Wartime Radio: 
Salvadoran Stations Play Out Real life for Journalists

BY JEREMY BIGWOOD, Popular Communications, 1996

Muffled explosions and unscrambled voices emanated from my scanner. a Radio Shack Pro-2004. Looking over at it from my bed through sleepy eyes, I could see its familiar green light showing scanned frequencies. Above it. laying over the speaker, was a Sony Pearlcorder, set to "vox," still in its leather sheath. The backlit face of a travel-alarm clock glowed 04:00 Salvadoran time. The scanner was playing out an attack on a Salvadoran army base by leftist FMLN guerrillas — blow by blow. "Commander Two-Zero" had to be the code name for a U.S. military adviser. and "Retelo" the on-duty U.S. officer at the U.S. military group’s headquarters in San Salvador.

It was February 1989. and I was working as a photojournalist covering the wars in Central America for a New York photo agency. I had bought the scanner on a recent trip to the United States and smuggled it into El Salvador, where scanners were considered illegal and subject to confiscation by the military government.

During a rushed visit by then-Vice President Dan Quayle, I had started to search the airwaves for police, Army and embassy frequencies, and also those of the FMLN guerrillas. After hours and sometimes days of monitoring frequencies, the scanner locked onto various Salvadoran police frequencies at about 179 MHz, and later vectored in on U.S. Embassy traffic, and even better — the clear, unscrambled frequencies of the U.S. military advisers attached to the military bases throughout the country.

The scanner switched to other frequencies, then, suddenly Two-Zero was back:

He clearly was under intense fire from both small arms, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG-7s) and guerrilla-homemade rampas —explosives catapulted by smaller charges from a wooden crate. I could imagine guerrillas, some of them almost naked, covered in black mud probing the base, illuminated by parachute flares in a tracer-slashed nightscape.

And then static:

"Yeah, the probe has turned into an attack from the northeast. We got. ah three wounded already. we have one blindado in ambush ... And we got one kid — he’s in pretty bad shape. He’s probably going to go away. And we have two other wounded, over."

Now it was getting more serious. The guerrillas had taken out a blindado — an armored personnel carrier. I needed to know where this action was taking place, as there was no way of knowing from which base Two-Zero was speaking. But this detail probably would be broadcast during the local morning commercial news in a program from COPREFA, the arm~ press and propaganda office. Knowing that it was recorded. I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning I missed the guerrilla shortwave station broadcasts. but listened to the commercial AM radio news programs~ Although these included some fine journalists on their staffs. they were obliged to run ~he government s COPREFA report.

The report mentioned that several guerrillas had died attacking a military base in the southern town of Zacatecoluca. Now I knew where it had taken place. According to the hissing announcer, the cowardly attack by delinquent terrorists had been successfully repelled by the heroic soldiers of the armed forces, who had suffered no casualties in the process. Without the scanner, this official version of the events would have been the "news".

At 18:00 local, I tuned my Sony to the guerrilla shortwave station. Radio Farabundo Marti broadcasting on the low end of the 3-MHz band from the northern Salvadoran department of Chalatenango. The signal was weak. and just as I fine-tuned it during the Salvadoran national anthem, a clear sound came on followed by a loud signal playing heavy metal rock. The government was jamming again. I could wait for Radio Farabundo Martí to move its signal from under the jamming or look for the other guerrilla shortwave station.

Pushing in the station preset button and turning the dial revealed Radio Venceremos broadcasting from the northeastern part of the county — unhindered by government jamming. A woman’s voice reported a successful attack on the army engineers base near Zacatecoluca, where several soldiers had been killed, including a major. The guerrillas had suffered wounded, but also had decommissioned an armored personnel carrier. There was no word of the brave, but shaken U.S. advisor who must have survived. I wrote down the details of the broadcast and added a transcript from the scanner and passed this information to other journalists, who would synthesize all versions in their reports to their respective press agencies.

Not only did the Salvadoran government’s COPREFA continually misrepresent events in El Salvador, but they made it very difficult for journalists to cover the war. In their desire to make the war zones off-limits to journalists, the Salvadoran army’s press office demanded that journalists apply for written permission called "safe conduct passes" to enter such zones, which included most of the country.

The passes had to he petitioned three days to a week in advance of the proposed visit. And more often than not, requests for passes were denied. As a result, it was impossible to cover breaking news like an attack or massacre outside the capital city. If one was caught in the countryside without an army pass, one could be arrested and deported, or even worse. Sometimes, aided by friendly campesinos who were risking their lives, journalists would sneak into prohibited zones avoiding army foot patrols and aircraft, often at night, walking miles around roadblocks and military installations.

Even with a safe-conduct pass, journalists were required to check in at the local army base on entry into the zone and upon leaving. My first pass, after weeks of petitions, supposedly permitted me to go into guerrilla-controlled territory in Morazán, in the northeastern part of the country. When I arrived at a military base at the last road block, the soldiers summoned me to see the major. He told me that I could not go ahead unless I traveled with his troops. Not wanting to return empty-handed. I volunteered to go on a long-range patrol with a special CIA-trained force of Salvadoran PRAL (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol or LRRP) soldiers dressed as guerrillas (or, at least they thought they were dressed like guerrillas).

