exiled home by susan bibler coutin

8/19/2019 Exiled Home by Susan Bibler Coutin

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SUSAN BIBLER COUTIN

EXILED HOME

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SUSAN BIBLER COUTIN


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EXILED HOME


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GLOBAL INSECURITIES

A series edited by Catherine Besteman and Daniel M. Goldstein


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EXILEDHOME

in the of

SUSAN BIBLER COUTIN

Duke University Press Durham and London


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© Duke University Press All rights reservedPrinted in the United States o America on acid-ree paper ∞Typeset in Arno Pro by Graphic Composition, Inc.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Coutin, Susan Bibler, author.Title: Exiled home : Salvadoran transnational youth in theafermath o violence / Susan Bibler Coutin.Other titles: Global insecurities.Description: Durham : Duke University Press, .Series: Global insecurities | Includes bibliographical reerencesand index.Identifiers: | (hardcover : alk. paper) | (pbk. : alk. paper) | (e- book)

Subjects: : SalvadoransUnited States. | Salvadoran Americans United States. | United StatesEmigration andimmigration. | El SalvadorEmigration and immigration.| SalvadoransLegal status, laws, etc. United States. |ReugeesUnited States. | Unaccompanied immigrantchildrenUnited States.Classification: .s c | /.dc record available at hp://lccn.loc.gov/

Cover art: “Cementerio de zapatos,” homenaje a Mons.Romero, de la serie Mis pies son mis alas , de Walterio Iraheta.(“Cemetery o Shoes,” an homage to Archbishop Romero,rom the series My Feet Are My Wings , by Walterio Iraheta.)


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ix Acknowledgments

Violence and Silence

Living in the Gap

Dreams

Exiled Home through Deportation

Biographies and Nations

Re/membering Exiled Homes

Appendix Notes Reerences

Index

CONTENTS


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My deepest debt o gratitude is to the many individuals who agreed to partici-pate in interviews but who remain nameless here or reasons o confidentiality.

I eel extremely privileged, inspired, and humbled to have had the opportunityto speak with all o you, to document some key moments in your lives, and toreflect with you on the significance o U.S. and Salvadoran immigration policiesand histories. I have been changed as a result, and I now view the world differ-ently. I hope that this book in some way does justice to the many accounts that were entrusted to me and that it serves to re/member.

I am also indebted to the many individuals and organizations that acilitatedthe research or this book by inviting me to events, reerring me to others, al-

lowing me to make announcements about the project, and brainstorming withme. I thank Henry Aguilar, Jesus Aguilar, Kay Andrade-Eekhoff, Tony Azúcar,Beth Baker-Cristales, Norma Chinchilla, Grace Delgado, Ester Hernández,

Luis Perdomo, Alex Sanchez, Daniel Sharp, Samuel Uribe, and Kristine Zent-gra or their help. I am also grateul to the Central American Resource Cen-ter (, Los Angeles; Internacional in San Salvador; theCentro de Intercambio y Solidaridad, El Salvador; El Rescate, Los Angeles;

and Homies Unidos, El Salvador, or their assistance. In particular, I could not

have done interviews with individuals who had been deported to El Salvador were it not or the incredibly valuable assistance o Luis Perdomo, to whom

I owe a tremendous debt. There are other individuals who also assisted but

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


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who are not named here or reasons o confidentiality: I am extremely grateulto you as well.

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Founda-tion under Grant No. -. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions

or recommendations expressed in this material are those o the author and donot necessarily reflect the views o the National Science Foundation.

I thank William Flores or sharing his copy o the script to De la locura a laesperanza and or permission to reproduce his photo o actress Rocio Enriquezperorming in the play; Carlos Henriquez Consalvi or permission to repro-

duce a photo rom the collection held by the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen;Beatriz Cortez or permission to reproduce one o the stills rom Pasaje Los

Ángeles and or her corrections to my description o the commemoration o

the peace accords; Maya Chinchilla or permission to reprint the poem“Central American- American”; and GusTavo Adolo Guerra Vásquez or per-mission to reprint the poem “hybrideities/hibrideidades.”

I had the benefit o numerous graduate student research assistants, who

lent their expertise to the project, including Joshua Clark, Katie Dingeman-

Cerda, Véronique Fortin, Danny Gascon, Tim Goddard, Glenn Trager, and

Sylvia Valenzuela. I am ortunate to have worked with such skilled, sensitive,

and smart assistants.I also am grateul to the members o the University o Caliornia, Irvine( “Ethnography Lab Group”Alyse Bertenthal, Josh Clark, VéroniqueFortin, Justin Perez, and Daina Sanchezor stimulating conversations and

moral support.Some o the material in this book draws on ideas and material presented

in earlier publications and has been substantially revised here. Portions o

chapter draw on sections o my paper, “In the Breach: Citizenship and

Its Approximations,” published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (): –. My analysis o deportation, presented in chapter , was workedout in several o my earlier publications, including “Deportation Studies: Or-igins, Themes, and Directions,” which appeared in in Journal of Ethnicand Migration Studies (): –; “Place and Presence within SalvadoranDeportees’ Narratives o Removal,” published in in Childhood ():–; “Falling Outside: Excavating the History o Central American AsylumSeekers,” published in in Law and Social Inquiry (): –; and “Con-

fined Within: National Territories as Zones o Confinement,” which appearedin in Political Geography (): –. Some o the ideas that inorm


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chapter were first developed in “Re/Membering the Nation,” which appearedin in Anthropological Quarterly (): –.

