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Enrique Alvarez Cordova

Author: John W. Lamperti

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-04-04

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0786424737

Enrique Alvarez Cordova was the son of one of El Salvador's ruling families. Intelligent, charismatic and above all wealthy, he had nothing to gain--and a great deal to lose--by courting revolution. Yet this young man with all the advantages did just that. Impressed by the poverty and miserable existence of the rural population, Alvarez set about making a change. He spent most of his adult life working for reform within the constraints of the existing system, serving as minister of agriculture under three governments. He turned his own ranch, El Jobo, into a successful workers' cooperative to convince the ruling class that agrarian reform was possible and even profitable. In the end, however, he found that fundamental change was simply beyond the reach of such efforts. Embracing armed struggle as a last resort, he ultimately became one of the revolution's first casualties. Centering on El Salvador's political landscape, this biography details the life of one of the nation's little known revolutionaries. The body examines the motivations behind Alvarez's choice to become a traitor to his class and embrace political reform, first through his work within the government itself and later as president of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), the country's primary radical movement. Through this lens, the work also describes El Salvador's political evolution, illuminating the country's internal situation during the 1970s and early 1980s. The government-condoned assassination of Alvarez and five of his FDR colleagues in November 1980 ended the last hope of avoiding an armed conflict. Within two months of the assassinations, El Salvador was plunged into a civil war that would last for the next 11 years. Other than a few official legal documents, the work is compiled from interviews and testimony of those who knew Enrique Alvarez Cordova, thus providing a contemporary, firsthand perspective. The work is also indexed.

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Author: Joaquín M. Chávez

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-01-25

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0199315523

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Poets and Prophets of the Resistance offers a ground-up history and fresh interpretation of the polarization and mobilization that brought El Salvador to the eve of civil war in 1980. Challenging the dominant narrative that university students and political dissidents primarily formed the Salvadoran guerrillas, Joaquín Chávez argues that El Salvador's socioeconomic and political crises of the 1970s fomented a groundswell of urban and peasant intellectuals who collaborated to spur larger revolutionary social movements. Drawing on new archival sources and in-depth interviews, Poets and Prophets of the Resistance contests the idea that urban militants and Roman Catholic priests influenced by Liberation Theology single-handedly organized and politicized peasant groups. Chávez shows instead how peasant intellectuals acted as political catalysts among their own communities first, particularly in the region of Chalatenango, laying the groundwork for the peasant movements that were to come. In this way, he contends, the Salvadoran insurgency emerged in a dialogue between urban and peasant intellectuals working together to create and execute a common revolutionary strategy--one that drew on cultures of resistance deeply rooted in the country's history, poetry, and religion. Focusing on this cross-pollination, this book introduces the idea that a "pedagogy of revolution" originated in this historical alliance between urban and peasant, making use of secular and Catholic pedagogies such as radio schools, literacy programs, and rural cooperatives. This pedagogy became more and more radicalized over time as it pushed back against the increasingly repressive structures of 1970s El Salvador. Teasing out the roles of little-known groups such as the politically active "La Masacuata" literary movement, the contributions of Catholic Action intellectuals to the New Left, and the overlooked efforts of peasant leaders, Poets and Prophets of the Resistance demonstrates how trans-class political and cultural interactions drove the revolutionary mobilizations that anticipated the Salvadoran civil war.

Mozote

Author: Tom Phillips

Publisher: Tom Phillips

Published: 2022-04-24

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13:

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In the years 1980 and 1981, El Salvador was in the midst of a brutal civil. In March, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by a death squad. The novel’s fictional heroine, Public Prosecutor Alejandra Rivera de Hernandez, is assigned to investigate the case. The National Police will not help her, as the death squads have deep connections to the police and armed forces. Alejandra participates in a raid of the farm of Roberto D’Aubuisson, a former Major in the Army and reputed leader of the death squads. She interviews him and recovers documents that show a massive cover-up, with all branches of the armed forces, and the CIA, involved in the targeting of students, priests, and union leaders, for torture and elimination. As Ale pursues the case, and issues subpoenas to the heads of the Intelligence sections, she becomes the target of the death squads, and soon she is running for her life. This novel blends real, historical characters that participated in El Salvador’s civil war with fictional characters, so that the reader can be a witness to the events that occurred. Along the way there is a reflection on religion and the nature of evil, and how the killers on both sides justified their actions.

Blood in the Fields

Author: Matthew Philipp Whelan

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 081323252X

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"Examines the life and martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador through the lens of agrarian reform, arguing that his advocacy for the just distribution of land drew heavily on Catholic Social Doctrine and its conviction that creation is a common gift"--

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador

Author: Erik Ching

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-08-26

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1469628678

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El Salvador's civil war began in 1980 and ended twelve bloody years later. It saw extreme violence on both sides, including the terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers, and the death and disappearance of more than 75,000 people. Examining El Salvador's vibrant life-story literature written in the aftermath of this terrible conflict--including memoirs and testimonials--Erik Ching seeks to understand how the war has come to be remembered and rebattled by Salvadorans and what that means for their society today. Ching identifies four memory communities that dominate national postwar views: civilian elites, military officers, guerrilla commanders, and working class and poor testimonialists. Pushing distinct and divergent stories, these groups are today engaged in what Ching terms a "narrative battle" for control over the memory of the war. Their ongoing publications in the marketplace of ideas tend to direct Salvadorans' attempts to negotiate the war's meaning and legacy, and Ching suggests that a more open, coordinated reconciliation process is needed in this postconflict society. In the meantime, El Salvador, fractured by conflicting interpretations of its national trauma, is hindered in dealing with the immediate problems posed by the nexus of neoliberalism, gang violence, and outmigration.