What our history has been! We have come to know what a movement is,
we have won a cease-fire. We, as a cooperative, now we know what it is to be free.
–Las Marías Defense Commission, 1992
Why did campesinos in Tenancingo and Usulután support the FMLN and join
insurgent organizations, despite the high costs of doing so? The Salvadoran insurgency
was about land. Perhaps access to land, a key material interest of campesinos,
accounts for why so many campesinos participated in the insurgency, thereby resolving
the puzzle of collective action posed in the opening pages of this book. However,
at the time the insurgent cooperatives were formed, residents of the case-study
areas had access to land whether or not they participated, as long as they refrained
from informing on insurgent activities and made occasional material contributions
(which they also had to make to passing government forces). Thus during the middle
and later years of the civil war, it was possible for those who did not support
the rebels to reside in the case-study area as "free-riders" on the
benefits of the insurgency. The benefits included improved working conditions
in some areas and unprecedented access to land and freedom from the often capricious
authority of landlords and security forces in others. But none of these benefits
required participating in the insurgency beyond the coerced minimum contribution.
In short, the material benefits of the insurgency took the form of a public good
which was available to all residents. Moreover, many members of agrarian reform
cooperatives, who had gained access to land through government-sponsored reform,
also supported the insurgents.
Perhaps campesinos supported the insurgent cooperatives in order to secure
legal claim to land in the long run, perhaps believing that participation would
lead to the legalization of claims to occupied land. The pattern of participation
certainly supports this reasoning in one respect: after peace negotiations signaled
the likely end to the war and the possibility of land transfer to FMLN supporters
occupying land, participation in land occupations greatly increased. Approximately
half of those who took over land did so only toward the end of the war. A survey
carried out in 1993 found that the average length of land occupation, as reported
by those occupying properties, was three and a half years (Seligson, Thiesenhusen,
Childress, and Vidales 1993: 2-16). Even then the risks were significant: violent
evictions and attempted evictions of occupied properties were commonplace in late
1991 and in 1992 , and were usually accompanied by severe injuries.
On the other hand, half of those occupying land did so before peace negotiations
began in 1990 and well before April 1991 when the first serious fruits of the
peace negotiations were evident. For access to land in the long-run to have been
the principal motivation for founding or joining an insurgent cooperative, a potential
participant would have to have believed that 1) the founding of the cooperative
was necessary for long-run access to land, 2) that his participation was necessary
to its success, and 3) that he judged that the anticipated benefit, access to
land in the long run, outweighed the anticipated costs, possible retaliation by
local landlords or state authorities as well as the everyday costs of attending
meetings. Even militant campesinos who otherwise supported the FMLN judged the
risks too high until 1986 and 1987. Yet from 1987 to approximately 1990, dozens
of cooperatives were founded although the risks were very high (though declining),
the selective benefits very few (a bit of credit to a few members of a few cooperatives),
and the prospects for the legalization of land claims vanishingly small. It is
improbable that potential participants would judge these negligible material benefits
worth the risks. Indeed, more than half of the residents of the case-study areas
did not join insurgent cooperatives even in 1991 and 1992.
So the puzzle of revolutionary collective action remains. I first explore whether
we can garner insight into why some campesinos rebelled by systematically examining
which type of campesino (tenant, landless laborer, and so on) participated. Because
some insight to the puzzle may be gleaned from the accounts that participants
themselves provide, I then analyze the accounts given by campesinos who joined
the insurgency and those by campesinos who did not. I also analyze the maps drawn
by insurgent campesinos. Drawing on this enthographic evidence as well as a postwar
survey of political attitudes, I conclude that a new insurgent political culture
emerged in the case-study areas during the civil war.
Continued
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