cleared with Piñeiro beforehand. In effect, the Departamento América was ‘the bridge to the DOE’ and Piñeiro was the conduit between the FMLN and the Cuban government – which effectively meant Castro. Thus, much like a country's Foreign Ministry serves as the link between that country's government and its foreign counterparts, the Departamento América was the link between the Cuban government and the revolutionary leaders of El Salvador. The existence of the Departamento América as a parallel organisation to the Foreign Ministry enabled Havana to avoid its explicit institutional involvement with revolutionary movements in the region. An overt association could have jeopardised Cuba's relations with other Latin American governments and with the international community – relations that Cuba had worked hard to repair since 1969. The Departamento America has been characterised as the place from which revolution was exported. Although this classification downplays the indigenous causes of revolutions, and the agency of revolutionaries in shaping their own movements, it reflects the pivotal role that this department played in Cuba's relations with the FMLN. The assessment that the Departamento America's ‘links with the Latin American left were extensive, intimate, and decisive’ holds true in the case of El Salvador.

The scarce analysis of Cuban support for the FMLN has largely had a military focus. While assistance was not confined to the military sphere, Cuba's training of Salvadoran combatants and its involvement in military planning was indeed widespread. Throughout the 1970s, Cuban assistance to the Salvadoran guerrillas was limited and consisted mainly of intelligence and counterintelligence strategies as well as urban conspiracy tactics. After October 1980, however, Cuban military assistance increased exponentially. Throughout the subsequent decade, Cuba trained Salvadoran combatants on the island, helped them set up a nationwide communications system, and aided with military planning. In the months following the FMLN's creation, Cuban military assistance proved decisive. Camps were established on the island where Salvadoran revolutionaries received training and preparation for special operations. On the road from Havana to the beach of Varadadero lay what was known as Punto Cero – ‘Point Zero’. This was the training base for Latin American revolutionaries that Cuban officials conceptualised as their counterweight to the United States' ‘School of the Americas’. It must be noted, however, that Cuban training at Punto Cero excluded the brutal methods of the School of the Americas which earned that institution the name of ‘School of the Assassins’ amongst Latin Americans. In fact, Cuba played an important yet scarcely recognised role throughout the conflict, by caring for the FMLN's sick and wounded and by promoting humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Although the first group of FMLN military officials was formed in Cuba, the actual number of Salvadorans trained on the island was small. The numbers, however, are deceptive because Cuban-trained officials returned to El Salvador and instructed fellow combatants based on their newly acquired skills. Thus, Cuban instruction had a ripple effect which permeated the FMLN organisation and had a much greater impact than the mere numbers would suggest. As the war in El Salvador progressed, increasingly becoming a war of guerrillas, the Salvadoran revolutionaries' own experience came to be their best instructor. By 1983, the student had outgrown the teacher and Salvadoran revolutionaries were more adept at guerrilla warfare than Cuban officials. At this point, what proved most useful for the FMLN were Vietcong guerrilla combat strategies, which were taught to the Salvadorans on the island by Cuban and Nicaraguan combatants.

At the FMLN's request, Havana would also provide training for special operations. The most notorious of these operations was the ERP's highly successful attack on the Ilopango air base in 1981. In preparation for this venture, a facsimile air base was created in Cuba, where a group of ERP members received intensive training for a 45-day period. While the DOE built the Ilopango duplicate and trained the Salvadorans, the military tactic was imported from the Vietcong. Furthermore, such an accurate recreation of the base was made possible through photographs of Ilopango taken from small FMLN planes. As this episode illustrates, Cuban military assistance to the FMLN was largely the product of a joint collaborative effort.

Salvadoran revolutionary leaders worked closely with Havana to devise military strategies. In fact, this was the aspect of FMLN–Cuban relations that Fidel Castro most enjoyed. Villalobos judges that the key to his chemistry with Castro – a chemistry that was unrivalled between 1981 and 1990 – was that they shared a passion and genius for military strategies. Therein lay Villalobos' comparative advantage over other contenders for Fidel's favour. As Villalobos claims: ‘Fidel is a commander, a military man, a man of war. He likes war strategy much more than the political and ideological aspects of revolution.’ Every time Villalobos travelled to Cuba, Castro would invariably make a surprise appearance to meet with him. The former ERP leader recalls countless meetings with Fidel Castro in which they spent hours alone, poring over maps of El Salvador and developing military strategies. Such instances included preparation for the 1982 battle of Moscarrón and for the 1989 ‘until the limit’ offensive. While these summits attest to the Cuban leader's proclivity for the military realm in general, and for Villalobos in particular, they also reflect Castro's constant pursuit of first-hand information and proximity to the Salvadoran leaders.

