Profile : Trading a Mean Streak for the Human Touch : An aloof rebel mastermind in El Salvador’s war is now a gregarious politico. But some complain that he’s taken his conciliatory message too far.

SAN SALVADOR â€”  For nearly a decade, guerrilla commander Joaquin Villalobos operated out of a remote mountain base in northeastern El Salvador, earning himself a reputation as the rebels’ best and meanest military strategist.

He was a communist wolf to the country’s right-wing elite and an enigma to the rest of El Salvador. Villalobos let years go by without talking to the press and often refused to leave his post even to meet with his own civilian allies on the left.

Today, Villalobos the politician works out of a bustling office on one of San Salvador’s busiest boulevards. He is a regular at public forums and embassy receptions, and his telegenic face has become one of the most recognized in the country. Once incommunicado, the 41-year-old Villalobos is preaching communication among those who used to be at war.

“Human contact is fundamental,� Villalobos said. “If there are people thinking of killing us, I know if I could just talk to them, I would change their minds.�

In the seven months since a U.N.-brokered cease-fire agreement ended El Salvador’s 12-year civil war and brought the rebel commanders back to the capital, Villalobos has emerged as the leading politician and diplomat of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN.

Although he reportedly was the last of five FMLN commanders to sign off on the peace accord, his reputation now is as the most pragmatic and adaptable to new times. Too pragmatic, some rebels say.

The United States, which spent more than $4 billion trying to beat the FMLN, long considered Villalobos the most ruthless rebel leader. But after the war, he was the first to dine with then-U.S. Ambassador William Walker and the first to travel to Washington, where he urged Congress to send aid for reconstruction.

Before becoming a guerrilla, Villalobos was a student activist. The rebel leader, son of a middle-class family from San Salvador, said he was introduced to politics through the Roman Catholic Church and teachers at his Catholic high school. He began his career teaching in a literacy campaign.

He emerged as a student leader while studying economics at the National University and, in the early 1970s, went underground to form the People’s Revolutionary Army, one of the five groups that eventually joined forces in the FMLN.

The rebels were responsible for many deaths during the civil war, but the one that still dogs Villalobos is the 1974 killing of his rival, poet Roque Dalton. During an emotional speech to the country Feb. 1 this year--the day the truce officially began--Villalobos acknowledged that the guerrillas had “committed errors, that we were not infallible and that this is the moment to say to the nation with humility that we recognize this.� He quoted from a Dalton poem.

But his apology has not put the issue to rest. In public forums, he is pressed for explanations. Villalobos answers that the killing was a collective decision and a mistake. He has yet to answer a family request to turn over Dalton’s body.

“Villalobos is seen as the FMLN’s ablest politician,� a political analyst said. “The only one competing with him is Roque Dalton--the dead man who follows him wherever he goes.�

Villalobos ensconced himself in the northeastern province of Morazan after a failed offensive in January, 1981--one that he had argued would produce a popular insurrection like the Sandinistas’ in Nicaragua--and he turned his urban movement into a rural guerrilla army.

As a military man, Villalobos was considered audacious and good at psychological warfare. His group’s clandestine Radio Venceremos was an effective tool against the army. He persuaded his troops to use artillery in an attack on the Third Brigade headquarters in the center of San Miguel as much for the psychological impact as for the military benefit.

Perhaps his biggest military coup was to outsmart his nemesis in the army, Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa. The two were mutually obsessed with destroying each other--a battle Villalobos won.

According to a rebel account, Villalobos understood Monterrosa’s character and need to take home “trophies� of his military successes. Villalobos staged a battle with fake casualties and allowed the army to “capture� a radio transmitter filled with dynamite.

To convince Monterrosa that the transmitter was real, Villalobos ordered Venceremos off the air for several days at the risk of demoralizing his own troops. The trick worked. When Monterrosa personally recovered the transmitter to show it off to reporters, the rebels blew it up by remote control in the colonel’s helicopter. Monterrosa and several other officers died.

But the war reached a stalemate, and Villalobos and the other commanders finally emerged from the mountains in 1988 for a diplomatic tour of Latin America. That year, Villalobos began to argue for political moderation and talks to end the war while still defending such extreme tactics as car bombs and the execution of rural mayors he saw as part of the government’s counterinsurgency strategy.

Villalobos said he had given up the idea of a popular insurrection before the rebels’ largest-ever offensive in November, 1989. He said the purpose of the San Salvador assault was to pressure for negotiations and U.N. involvement.

But other sources say that both Villalobos and a close friend, Sandinista army chief Humberto Ortega, continued to believe in the possibility of a military victory until the offensive ended without one.

Villalobos seems to have learned the lessons of the Sandinistas’ fall from power, as well: It is dangerous to lose touch with your political base, and a monopoly on political power can be fatal. He adopted the Sandinistas’ willingness to break with orthodox Marxist economic formulas.

The rebels were mistaken in their early days to take Marxism, “a useful instrument of analysis, and convert it into a political plan,� Villalobos said. He now describes the FMLN as “closest to social democratic� in its political views.

Some rebels complain that Villalobos is steering the FMLN too far to the center and that he can become so occupied with pragmatic interests--such as setting up FMLN businesses--that he loses sight of the top goal of democratizing El Salvador.

But as the rebels apparently have understated their weapons inventory to U.N. officials, some people wonder if Villalobos really has abandoned his militarism. Others question his real political beliefs. Christian Democratic leader Gerardo Le Chevallier argues that sincerity is not the issue.

“All forces are in transition. Neither (President Alfredo) Cristiani nor Villalobos is Thomas Jefferson. One heads a neo-Nazi party trying to become conservative and the other heads a Marxist-Leninist party becoming social democratic. Neither (vision) is the society they dreamed of, but both men have the ability to take advantage of the situation and adapt their ideology,� he said.

Villalobos is tall by Salvadoran standards, with a boyish face that is unnerving to those who expect to dislike him. On the few occasions he did receive reporters back in Morazan, a fatigues-clad Villalobos was guarded and quick to anger over questions he perceived as hostile. Today, dressed in a white guayabera shirt, casual slacks and polished black shoes, he is at ease with reporters, agile in handling questions he does not like.

Through peace negotiations, he also has grown accustomed to dealing with the right-wing army officers he spent so many years trying to topple. He has found himself at receptions with businessmen who almost certainly funded paramilitary death squads in the early 1980s--and might be willing to do so again.

Ever conscious of how Colombian guerrillas were gunned down after their return to civilian life, he keeps heavy security, varies his routine and avoids public places such as restaurants. He still finds it hard to believe that he is back in San Salvador.

“Sometimes it is surrealistic to think of being here. It makes you want to pinch yourself to think that the war is over and you are standing here. It seemed like it would never end,� he said.

Miller, The Times’ Mexico City Bureau chief, was recently on assignment in San Salvador.

Biography

Name: Joaquin Villalobos

Position: Chief politician of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Age: 41

Personal: From middle-class roots. Was a student activist, then a teacher before becoming a guerrilla leader. Single. One son.

Quote: “Human contact is fundamental. If there are people thinking of killing us, I know if I could just talk to them, I would change their minds.