Joe Sanderson: a life in words and deeds
Joe Sanderson’s passport and the diary he was carrying at the time of his death as a guerrilla fighter in El Salvador. Sanderson is one of two Americans known to have fought and died with the rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front during El Salvador’s civil war and revolution in the 1980s. Sanderson was killed in 1982 but left behind a diary of his experiences with the rebels. The diary is stored at the Museum of the Word and Image in San Salvador, in an archive dedicated to the country’s revolution. (Hector Tobar / Los Angeles Times)
A box filled with letters sent home to Urbana, Ill., by Joe Sanderson during his two decades of wandering the world. Sanderson visited more than 60 countries on five continents before joining El Salvador’s guerrilla rebel movement. (Hector Tobar / Los Angeles Times)
Former guerrilla fighter Carlos Consalvi examines the passport, diary and other documents of Joe Sanderson, an American killed fighting as a guerrilla in El Salvador’s civil war. Consalvi marched alongside Sanderson during the war and rescued Sanderson’s diary after his 1982 death. Now Consalvi is storing the documents in the archives of the Museum of the Word and Image, the San Salvador institution Consalvi founded to document the history of the country’s revolution. (Hector Tobar / Los Angeles Times)
