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In El Salvador, the UN mediated a peace agreement and ONUSAL played a major supporting role in its implementation. An elected government made all executive decisions and set priorities for economic reconstruction, in consultation with the FMLN. Many consider El Salvador's war-to-peace transition the most successful in the post-Cold War period, owing to its emphasis on DDR programs and to a clear exit strategy for ONUSAL as the country moved into normal development. This chapter illustrates how a business-as-usual approach by the UN and the IMF led to confrontations as the separate economic and peace processes moved forward and how the FMLN stopped demobilization, blaming the government for delays in the arms-for-land program. The chapter analyzes how public debate led to better coordination and greater fiscal flexibility in the IMF-supported program, avoiding the return to war. The chapter also looks at the UN performance in economic reconstruction and draws lessons.

This chapter describes the variation in armed-group institutions across subgroups of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and over time and reconstructs the ways that institutional variation affected FMLN combatants' mindsets. It specifically considers the FMLN's two largest subgroups: the Popular Forces of Liberation (FPL) and the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP). From its inception in 1972, ERP leaders adopted a militarist orientation, believing a small revolutionary vanguard would provide inspiration for a broader uprising among the people. Politics were secondary; indeed, the ERP formed a political wing only after several years of existence as an armed revolutionary organization. The ERP's militarist approach emphasized the utility of civilians as allies to the military effort. The FPL, by contrast, initially followed a strategy of prolonged popular war. This approach emphasizes the political aspects of guerrilla war over the military aspects. It views civilians and civilian agreement as essential to the revolutionary project.

A rich history of civic organizing in El Salvador and the Palestinian territories undergirded the mass mobilization of the 1970s and 1980s. These mobilization efforts and much of the associational life that grew out of them were responses to conflicts with long historical roots. This chapter explains the historical roles of the political-military organizations of the FLMN and PLO in mass mobilization in the two cases. It then traces the evolution of mass mobilization and associational life leading to the beginning of the conflict to peace transition in each case, including the development of mass based women’s organizing in both cases.

This chapter introduces the central questions of the book, explains why a micro-level approach is necessary to answer these questions, and foreshadows the answers. It also reviews the data and methods on which the analysis of women guerrillas in the FMLN is based. It then briefly summarizes the book’s theoretical contributions to studies of social movements, gender, and political violence, as well as its contributions to the historiography of civil war in El Salvador.

This chapter examines the history of the civil war in El Salvador, outlines what actions were available to campesina women during the war, and examines how those possible actions changed over time and across people’s life courses. It defines four spaces (pre-war village, refugee camp, repopulation and FMLN guerrilla camp) and three roles (guerrilla, collaborator, and non-participant) available to rural Salvadoran women in the 1980s.

Recruitment of activists is a perennial challenge in any social movement, and especially in movements where participation is “high risk”. Recruiting women into the FMLN guerrilla army was especially difficult: How could the FMLN convince women from patriarchal rural El Salvador to “bend gender” enough to take on the traditionally masculine task of making war? Using data from interviews and archives, this chapter describes both the official and the unofficial FMLN recruitment processes. It concludes that two narratives were central to the FMLN’s extraordinary mobilization success. First, capitalizing on the violence of the times, the FMLN successfully redefined many common identities to include the war effort, such that being a “youth” or a “campesino” became incomprehensible without situating that identity in relation to its wartime responsibilities. Second, the FMLN successfully narrated itself as the “good guys” in a bad situation, and thus worthy of widespread support. The chapter concludes that gender norms were central to the success of each of these recruitment narratives.

This chapter examines the other side of mobilization—which recruited individuals adopted the identity of “guerrilla,” and why? Women’s mobilization experiences varied according to the identities they held, the networks in which they were embedded, and the specific historical moment of their recruitment. These patterned variations resulted in three separate mobilization paths for women guerrillas, labelled “politicized,” “reluctant,” and “recruited.” Although distinct, each path was undergirded by one common, powerful narrative: that of the FMLN as a righteous organization. Again, gender norms were central to the success of this narrative, and focused on young women’s concerns about escaping rape in war torn El Salvador.

