Joaquín Villalobos

Joaquín Villalobos (born 1951) was a founder in 1972 and was the main leader of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (in English: People's Revolutionary Army), which was one of five organizations that joined together in 1980 to found the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front during the Salvadoran Civil War. During the Salvadoran Civil War, Villalobos was generally believed to be the principal military strategist for the FMLN. He is accused of the murder of poet Roque Dalton. [http://www.counterpunch.org/serrano07022007.html] [http://www.counterpunch.org/hirschman07022007.html] Villalobos was one of the signers of the peace agreement that ended El Salvador's civil war in 1992.

As a result of the 1992 Peace Accords, the FMLN was legalized as a political party, and Villalobos continued as a member of the FMLN until 1995, though his views became centrist and more antagonistic to other FMLN leaders. In 1995, he, along with other former leaders of the ERP, split from the FMLN to form a new centrist political party, the Democratic Party, which disappeared as a political party soon after.

Later in the 1990s Villalobos went to England to study at Oxford University.

Now Villalobos is an outspoken critic of the left in El Salvador and has also been publicly critical of left-wing guerrilla movements in other Latin American countries. Villalobos has served as a consultant on peacemaking efforts in other countries (Colombia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Bosnia, Northern Ireland), as an adviser to the Center of Cooperation Initiatives for Development at the University of Alcalá de Henares, and as a member of the Inter-American Dialog in Washington DC, USA.