This book manuscript has been long in the making and has benefited romconversations with and comments by numerous colleagues, including Leisy

Abrego, Allison Alexy, Kay Andrade-Eekhoff, Sameer Ashar, Beth Baker-Cristales, Ulla Berg, Victoria Bernal, Jacqueline Bhabha, Tom Boellstorff,

Sergio Bran, Don Brenneis, Noelle Brigden, Kiy Calavita, John Campbell,

Jennier Chacón, Leo Chavez, Maya Chinchilla, Norma Chinchilla, Michael

Collyer, Marianne Constable, Maria Lorena Cook, Beatriz Cortez, Cather-

ine Dauvergne, Alexandra Délano, Robin DeLugan, Katie Dingeman-Cerda,Heike Drotbohm, Ingrid Eagly, Antje Ellerman, Julia Elychar, David Engel,

Mario Escobar, Allison Fish, Danny Gascon, Ilana Gershon, Ruth Gomberg-

Muñoz, Roberto Gonzales, Carol Greenhouse, Dirk Hartog, Ines Hasselberg,Ester Hernandez, Josiah Heyman, Nancy Hiemstra, Alexandra Innes, CarolinaKobelinsky, Louise Lamphere, Stephen Lee, Hester Lessard, Randy Lippert,Cecelia Lynch, Mona Lynch, Dora Magaña, Cea Mainwaring, Chowra

Makaremi, Lynn Mather, Bill Maurer, Connie McGuire, Cecilia Menjívar,

Julie Mitchell, Michael Montoya, Ellen Moodie, Hiroshi Motomura, Alison

Mountz, Michael Musheno, Benjamin Nienass, Karina Oliva Alvarado, Ra-

chel O’Toole, David Pedersen, Héctor Perla, Nathalie Peutz, Keramet Reiter, Justin Richland, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Horacio Roque Ramirez, Ana PatriciaRodríguez, Rubén Rumbaut, Kim Scheppele, Daniel Sharp, Jonathan Simon,Rachel Stryker, Susan Terrio, Monica Varsanyi, Erica Vogel, Wendy Vogt, Leti

Volpp, Roger Waldinger, William Walters, Joe Wiltberger, Peter Wissoker,

Barbara Yngvesson, and Elana Zilberg. This list is necessarily incomplete, as Ihave been ortunate to participate in a rich, intellectual environment, in whichstimulating conversations and exchanges abound. Thank you to everyone, not

only those listed here but others who would be named i somehow this rich,intellectual environment could materialize within these acknowledgments. I

especially thank two key segments o this environment: my colleagues inthe departments o Criminology, Law and Society, and Anthropology.

Earlier versions o portions o this manuscript were presented at meetingso the American Association o Law Schools, American Anthropological As-sociation, American Ethnological Society, American Sociological Association’sHistorical/Comparative mini-conerence, International Studies Association,

Law and Society Association, Society or Cultural Anthropology, and West-ern Society o Criminology; and at Arizona State University; Caliornia State


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University, Los Angeles; Caliornia State University, Northridge; ; theCenter or the Study o Law and Society and the Townsend Center at the Uni- versity o Caliornia, Berkeley; the International Center or Migration, Ethnic-ity, and Citizenship at the New School, New York; the International Institute

or the Sociology o Law; Northwestern University; Ohio State University;Radcliffe Institute or Advanced Study, Harvard University; Princeton Univer-sity; School o Oriental and Arican Studies at the University o London; theUniversity o British Columbia; ; the University o Caliornia, San Diego;and the University o Colorado, Boulder. I am grateul to the conerence andpanel organizers or giving me these opportunities and to all o the discussantsand audience members or their comments and questions.

I also would like to thank Alyse Bertenthal, Michelle Lipinski, Alison

Mountz, and Caitlin Patler or providing wrien comments on portions othe manuscript, and Keramet Reiter or reading and commenting on the entiremanuscript beore I sent it out or review. I am also grateul to the anonymousreviewers, and especially Daniel Goldstein, Catherine Besteman, Don Bren-

neis, and Susan Terrio. O course, any remaining errors are my own.I wrote this book while serving as associate dean or academic affairs o the

Graduate Division at , so I also would like to thank the Graduate Division

dean, Frances Leslie, or providing a model o how to continue to do research while also doing administrative work. I thank her as well or granting me anadministrative leave in the final stretch o writing. My colleagues in the Grad-uate Division have also been an inspiration.

I am honored to have my book appear in the Global Insecurities series ed-ited by Daniel Goldstein and Catherine Besteman, and I thank them both ortheir interest in my work. It has been a pleasure to work with Gisela Fosado atDuke University Press. I am grateul to her or believing in the project and or

her editorial support and guidance. I also appreciate the work o her assistant,Lydia Rose Rappoport-Hankins, and o all o the Duke University Press staffthat are helping the book come to ruition.

Several riends and colleagues have been a source o moral support through-out the writing process. Lynn Mather and Tom Boellstorff provided publish-ing advice. Barbara Yngvesson is always a source o inspiration and my workhas been in dialogue with hers or many years. Véronique Fortin became an

ethnographic collaborator, which created countless opportunities or conver-

sation about writing and research. Cecelia Lynch listened to me talk throughdilemmas. Victoria Bernal was always a sounding board or ideas. Julie Mitchelland I traveled to new places. Jennier Chacón let me audit her immigration


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law course. The Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles became

a home-away-rom-home or me during the years that I was writing, and the legal staff deepened my understanding o immigration law.

Lastly, I am grateul to my amily. My parents first taught me how to write,

and they have always believed in me. My husband accompanied me throughoutthis journey. My children keep me sane and remind me to walk away rom

the computer (though now, I have to tell them the same thing!). I thank my

son Jordy or leing me write about his experience at the commemoration othe Salvadoran peace accords. I was pregnant with my son Casey when I didthe first interview or this project, so he was with me in more ways than onethroughout. This book is dedicated to him.


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, . On the ront lawn o a church in Santa Rosa, Caliornia,several dozen peopleincluding megathered to welcome the Northwest

Coast section o a national caravan o Central American reugees and solidarity workers. The reugees were undocumented immigrants who were at risk o being deported rom the United States to ace violence in their home coun-

tries and, by traveling with them, the solidarity workers sought to provide a

measure o protection. The reugees were undocumented because they werepart o a mass displacement o civilians that had been generated by civil wars

between lef-leaning insurgents and right- wing governments in El Salvador

and Guatemala. Victims who fled to the United States were rarely able to get

visas to enter legally and so were undocumented. Although they could applyor asylum afer they came to the United States, such petitions were generallydenied due to U.S. military and economic support or the very governmentsthe reugees had fled. So, to raise public consciousness about the violence beingperpetrated in Central America, U.S. involvement in that violence, and Central Americans’ need or reuge, Central American and U.S. solidarity workers hadresorted to such tactics as organizing caravans and establishing sanctuaries orCentral American asylum seekers. Participants in such activities ran legal risks.

