SUMMARY
ERP (Ejército revolucionario del pueblo, or People’s Revolutionary Army) was an armed group active in the Salvadoran intrastate conflict over government. Following El Salvador’s independence in 1856, land ownership and income were concentrated in a small economic elite, commonly referred to as the “los catorce” (“the Fourteen”) oligarchy. Likewise, political power was monopolized by a small authoritarian and exclusionary regime, which was more or less dominated by the Salvadoran military. El Salvador’s political leadership was also geared towards protecting the interests of the economic oligarchy, rather than those of the broader population. In 1932, Salvadoran peasants led by Agustín Farabundo Martí rose up against the government in protest against this system; despite being brutally crushed, the 1932 uprising came to serve as a role model for subsequent leftist movements in El Salvador. The enduring oligarchic control over El Salvador’s economic and political spheres made the country susceptible to revolutionary leftist currents, which led to the establishment of several armed groups during the 1970s; it was in this context that ERP emerged. Ideologically, the group was described as revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, and it claimed to represent El Salvador’s economically and politically marginalized rural and working class population. ERP’s primary goal was to overthrow the Government of El Salvador, particularly the “Revolutionary Government Junta” that seized power via a coup in October 1979.
ERP was officially created on 2 March 1972, but the foundations for the group began to emerge as early as 1969. As many revolutionary movements in the country, ERP had some of its roots in the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS, or Communist Party of El Salvador). It was youths from the Union of Young Patriots (UJP) – PCS’ youth wing – that together with members of the Salvadoran Christian Democratic Party’s (PDC) youth league and various university students formed the embryotic ERP. Aside from utilizing political mobilization at El Salvador’s universities, the group also to a large extent included radicalized members of the Catholic and Protestant communities. For example, Joaquín Villalobos – ERP’s leader and one of its principal founders – was a member of ACUS (Acción Católica Universitaria Salvadoreña, Salvadoran University Catholic Action), a Christian action group.
Organizationally, ERP initially adhered to the “foco” revolutionary doctrine. This implied that the group believed that a relatively small armed group could achieve its revolutionary objectives without the support of a wider “mass movement”. This reflected the group’s tendency to favor a militarized strategy over a political one. This stance was revised in 1978, when ERP realized that it ran the risk of being marginalized by other Salvadoran revolutionary groups (such as FPL) that had affiliated popular movements. Consequently, ERP endorsed the creation of the “Ligas Populares de 28 de Febrero” (LP-28, 28th of February Popular Leagues) popular movement by ERP sympathizers at the University of El Salvador in 1978. ERP and LP-28 later also facilitated the creation of a “revolutionary party” - Partido Revolucionario Salvadoreño (PRS, Salvadoran Revolutionary Party) – to serve as the movement’s formal “political wing”. In 1979, ERP had around 550 fighters; LP-28 had approximately 10 000 members, which filled various non-combat functions.
In 1973, an ERP faction that included several important group members- such as Fabio Castillo Figueroa Francisco Jovel, and María Marta Valladares – left ERP following disagreements over the group’s military and military strategies. The splinter faction initially called itself Organización Revolucionaria de Trabajadores (ORT, Workers’ Revolutiuonary Organization), but was reorganized as Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos (PRTC, Revolutionary Party of the Central American Workers) in 1976. In May 1975, ERP suffered another internal split caused by the decisions made by the group’s most militant faction to assassinate two of ERP’s most prominent members, Roque Dalton and Armando Arteaga. As such, a faction that included members like Ernesto Jovel, Lil Milagro Ramírez, and Eduardo Sancho left ERP to create Resistencia Nacional (RN, National Resistance).
In 1980, ERP merged with several other Salvadoran revolutionary groups – including PRTC and RN – to create the FMLN umbrella organization. After this, ERP ceased to exist as a separate actor in the UCDP data.
