The Debts of War

Bifurcated Veterans’ Mobilization and Political Order in Post-settlement El Salvador

in Conflict and Society
Author:
Ralph Sprenkels Leiden University r.w.g.sprenkels@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Search for other papers by Ralph Sprenkels in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/arcs.2019.050106
Keywords:
Alianza Republicana Nationalista; bifurcated mobilization; citizenship; Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional; postwar transition; recognition struggles
Restricted access

All currencies in US Dollar

PayPal Logo

Abstract

This article examines mobilization by civil war veterans of the insurgency and the government army. These veterans became a major political force in postwar El Salvador. I demonstrate that the ascendency of the war veterans hinged on the combination of two types of mobilization: “internal” mobilization for partisan leverage, and public mobilization to place claims on the state. By this bifurcated mobilization, veterans from both sides of the war pursued clientelist benefits and postwar political influence. Salvadoran veterans’ struggles for recognition revolve around attempts to transform what the veterans perceive as the “debts of war” into postwar political order. The case of El Salvador highlights the versatility and resilience of veterans’ struggles in post-settlement contexts in which contention shifted from military confrontation to electoral competition.

Contributor Notes

RALPH SPRENKELS is Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies in the Department of History at Leiden University. His historical and anthropological research focuses on the legacies of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Latin America. Besides his academic career, he also holds ample experience in human rights work in Central America. His publications include books and articles about El Salvador's civil war, human rights, memory politics, and postwar transition. His most recent book is After Insurgency: Revolution and Electoral Politics in El Salvador (2018). Email: r.w.g.sprenkels@hum.leidenuniv.nl

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Conflict and Society

Advances in Research

Cover Conflict and Society
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
17
Keywords:
Alianza Republicana Nationalista; bifurcated mobilization; citizenship; Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional; postwar transition; recognition struggles
Print Publication Date:
01 Jun 2019
Online Publication Date:
01 Jun 2019
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2019

  • Allison, Michael, and Alberto Martín Alvarez. 2012. “Unity and Disunity within the FMLN.” Latin American Politics and Society 54 (4): 89–118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2012.00174.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Almeida, Paul. 2008. Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador 1925–2005. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  • Almeida, Paul. 2010. “El Salvador: Elecciones y movimientos sociales” [El Salvador: Elections and social movements]. Revista de Ciencias Políticas 30 (2): 319–334. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-090X2010000200008.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Arnson, Cynthia. 2002. “Windows on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador.” In Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, ed. Bruce Campbell and Arthur Brenner, 85–124. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Artiga, Alvaro. 2006. “Entre la oposición y el gobierno tras doce años de elecciones” [Between opposition and government after 12 years of elections]. Revista Centroamericana de Ciencias Sociales 3 (2): 49–83.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Artiga González, Alvaro, Carlos Dada, David Escobar Galindo, Hugo Martínez, Gloria Salguero Gross, Rubén I. Zamora, and Roberto Turcios. 2007. La polarización política en El Salvador [Political Polarization in El Salvador]. San Salvador: Fundaungo.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Bendaña, Alejandro. 1999. Demobilization and Reintegration in Central America: Peace-Building Challenges and Responses. Managua: Centro de Estudios Internacionales.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Binford, Leigh. 2010. “A Perfect Storm of Neglect and Failure: Postwar Capitalist Restoration in Northern Morazán, El Salvador.” Journal of Peasant Studies 37 (3): 531–557. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2010.494375.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Buchanan, Cate, and Joaquín Mauricio Chávez. 2008. Guns and Violence in the El Salvador Peace Negotiations. Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Burgos, Roberto, 2011. La derogatoria de la “Ley de Amnistía General para la Consolidación de la Paz”: Sus alcances y limitaciones en la sociedad salvadoreña [The derogation of the “General Amnesty Law for the Consolidation of Peace”: Its scope and limitations in Salvadoran society]. San José: CONARE.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Byrne, Hugh. 1996. El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of a Revolution. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

  • Cabarrús, Carlos Rafael. 1983. Génesis de una revolución: Análisis del surgimiento y desarrollo de la organización campesina en El Salvador [Genesis of a revolution: Analysis of the emergence and development of the peasant organization in El Salvador]. Mexico City: Ediciones de la Casa Chata.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Castillo, Graciana del. 1997. “The Arms-for-Land Deal in El Salvador.” In Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador, ed. Michael Doyle, Ian Johnstone, and Robert Orr, 342–365. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ching, Erik. 2016. Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory. Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Crandall, Russell. 2016. The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Denissen, Marieke. 2010. “Reintegrating Ex-combatants into Civilian Life: The Case of the Paramilitaries in Colombia.” Peace & Change 35 (2): 328–352. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2009.00630.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • DGEC (Dirección General de Estadísticas y Censos). 1996. Proyección de la Población de El Salvador, 1995–2025 [Projection of the population of El Salvador]. San Salvador: Ministerio de Economía.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Duclos, Nathalie. 2012. “Introduction: Rethinking the Former Combatants’ Return to Civilian Life.” In War Veterans in Postwar Situations: Chechnya, Serbia, Turkey, Peru, and Cote d'Ivoire, ed. Nathalie Duclos, 1–21. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Dunkerley, James. 1985. The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador. New ed. London: Verso.