The FMLN came to have the most versatile and modern guerrilla army in Latin America. Notwithstanding Havana's contribution to the FMLN's military capacity, the Salvadoran guerrilla army cannot be reduced to a Cuban creation. At a most basic level, those doing the fighting were Salvadoran revolutionaries. At no point in the war did Cubans fight with the FMLN. Furthermore, the myriad trainings that Cuba provided were above all done at the FMLN's request and while both Cuban officials and the FMLN leadership shared responsibility or credit for devising battle plans, at the end of the day, the FMLN had to be convinced of their utility and willing to carry them out.

In some cases, Cuba was more eager to assist than the revolutionary leaders wanted. For the Ilopango operation, for example, Castro and Piñeiro wanted troops to train in Cuba for six months. Only after much negotiation did Villalobos reduce it to 45 days. The ERP leader claims that Piñeiro would often press for more combatants to be sent to the island and Villalobos would decline because Cuba tended to combine military training with Marxist academic instruction and had a tendency to offer and bestow special favours on Salvadoran combatants who kept Havana informed. In his words: ‘the fear was that you would send Salvadoran revolutionaries to Cuba and they would return as Cuban ideologues that had lost sight of Salvadoran realities’.

The promised weapons for revolution

Cuba kept its promise to supply arms to the Salvadoran revolutionaries. While it seldom provided the weapons directly, Havana played a crucial diplomatic role in obtaining these arms from third countries and in the logistics of having them reach El Salvador. In addition to Cuba, Nicaragua was also central to the FMLN's firepower.

The first step in the elaborate process of getting arms to the FMLN was persuading countries to provide the Salvadorans with the arms in question. US government documents dating back to the 1980s attribute these efforts to Salvadoran communist leaders, most notably to Communist Party leader Shafik Handal, who is said to have travelled to the USSR, Vietnam, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Ethiopia in the summer of 1980 to secure arms for the Salvadoran guerrillas. Although Handal's travels and lobbying efforts did in fact take place, prominent FMLN leaders agree that Cuba's endorsement was the deciding factor that secured the military support of these countries. While Handal might have advocated for the Salvadoran revolutionary cause throughout his travels, and put a face to the Salvadoran movement for national liberation, his power of influence, especially in the early stages of conflict, was no match for the Cuban leader. As Villalobos conveys: ‘the most important communist we had was Fidel, not Handal’. Providing further validation to this point, Villalobos recounts that in one of his first meetings with Castro, he explained that FMLN members wanted him to travel to Moscow and secure the provision of weapons. Castro's response was: ‘Chico! What are you going to do in Moscow? Your place is in El Salvador, with the combatants. I'll take care of Moscow's support.’

The weapons granted by third countries were brought to the island on Cuban commercial boats or on airplanes. From the island, the weapons were sent to Nicaragua both by sea and by air and then, from there, they were transported clandestinely by sea into El Salvador through the Gulf of Fonseca or overland through Honduras. The main problem for the FMLN was not obtaining weapons but getting them in to El Salvador; a process for which Cuba and Nicaragua were indispensable. In effect, these two countries served as bridges to get arms to the FMLN and as warehouses for such arms. Nicaragua's ‘warehouse status’ led to the scandalous event in 1993, colloquially known as ‘El Buzonazo’, in which the explosion of a bomb in a residential area of Managua resulted in the uncovering of a very large arms cache that belonged to the FPL.

Show me the money

With very specific exceptions, Cuba could not play a significant role in the FMLN's finances, for the simple reason that it lacked a monetary surplus to bestow on any cause, regardless of how worthy it felt the cause to be. There were very specific moments when Cuba gave money directly to the FMLN. Fidel Castro made a small contribution to help finance the 1981 ‘final offensive’, he gave Joaquín Villalobos $500,000 for the battle of Moscarrón, and also gave almost $1,000,000 for the last large-scale ‘until the limit’ offensive in 1989. Attesting to Castro's very limited possibility of providing financial support, Villalobos recalls that every time he was given Cuban money Castro would remind him: ‘remember that people in Cuba don't have toothpaste’, or ‘remember that we suffer economic limitations on the island’. ‘It was as though with every payment, he was giving me a part of his soul’, Villalobos recalls.

