In the first two InsideGMT articles on The Guerrilla Generation I covered the conflicts in South America, featuring an urban insurgency (Uruguay) and one of the most violent insurgencies in the region’s history (Peru). In this InsideGMT article we move on to the first of the two conflicts set in Central America. The Central American civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s also combine in the “Resisting Reagan” Campaign scenario, which will be featured in the fifth InsideGMT article in this series. Unlike the two previously covered games, which include only minor references to United States involvement, the US played a major role in the two remaining conflicts. This article, on The Guerrilla Generation: El Salvador, covers the most complex multipack game yet designed. With a larger number of pieces, Pivotal Events, and new special decks, the game introduces several mechanical changes to cover the complexity of this conflict. Given the use of mechanics such as Pivotal Events in several previous COIN volumes, El Salvador serves as a good stepping stone to more complex multiplayer COIN games, such as Fire in the Lake, Liberty or Death, or Pendragon.

The Guerrilla Generation: El Salvador covers the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)’s insurgency against the government of El Salvador. The FMLN is attributed with possessing the strongest military capabilities of any insurgent group in Latin American history, including the use of special forces, spectacular raids on military bases, and two major offensives analogous to the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The FMLN player will often be able to match the military capabilities of their Government opponent, unlike many of the other insurgents in this multipack. However, unlike Castro’s far militarily weaker July 26th Movement featured in Cuba Libre, the FMLN did not succeed in overthrowing the government of El Salvador and had to settle for a negotiated settlement in 1992. Unlike the Batista Government in Cuba Libre, which faces drastic US aid cuts leaving them barely able to operate by the end of the game, the Government player in El Salvador will receive vast amounts of US assistance, particularly if they pursue reforms, enabling them to often beat back the best efforts of the FMLN insurgency.

Repression and Reform in El Salvador

The civil war in El Salvador originated from the refusal of a narrow group of economic elites to reform the structural inequalities built into the largely agrarian economy, which led to increasing protests and unrest throughout the 1970s. An alliance had long existed between the economic elites hoping to block reforms and the military who blocked any challenges to the status quo, including the extremely violent suppression of a revolt in the 1930s led by Farabundo Martí (who gave the FMLN insurgency its name). However, with the fall of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua to the Sandinista insurgency in 1979, elements within the Salvadoran military began exploring reforms to prevent an insurgent victory in El Salvador. That same year, a coup by reformist officers set the government again on the path to democratic rule. The coup created a divide within the government of El Salvador between a “reformist” approach that favored addressing the underlying causes of the insurgency through reforms and a “rightist” approach that favored using brutal repression to crush the insurgency, with the latter approach risking an aid cut off by the United States. Both the Carter and Reagan administrations backed reformists in the Salvadoran government but had different levels of tolerance for the rightist faction, who were willing to use death squads to combat the insurgency and block any reforms that threatened the status quo.

In game terms, this divide in the Salvadoran Government is modeled by the Government Track, which interacts with a number of mechanics and Events. By using the Reform Special Activity and Events, Government players may adopt a reformist approach that grants additional US Aid and powerful permanent effects, drawn from a Reform Deck that serves as a new way of depicting the Government Capability Cards used in other COIN games. However, the Government begins the game Rightist, and adopting a Reformist approach can take time while also forgoing the brutal levels of repression available to those sticking with the Rightist approach. By using the Reprisal Special Activity, the Government can shift the track toward Rightist, greatly increasing the lethality of Reprisal itself, which can directly remove Underground Guerrillas from Government Controlled spaces.

However, beyond being completely unethical, the Rightist approach also comes with serious costs. First, unless the FMLN is winning the war, a Rightist Government player will get no aid from the US Congress, who are disgusted by their violence. During this period, several regimes in Latin America faced aid cutoffs or reductions because of repression and human rights abuses. Second, the more Terror markers placed on the map, the greater the chance the FMLN player will be able to discover and broadcast the Government’s atrocities to the world by using their special Radio Venceremos Base to draw cards from the Atrocity Deck. Of course, if the Government player manages to remove the Radio Base from the board, they will be able to carry out crimes without consequence until the next Campaign (besides feeling awful for what they’re doing). I highly recommend players avoid going full Rightist against a competent FMLN opponent unless they want to play on hard mode. Remember that crime doesn’t pay – unless you’re the British Empire conducting counterinsurgency in their more remote colonies (see The British Way: Malaya and Kenya).

