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Joaquín Villalobos, 30. Commander of the People's Revolutionary Army (E.R.P.), the second largest guerrilla organization and the one that is probably the least doctrinaire, Villalobos has been described in some leftist publications as a "militarist," meaning that he denigrates theory in favor of action. Unlike some of the other groups, Villalobos' E.R.P. did not stem from the Communist Party; its original members were largely radicalized Roman Catholics who resorted to kidnaping and urban terrorism.
A would-be economist turned university dropout, Villalobos was a left-wing student leader. In 1971 he began to form clandestine groups to foster "armed struggle" in El Salvador. In 1973 he officially declared the existence of the E.R.P. and led it underground.
In 1974, Villalobos caused a sizable scandal in Latin American leftist circles when he personally executed a well-known Communist poet, Roque Dalton Garcia, on trumped-up charges of being an agent of the CIA. In reality, Dalton was Villalobos' chief political rival. The killing led to bitter factional fights within the E.R.P. and to a breakaway movement. Villalobos' chief gestures of conciliation, on the other hand, have been toward his erstwhile enemy, the Salvadoran army. While some extremists want to purge the whole force in the event of a guerrilla victory, Villalobos has said that "those army sectors that take a progressive position and patriotic and revolutionary viewpoints have an important role to play."
Eduardo Sancho Castañeda, 35. Better known as Fermán Cienfuegos, Sancho commands the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN), a group that split from the E.R.P. over internal political differences. At times it seemed as if the two terrorist organizations were spending as much time shooting at each other as at their common enemy, the Salvadoran military. FARN was the only guerrilla group to break with the guerrillas' united front after it was formed in early 1980, at the insistence of Fidel Castro. FARN rejoined the others, however, within a few months, after one of its commanders, Ernesto Jovel, died in a mysterious airplane crash.
Sancho, who was born in Costa Rica, was also a student radical in San Salvador. In the late 1960s, he began to organize workers, peasants and students into clandestine armed cells in the department of San Vicente. He worked aboveground as a professor of art history for the Salvadoran Ministry of Education. In 1970, Sancho formed "The Group," a political-military organization that brought together radical students and radical Christians. Like the other organizations, FARN bankrolled itself through kidnapings; Sancho is accused of responsibility for the 1978 kidnaping-assassination of Japanese Industrialist Fujio Matsumoto, among others. By one estimate, FARN had amassed $60 million through kidnapings by 1979.
Sancho admits that the guerrilla high command is Marxist, but "it is a Marxism that is 100% Salvadoran. We know we have to act with great realism and seek a policy of coexistence between our little peoples of Central America and the U.S."