This chapter describes the organizational structure and daily functioning of FMLN guerrilla camps. FMLN camps were highly stratified by gender, yet former guerrillas insisted that gender equality was the norm. They argued that commanders assigned individuals to tasks based on their “abilities” and not their sex. This narrative transformed the learned skills people brought with them to the camps—(e.g., skills in making tortillas)—into more organic talents or “abilities.” As a result, both men and women guerrillas believed that women were “made for” the kitchen, while men were more suited for combat. The rare exceptions—women in combat and command positions—were offered as evidence that abilities, not gender, explained the division of labor. Nevertheless, many women were assigned to high prestige positions like medic, radio operator, and expansion work—positions that also required regular participation in armed combat. These women came to see themselves as “able” to do many things that men could do, and some also gained new connections to powerful people. Yet, because the “abilities” narrative provided a veneer of gender equality, none questioned the broader gender stratification within the FMLN.

Public and private spheres merged in the FMLN camps, requiring commanders to regulate guerrillas’ family lives as well as military actions. Because men significantly outnumbered women, rules promoting “respect” for women reduced internal conflicts over access to women’s bodies, and maintained the FMLN’s “good guy” image with the civilian population. Women guerrillas welcomed these rules, and the protection they provided from mistreatment or abuse. In contrast, men guerrillas reported that they respected a woman’s relationship with another man, more so than the woman herself. Unlike women, men often dismissed their guerrilla camp relationships as not serious. Ironically, then, the FMLN’s narrative of “respect” did little to challenge traditional gender attitudes. Most women guerrillas became pregnant in the camps, and many used the pregnancy as a reason to demobilize from guerrilla activism, even over the protestations of commanders. Men, in contrast, had no choice but to stay in the guerrillas or defect. Women’s greater flexibility in leaving FMLN camps during the war, in conjunction with men’s lack of commitment to wartime relationships, often left women as single moms, and without the benefits of a “demobilization” package, at the war’s end.

What happened to women guerrillas after the Peace Accords ended the civil war in El Salvador? Some capitalized on their wartime activism to break gender barriers, transform their own lives, and continue their political activism. Others eschewed further activism and rejected the notion of women’s equality. This chapter demonstrates how the network locations that women occupied during the war intersected with the timing and place of their demobilization to influence women’s post-war opportunities. Those most likely to capitalize on their wartime experiences were women who had either been stationed near FMLN commanders or near international civil society workers during the war. Surprisingly, those who “bent gender” the most during the war—those who took on the most bellicose guerrilla roles—were among the least likely to experience gendered identity transformations or political gains after the war. Scholars have already demonstrated how movement activism can powerfully transform individual activists’ identities, but only a micro-level theory of mobilization provides tools to understand why some identities may transform more (or differently) than others, or why even similar identity changes may result in different post-movement outcomes.

Chapter 5 examines Rodríguez’s work for the FPL/FMLN over the entire course of the Salvadoran Civil War, from 1980 to 1992. After the failed 1981 final offensive, Rodríguez was assigned to FPL-controlled territory in Chalatenango, just north of San Salvador, and was put in charge of building and strengthening Christian base communities. During this time, a number of priests, like Rodríguez, worked with the popular and politico-military organizations. Later Rodríguez was put in charge of organizing what were called Local Popular Powers (PPLs), the local governments that the FMLN formed in guerrilla-controlled areas. Eventually, in 1984, the FPL asked him to go to Mexico to work in the finance committee of the FPL and FMLN. From 1984 until the end of the war Rodríguez would travel to Latin America, the United States, and Europe to raise funds for the FMLN. An important theme in this chapter is the U.S. government’s decision to provide massive economic and military support to the Salvadoran regime and the argument that, without this support, the guerrillas and the popular organizations would probably have toppled the repressive government.

