The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-689 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.


Author(s):  
Philip J. Williams ◽  
J. Mark Ruhl

This chapter considers how the armed forces declined in power throughout Latin America in the early 1990s, but the processes of demilitarization in El Salvador and Guatemala were unique. While demilitarization followed civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, these are the only two cases in Latin America in which the United Nations played a major role in brokering negotiated settlements to end the armed conflicts and in monitoring peace agreements that set in motion processes of demilitarization. In both countries political opposition to continued military domination, including armed insurgencies, was a constant feature from the 1960s onward. Moreover, economic elites who traditionally looked to the military to protect their business interests increasingly expressed concern about the liability of supporting a large, well-equipped military without a mission.


Author(s):  
V. Krasil’shchikov

The paper deals with the problem of dependent development and conservative modernization in Latin America. Whereas external dependency has been the permanent feature of Latin American development since colonial times, conservative modernization can be treated as the essential effect of this development. Almost all significant reforms in Latin American countries began earlier than the own premises for them could mature, because they were the obliged responses to the external challenges and shocks the continent underwent. The social actors of those reforms were often interested in adaptation of the obsolete socioeconomic structures and relationships to the changed external conditions instead of their destruction and genuine social renewal. The cases of authoritarian modernizations in the Southern Cone countries in the 1960s–80s clearly illustrated such attempts of the ruling groups to go forward whilst looking back. The neoliberal reforms of the 1990s demonstrated, at first glance, continuation of this practice being a form of modernisation for the upper classes’ advantages. Meanwhile, as the author argues, these reforms were actually a “swan song” of conservative modernization in Latin America. The “left turn” of the next decade did not abolish external dependency of Latin American countries, but created some important premises for the rise of internally rooted impulses to endogenous development. The new social actors of this development, such as various NGOs and left-wing movements, began to emerge in Latin America. They propose own programmes of transition towards a knowledge-based, innovative economy. This phenomenon allows to suppose that some Latin American countries have real chances for technological breakthroughs in the future, and it will be the genuine deliverance from the model of a dependent, imitative development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Victoria Carmona Bozo

Since their origins in the 1960s, criminal organizations in Latin America have been responsible for brutal acts of violence in the region. However, very little is known about the specific mechanisms involved in their recruitment tactics. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the use of selective incentives is widespread among gangs to compel membership.This essay considers both the shape and character of Honduran gang members and attempts to highlight the complex phenomenon of gang recruitment. I will advance a twofold approach of the selective incentives theory of rebel recruitment to identify the significant mechanisms at play in the recruitment of citizens to join violent gangs. Understanding the processes of recruitment involved in the Honduran case will potentially contribute to better plan and execute interventions to reduce gang violence in the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) and Latin America at large.


Author(s):  
Matt Eisenbrandt

Using trial testimony about Romero’s last Sunday homily in 1980, this chapter gives a history of the Catholic Church in El Salvador and Romero’s life culminating in his three years as archbishop. The Church underwent an overhaul during the 1960s, leading many priests and bishops in Latin America to follow Liberation Theology, the belief that rather than providing charity to the poor, they should focus on the systemic causes of inequality. Romero was viewed by many Salvadoran clergy as conservative when he became archbishop in 1977 but the death squad murder of his friend Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit follower of Liberation Theology, pushed Romero to more openly denounce those responsible for the inequality and repression. The day before his murder, Romero, in his Sunday homily, called on soldiers to “stop the repression” by disobeying the orders of their commanders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.


Author(s):  
Ericka A. Albaugh

This chapter examines how civil war can influence the spread of language. Specifically, it takes Sierra Leone as a case study to demonstrate how Krio grew from being primarily a language of urban areas in the 1960s to one spoken by most of the population in the 2000s. While some of this was due to “normal” factors such as population movement and growing urbanization, the civil war from 1991 to 2002 certainly catalyzed the process of language spread in the 1990s. Using census documents and surveys, the chapter tests the hypothesis at the national, regional, and individual levels. The spread of a language has political consequences, as it allows for citizen participation in the political process. It is an example of political scientists’ approach to uncovering the mechanisms for and evidence of language movement in Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Silva ◽  
Francisco Vergara-Perucich

AbstractUrban sprawl has been widely discussed in regard of its economic, political, social and environmental impacts. Consequently, several planning policies have been placed to stop—or at least restrain—sprawling development. However, most of these policies have not been successful at all as anti-sprawl policies partially address only a few determinants of a multifaceted phenomenon. This includes processes of extended suburbanisation, peri-urbanisation and transformation of fringe/belt areas of city-regions. Using as a case study the capital city of Chile—Santiago—thirteen determinants of urban sprawl are identified as interlinked at the point of defining Santiago's sprawling geography as a distinctive space that deserves planning and policy approaches in its own right. Unpacking these determinants and the policy context within which they operate is important to better inform the design and implementation of more comprehensive policy frameworks to manage urban sprawl and its impacts.


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