After being flown by helicopter to a hill where they were resting under shady mango trees, we ate canned rations and then commenced to walk in the hot, humid mountains. The radioman humped a radio in a backpack, and was straining under its weight. At dusk, we set up camp on another hill overlooking a farm. During the night. the officer, who called himself Charlie Cobra, called in an artillery strike through his radio operator. Soon we heard the whistling shell come closer and closer, and someone yelled "Incoming!" as it passed through the branches of an overhead tree exploding in an open field just below us.

Charlie Cobra yelled: "You imbecile. you ve mixed up the coordinates! Call them back right now!

As members of the PRAL huddled the ground, the nervous radioman called and changed the mixed-up coordinates, and the next shell flew clear of us.

Unlike the army. who used the old, heavy PRC-77 radio packs, the guerrillas used narrowband FM for most of their internal communications within a specific zone or "front"—a s they were called. Typically, the battery pack was cut out of the handheld, and a coiled telephone wire was attached to the poles within, which in turn was attached to a homemade battery pack containing easily obtainable C flashlight batteries. The homemade battery pack usually was placed in a pouch and attached to the belt of their ALICE harness, and the actual handheld clipped to a shoulder D-ring on the harness.

Besides being incredibly lightweight in comparison to the army’s radios, this setup held the radio between the chest and the shoulder, a good position for monitoring or communicating. The guerrillas also used the large PRC-77 radios on shortwave frequencies—known to them as "radio verdes" ("green radios")—for communications between zones. The guerrillas most often used numbered codes, those famous Spanish number stations of DX lore, hurriedly deciphering them with the latest code book.

The two guerrilla shortwave stations. Radio Venceremos an Radio Farabundo Martí had the extremely difficult job of operating daily under wartime conditions in a country the size of Massachusetts. Because of the propaganda value to the rebel cause, both radio stations were considered targets of the highest priority by the Salvadoran government and the U.S. counterinsurgency program. The Salvadoran Air Force, under direct control of the U.S. military’s Southern Command, had the ability to deliver air strikes at any time to any location. Salvadoran Army howitzers and mortars could deliver shells —on demand— to most quadrants in the country. In spite of overwhelming odds against them, Radio Venceremos broadcast twice daily during the 12-year-old ‘.var, missing only one day. As an excuse for their inability to destroy these stations. Salvadoran army and U.S. State Department spokesmen claimed that guerrilla broadcasts originated from Managua. Nicaragua.

This also presented the press and public a spurious mirror image of the CIA-operated Contra radio stations aimed at Nicaragua, which everyone knew to be operating out of safe, fixed radio stations in Honduras and Costa Rica. Many journalists had bought the government line. The only way for Radio Venceremos to prove to the public that they were operating out of El Salvador was to allow the press occasional access to them, a very dangerous proposition under their circumstances (at that time, the photo agency that hired me was allowing the U.S. government access to all of my images. although I wasn’t aware of it).

Taking advantage of a UNICEF child inoculation trip to guerrilla country in northern Morazán, I was able to visit Radio Venceremos for the first time in February 1988. As the three men and two women members of Radio Venceremos set up in the living room of a house, one of the three other journalists who were present walked across the street and sat on the rubble of a bombed-out house — from where he could see – but not hear the broadcasters speaking. He turned on his small shortwave receiver, tuning it in to the low end of 6 MHz.

During live parts of the program, the announcers’ voices synched with the words emanating from his receiver — proving to him, a doubter – that he was observing the real thing. Inside, I photographed the scene. Then, as the others left on the five-hour trip back to San Salvador, I stayed on to document life in this guerrilla zone. I didn’t see Radio Venceremos for another month. but I heard them clearly throughout the whole zone where government jamming was more muted. I was to learn later that both radio stations, moving frequently to avoid detection, often used barbed-wire fences as their antennas. Radio Venceremos and its sister Radio Farabundo Martí continued to broadcast daily for the next four years from their mountain redoubts until the war ended in 1992 through U.N.-sponsored peace negotiations.

Since the signing of the Salvadoran peace accords, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Martí have moved to the capitol city of San Salvador and now broadcast only in the FM band. Radio Venceremos is a popular commercial station, albeit with a decent news program. For news and analysis purposes, Radio Farabundo Marti is better. It is a shame that these two stations are not available on shortwave.

In this age of CNN and the Internet, scanning and shortwave DXing are given the short-shrift, but in reality the are a hidden, but essential part of news-gathering. Scanners are usually prohibited by governments with something to hide, but carefully taking the risk of using one can reveal worthwhile stark realities. For journalists who cover wars where both sides have radio stations, and where access to actual events difficult, the search for the truth about the conflict is greatly facilitated by DXing.