Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador PDF
Preview Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador
Everyday Revolutionaries Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights Series Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton, Stephen Eric Bronner, Aldo Civico, and Nela Navarro Everyday Revolutionaries Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador IRINA CARLOTA SILBER RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Silber, Irina Carlota Everyday revolutionaries : gender, violence, and disillusionment in postwar El Salvador / Irina Carlota Silber. p. cm. — (Genocide, political violence, human rights) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8135-4934-7(hbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8135-4935-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Postwar reconstruction—Social aspects—El Salvador. 2. Revolutionaries— El Salvador—Case studies. 3. Political activists—El Salvador—Case studies. 4. El Salvador—History—1992– 5. El Salvador—Social conditions. 6. El Salvador—Politics and government—1992– 7. El Salvador—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects. I. Title. F1488.5.S55 2011 972.8405(cid:2)4—dc22 2010013766 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2011by Irina Carlota Silber All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America For Antonio, Cenzo, and Inés Dispatches from the Frontlines AROUND THE WORLD; Salvadoran Police Report 50Dead in Political Strife SAN SALVADOR, July 6 The police said today that at least 50people were killed over the weekend in El Salvador. Ten of the bodies were in the northern town of Las Vueltas, an area where leftists who have been fighting the ruling junta are concentrated. Residents of the town said that the victims had been pulled from their homes Friday night by unidentified men, and that when the bodies were found the next day, they showed signs of having been tortured. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran military reported guerrilla attacks on installations in the northern town of Chalatenango and in the eastern department of Cabanas [sic]. A military spokesman said the attacks were minor and discounted them as “desperate acts of extremists.” —Associated Press, July 7, 1981 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix List of Organizations xv Cast of Characters xvii Introduction 1 1 Entangled Aftermaths 10 2 Histories of Violence/Histories of Organizing 31 3 Rank-and-File History 41 NGO War Stories 70 4 NGOs in the Postwar Period 75 Stitching Wounds and Frying Chicken 89 5 Not Revolutionary Enough? 91 FMLN Snapshots 111 6 Cardboard Democracy 118 Aftermaths of Solidarity 135 7 Conning Revolutionaries 137 Postwar Dance 163 8 The Postwar Highway 165 Epilogue: Amor Lejos, Amor de Pendejos 189 Notes 203 References 219 Index 231 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has taken me some time. In the process of assembling it I have been inspired, pushed, challenged, and supported by mentors, colleagues, family, and friends. While time has changed the questions I pose, the stories I weave, and the analysis I develop, what has remained constant is my deep respect for the men, women, and children of repopulated communities in Chalatenango, El Salvador, who welcomed me into their homes and shared so much about their lives in the past and in the present. Their power of reflection and their analysis of loss and possibility is what I privilege in this book. Though I provide pseudo- nyms, in particular, I must thank Elsy, who opened up a path for this research and whose children I did not expect to thank over pupusasin the United States. Much of this book is for this next generation of Chalatecos, whose stories, whose genealogies, force us to rethink the meaning of postwar and to people our accounts upon which so much policy is forged. For so many hours of conversa- tion, company, and distraction, I thank Chayo, her family, and Chavela and the women from the arts and crafts workshop. I am grateful to Aquilino for his patience in explaining postwar processes to me, and to Kasandra for her com- panionship and café listo. This book would not be possible without the assis- tance of the many directors and staff of the Chalatenango offices of two organizations, CORDES and CCR, who opened up their doors to me in 1993and granted me access to repopulated communities. Throughout the book I seek to discuss, faithfully and fairly, events organized by these groups, whose overarch- ing labor is to promote a dignified life for historically marginalized citizens in El Salvador. After nearly two decades of engagement with Salvadoran processes, the list of individuals and institutions to thank are many. For their intellectual guid- ance at different stages of his project, I thank Roger Rasnake, who first pushed me to research the politics of Salvadoran migration when I was still an under- graduate, Connie Sutton for her early guidance, Aldo Lauria-Santiago for shaping the field, and Elisabeth Wood for her model scholarship and her engagement with my work. I am indebted to Bambi Schieffelin for helping me theorize narrative language practices and for her long-standing support of my ix
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