 |
Chapter 3
Redrawing the Boundaries of Class and Citizenship
|
|
We felt the poverty in our own flesh. The pain that we are now suffering in our bodies is the labor of the birth of something new.
–Campesina, Tierra Blanca, 1992
On January 16, 1992, the Plaza Cívica in downtown San Salvador overflowed with
a festive crowd, many carrying FMLN flags or wearing FMLN bandanas or headbands.
Enormous banners proclaiming support for the FMLN and other insurgent organizations
hung from the National Palace and the cathedral. At noon the cathedral bells tolled
in the peace, shortly before the signing in Mexico of the agreement that ended
more than a decade of war. One of the FMLN’s clandestine radio stations broadcast
the speeches and music from the cathedral. Many in the plaza, including some members
of the FMLN’s General Command and several regional commanders, had not been seen
in the capital for more than a decade. I saw a number of reunions of people separated
by the vagaries of the war, including one in which both had believed the other
dead for years. Between blaring dance numbers, speakers celebrated the peace agreement
as an insurgent victory, reiterating the theme that the FMLN had forced the government
to negotiate a transition to democracy, allowing political participation of the
left for the first time.
Two blocks away in the Parque de la Libertad, the governing ARENA party celebrated
its own interpretation of the signing, lauding the contributions of President
Alfredo Cristiani to freedom, peace, and the successful defense of the country
from communism. Distinctly absent from the government celebration was the Salvadoran
military, which lost long-standing prerogatives under the terms of the agreement.
One of the most striking things I observed that day was that many people walked
back and forth between the two rallies, listening to the speakers and dancing
to the bands of both.
In the optimism of the moment, the twin celebrations heralded a future of electoral
rather than armed competition for political power. No one could have imagined
these events just a few years earlier. Even after the signing of several interim
agreements beginning in 1990, most observers had remained skeptical. Unlike many
Latin American countries where a recent transition to democracy was a return to
democratic rule, the transition to democracy in El Salvador -- forged in the fire
of a decade-long civil war -- was unprecedented. A socialist guerrilla group and
its associated social movement organizations had forced the once virulently undemocratic
elites of El Salvador to agree to an inclusive political regime.
The civil war that eventually brought these political actors to downtown San Salvador
largely took place in the countryside (with the notable exception of the November
1989 offensive). The FMLN’s military and political capacity that undergirded the
eventual stalemate was largely rural: neither side could defeat the other in the
countryside, in large part because of the willingness of many campesinos to
provide supplies and intelligence to the insurgents. The evolution of the principal
economic interests of the elite away from export agrarian property toward other
sources of income as a result of insurgency and counterinsurgency shaped the compromise
that ended the civil war.
The changes wrought during the civil war in some of the case-study areas were
no less profound. By the war’s end, dozens of insurgent campesino organizations
occupied properties and claimed them under the terms of the peace agreement. Through
their ties to each other and to national and international organizations, these
new political actors articulated hitherto unheard grievances and claims. Thus
de facto agrarian property rights, land use, and civil society had been transformed
in some areas. Yet in other areas, continuity rather than change was the dominant
pattern. In this chapter I document these patterns of change and continuity across
the case-study areas. I first discuss the criteria for the case-study areas and
show that together the five case-study areas met those criteria. Using the maps
drawn by campesinos, I then describe each in detail. (Color versions of
the maps can be found at /features/wood/.)
Continued
|
|
|
|
|
