ABSTRACT
Operacion amor is a fictional account of an event well known among Salvadoran hippies of the 1960s. It tells the story of a hippie commune made up of young musicians, artists, poets, and mystics. A high-ranking military officer known as "the commandant" leads a raid against the rural estate that houses the commune, imagining that the place is a guerrilla training camp, but the officer ends up joining an ongoing happening organized by the hippies. Musicians and artists who took part in the cultural scene of El Salvador in the 1960s and early 1970s have similar memories about the odd occurrences alluded to in Operacion amor. Most copies of Operacion amor, 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.
