José Eduardo Sancho Castañeda (born 6 March 1947), better known by his nom de guerre Fermán Cienfuegos, was the leader of the Salvadoran organization National Resistance Armed Forces (FARN), which was a part of National Resistance (RN).

Biography

José Eduardo Sancho Castañeda was born on 6 March 1947 in San José,

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

. His parents were Guillermo Sancho Colombari and Liliam Castañeda Saldívar. His parents met in

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

in 1942 when Sancho Colombari went to the country to study medicine. Sancho Castañeda attended the Central American University. Sancho Castañeda was influenced by leftists in Costa Rica, including Manuel Mora Valverde, the leader of the People's Vanguard Party whom he considered to be a close friend. There, he also began to read texts written by

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

. He opposed the

Football War The Football War (), also known as the Soccer War or the 100 Hour War, was a brief military conflict fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. Existing tensions between the two countries coincided with rioting during a 1970 FIFA World ...

fought between the governments of El Salvador and

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

in 1969. The RN was founded in 1975 as a split from the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) after an internal struggle within the ERP resulted in the assassination of a group of ERP leaders including famed Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton who advocated that the ERP should not have such a largely militarist focus and should do more organizing among the masses. In 1980, the RN was one of the five revolutionary Marxist organizations that formed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) that fought an armed struggle against the Salvadoran government. As the leader of the RN, Cienfuegos was one of the leaders of the final offensive of 1981 and was one of the signatories of the 1992 Salvadoran peace accords.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cienfuegos, Ferman Salvadoran communists People of the Salvadoran Civil War 1947 births Living people