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Joaquín Villalobos (born 1951) was one of the founders, in 1972, and was one the main leaders of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (in English: People's Revolutionary Army). The other founders of the ERP were Alejandro Rivas Mira (CIA agent) and Jorge Melendez "Jonas." The ERP is 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. A clear example of this was his clever involvement in what was arguably one of the most iconic victories for FMLN during the war. Villalobos was the strategist behind the death of the high ranking military officer Domingo Monterrosa. Villalobos cleverly tricked Monterrosa into picking up what he believed was the radio transmitter for Radio Venceremos, which coordinated the entire FMLN movement. The transmitter did not actually work, and instead a bomb was attached to it. The bomb went off in Monterrosa's helicopter, where he, along with the entire crew were killed. This was a landmark victory for the FMLN forces, and the remnants of Monterrosa's helicopter can actually be found in the Museum of the Revolution located in Morzan Department. Villalobos is also accused in the murder of poet Roque Dalton, a member of the FMLN, who was suspected of being a CIA agent. [1][2] After the armistice of the war, 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 St Anthony's College,Oxford University [3].

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.

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