Undocumented Central Americans could be detected and deported, while U.S.citizens could be prosecuted on migrant-smuggling charges, as had occurredthe previous year in Tucson, Arizona. Nonetheless, the mood that March

INTRODUCTION


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day was defiant. As the caravan arrived, honking loudly, its hosts clapped andchanted, “Stop the war in El Salvador!”

A doctoral student in anthropology at Stanord University, I had come to join the caravan on its last leg, as it returned to San Francisco afer having

departed almost a month earlier. I was doing dissertation research regardingthe U.S. sanctuary movement, a grass-roots network o congregations that

had declared themselves “sanctuaries” or Salvadoran and Guatemalan reu-

gees. I had chosen this research topic because o both my academic interestsin social change and my own commitment to human rights. I had come thatday to understand and document the caravan’s efforts to overcome divisions between those directly affected by wartime violence and those living in U.S.

communities seemingly distant rom the conflict. I also was available to assist

by translating at events. Afer caravan participants and hosts filed into the church, one o the Central

Americans presented a testimonio , or “testimony,” a firsthand account o per-secution and violence, “in which speaking subjects who present themselves assomehow ‘ordinary’ represent a personal experience o injustice . . . with thegoal o inducing readers [or listeners] to participate in a project o social jus-tice” (Nance :; see also Padilla ). Speaking in Spanish, a Salvadoran

caravan participant told a harrowing story. He had been in his ninth-gradeclassroom when the Salvadoran army entered his school and took away five

o his classmates. He stopped going to school and moved to the countrysideor greater saety. When three o his uncles were killed, he decided to leave ElSalvador. Despite the lie-threatening situation he aced in El Salvador, he wasdeported several times by U.S. officials. Afer his mother and siblings receiveddeath threats, he also took the risk o making one return trip to El Salvador

o his own volition, to help them escape to the United States. The speaker

concluded by emphasizing the importance o ending U.S. military aid to ElSalvador.

Though the caravanistas dispersed, first to sleep in the homes o local hostsand then to continue on to their next destination, the testimonio that wasrecounted at this reception lingered. Across time and space, this testimony

invoked young students who had been abducted, uncles who had been assas-sinated, the terror o death threats, and the urgency o the young man who

spoke. His words posed a challenge: Would social justice be achieved in Cen-

tral America? Would the violence that led him and others to leave El Salvador be acknowledged? And would those affected by civil war and human rights


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violations be able to secure reuge in the United States? These questions arestill with us today.

Re/membering and DismembermentThe political and legal dynamics that shaped the caravan that long-ago Marchday also affected a generation, as Salvadorans who fled the devastation o the– Salvadoran civil war aced legal and other challenges in the UnitedStates. During the s, Salvadorans who entered the United States were re-garded by U.S. officials as economic migrants, despite the war in their home-land. By the s, a decade o advocacy resulted in legal remedies or these

asylum seekers, yet the peace accords jeopardized their abilities to qual-

iy or these remedies. Many were not able to obtain residency until the earlys, while others remained undocumented or had only temporary status.

For young people, who immigrated to the United States as children and grewup there, the circumstances were particularly stark. Those who were able to

become U.S. citizens resolved their immigration situation but ofen were lef with questions about the civil war, the relationship between national events

and their amily’s history, and their places in both the United States and El

Salvador. Those who were noncitizens remained vulnerable to deportation, aseven lawul permanent residents could be removed i convicted o crimes. Andthose who were undocumented or had only temporary legal status aced uncer-tain utures in the United States and ofen had only dim memories o El Salva-dor, their country o legal citizenship. This book examines the experiences osuch young people, ocusing on the power and limitation o the nation- basedcategories o membership that they encountered, embraced, or rejected. In

particular, I explore young people’s efforts to re/member , that is, to negotiate

their membership within the United States and El Salvador, while also deep-ening memory o Salvadoran social history, political violence, and immigrantexperiences. Public accounts o individual lie histories, such as the testimonyrecounted during the caravan described above, were key to such orms ore/membering as individuals experienced being exiled, whether physically,

legally, or socially, rom the multiple homes they had occupied.Re/membering is made necessary by the dismemberment associated with

civil war, displacement, emigration, the denial o legal status, and removal. By

deploying the term dismemberment , I bring together two meanings o dismem-ber : () not remembering or erasing, and () the breaking apart o bodies,


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polities, and nations. Dismembering thus reers to the separation o persons rom history, the literal injury or destruction o bodies, the embodied natureo structural violence (Farmer ), and the denial o membership, either byorcing people to flee their country o citizenship or by preventing them rom

being granted membership in the country where they reside. As individualsare dismembered, so too are nations whose citizens go elsewhere or that aremade up o people who officially do not belong (Coutin ). It is sometimeshard to discern the violence o such processes, as the very state practices thatdefine individuals as outsiderspractices such as surveillance and requests oridentity documentscan become so common that they are taken or granted(Coddington ). Such erasures o dismemberment obscure the histories

through which people become deportable or crime becomes rampant or police

adopt authoritarian measures.Thus, through dismemberment, histories are repressed or distorted.

Examples o such erasures o knowledge abound. Regarding South Arica,

Martha Minow () and other scholars (e.g., Wilson ) have examinedhow the extent o atrocities commied by the apartheid regime was publiclydenied. Regarding Argentina, Diana Taylor () developed the notion o

percepticide to describe the ways that, during the – dirty war, Ar-

gentine military rulers “disappeared” people in broad daylight, while also dis-couraging the general populace rom “knowing” about or acknowledging thereality o the disappearances. Taylor writes that the military repression was

“a perormance that ‘disappears’ its audience” (). Even as instances o staterepression were erased rom public knowledge, accounts o the dangers that

alleged “subversives” posed to the Argentine nation circulated widely and werecited to justiy the role that the Argentine military assumed in public lie. “Notknowing” is thereore made possible through a public perormance o a void,

the knowledge that cannot be permied to circulate. And regarding responsesto state terrorism, the movement to make truth commissions and internationalcriminal courts key components o democratization derives in part rom theneed to set the record straight about human rights violations (Hayner ;

Kaye ; Roche ).In the United States, the scapegoating o immigrants or crime, terrorism,

cultural change, and the nation’s economic woes is another example o histori-cal erasure. Leo Chavez has identified the popular myth that there is a “Latino

threat” that jeopardizes the United States through illegality, overpopulation,pollution, and disease (; see also Inda ). This myth ignores the actthat “illegal aliens” were produced historically, as changes in U.S. immigration


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law and policy orbade the presence o certain people, while creating oppor-tunities or others to legalize (Ngai ). Even noncitizens who are in this

country legally are on “probation,” so to speak, in that their legal status can berevoked i they are convicted o certain crimes or i they ail to meet paperwork

deadlines and presence requirements (Kanstroom ; Motomura ).Border enorcement has given rise to a burgeoning detention-center industry(Welch ), pushed border crossers into terrain where they ace increasedrisks (Nevins ), and made the journey or undocumented migrants bothmore expensive and more deadly (Andreas ). These enorcement practicesnaturalize borders, citizens, and aliens, that is, they treat them as naturally ex-isting, rather than socially and historically constructed phenomena.

