The book Guerrillas by Dirk Kruijt documents the history in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua guerrilla movements that developed between the 1950s and the 1970s, providing information that allows the reader to encounter the similarities of these movements, but also the differential factors that altered the development of each movements in the mentioned countries.
The book, then, illustrates the trajectories of El Salvador’s Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN); the Guatemala’s Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URGN), and Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). By doing so, the author makes important points about the initial movements, their strategies, the organizing process and the many challenges they faced in order to constitute and achieve their goals.
These movements’
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Albeit during the first months they were able to provide with public services and focus on literacy, education and culture, their politics did not bring progress to their people and did not have long term results.
The failure of this revolutionary government may be by the lack of professional technicians, but it is also necessary to understand that the Sandinistas were not able to redesign a new structure that fitted with the governmental structure, not being able to do good politics as their main training was focused on armed strategy.
The fact that they became in many of the things they protested against allow to observe how the corruption of institutions and structures of power are at the end capable to dismantle ideals and noble objectives. Thus, the government of the Sandinistas was what actually caused their fracture, since the lack of formal organization and clarity led to misconceptions and strong disagreements inside the