A vivid, frank account of two women who became leaders in the Salvadoran revolutionary movement

Spanning the early days of the Salvadoran resistance movement through the end of the country’s civil war, Myrna and Marisol blends first-person narratives and conversations between two young social workers, Marisol Galindo and Myrna Lopez. Haunted by the dispossession of their country’s poor by a violent right-wing elite, and unwilling to abide by the patriarchal rules for their lives, Myrna and Marisol found each other and set off to change the world.

Through interviews and conversations, we follow Myrna’s and Marisol’s personal and political paths as they recall how they came to hold leadership positions within the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), the leftist revolutionary organization that fought against an authoritarian regime in El Salvador for over a decade. Told in their own voices, the book covers the underreported history of the early years and development of the Salvadoran resistance movement as it evolved from small underground cells to mass fronts of civilians to armed organizations fighting a nationwide war.

Through the testimonios of these two women, we witness the meaning of discipline in a revolutionary movement, the role of women—and of sexism—in the work of building a new vision for society, the compromises that women leaders were asked to make, and the ideology and organizing history of a movement that grew massively in spite of brutal repression.