In contrast to dismemberment, re/membering not only reveals these his-

tories but also makes it possible to draw connections between them. Children who immigrated during the – Salvadoran civil war experienced mul-tiple orms o violence, including bombings, bales, the assassination o amilymembers, displacement, separation rom loved ones, and immigration policiesthat orced many to hide their presence while living in the United States as

unauthorized immigrants. Emigration exiled young people rom the lives andplaces they had occupied beore, creating proound disjunctures that they

subsequently sought to understand, overcome, or, in some cases, reinorce.

At the same time, emigration transormed nations, dispersing the Salvadorancitizenry, altering neighborhoods in the United States and elsewhere, creatingnew understandings o ethnicity and nationality, and reconfiguring the spacesthat young people lef behind and joined. For youths, such rapid reconfigura-tions entailed erasureso knowledge, memory, history, and being. Indeed,some o the most proound erasures occurred in the s and s, when

youths who grew up in the United States were deported to El Salvador, thus

reproducing (but in the reverse direction) the amily separations that theyhad experienced as children (Dingeman-Cerda and Coutin ). Such dis-

placements, erasures, and traumas have been both countered and exacerbatedthrough various orms o re/membering (Schwab ). Youths revisit their

own pasts, students organize on behal o the undocumented, activists orge

new relationships with the Salvadoran state, Central American writers recordtheir communities’ histories, and state officials seek to incorporate diasporiccitizenries. These strategies, with their complex effects and gaps, reshape na-

tions, citizens, and membership. As an analytical concept and a social practice, re/membering makes at least

our contributions to understanding migration and social violence. First, by


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providing access to subjective experiences, re/membering reveals commonal-ities in the violence o war, poverty, crime, exile, emigration, criminalization,and deportation. Both in the United States and under international law, politi-cal asylum has been reserved or individuals with a well-ounded ear o being

persecuted due to their race, religion, nationality, social-group membership, orpolitical opinion (Bohmer and Shuman ; Smith ). In contrast, individuals who are fleeing dire economic circumstances or criminal violence have been subjected to deportation i apprehended (Harris ). Such distinctionsdepoliticize economic deprivation and citizen insecurity, while also creating

the potential or explicitly political violence to be turned into something else,at least discursively. Importantly, re/membered accounts highlight not only

the indirect impacts o violence on those who are exposed to its effects, but

also the violence that is intrinsic to securitization and border control (Mountz). Individuals are not intrinsically “illegal” or deportable; rather, they haveto be made to be so (Dauvergne ; Ngai ). This redefinition is ac-

complished through a series o actions and omissions, such as bureaucratic

delays, denying asylum to alleged “economic immigrants,” and distinguishing between generalized and direct violence. Violence thus takes both mundaneand dramatic orms (Arias and Goldstein ), a theme that is urther devel-

oped in chapter .Second, in that they address both membership and memory, re/memberedaccounts reconnect subjects to national communities. Personal stories stand inor those o a broader community (Cho ) and thus potentially can over-come “gaps between certain official versions o the past (history) and under-represented understandings o the past (memory)” (DeLugan :; see

also Darian-Smith ; DeLugan ). Even though history has been seenas objective and memory as subjective, the two are linked in that “memory is

what establishes the relationship o the individual to history” (Visweswaran:). In act, because numerous legal processes require individuals to pro-duce personal narratives, biographies are both the substance o testimonies

and products o law, though they take different orms in different contexts. Asylum applicants produce affidavits recounting their experiences o persecu-tion, individuals seeking a suspension o deportation detail the extreme hard-ship that a potential removal would cause them, and naturalization applicantsmust demonstrate their “good moral character” over the five years (three in

the case o those who are spouses o U.S. citizens) that they have been legalpermanent residents. “Biographies” in the orm o criminal records or arrest

histories can also be used to disqualiy individuals or particular statuses. In


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the case o deported .-generation youthsthat is, those who immigrated as young children and who thereore share characteristics o both first-generationimmigrants who are born outside o the country and second-generation immi-grants who are raised in the United States (Abrego ; Kim et al. )the

securitization o immigration law has made de acto membership both salientand elusive. This theme is explored urther in chapters and .

Third, re/membering is temporally complex in that it entails revisiting thepast with an eye toward achieving a more just uture. Re/membering suggeststhat ar rom being inert, the past haunts the present. Avery Gordon defines

haunting as “an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social vi-

olence is making itsel known” (:xvi). Re/membering such unresolved

social violence is a creative process, one that involves “puing lie back in

where only a vague memory or a bare trace was visible” (). Re/memberingis thus akin to archaeology in that it excavates the historical layers that underliecurrent realities, making it possible to reconnect historical conditions (such

as violence that provokes emigration) to what might otherwise appear to be

intrinsic individual characteristics (such as illegality). Chapter explores thisprocess urther by detailing the uncanny repetitions through which denials oasylum during the s lef some Salvadoran youths vulnerable to deportation

in the s. Re/membering such historical conditions is also generative inthat revisiting “the conditions under which a memory was produced in the

first place” makes it possible to produce “a countermemory, or the uture”

(). Thus, alongside historical repetitions are differences that appear throughaention to generation , a theme taken up in chapter , which examines the liveso .-generation and second-generation migrants growing up in the United