While Cuba did not determine what the money it gave ought to be used for, the Cuban administration did monitor how the Salvadorans spent their resources through informants they had within the FMLN ranks. The Cuban administration was on a relentless quest for information obtained through intelligence, not unlike most governments throughout the Cold War.

The Salvadoran revolutionaries did not depend on Castro financially. They had their own reserves – obtained through kidnappings, bank robberies, and taxation from territories under their control. Furthermore, they received money from Western Europe, socialist countries, and support groups in the United States. The FMLN's monetary funds were perhaps the sphere in which the organisation enjoyed the most independence from Cuban support. This financial independence from Havana was consequential because it gave the FMLN the space to pursue strategies that Cuba did not necessarily agree with, especially in the ambit of foreign policy.

FMLN diplomacy

The FMLN's quest to transform El Salvador was not confined to the military realm. Spearheaded by the Political Diplomatic Commission (Comisión Político Diplomática, CPD), the FMLN created a diplomatic nexus that was unprecedented, in both scope and significance, by any other opposition movement in Latin America. The CPD enabled the international community to hear not just the point of view of the Salvadoran powers that be, but also that of the opposition, which was quickly becoming a de facto power alongside the state. In this non-military realm of FMLN activity, Cuba also proved its resolve to support its Salvadoran allies. In contrast to the covert nature of Cuban–FMLN relations in the military sphere, diplomatic relations were institutional and between the CPD and Cuba's Foreign Ministry and embassies. At gatherings of the Socialist International and meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement, Havana advocated the cause of the Salvadoran opposition and gave the FMLN a space to present its platform. Cuban endorsement at these international forums – arenas where Cuba was well respected – undoubtedly bolstered the recognition of the FMLN by the member countries. This reality becomes especially palpable when one takes into account that the FMLN's diplomats were predominantly in their mid or late twenties; a factor that surprised governments and raised initial scepticism. The effectiveness of such efforts, and the capabilities of the CPD corps, resulted in the Salvadoran guerrillas receiving ‘more international aid from the Socialist world than any other Latin America insurgent group ever received during the Cold War’.

The FMLN's foreign policy did not come cheap. Travels to countries such as Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Angola had to be paid for and the FMLN lacked the financial resources to do so. When the FMLN attended conferences of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Socialist International, the Cuban administration and embassies took care of the logistics of the FMLN's diplomatic missions abroad. Cuba handled the CPD's transportation to and from these foreign countries and the representatives' accommodation while on these missions. Most frequently, the CPD members would travel to these conferences on Cuban planes. In addition to Cuba, the FMLN was assisted in its travels by a number of countries that gave the organisation airplane ticket vouchers. Providing this type of assistance presented a convenient way for some governments to help the Salvadoran revolutionaries while avoiding the potential complications that could come from giving them money directly. French President Mitterrand, for example, unable to give the FMLN money directly because in his words: ‘France is not Cuba, and in France leaders have to account for money spent’, resorted to giving the Salvadoran revolutionaries $50,000 in airplane vouchers. The Soviet Union also provided thousands of Aeroflot tickets. These vouchers would prove to be an invaluable resource to the FMLN during the peace negotiations.

The diplomatic endeavours of the FMLN reveal a crucial facet of the nature of its relationship with Cuba. Cuban influence, and Fidel Castro's clout within the FMLN leadership, did at times shape the FMLN's politics and, by extension, the course of the war. In 1981, the FMLN proclaimed that it was open to negotiations with the Salvadoran government through international mediation. This platform was initially adopted not because the FMLN seriously considered negotiation, but as a political strategy to strengthen international support by giving the organisation moral high ground. Cuba was always in favour of the FMLN's adoption of this strategy and this was vital in making it a reality. The leader of the ERP recalls that he was initially exposed to the idea in his first meeting with M-19 leader Jaime Bateman, who discussed the M-19's negotiations with the Colombian government. After this meeting, which had been arranged by Manuel Piñeiro in his Protocol House in Cuba, Villalobos began to support the FMLN's stance as a willing negotiator. The ERP and M-19 leader subsequently met on a couple of occasions, always in the company of Piñeiro.

