ABSTRACT
Most copies of Operación amor (Operation love), a short novel by the Salvadoran poet, writer, and theater director Manuel Sorto were apparently destroyed along with thousands of other books during the 1980 military occupation of the University of El Salvador. 1 At the time, Sorto was playing John Proctor in The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials, in Acto Teatro, one of the few theater venues operating in San Salvador in the midst of the brutal repression that heralded the country’s civil war (1980–1992). Folk musician Carlos “Tamba” Aragón, who joined the emerging revolutionary movement in the 1970s, alerted Sorto about the Salvadoran military’s intention to assassinate him and other actors they labeled subversives. The next day Sorto and his family fled to Mexico City and ultimately settled in France. 2