States, and chapter , which analyzes youth activism.Fourth, re/membering highlights ways that both memory and member-

ship are spatialized through presence, absence, and return. By fixing origin andnationality, law has the power to pull individuals to particular territories, to

make them disappear rom others, and even to place them outside o nationsaltogether, thus exiling them rom “homes” in multiple senses (McGuire andCoutin ). Temporal calculations o presence and absence are thereore alsospatializations. Additionally, to the degree that Salvadoranness in the UnitedStates has been defined in relation to an origin elsewhere, youths who strive tofind and/or produce their own identities ofen return , whether literally or figu-

ratively, to their countries o origin. Whether legally present or unauthorized,noncitizens occupy an ambiguous zone between societal membership and le-gal exclusion, with the result that those who are removed through deportation


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are key members o U.S. amilies and communities. In act, Kanstroom () writes o the de acto deportation o U.S.-citizen children and spouses who

accompany deportees. Re/membering engages such spatialization in that it

both seeks legal recognition o the de acto orms o membership that youths

who are not (or not yet) citizens already practice and challenges racializingexclusions to which even citizens are subjected (de Genova and Ramos-Zayas), themes developed in chapters and . Thus, young people’s accountso their own lives compete with more dominant interpretations, in which, orexample, the violence that compelled them to emigrate is defined as poverty orin which the marginalization they experienced in the United States is defined asa likelihood that they will become criminals. These competing interpretationso origins and trajectories make the space and time “beore” emigration one o

flux and conditionality. Exploring this alternative understanding o origin asone o movement rather than stasis gestures toward utures in which multiplememberships might be acknowledged.

Youth Migration between the United States and El Salvador

The idea or doing the research or this book was inspired by interviews that

I conducted in – with .-generation Salvadoran migrants. At thetime, I was conducting interviews with Salvadorans who had pending appli-

cations or U.S. residency. Although most o these interviewees had migratedas adults, I had occasion to interview young people who had immigrated as

children and grown up in the United States. I was immediately struck by thedifferences between their experiences and those o other interviewees. For

example, in contrast to accounts o adult migrants who described El Salvadoras the place in which they had lived, worked, or studied, a recently naturalized

.-generation Salvadoran woman who had never returned to her homelanddescribed El Salvador as “this abled place. It’s like enchanted. It’s like, it’s likea antasy to me. . . . There’s a large part o me that is still there . . . living.” An-other .-generation Salvadoran woman, who had a pending application or

U.S. residency, elt that her lack o permanent legal status in the United Statesand her lack o memory o El Salvador made her unreal: “It’s likethere is

nothing. There is nothing here, there is nothing there. . . . You’re just walkingaround, and you’re just, you’re like invisible to everything else. Everybody else

is solid but you’re not.” These interviewees’ descriptions o El Salvador, a placeto which they elt tied by birth and perhaps also (in the case o the second

speaker) by potential uture deportation, highlighted both the power and in-


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accessibility o origin. The first speaker imagined El Salvador as “enchanted,” whereas the second speaker thought o it as a void. What did El Salvador meanto youths who were Salvadoran citizens but who primarily knew the United

States? And how were these meanings produced?

These questions about origin, status, and belonging resonate with theexperiences o other immigrant communities in the United States. It is not

uncommon or .-generation youths to be pulled between nations, eeling

that they are both here and in their country o origin, while also earing thatthey belong in neither place (Boehm ; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ávila ;Zavella ). Immigrant amilies rom multiple nations have experienced

marginalization and social exclusion, particularly due to their legal status,

with even U.S.-citizen children o migrant parents worrying about the depor-

tation o amily members (Dreby , ; Gurrola, Ayón, and Salas ; Jefferies ). Many migrant children have had to endure separations rom

amily members, violence in their country o origin, or trauma while en routeto the United States (Abrego b; Boehm ; Foner and Dreby ; Jaycoxet al. ; Ong ). As well, Salvadorans who have migrated to other coun-tries, such as Canada or Costa Rica, have encountered discrimination, have

struggled with the ambiguity o their identities and social locations, and have

sometimes turned to historic examples o resistancesuch as the peasantuprising that gave rise to mass killings o indigenous people in El Salvador, oreven the Salvadoran civil waror inspiration in overcoming such challenges(Carranza ; Hayden ). These commonalities suggest that the materialrecounted in this book speaks to the circumstances o other immigrant groupsas well.

At the same time, across these commonalities, the experiences o .-

generation and second-generation Salvadoran youths who came to the United

States during the s and s are also unique in several key ways. First,as detailed urther in chapter , there is a historical specificity to the events

that led them and their amilies to emigrate. Young people were particularly

affected due to orced recruitment, requent university closures, bombings

that drove civilians out o rural communities, and death-squad activity againstsuspected dissidents. The pages that ollow will recount numerous instanceso social violence, including those o a Salvadoran college student who saw

photographs o the Salvadoran civil war and came to understand these images

as part o his own history, a boy who ound a hand in a garbage dump in hishometown and did not consider that out o the ordinary, a woman who onlylearned rom her cousin that her mother had almost been killed during the


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war, a child who witnessed an execution and then played with the corpse, and young people who want to understand the relationships among such events,their lives in the United States, and their connections to El Salvador.

Second, the unique legal history o Salvadoran immigrants to the United

States poses in a particularly stark ashion what are wider dilemmas surround-ing memory and membership. During the s, Salvadorans who fled to theUnited States without authorization were told that the violence that they hadexperienced was not political, that they had not been “singled out” or persecu-tion, and that they could return saely to their homeland. Many remained in theUnited States anyway, avoiding apprehension i possible. In , Salvadorans were allowed to apply or Temporary Protected Status (), which had beennewly created by the Immigration Act o . Additionally, in , a class-

action suit that was seled out o court gave Salvadorans and Guatemalans theright to de novo asylum hearings. These two remedies resulted in temporarystatuses that did not authorize Salvadorans to petition or their relatives to jointhem in the United States or to travel to El Salvador to visit amily members but did allow recipients to remain in the country. Then, in , passage o theNicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relie Act () enabledSalvadorans and Guatemalan recipients and asylum applicants to seek

legal permanent residency on the basis o the lives that they had created inthe United States instead o on their need or reuge. This was an important

development, given that peace accords were signed in El Salvador in andin Guatemala in , thus largely placing asylum out o reach. Yet interim

regulations were not issued until , with the result that most ap-plicants could not obtain residency until the s. This long legal struggle

denied membership to Salvadorans or many years while also denying legal

recognition o the conditions that had caused them to migrate in the first place.