  • Garibay, David. 2006. “A Peace Built on Forgetting Demobilised Combatants in Post-war El Salvador.” International Social Science Journal 58 (189): 467–478. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2451.2007.00645.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hagopian, Patrick. 2009. The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Kriger, Norma. 2003. Guerrilla Veterans in Postwar Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics, 1980–1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Kruijt, Dirk. 2017. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America: An Oral History. London: Zed Books.

  • La Prensa Gráfica. 2013. “Veteranos juramentan a directiva.” 15 October. https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/Veteranos-juramentan-a-directiva-20131015-0121.html.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • La Prensa Gráfica. 2016. “A 27 años de la ofensiva Hasta el Tope, excombatientes del FMLN exigen cumplimientio de ley.” 11 November. https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/A-27-anos-de-la-ofensiva-hasta-el-tope-excombatientes-exigen-cumplimiento-de-ley-20161111-0038.html.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Luciak, Ilja. 2001. Después de la revolución: igualdad de género y democracia en El Salvador, Nicaragua y Guatemala [After the revolution: gender equality and democracy in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala]. San Salvador: UCA editores.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Martín Alvarez, Alberto, and Ralph Sprenkels. 2014. “La izquierda revolucionaria salvadoreña. Balance historiográfico y perspectivas de investigación [The Salvadoran revolutionary left: Historiography and research perspectives].” In El estudio de las luchas revolucionarias en América Latina (1959– 1996): Estado de la Cuestión [The study of the revolutionary struggles in Latin America (1959–1996): State of Affairs], ed. Martín López Ávalos, Verónica Oikión Solano, and Eduardo Rey Tristán, 211–239. Mexico City: El Colegio de Michoacán.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mashike, Lephophotho. 2004. “‘You Are a Time Bomb … ’ Ex-combatants in Post-conflict South Africa.” Society in Transition 35 (1): 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2004.10419108.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mason, T. David. 1986. “Land Reform and the Breakdown of Clientelist Politics in El Salvador.” Comparative Political Studies 18 (4): 487–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414086018004004.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2003. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2008. “Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention.” Qualitative Sociology 31: 307–331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-008-9100-6.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McMullin, Jaremey. 2013. “Integration or Separation? The Stigmatisation of Ex-combatants after War.” Review of International Studies 39 (2): 385–414. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210512000228.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Metsola, Lalli. 2010. “The Struggle Continues? The Spectre of Liberation, Memory Politics and ‘War Veterans’ in Namibia.” Development and Change 41 (4): 589–613. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2010.01651.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Montgomery, Tommie Sue. 1995. Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

  • Montoya, Ainhoa 2013. “The Violence of Cold War Polarities and the Fostering of Hope: The 2009 Elections in Postwar El Salvador.” In Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy, ed. Jennifer Burrell and Ellen Moodie, 49–63. New York: Berghahn Books.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Montoya, Ainhoa. 2015. “The Turn of the Offended: Clientelism in the Wake of El Salvador's 2009 Elections.” Social Analysis 59 (4): 101–118. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2015.590407.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Montoya, Ainhoa. 2018. The Violence of Democracy: Political Life in Postwar El Salvador. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Moodie, Ellen. 2010. El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty and Transition to Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Muggah, Robert. 2008. Security and Post-conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War. London: Routledge.

  • Nussio, Enzo. 2012. La vida después de la desmovilización: Percepciones, emociones y estrategias de exparamilitares en Colombia [Life after demobilization” Perceptions, emotions and strategies of former paramilitaries in Colombia]. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Özerdem, Alpaslan. 2010. “Insurgency, Militias and DDR as Part of Security Sector Reconstruction in Iraq: How Not to Do It.” Disasters 34 (1): 40–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.2009.01098.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Popkin, Margaret. 2000. Peace without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Romero, Mauricio, and León Valencia. 2007. Parapolítica [Parapolitics]. Bogotá: Intermedio Editores.

