Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador

Lotti Silber has a new book out on Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador. Here's the excerpt

Everyday Revolutionaries provides a longitudinal and rigorous analysis of the legacies of war in a community racked by political violence. By exploring political processes in one of El Salvador’s former war zones—a region known for its peasant revolutionary participation—Irina Carlota Silber offers a searing portrait of the entangled aftermaths of confrontation and displacement, aftermaths that have produced continued deception and marginalization. 

Silber provides one of the first rubrics for understanding and contextualizing postwar disillusionment, drawing on her ethnographic fieldwork and research on immigration to the United States by former insurgents. With an eye for gendered experiences,  she unmasks how community members are asked, contradictorily and in different contexts, to relinquish their identities as “revolutionaries” and to develop a new sense of themselves as productive yet marginal postwar citizens via the same “participation” that fueled their revolutionary action. Beautifully written and offering rich stories of hope and despair, Everyday Revolutionaries contributes to important debates in public anthropology and the ethics of engaged research practices. 

The book looks really interesting. Lotti probably doesn't remember but we were in El Salvador at the same time back in 1997.

Ortega maintains slight lead according to new poll

Daniel Ortega maintains a seven point lead over Fabio Gadea in CID-Gallup's most recent poll (Boz). 

The numbers are wildly different from a June poll (from a different polling agency) that had Ortega at 57% and Gadea at 14%. My favorite line and probably saddest one from La Prensa's article has to be

[Ortega] competes for the sixth time in search of a third term in contravention of two constitutional prohibitions that prevent him from participating in the race.

Sandra Torres in Guatemala, on the other hand, will have to wait a few more minutes before she finds out whether the constitution applies to her.

Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs

From the Voice of America

The United States has made public documents on the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, describing U.S. negotiations with some other regional governments on support for the botched mission...

The documents detail U.S. efforts to maintain Guatemala's cooperation for the mission.  The CIA used Guatemala to train Cuban exiles for the invasion, which was aimed at toppling then-Cuban President Fidel Castro.  Two years ago, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologized to Cuba for his country's involvement in the invasion.

The Archive also says the documents detail information regarding CIA negotiations with Nicaragua and Panama for the invasion.  They describe the agency's efforts to obtain a Nicaraguan air base and port facility from which to launch the anti-Castro strike force against Cuba.  The documents also say Panama was involved marginally in the anti-Castro effort...

Separately, the newly-released documents describe how in 1960, the government of then-Guatemalan President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes faced a series of attacks from Guatemalan rebel forces and asked the United States for napalm to wipe out the rebels.  The request was refused for technical reasons, but the U.S. provided flyovers to help quell the unrest.

Given the US flyovers and strafing of the country during the 1954 coup, I can't say that I was surprised to learn that the US provided flyovers six years later during the November 1960 military uprising. The uprising was put down pretty quickly so I was surprised to read that the Ydigoras government asked for napalm support to deal with the military rebellion. On the other hand, many of the survivors were able to flee to neighboring countries before some of them returned two years later to create the first guerrilla groups.

Convictions in Dos Erres Massacre

News out of Guatemala tonight:

A Guatemalan court has sentenced three former special forces soldiers to 6,060 years in prison each for the 1982 massacre of more than 200 men, women and children.

The court also has sentenced a former army second lieutenant to 6,066 years in prison for the same massacre.[Carlos Carias got an extra six years for aggravated robbery.] 

Guatemalan law, however, says convicts can only be in prison for a maximum of 50 years.

Authorities say soldiers raped and killed women and girls, and banished hundreds of people from the community of Dos Erres.

The massacre was one of hundreds that occurred during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. Some 240,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, vanished or died.

I'm not sure about a court case that only lasts a couple of days and results in 6,000 year prison sentences. While the evidence was probably pretty overwhelming, it still doesn't sound right. On the other hand, the Prosecutor's Office asked for over 12,000-year sentences for each and the actual sentence only works out to 30 years for each victim. And no amount of jail time is going to make up for the loss that the victims' families feel.