Third, immigration enorcement, which escalated in the mid-s, hada particularly strong impact on Latino youths in the United States, includingSalvadorans. Restrictive ederal legislation that was passed in stiffened

the immigration consequences o criminal convictions and oreclosed many

other avenues o legalization, with devastating consequences or Salvadoransand other migrants. Deportations to El Salvador, a country o approximatelysix million, skyrocketed rom , in to , in , making El Salva-dor the ourth most common destination or removals rom the United States

(U.S. Department o Homeland Security ; U.S. Immigration and CustomsEnorcement ). With these escalated deportations, once again, amily

members were being separated, as deportees lef behind parents, siblings, and


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children. Once again, deportees were subjected to violence, in this case, by

gang members, security guards, and sometimes the police. And once again, this violence was largely considered apolitical in nature and thereore not groundsor asylum in the United States.

Fourth, while immigration rom El Salvador to the United States had existedpreviously, dramatic increases when the war began in the s meant that

Salvadoran children who immigrated then were the first large-scale generationo Salvadorans to be raised in the United States. The .-generation migrantsand their U.S.- born counterparts were socialized in U.S. schools, ormed parto the abric o U.S. neighborhoods, and sought to create new definitions o

Salvadoranness in the United States (Baker-Cristals a). Theirs is a storyneither o straight assimilation nor o a transnational identity, though it shares

eatures o each (Menjívar ; Portes and Rumbaut ; Rumbaut andPortes ). Rather, the .-generation and second-generation Salvadoran

and Central American activists, organizers, writers, artists, and students whomI interviewed described an effort to create a new space and public presence

or members o their generation, one distinct rom their parents’ generation

and rom that occupied by other ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Youths emphasized the need to move away rom the issues o reugee rights

that defined earlier Central American struggles (including the caravan) toinstead ocus on such concerns as access to higher education, media imageryassociating Salvadoranness with gangs, and the quality o inner-city schools.In this sense, Salvadoran youths were like other immigrant children, who oundit important to establish political and social agendas that differed rom those otheir parents’ generation (Kasinitz, Mollenk, and Waters ). At the sametime, youths sought to distinguish themselves as Salvadorans and Central

Americans rom Chicanos or Latin Americans more generally. Thus, Salva-

doran youths sought to generate their own identities, create new institutions,and secure public recognition in a specifically U.S. context.

I should note that, in examining the experiences o .- and second-

generation Salvadorans, I use the term youth to convey both a particularlie point (the ormative stage in which one anticipates or has recently gone

through the transition to adulthood) and a loosely bounded generation (in-

dividuals who were children during the Salvadoran civil war and its immedi-ate afermath). In this sense, I am aempting to consider both “the effects o

historical period” (that is, immigrating during the civil war) and “generation-since-immigration” (that is, being part o the . and second generation o Sal- vadoran immigrants) (Telles and Ortiz :). At the same time, I do not


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want to overemphasize homogeneity, given that “‘generation’ can perhaps bemore accurately conceived o as a spectrum o different lie experiences” thanas a clearly bounded category (Boehm :). I suppose I also use youth tosignal the act, generally speaking, that I am rom the same generation as their

parents, the cohort who immigrated as adults during the civil war. Indeed, asI interacted with interviewees, I ound mysel thinking that many were in thesame age range as my undergraduates and were just a bit older than my ownchildren. At the same time, youth has analytical significance or this project, because it was the potential discrepancy between being born in El Salvador butraised in the United States that created the conundrum that is the ocus o thisstudy. As Sharika Thiranagama explains, “Youth as an ‘age span’ has a particularcharged valence within . . . the shuling back and orth between experience,

relations, structures and selves” (:). Likewise, Cal Morrill and colleaguesdefine youth as “a socially constructed category located in liminal social spaces,at the blurred boundaries between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’” (:,

citations omied). Salvadoran immigrant youths’ accounts o shuling acrosssuch blurred boundaries reveal how nations, persons, and histories are remem- bered and reassembled in the afermath o violence.

Ethnography

My analysis o the relationships that .-generation and second-generation

youths have orged with the United States and El Salvador relies on ethno-

graphy, which I see less as a “research method” than as a way o knowing. Assuch, ethnography has much in common with the re/membering practices

in which Salvadoran youths are engaged. For one, although anthropological

approaches to ethnography have in the past assumed that individuals were part

o clearly bounded cultural groups, this view has come into question. Writingin the late s and early s, the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern ()described the anthropological problem o enumerating cultures and represent-ing them. Now it is not clear what “a” culture isa particular village? a region?a kin group? a nation?nor is it clear how to bound the categories “Salva-

doran,” “Central American,” or “youth.” For another, drawing on the work oStephen Tyler, Strathern suggested that ethnographies produced knowledge

by evoking certain responses in readers and thereore were evocative rather

than representational. Likewise, testimonies disseminate knowledge by mak-ing listeners witnesses to the events that are narrated (Hirsch ) and thusto the collective realities that individual accounts convey (Arias ; Behar


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; Beverley ; Nance ). Both testimonies and ethnography enableindividuals to enter realities that are imagined as simultaneously whole and

partial, representative o a collectivity and yet narrated rom particular expe-rience. Ethnographies thereore put orward truth claims by assembling the

documentary record that makes them evident.The documentary record on which this book relies was assembled through

interviews with migrants in Southern Caliornia and in El Salvador, discussions with officials and advocates who work with such migrants, and my own priorinvolvement in and research about legal and political advocacy on behal o

Central Americans. I met interviewees in various ways. I made announcementsin Central American studies classes taught by my riends, as well as in large

lecture courses. I met leaders o Central American student groups, who then

reerred me to their co-organizers. I consulted with Salvadoran youths who worked in community organizations. The legal staff at the Central AmericanResource Center () in Los Angeles helped me to locate regis-trants who were .-generation migrants. Some interviewees gave me names

o relatives or coworkers. I sent out email announcements to list-servs or stu-dents who participated in the Caliornia Dream Network. And in El Salvador,I worked with the San Salvador offices o Internacional and Homies

Unidos to locate .-generation migrants who had been deported.Between and , I interviewed individuals, consisting o orty.-generation and second-generation youths in Southern Caliornia; orty-

one youths who had been deported and who were interviewed in El Salvador;and twenty-five nongovernmental organization members or immigrant rightsorganizers who worked with youths in Caliornia or in El Salvador. The age othe .-generation and second-generation youths interviewed in the United