  • Samayoa, Salvador. 2002. El Salvador: La reforma pactada [El Salvador: The agreed reform]. San Salvador: UCA Editores.

  • Seligson, Mitchell, and Vincent McElhinny. 1996. “Low Intensity Warfare, High Intensity Death: The Demographic Impact of the Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 21 (42): 211–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.1996.10816742.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Silber, Irina Carlota. 2011. Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Söderberg Kovacs, Mimmie, and Sophia Hatz. 2016. “Rebel-to-Party Transformations in Civil War Peace Processes 1975–2011.” Democratization 23 (6): 990–1008. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2016.1159558.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Southall, Roger. 2016. Liberation Movements in Power: Party and State in Southern Africa. Woodbridge: James Curry.

  • Spencer, Denise. 1997. Demobilisation and Reintegration in Central America. Bonn: International Center for Conversion.

  • Sprenkels, Ralph. 2001. El día más esperado: Buscando a los niños desaparecidos de El Salvador [The most awaited day: Searching El Salvador's disappeared children]. San Salvador: UCA Editores.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sprenkels, Ralph. 2011. “Roberto d'Aubuisson versus Schafik Handal: Militancy, Memory Work and Human Rights.” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 91: 15–30.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sprenkels, Ralph. 2012. “La guerra como controversia: una reflexión sobre las secuelas políticas del informe de la Comisión de la Verdad para El Salvador [War as controversy: a reflection on the political consequences of the report of the Truth Commission for El Salvador].” Identidades 2 (4): 68–89.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sprenkels, Ralph. 2018a. After Insurgency: Revolution and Electoral Politics in El Salvador. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.

  • Sprenkels, Ralph. 2018b. “Negotiated Revolution or Captured Peace? The Historiography of the Peace Process in El Salvador.” Contemporanea 21 (2): 301–315. https://doi.org/10.1409/89754.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Tarrow, Sidney, and Doug McAdam. 2005. “Scale Shift in Transnational Contention.” In Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow, 121–150. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Taylor, Brian D., and Roxana Botea. 2008. “Tilly Tally: War-Making and State-Making in the Contemporary Third World.” International Studies Review 10 (1): 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.00746.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Tilly, Charles. 1985. “Warmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime.” In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Peter Evans, and Theda Skocpol, 35–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Tilly, Charles. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Blackwell.

  • Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2015. Contentious politics. 2nd ed. Oxford: University of Oxford Press.

  • Themnér, Anders. 2013. “A Leap of Faith: When and How Ex-combatants Resort to Violence.” Security Studies 22 (2): 295–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2013.786917.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Torjesen, Stina, 2009. “New Avenues for Research in the study of DDR.” Conflict, Security & Development 9 (4): 411–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/14678800903345754.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Verhey, Beth. 2001. Prevention, Demobilization and Reintegration of Child Soldiers: Lessons Learned from El Salvador. Washington, DC: World Bank.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Vigh, Henrik. 2006. Navigating Terrains of War: Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau. New York: Berghahn Books.

  • Vince, Natalya. 2016. Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

  • Viterna, Jocelyn. 2013. Women in War: The Micro-processes of Mobilization in El Salvador. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Wade, Christine. 2016. Captured Peace: Elites and Peacebuilding in El Salvador. Athens: Ohio University Press.

  • Wiegink, Nikkie. 2013. “The Forgotten Sons of the State: The Social and Political Positions of Former Government Soldiers in Postwar Mozambique.” Colombia Internacional 77: 43–72.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wiegink, Nikkie. 2015. “‘It Will Be Our Time To Eat’: Former Renamo Combatants and Big-Man Dynamics in Central Mozambique.” Journal of Southern African Studies 41 (4): 869–885. https://10.1080/03057070.2015.1060090.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Williams, Philip, and Knut Walter. 1997. Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wolf, Sonja. 2009. “Subverting Democracy: Elite Rule and the Limits to Political Participation in Postwar El Salvador.” Journal of Latin American Studies 41 (3): 429–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X09990149.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Zamora, Rubén. 2003. La izquierda partidaria salvadoreña: Entre la identidad y el poder [The Salvadoran partisan left: Between identity and power]. San Salvador: FLACSO.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Zeeuw, Jeroen de. 2010. “‘Sons of War’: Parties and Party Systems in Post-war El Salvador and Cambodia.” Democratization 17 (6): 1176–1201. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2010.520549.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Zurn, Christopher. 2003. “Identity or Status? Struggles over ‘Recognition’ in Fraser, Honneth, and Taylor.” Constellations 10 (4): 519–537. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1351-0487.2003.00351.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 548 317 62
Full Text Views 52 8 0
PDF Downloads 61 9 0