Joe Sanderson (May 14, 1942 – April 27, 1982) was an adventurer from Urbana, Illinois who was one of two Americans to be killed in combat while fighting with leftist rebels during the Salvadoran Civil War.

[5] After backpacking and hitchhiking and taking boats across the Americas, Sanderson worked with the International Red Cross in Nigeria during the Biafran War in 1967.

In Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo, he met the white mercenaries who had been hired by the government to fight the warriors of the Simba Rebellion.

Sanderson traveled to El Salvador in 1980; by now a fluent Spanish-speaker, he made contact with underground operatives of the People's Revolutionary Army, one of the armed groups that would later be allied in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

[7] He also worked with the rebel's Radio Venceremos station, as a photographer; and in one combat encounter with the Salvadoran army he killed at least two government soldiers.