Abstract
The book’s introduction lays out the ways in which the relationship between violence and democracy, which has been assumed to be antithetical in the context of post-Cold War peacebuilding operations, can be problematized from an anthropological perspective. This introductory chapter also delves into the epistemological value of rumors as both a relevant object of enquiry and an analytical lens through which to learn about a violent democracy like El Salvador’s. It provides background on El Salvador’s war and ensuing peacebuilding operation as well as the country’s twentieth-century processes of statecraft and citizenship so as to elucidate why El Salvador serves as a pertinent case study for an enquiry into the relationship between violence and democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Victoria histórica de la ex guerrilla izquierdista en El Salvador’, El País, 16 March 2009.
- 2.
The Salvadoran electoral code (Art. 342) prohibits the sale, distribution, and consumption of alcoholic beverages on Election Day as well as on the days immediately preceding and following it.
- 3.
Only FMLN and ARENA competed in the 2009 presidential election. For more details about this election, see Chap. 5.
- 4.
My policy throughout the book has been to anonymize friends and acquaintances, research participants, and places inasmuch as possible. However, I have maintained the names of prominent political actors and municipalities and towns. Where anonymity did not suffice to conceal the identity of research participants, I have also distorted details to better achieve that goal while making sure to preserve the integrity of the evidence.
- 5.
Rodrigo Ávila was the ARENA presidential candidate in the 2009 elections and the former National Civilian Police (PNC) director in 1994–1999 and 2006–2008, thereby evoking the alliances between economic elites and the country’s institutions of order that characterized previous eras (see Stanley 1996). During the campaign, rumor had it that he had belonged to paramilitary groups in the past.
- 6.
All translations of research participants and extracts from Spanish texts throughout the book are my own.
- 7.
‘2009 el año más violento desde 1992’, El Faro , 3 January 2010.
- 8.
Although much of the writing on gangs is journalistic in nature, there is also abundant scholarly work. See, for instance , Smutt and Miranda (1998), Santacruz Giralt and Concha-Eastman (2001), Cruz (2007b), Savenije (2009), Bruneau et al. (2011), Wolf (2012d), Ward (2013), and Martínez D’Aubuisson (2015).
- 9.
It should be noted that Calle Dieciocho split after 2005 into two factions, Sureños and Revolucionarios, which have fought each other ever since while continuing to fight their arch-rival Salvatrucha. To read about the events that led to this split , see Amaya and Martínez (2015).
- 10.
From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, between 200 and 600 Salvadorans were deported monthly (Zilberg 2011: 129).
- 11.
It should be noted, however, that in recent years, gang members have begun to avoid any outward signs that might facilitate police identification and detention.
- 12.
Chapter 6 discusses local appropriations of the global discourse of reconciliation that has accompanied peacebuilding operations. For critical approaches to the discourse of reconciliation , see, for instance , Wilson (2001), the edited volume of Focaal (Eastmond and Stefansson 2010), and the dialogue in Public Culture (Borneman 2002, and the responses to him in the same issue).
- 13.
These figures are estimates since there is no consensus on the global count of Salvadoran migrants (PNUD 2005b: 40).
- 14.
Indeed, since the signing of the Peace Accords, the homicide rate went down only slightly, to under 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, in the early 2000s (PNUD 2010: 275). Following the enactment of mano dura (iron fist) policies from 2003, homicide rates dropped under that level only after the 2012 gang truce . For the evolution of homicide rates between 2009 and 2014, see FUNDAUNGO (2014).
- 15.
- 16.
The FMLN was born in October 1980 as an agglutination of five political-military organizations founded in the 1970s (except for the Salvadoran Communist Party, PCS , which had been founded in 1930). The Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) was the political arm of the FMLN during the war and peace negotiations . For comprehensive accounts of the structure of the FMLN, see Martín Álvarez (2006, 2010) and Sprenkels (2014: 75–138).
- 17.
Wood (2003) has provided a thorough study of popular support in various rural areas of El Salvador’s Usulután Department during the war.
- 18.
Socorro Jurídico , a human rights organization within the San Salvador Archbishopric , registered 11,903 civilian victims in 1980 and 16,266 in 1981 (United Nations 1993: 24). From then onward, the annual figure of victims—both civilian and military—oscillated between 1000 and 6000.
- 19.