Chapter 6 tells the story of Rodríguez’s move to democratic political leadership. Victory for the FMLN meant that they could now finally participate politically and bring necessary changes via the ballot box. Rodríguez tried to return to the church but conditions were placed on his that he found unacceptable and thus he returned to the FMLN to help establish it as a legal political party. Owing to his popularity and his longstanding struggles representing the interests of the campesinos, Rodríguez was nominated as a candidate for a legislative seat in the Department of La Paz, which was part of the diocese of San Vicente, a region in which he was well-known. He was elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2000; and then again in 2009 and in 2012, meaning that he will serve as a legislator until 2015. This chapter will highlight the difficulties in trying to bring structural changes to El Salvador via the electoral process. Part of the problem lies in the leaders themselves, who often become complacent once they win political office.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of repertoires of violence, which refer to the forms of violence frequently used by an actor. While political scientists have examined repertoires of violence during individual wars, none has theorized repertoires per se. This book aims to consider how, and how systematically, repertoires of violence differ from time to time, place to place, and group to group. Repertoires of violence may be narrow or broad. “Broad repertoire of violence” means a repertoire of violence in which many different forms of violence are represented, including both forms of violence that often require planning or infrastructure and are often ordered by commanders, and forms of violence that often happen in the absence of orders. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Shining Path, and Kamajors used narrow repertoires of violence in most times and places, contrasting with the Salvadoran Army, the Peruvian Army, and the Revolutionary United Front.

This chapter analyzes interviews, archival research, and survey responses in an attempt to document broad differences between how the Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES) combatants understood themselves in relation to the war, and how their counterparts in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) did. Throughout the war, the FAES recruited with a mix of force and economic incentives; they offered competent, though conventional, military training and no political education to speak of. The FMLN also trained combatants to kill, but at the same time it offered a comprehensive program of political education that focused on the important strategic role of civilians. Thus, if the Commander's Dilemma theory is correct, one should expect to observe that, despite facing strategic incentives to avoid clearly excessive or unnecessary abuses, state forces use broader, less uniform repertoires and higher levels of violence than FMLN forces throughout the conflict.

The chapter analyses the causes that led to the Salvadorian civil war, with an emphasis on the formation and expansion of the revolutionary movement. Secondly, the main transformations experienced during the war by the major political actors are explained. The focus here is on the changes within US policy on the conflict, the position of the allies of the armed left, the structural transformations of the economy and the interests of the Salvadoran elite and the internal dynamics of the armed left. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks on the transformation from a coalition of guerrilla organisation to a political party.

This chapter examines the politics of affect within the context of posthegemony by focusing on El Salvador’s FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, or Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the guerrilla group that waged war on the Salvadoran state in the 1980s. Drawing on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory of affect, it argues that we need an affective theory of power per se, and that affect is central to the understanding and elaboration of posthegemony. It also asserts that the Deleuzian conception of affect is insufficient because it cannot distinguish between insurgency and order, and ultimately between revolution and fascism. Finally, it considers Latin America’s affective potential, particularly the complex relationship between Latin affect and Western reason: both reinforcement and subversion.

The chapter illustrates the fundamental roles that peasant leaders played in the transformation of the relatively small urban insurgency in the early 1970s into a massive rural insurgency by the end of the decade. It examines the political crisis that fueled the intensification of state terror, militant activism, and insurgency that led to the civil war. The chapter also describes a major realignment that took place within the left and right between 1979 and 1981. It considers the foundation of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) as an historical convergence between the Old and New Left that articulated the grievances and demands of vast urban and rural sectors. A new right-wing coalition made up of businessmen, middle-class activists, military officers, and paramilitaries formed the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), displacing the Party of National Conciliation (PCN), the official party created in 1962, as the main political force of Salvadoran conservatives, and becoming a key player in Salvadoran politics during the civil war and beyond. The chapter analyzes the transformation of the peasant movement into a massive rural insurgency in Chalatenango.

The conclusion examines the transformation of insurgent intellectuals into leaders of the civil war that pitted the FMLN and its civilian allies against US-sponsored Salvadoran governments between 1980 and 1992. These intellectualsled a transition from politics to war that posed an unprecedented challenge to oligarchic-military rule and US hegemony in El Salvador. It ponders the roles that elite intellectuals –professionals, public figures, and scholars–played in the formation of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), a broad based alliance created by social movements, legal political parties, and civil society organizations. The convergence between the insurgent and elite intellectuals that made up the FMLN-FDR leadership endowed the democratic revolution in El Salvador with extraordinary political, diplomatic, and military capacities throughtout the civil war. The transition involved the massive conscription of social activists into insurgent forces, the creation of a guerrilla army under a centralized command, and the consolidation of the rebels’ territorial control over rural areas.