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Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War

by Molly Todd

University of Wisconsin Press, 2010
Paper: 978-0-299-25004-1 | eISBN: 978-0-299-25003-4
Library of Congress Classification F1488.3.T63 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification 972.84053

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

During the civil war that wracked El Salvador from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, the Salvadoran military tried to stamp out dissidence and insurgency through an aggressive campaign of crop-burning, kidnapping, rape, killing, torture, and gruesome bodily mutilations. Even as human rights violations drew world attention, repression and war displaced more than a quarter of El Salvador’s population, both inside the country and beyond its borders. Beyond Displacement examines how the peasant campesinos of war-torn northern El Salvador responded to violence by taking to the hills. Molly Todd demonstrates that their flight was not hasty and chaotic, but was a deliberate strategy that grew out of a longer history of collective organization, mobilization, and self-defense.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Molly Todd is assistant professor of history at Augustana College.

REVIEWS

“An utterly original story, well told and absorbing. Todd shows that Salvadoran peasant communities had developed a strategy of mobility and hiding even before the point of international displacement, adapted it to conditions of international refugee camps and transnational solidarity politics in Honduras, and used the camps as a base to push a repopulation movement in tandem with a peacemaking strategy. A new history of the war for El Salvador begins here.”—Steve J. Stern, series editor

“Draws from the best of historical and anthropological methods to document the ways in which courageous individuals and heroic families forged deeper ties of solidarity and built humane communities. Written with great passion and analytic precision, this book contributes to our understanding of an often overlooked facet of El Salvador’s civil war and fitful democratic resurgence.”—Greg Grandin, author of The Last Colonial Massacre

“Reading Molly Todd’s thorough and engaging book brought me back to Los Amates. . . . Todd provides rich detail and some surprising revelations distilled from a diversity of sources, including government, human rights, and the U.N. archives, as well as private collections. She effectively incorporates media and literature reseach and draws on powerful oral history interviews. She enhances interpretations with songs and poetry as well as art and posters produced by Salvadorans in exile.”—Ellen Moodie, The Americas

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: A People Without History

Chapter 1. Remapping La Tierra Olvidada

I. Introduction. Lost Peoples, Forgotten Lands

II. The Map Reconfigured: The North as a Space of Opportunity

III. El Salvador's North and La Lucha

Foundations

Formalization and Expansion

Radicalization

IV. Conclusion. Flames of Revolution

Chapter 2. Organizing Flight: The Guinda System

I. Introduction. Unspeakable Acts

II. Civil War, State-Sponsored Violence, and Gente Consciente

III. Mobile Communities and Self-Defense: Origins of the Guinda System

IV. Formalization of the Guinda System

V. Refuge Points and Alliances

VI. Conclusion. From Reaction to Resistance: Combative Mass Movement

Chapter 3. Internationalizing La Guinda

I. Introduction. A Thin Black Line?

II. Discovering Honduras

III. Integrating Honduras into the Guinda System

IV. Organizing Exile

Defining the Community

Managing the Basics

Managing the Moral Boundaries of Community

V. Conclusion

Chapter 4. The Politics of Exile

I. Introduction

II. Allying with Los Internacionales

III. The Politcs of Refugee Aid

IV. Maneuvering the System

Utilizing Fissures

Staging for Success

V. Conclusion

Chapter 5. Citizen Refugees and La Lucha

I. Introduction. Documenting the Present

II. The Patria Stained Red

III. Salvadorans to the Soul

IV. Contributions from Exile

V. Conclusion

Chapter 6. (Re)Writing National History from Exile

I. Introduction. Declining Aid in the Name of te Nation

II. To Educate is to Transform

III.The Political Implications of Popular Education

IV. Documenting Tradition

Refugees as the Heirs of Farabundo Marti and the Martyrs of 1932

The 1969 (B)Order Wars

Tracing Patterns Beyond the Nation

V. Conclusion

Chapter 7. The Grassroots Repopulation Movement

I. Introduction. Going Home

II. Repopulation as Resistance

III. Preparing the Conditions

Phase One: Operation Underground

Phase Two: Going Public

IV. From Negotiation to Direct Action

V. Conclusion. Contested Sove

Conclusion. Body Politics

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