The 1989 offensive, which lasted from 11 November to 12 December, left behind 2000 victims; according to the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, it was one of the most violent events of the war (United Nations 1993: 49).
- 20.
Although peace negotiations among the five Central American presidents, led by the Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, had already begun in 1987 as a joint effort to pacify the region, the UN-brokered negotiations between El Salvador’s opposing sides did not begin until 1989 (Karl 1992: 154; United Nations 1992a: i–ii; Montgomery 1995: 141).
- 21.
As I explain later, although initially led by the most reactionary sector of the elite, by the end of the 1980s, a shift in the balance of power within the party fostered a new leadership more open to negotiation.
- 22.
In the postwar era, migration has become Salvadorans’ main way to escape increasing economic insecurity , to the extent that the flow of remittances sent by Salvadoran migrants has amounted to an average of more than 16 percent of El Salvador’s GDP (Gammage 2006).
- 23.
The land transfer program was negotiated mainly for demobilized guerrillas and communities already occupying the land in regions or areas that had been FMLN strongholds during the war (Sprenkels 2014: 174).
- 24.
Ecclesial Base Communities were formed in El Salvador’s rural areas as well as in other Latin American countries from the late 1960s, linked to parishes led by priests who embraced liberation theology, in order to promote critical and progressive religious practice. The activity of CEBs contributed in turn to increased political participation in rural areas.
- 25.
The land reform promoted by the United States and implemented by the PDC from the early 1980s consisted of three stages, of which only the first (expropriation of large estates and their transformation into cooperatives) and third (the legal titling of individually owned plots) phases were implemented. Phase two, which would have had the largest impact in terms of the amount of land expropriated and redistributed , was never enacted (Byrne 1996: 73). Since the land initially managed by cooperatives was divided into small parcels and redistributed in the late 1980s, both implemented phases ultimately sought to generate a land market while weakening the landed elite and diminishing support for guerrillas among the rural population (Robinson 2003: 92).
- 26.
Romero was the archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 to 1980, when he was killed. Although initially pro-elite, Romero radically changed his attitude due to El Salvador’s increasingly violent conjuncture and the influence of liberation theology (see Chap. 6).
- 27.
From the 1980s, both the IMF and WB attached policy conditionalities, specifically structural adjustment programs, to their loans (Paris 2004: 29) . Yet the adoption of these programs was not simply a response to the pressure of international organizations; neoliberal policies were enthusiastically embraced by the ARENA governments (Paige 1997: 51; Robinson 2003: 87–102).
- 28.
A maquila is a factory in which products are assembled by a low-cost labor force.
- 29.
However, the elite divisions have sparked constant intraparty tensions, and the loss of votes and affiliates to the PCN in the late 1990s and to the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA) after 2009. Following the electoral defeat of ARENA in 2009, former president Elías Antonio Saca was expelled in an attempt by the Cristiani-led faction of ARENA to regain control of the party from a new generation of politicians relatively independent of the traditional elite (Réserve 2016: 180–183). As a reaction, Saca and the faction of the party that supported him founded GANA . This party, which competed in the 2012 municipal and legislative elections for the first time, has contributed to dividing the rightwing share of vote and weakening ARENA.
- 30.
A department is an administrative regional division equivalent to a province.
- 31.
Throughout the book, I use the Spanish demonym as a short form for ‘residents of Santiago’. Because the Spanish language lacks a gender-neutral form, I use both the feminine (Santiagueñas) and masculine (Santiagueños) interchangeably to refer to both men and women unless I specify otherwise.
- 32.
According to the Institute of Forensic Medicine (IML), 1134 homicides occurred in La Paz between 2001 and 2008, making this department the sixth most violent of the 14 into which El Salvador is divided (IML 2009: 56). However, this was largely due to the high number of homicides occurring in Zacatecoluca , which by the end of the decade was considered to be among the ten municipalities with the highest risk of homicide (see IML 2009: 127, 129).
- 33.
Although in the past there have been other leftwing or Center–Left alternatives, these have never obtained any significant support and eventually dissolved.
- 34.
Although both Binford and Sprenkels refer to Salvadorans from former war zones, some of Santiago’s residents migrated from those regions and had socialized as insurgents or joined popular organizations linked with the FMLN.
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Montoya, A. (2018). Introduction. In: The Violence of Democracy. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76330-9_1
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