The Strongest Insurgency in Latin American History

Facing the divided Salvadoran Government is the FMLN insurgency, which formed from a merger of five separate insurgent groups in 1980. The unique organizational characteristic of the FMLN insurgency is its sophisticated military capabilities, far exceeding any other groups in the multipack. The FMLN possesses a Raid Special Activity similar to the one used by the ARVN in Fire in the Lake, reflecting their special forces and sapper units that achieved several spectacular successes against the Salvadoran military, including the near complete destruction of the country’s air force early in the conflict. The United States eventually replaced the lost aircraft, but these exploits by their special forces is only one part of the FMLN’s capabilities. The insurgency also organized larger military units capable of matching and routing government forces early in the conflict, reflected in the Assault Special Activity that allows the FMLN to remove a Government piece for each Guerrilla, like the Assault Operation of most Government Factions in the COIN series. Finally, the FMLN player begins each game of El Salvador by playing their optimistically named “Final Offensive” Pivotal Event, representing the major insurgent offensive at the start of the civil war in January 1981. After the first Propaganda Round, the “Final Offensive” Pivotal is returned to the FMLN player, allowing for a second “final” offensive later in the conflict, as happened historically in 1989. These FMLN offensives are often compared to the Tet Offensive, due to their ability to bring the war to the relatively secure cities of El Salvador.

In sharp contrast to both the Government of El Salvador and the Shining Path insurgency covered in the second InsideGMT article of this series, the FMLN insurgency used considerable restraint in dealing with civilians. The Truth and Reconciliation report for El Salvador attributed only 5% of the deaths to the guerrillas, compared to 85% by the Salvadoran military. To reflect the insurgency’s incredible restraint, the FMLN does not possess a Terror Operation. The few instances of abuses against civilians, such as the assassination of mayors and brief uses of forced conscription, are covered by Events. Instead, the FMLN player has a Sabotage Operation. A major part of the FMLN’s strategy against the government was economic sabotage, similar to the use of Sabotage by EOKA or Irgun in The British Way. However, given their far greater size, the FMLN managed to carry out greater damage to the economy of El Salvador than those smaller insurgent groups. Estimates from the early 1990s put the damage somewhere between $1 to $1.5 billion, with 83 out of 92 bridges being destroyed or severely damaged at some point in the conflict. Although the strategy put significant pressure on the government, the destruction of the economy was fairly unpopular and may have contributed to the FMLN’s initial electoral defeats following the peace agreement in 1992.

US Support to the Government

Massive amounts of military and economic aid from the United States is one of the main reasons the Salvadoran government survived the impressive military capabilities and economic sabotage of the FMLN. Unlike Aid in other COIN volumes, US Aid serves as a separate type of Resource for the Government Player that can only be spent on certain actions. US Aid can be used for Train, placing Government Bases, Civic Action, and the Air Strike Special Activity. Government Bases represent the air force of El Salvador and enable more flexible Sweep Operations (helicopters) and more Air Strike spaces (tactical bombers). Air Strike is particularly effective in El Salvador, because beyond removing exposed insurgent pieces the game also models the displacement caused by the bombing. Bombing in Support spaces is counterproductive as it shifts the space to Neutral. However, Air Strike in Opposition spaces also shifts spaces to Neutral, reflecting the flight from insurgent controlled areas to cities where aid groups distributed relief to the displaced. The displacement of civilians from insurgent areas is a strategy similar to the one used by the United States in Vietnam (see the “Free Fire Zone” Bonus Capability Event in the Sovereign of Discord Expansion), and as the scholar Leigh Binford notes, the use of bombing to undermine the FMLN’s popular support became an “infinitely more deniable version of the same ‘empty-the-sea’ strategy that precipitated the massacres of the early 1980s”. I intentionally made the design decision to include the social and strategic consequences of the vastly expanded bombing to ensure that the game didn’t give the impression that state violence ended when the government pursued a Reformist approach backed by US Aid. I encourage players to try the game with the goal of minimizing civilian victimization and explore the dilemmas and outcomes that result. Too often games in our hobby allow players to avoid such strategies by inaccurate omission rather than player choice.

The El Salvador game is a difficult game to play at times, in a multipack that many players will likely find more grim than even The British Way. However, I’d argue this is the only responsible and honest way to design games on such topics. For those looking to read more on El Salvador, I recommend Russell Crandall’s The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977-1992 for a general overview. Leigh Binford’s The El Mozote Massacre: Human Rights and Global Implication and Mark Danner’s The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War offer good accounts of violence, with the latter being quite inexpensive and easy to find. Neither are easy reading. There are a few obscure games on the civil war in El Salvador, including a scenario in Victory Games’ Central America that I don’t particularly recommend and a nearly impossible to find pen and paper game called El Salvador: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23947/el-salvador. Both were designed during the conflict and didn’t have the luxury of the massive amounts of information released since its conclusion.

I wish I could say the next InsideGMT article will be covering a less depressing topic, but that would be a lie! Next time, I’ll cover the last of the four games in The Guerrilla Generation, the Contra war in Nicaragua.

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Previous Articles: 

The Guerrilla Generation: Uruguay

The Guerrilla Generation: Peru