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Abstract
From 1980 to 1992, the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) fought each other in a civil conflict that devastated El Salvador, killing 75,000 people and leaving thousands more homeless or injured. Over 80 percent of the government's troops and over 20 percent of the FMLN's were under eighteen years of age; however, thus far, historians have missed the centrality of the role of children in this conflict. This article explores the legacy of both sides' reliance on child soldiers and examines the costs of child soldiering in terms of demobilization issues and postwar societal problems.
In 1981, Moreno, fifteen at the time, was walking home from a movie with his friend. Upon exiting the cinema, the two boys were stopped by a truck fidi of troops with guns. Before he realized what was happening, Moreno had been "enlisted" to serve in the Salvadoran army.1 Moreno's case was not unusual. Other boys had been picked up by the Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador (the Salvadoran Armed Forces, or the FAES) while walking to school, running errands for their parents, or playing in the schoolyard. In rural towns, the periodic FAES recruitment drives terrorized the local populations. FAES troops even went to the primary schools to recruit chUdren. By 1985, attending school in many areas was too dangerous, and hundreds of schools were closed.2
ChUdren also fought for the leftist guerrUla organization, El Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or the FMLN). Giovanni, for example, joined the FMLN guerriUas at age fourteen, after his famUy was kiUed by a group of government soldiers. He wanted to do something to avenge the massacre of his family and had "ganas de matar" (felt excited to kiU) the soldiers.3 Toño, a seven-year-old from San Pedro, became an active FMLN combatant after watching a FAES soldier hack off his mother's wedding ring from her dead corpse.4 FamiUaI and economic-based pressures, as weU as forced recruitment, brought other chUdren to take up arms with the FMLN. Thus far, historians and political scientists have missed the centraUty of chUdren in this war. Over half of those who fought in El Salvador's civü war (from 1980 to 1992) were...