But as I said last Thursday, "And while it is right that these four men from the Dos Erres massacre have their day in court, I am uncomfortable with the fact that the people who trained, ordered, and rewarded them for their behavior will not."

Poll Numbers in Guatemala

Prensa Libre and Prodatos published new poll numbers yesterday. Prensa Libre characterized the poll results as having shown little change in the preference for presidential candidates. That's true, but the results do indicate that Torres has narrowed the gap between her and Perez Molina quite a bit. Well, at least Perez Molina's support has dropped a bit. 

Otto Perez Molina still leads all candidates having captured 37% support. Sandra Torres is second with 17%. Perez's support is down ~5% and Torres' is up ~2% leaving them separated by 20.4% (a reduction from from 27.4%) with one month to go (actually one more court decision to go).

~25% remain undecided and we don't exactly know what's going to happen with Torres and the Constitutional Court. Heather Berkman, an analyst at Eurasia Group in New York believes that “Although the polls heavily favor Perez Molina, Torres is probably more competitive than polls suggest...A positive decision from the constitutional court would likely prompt a surge in her numbers.” 

It's quite possible and probably likely that Torres would get some bump in support. However, I'm not sure how much it would matter. She still trails by over 20% and every poll has indicated that Perez Molina would win pretty easily in a second round. 

I'm more worried about the CC giving Torres' campaign a green light. I get the feeling that the societal response to a decision by the CC to allow her to run would be met much worse than a decision to uphold the RC, TSE, and CSJ rulings.

El Salvador Links

President Funes bans the carrying of weapons in twenty-seven of the country's most violent municipalities for sixty days. While Guatemala’s murder rate is slightly better compared to last year, El Salvador’s is slightly worse. Most of the increase appears to have been caused by a bloody Julu.

After two months of uncertainty, Decree 743 was repealed last week. I was definitely more of a Funes supporter than I was an FMLN supporter, but some of his actions these last two years really leave one scratching me scratching my head. He's got three more years in office so don't give up on him just yet.

Pro-Busqueda continues to search for 400 children missing from the Salvadoran civil war.

The United States has promised to cooperate in the ongoing investigation into the murders of the six Jesuits and their housekeeper and daughter in November 1989. Let's hope that the cooperation goes beyond looking for two suspects thought to be living in the US. Given the arrests of former Guatemalan kaibiles, I'm optimistic here. But the US should open up all its files on the massacre and provide former and current government employees to testify as necessary. The Council on Hemispheric Relations has a brief note up on El Salvador: The Truth Commission and the Jesuit Massacre.

Finally, a tense situation involving 30 hostages at an evangelical church in Guazapa ended peacefully yesterday. A father and son held the thirty people hostage for several hours before authorities convinced them to release the hostages. The motive isn’t entirely known but it is believed that they were motivated by injustices and the recent arrest of the father’s daughter.

Guatemala Links

Insight Crime has English-language excerpts from Plaza Publica's interview with Guatemala’s next president Otto Perez Molina. Maybe Perez Molina and the Patriotic Party will stop spending campaign money now (they’re already over the limit) that they have no real challenger. On the other hand, now is the time to concentrate on congressional elections. As of right now, support its congressional candidates is lagging support for its presidential candidate.

AFP has the latest on Guatemala top court rejects Torres presidential run that I noted yesterday. So what does Sandra Torres do one day after being disqualified from the presidential race once again? First, she complains that the thirteen judges came to their conclusion too quickly. Then she and UNE said that they plan to appeal to the Constitutional Court which is the last, seriously last, judicial body that can save her.

Finally, Perla Trevizo has several interesting stories that document the complex relationship between the people of Tennessee and Guatemala after decades of migration between the two countries. Her reporting is part of the Times Free Press' Between Two Worlds project. Browse the website for stories, photos and videos.