Including a willingness to negotiate on the political platform was a contentious process for the incipient Salvadoran organisation. While the majority of the FMLN leadership favoured the strategy, FPL leader Cayetano Carpio – the de facto leader of the organisation when the war began – believed it represented a betrayal of revolutionary principles. The Comandancia General of the FMLN devised a seven-point proposal, known as ‘the green book’, that justified using such a strategy. Carpio refused to endorse it. Aware that Cuba supported using negotiations as a political strategy, the drafters of the proposal turned to the Cubans for support. A decisive meeting followed in Havana where the FMLN leadership sat across the table from their Cuban and Nicaraguan counterparts to discuss the platform. According to an account by an FMLN leader who has asked to remain anonymous, Fidel Castro picked up the proposal and one by one read over the seven points, asking Carpio to voice objections to each point as he finished reading them. Sensing his isolation, and the evident endorsement of the Cuba leader for the proposal, Carpio was, in essence, coerced into signing the document. For a man such as Carpio, who prided himself on being the revolution's supreme leader and insisted on being treated accordingly, this event was humiliating. Not only had it become evident that the rest of the FMLN leadership disagreed with him, but he had been pressured by Cuba into endorsing something he opposed. The FMLN leader who recounted the story to the author recalls that, when Carpio left the room abruptly after signing the document, ‘I thought he was going to commit suicide’. Carpio did in fact kill himself under very mysterious circumstances – not unrelated to this meeting – just a couple years later.

Undoubtedly, ‘Cuba carried a tremendous weight with negotiations being used as a political tool’ and their endorsement of this strategy was crucial to its implementation. The FMLN leadership turned to Cuba in pressuring Carpio to do something the Salvadoran leaders could not accomplish alone because they perceived that Castro's position could make or break certain facets of the revolution. Castro's success in securing Carpio's official endorsement of the green book proved that the FMLN leaders were right about Fidel's potential coercive power. Castro's clout cannot be reduced to his provision of arms and military training. This was, of course, important, but the Cuban leader's capacity to influence the course of events had much more profound historical roots. As described by Joaquín Villalobos, Fidel was in many ways looked to by the Salvadoran revolutionaries as ‘el papá’ or the father figure of revolution.

What did Cuba get?

While the core benefits obtained by the FMLN from its relationship with Cuba should be, at this point, clear, a crucial question warrants further discussion: what was in it for Cuba? In other words, what did Cuba have to gain that merited putting so much of itself into this relationship?

First, it must be stressed that Cuba's relationship with the FMLN was the product of Cuban policy and not, as some have charged, the product of instructions from Moscow. Cuban diplomacy is what secured the support of the Soviet camp towards the Salvadoran revolutionaries and not the other way around. With the exception of some members of the Salvadoran Communist Party, who did have close ties with Moscow, the FMLN leadership dealt with Havana and not with the Soviet Union. In the words of an FMLN leader and member of its Directorate:

In an extensive study on Cuban foreign policy, Jorge I. Dominguez establishes that this independence from Moscow actually pertained to the entirety of Central America.

Cuba's policy towards the FMLN was therefore its own and was driven, above all, by three factors: Cuban altruism, an attempt to compensate for the island's geographical and geopolitical isolation, and the aim to keep revolutionary movements in the region close.

The Cuban government accurately perceived – and empathised with – the suffering of the Salvadoran masses under the exclusionary political order that ruled the country until the 1980s. Whatever might be said about Fidel Castro's pragmatism, he is also a man of conviction who genuinely believes that the socioeconomic system in post-revolutionary Cuba offers people a more dignified existence than the alternative presented by free-market economies. The bold voluntarism that constituted a key element of Cuban foreign policy – under the principle that ‘it is the duty of revolutionaries to make the revolution’ – cannot be understood if this factor is not taken into account.

Supporting the FMLN was also a Cuban foreign policy strategy to ensure its own survival. In Havana's eyes, while the United States was vexed with possible revolutionary triumphs elsewhere in Latin America, its resources and attention focused on preventing such an occurrence, and Cuba took a back seat to these more immediate objectives. For the United States to prioritise other revolutionary efforts, it was essential for these movements to appear as though they might succeed. By promoting the union of the opposition in El Salvador; arming, training, and indirectly funding the guerrillas, and supporting their strength in the international arena, Cuba contributed towards creating the type of movement that it believed would scare and preoccupy Washington. Cuba's foreign policy strategy produced the desired results. With the triumph of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the birth of the FMLN in El Salvador, the United States made preventing revolution in Central America one of its priorities abroad. It trained and funded counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua and diverted a vast amount of resources to defeat the FMLN. Over the course of the decade, the United States provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador.