States ranged rom eighteen to thirty-seven, with an average age o twenty-

five (most were in their twenties). Interviewees who had been deported weresomewhat older, rom twenty-two to sixty-nine with an average age o thirty-three. But when a couple o outliers (the sixty-nine- year-old and a fify- two-

year-old) are removed, all but two o the remaining deportee sample were

in their twenties and thirties, and the average age o deportees interviewed

drops to thirty-one. Interviewees included undocumented college students inthe United States, deportees struggling to find their place within El Salvador,immigrant rights activists, poets, writers, student organizers, recipients,

gang violence prevention workers, newly naturalized U.S. citizens, Salvadoranofficials who worked with deportees, and some Salvadoran youths born in theUnited States to immigrant parents. Interviews, which each lasted one to two


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hours in duration, examined migrant youths’ legal histories, that is, youths’

lives in El Salvador, emigration to the United States, uture plans, and returnsto El Salvador (in some instances, as deportees). Interviewees’ legal statuses

varied and included U.S. citizenship, lawul permanent residency, , asylum

seekers, and undocumented. Approximately hal o the U.S. interviewees were women, whereas, due to the difficulty o recruiting emale participants, all othe deportees who were interviewed were men. Follow-up interviews were

conducted with about hal o the U.S. participants at one to two years afer theoriginal interviews. These made it possible to track changes in interviewees’

aitudes and circumstances. I also draw on interviews with ten .-generationSalvadorans that I conducted in – as part o my earlier research, ora total “sample” o . Unless otherwise noted, throughout this book, pseud-

onyms are used or all interviewees.Clearly, this sample is not representative o Salvadoran youths in the United

States or o the broader population o deportees. Given that I accessed indi-

viduals through universities and community organizations, the U.S. sample

is probably beer educated, on average, than the broader population o Sal-

vadoran youth. Nonetheless, this potential skewing has the advantage o in-

cluding individuals who had already assumed leadership positions and who,

through their own activism, scholarship, and, in some cases, business activities, were directly or indirectly helping to define what it meant to be Salvadoranor Central American within the United States. It is important to recognize,

though, that there are many Salvadoran immigrant youths who were not ableto aend college and who were working at low-income jobs. The experienceso several such individuals are discussed at some length in the pages that ollow.Furthermore, those who were interviewed in El Salvador included numerousindividuals who had not made it through high school and who aced such chal-

lenges as drug addiction, gang membership, and criminal convictions. Whilemany deportees were also taking on leadership positions in their own work-

places and communities, others continued to be challenged in seeking employ-ment and other opportunities. Interviewees’ occupations varied widely and

included proessional positions (or instance, in universities or corporations),sel-employment, blue-collar work (in construction or transportation), study-ing, and being unemployed. Each interviewee received a gif certificate or(in El Salvador) cash as compensation or participating.

Interviews coincided with and thereore described events o nationaland international importance, including the mass mobilization in the


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United States on behal o immigrants’ rights, efforts to secure comprehen-

sive immigration-reorm legislation, the election o the first Frente FarabundoMartí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation

Front, or , the coalition that made up the guerrilla orces in El Salvador

and that has since become a political party) Salvadoran president in ,advocacy surrounding the Caliornia and ederal Dream acts (addressing thelegal status and financial aid eligibility o undocumented college students),

the passage o Arizona Senate Bill (which required noncitizens to carryidentification and authorized Arizona police to question individuals regardingtheir immigration status), and the impact o the – recession and itssluggish recovery on immigrant communities. Interviews also discussed deeplypersonal issues, such as postponing marriage in order to maintain eligibility

or a amily- based visa, reunions with parents ollowing lengthy separations,and the psychological impacts o being deported. When possible, I also par-

ticipated in conerences, meetings, estivals, and other events organized by orabout youths.

It is important to note that the biographical accounts that I elicited duringinterviews were not unlike those produced as part o broader efforts to

re/member the histories o Salvadoran youths in the United States. It was

common or students and community organizations to deploy individual tes-timonies as part o advocacy work. For instance, the Students United to ReachGoals in Education ( , a student group at Caliornia State University,Los Angeles, occasionally put out calls or “testimonies” over its list-serv, and,during an act o political theater at the L.A. city hall in December , it ea-tured the personal stories o three students who were either undocumented or who supported educational access or undocumented students (see chapter ).Such stories are more examples o testimonio. Other interviewees collected oral

histories themselves, as part o a memoria histórica (historic memory) projectdesigned to document the history and cultural lie o Central Americans (seealso Silber ). Although they were elicited during interviews, the narrativesthat I analyze hereand, indeed, the decision to participate in an interview were linked to this advocacy work. For example, one interviewee, an electrician who had never aended college, likened being interviewed to marching or renewal. For him, telling me o his experiences was a orm o collaboration.

Thereore, my own ethnographic activities cannot be set apart rom the orms

o re/membering that I analyze in this book. The narratives generated duringinterviews were also acts o re/membering.


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I analyze interview material against the backdrop o other work that I havedone, some o whichsuch as my short caravan experienceI bring or-

ward here. I became involved in Central American issues through the worko Salvadorans and Guatemalans who sought to publicize human rights abuses

and mobilize U.S. solidarity workers (Perla and Coutin ). When the Sal- vadoran civil war began, I was an undergraduate student at the University oCaliornia, Berkeley, and, though aware o the conflict, was not particularly

involved in solidarity work. I do recall participating in a dance marathon to

raise unds or , the Commiee in Solidarity with the People o ElSalvador. The dance team that won the marathon’s costume contest came asRonald Reagan’s domino theory, each dancer dressed as a domino with “Cuba,”“Nicaragua,” ‘El Salvador,” or “Your backyard” wrien on his or her cap. Later,

as a graduate student at Stanord, when I was homing in on Latin America asmy area o research specialization, I aended meetings o the Stanord Central American Action Network (), a group that, beore my time, publishedan edited volume entitled Revolution in Central America ( ). I re-member joining the Stanord contingent o a peace and reedom parade in SanFrancisco and chanting as participants marched through the streets. In ,I spent the summer in Colombia studying Spanish, and in , I spent three

months in Argentina, studying at a university in Buenos Aires and interviewingmembers o the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, an organization made up o mothers who demanded justice or young people who had been disappeared during thedirty war in Argentina. My experience in Argentina deepened my interest in

and commitment to human rights issues. When the Tucson sanctuary trialmade national news, I realized that the sorts o concerns being addressed bythe Madres were playing out in my own community, where Central Americans

who were fleeing violence and persecution were not being granted reuge. I

thereore decided to make the sanctuary movement the subject o my doctoraldissertation.