US Ambassador to the UN Jean Kirkpatrick argued that the Reagan administration's resolve to prevent revolution in El Salvador resulted from Central America being ‘the most important place in the world for the United States’. Others have countered that it was the region's insignificance that made it a place where the US could recover from the calamitous loss and humiliation it had suffered in Vietnam. Irrespective of the motivator, the outcome for Cuba was the same: insurgency in El Salvador absorbed a vast amount of attention and resources from the region's hegemonic power.

Finally, while Castro's administration certainly favoured the emergence of other socialist movements in the region, it wanted these movements to be close to Havana and under its clout. Providing widespread assistance and being actively involved in every sphere of FMLN activity enabled Cuba to obtain the coveted loyalty and influence from the Salvadoran insurgents.

The survival of the Cuban revolutionary government for almost half a century, in the face of myriad challenges, largely attests to its bold and successful foreign policy. Some FMLN leaders emphasise the Cuban administration's selfless motivations when assessing why their movement received so much support from Havana. Others focus instead on the pragmatic considerations that led Cuba to endorse and assist their movement. In truth, altruistic and pragmatic motivators are not mutually exclusive and both drove the Cuban–FMLN affair.

Cuba's support for revolutionary and guerrilla movements in Latin America throughout the Cold War merits a historical and geopolitical contextualisation. Throughout this time period of stark polarisation, and when so much was considered to be at stake, not only was it unfeasible for Cuba – the bastion of communism in the hemisphere – to remain uninvolved, but also, very few countries actually remained neutral. The beacons of capitalism and communism in the hemisphere – the United States and Cuba respectively – were both actively and extensively involved in the Salvadoran conflict: each throwing its support behind the faction closest to its geopolitical position and interests.

The Salvadoran civil war should not be reduced to geopolitics, but it also cannot be fully understood without considering this dimension. The involvement of the United States and Cuba was profoundly consequential in shaping and defining this episode of Salvadoran history. The primary guarantors of the FMLN's endurance and success were the FMLN guerrillas. Notwithstanding, without Cuba's support, the Salvadoran security forces – which enjoyed the institutional advantages that came with the regime's support and extensive backing of the United States – would have militarily defeated the FMLN. In turn, had Washington not supported the Salvadoran military and security forces, the Salvadoran opposition would have been victorious. The parallel accusations made by the Cuban and US governments against each other, that their respective involvement was crucial in the survival of the warring faction each supported, were valid and provided both administrations with a justification for participating in the war. One can only speculate how the war in El Salvador would have developed if Cuba and the United States had not become active participants. It is certain, however, that it would have been remarkably different.

The end of the affair?

The FMLN's attempt to bring about a new order through armed insurrection was the norm rather than the exception in Latin American during the Cold War. Although undoubtedly the methods, objectives, and success of the region's various revolutionary efforts varied, they were all symptomatic not only of legitimate national grievances but also of a sentiment that social revolution was the only viable option and, more importantly, that it could succeed. These movements were inherent to an epoch in which the triumph of capitalism was not yet secure. Many still believed that a more egalitarian socioeconomic system was possible, and some were prepared to fight and die for it. When peace negotiations between the FMLN and the Salvadoran government began in earnest, the Cuban administration neither supported nor opposed the process. While its phlegmatic attitude towards the peace process starkly contrasted its involvement during the war, the Cubans respected the FMLN's decision to negotiate and transform into a democratic force. While the FMLN leadership celebrated what they perceived, in effect, to be the end of a terrible war, Cuba was perhaps mourning a lost revolution which, coupled with the fall of the Berlin wall a few years earlier, was perceived as an omen of the end of revolutions; the end of their Latin American left.

As exemplified by the Salvadoran case, Latin America's Cold War was marked by a series of ‘hot wars’ that transformed the political and economic landscape of the region. In this process of conflict and transformation, the region's leftist movements were pivotal agents and it is therefore necessary to understand how they were shaped and how they operated. While the Latin American Cold War left has received ample scholarly attention, the different revolutionary and guerrilla movements have been studied largely through national paradigms and thus contemplated as independent entities that acted predominantly within the confines of the nation-state. Furthermore, Cold War historiography of the region has largely focused on Washington as the central international actor shaping geopolitical developments and national processes.

Contemporary scholars of the Latin American Cold War need to move beyond frameworks of analysis confined by national boundaries and to look past US influence in the region by considering the impact of other regional powers. Doing so will broaden our understanding of how the Cold War unfolded in different parts of the region and it may reveal how the mutually constitutive interaction between national and international processes shaped the region's post-Cold War order.