For me, the sanctuary research that took me to the caravan initiated

over two decades o research ocused on political and legal advocacy by and on behal o Central Americans. In –, I lived first in Oakland, Caliornia,and then in Tucson, Arizona, while doing fieldwork within the sanctuary move-ment. As part o my fieldwork, I participated in sanctuary coalitions, answeredphones at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant office, collected clothing and ood

donations, scheduled speakers, interpreted or doctors who offered ree services to Central American reugees, documented asylum applications, aended


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church services and vigils, translated during public testimonies, observed asy-lum hearings, and interviewed more than one hundred movement participants.My book about the U.S. sanctuary movement detailed how movement

participants drew on and reinterpreted law, culture, and their aiths as they cre-

ated a means and a language o protesting violence in Central America. By themid-s, I lived in Los Angeles, home to approximately hal o the Salvadoranpopulation in the United States, and I embarked on my second major researchproject: a study o the ways that Salvadorans and Guatemalans who had spentthe s seeking asylum devised new legal strategies in the s, afer the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala came to an end. For that project, I also didfieldwork, which consisted o volunteering with the legal services programs othree Los Angeles–based Central American community organizations, observ-

ing immigration court hearings, aending protests and marches on behal oimmigrants’ rights, and interviewing activists, aorneys, and Central Americans with pending asylum applications (Coutin ). In –, I turned to mythird major project: a study o the significance o the Salvadoran population

or El Salvador and or the United States. Through interviews with govern-

ment officials, advocates, and migrants in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, andSan Salvador, I analyzed how it was that, in a time o heightened immigration

restriction, exceptions were carved out or Salvadoran migrants who, in thes, had been regarded as undeserving o a legal status (Coutin ). For

me, research was always a way to advance both knowledge and justice, in that Isought to document and make visible the experiences o groups (reugees, theundocumented) that have been marginalized in the United States.

Throughout this book, I interweave snippets o such material both as a wayto situate mysel in the accounts and histories presented here and as part o thedocumentary process entailed in re/membering. Like youths who seek (or,

in a ew cases, want to leave behind) their own histories, I include prior mo-ments o community history that I have experienced and that can contribute insome sense to the “record.” I also draw on literary and cultural sources (novels,perormances) where appropriate. Such orms o knowledge or explication

are part o the cultural production o Central American youths (Rodríguez

), and I employ them (but in abbreviated orm) neither to urther analyzenor to buress my own claims, but rather to evoke. I thereore conclude thisintroduction with an account o one such experience, a dramatic production

that exhorted audience members to explore and recount their own histories,in short, to re/member.


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. Dress lef behind at El Mozote. Re-printed with permission othe Museo de la Palabra y

la Imagen in San Salvador,El Salvador.

. Actress RocioEnriquez in De la locuraa la esperanza. Reprinted with permission rom William Flores. Photorom the play, De la locura

a la esperanza.


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¿Y la Suya? (and Yours?)

, . With great excitement, I approached the Los AngelesTheatre Center to see a perormance o the play De la locura a la esperanza ,

wrien and directed by William Flores. The play’s title was the same as a truth commission report on El Salvador. Central American advocates

had pointed out to me that it was hugely significant that this play, dedicatedto recounting Salvadoran history, was being perormed in such a key Los

Angeles venue.The play was accompanied by an exhibit rom the Museo de la Palabra y

la Imagen in San Salvador. The exhibit eatured photographs o the civil warand artiacts rom El Mozote, the site o one o the most inamous massacres

in which, in December , residents o an entire village had been killed, withthe exception o a single survivor. I was particularly sobered by a delicate child’sdress and toy on display in a case.

In the theater, I stood in line with Salvadorans speaking English and Span-ish, and I saw people I knew rom my work with community organizations.

I took a seat inside and watched as the curtain rose to reveal a dress that re-

sembled a shroud. The orm took lie as a womanseemingly a ghost, evoking

Rufina Amaya, the lone survivor o the massacre at El Mozoterecounted thehistory o her community:

Siento un poco de temor al hablar de todo esto, pero al mismo tiempo

reflexiono que mis hijos murieron inocentemente. ¿Porque voy a sentir

miedo de decir la verdad? Ha sido una realidad lo que han hecho y tenemosque ser uertes para decirlo. [I am a lile araid to speak o all this, but at

the same time, I reflect that my children died innocently. Why am I goingto be araid to tell the truth? What they have done is a reality, and we haveto be strong to tell it.]

Folk dancers perormed scenes o courtship and village lie. Then the army

arrived, and a voice-over reminded audience members that the United Stateshad supplied the Salvadoran government with more than billion in militaryaid during the war. In a chilling scene, soldiers destroyed the corn that village women had gathered, throwing stones and brutally stomping as the name oeach child killed in El Mozote was read. Afer this destruction, the ghostlike

woman lamented the loss, with great anguish. But the play concluded with amessage o hope. A children’s chorus sang:


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Que canten los niños que alcen la voz, que hagan al mundo escuchar,que unan sus voces y lleguen al sol en ellos está la verdadQue canten los niños que viven en paz y aquellos que suren dolor,que canten por esos que no cantarán porque han apagado su voz

[Let the children sing, let them raise their voice, let the world be made tolisten

let their voices unite and reach the sun, in them is the truth,May the children who live in peace and those who suffer sing,let them sing or those who will not sing because their voice has been

silenced.]

The woman concluded by emphasizing the importance o preserving history.

She repeated, “Esta es mi historia. ¿Y la suya? ¿Y la suya? ¿Y la suya?” (This ismy story. And yours? And yours? And yours?) Once again, she roze at centerstage, as though her moment to come to lie had run out, and, behind a screen,her body disappeared, to be replaced once more by a shroudlike dress.

And, reader, what is your story?

exiled home by susan bibler coutin

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