fmln, hegemony in the interior of the salvadoran revolution. the erp in northern morazán [jlaa...

hegemony in the interior of thesalvadoran revolution:the erp in northern morazdn

"War is a bloody experience from which only those who haveclone nothing escape with clean hands. " Mauricio Chavez(former FPL commander, currently director ofCEPAZ, Centrode Pazj

In his Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala, DavidStoll provides an interpretation of

abstract Guatemalan history that divides

This article offers a nuanced explanation r f P o n f b i l i * f o r * e mas1

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of the internal politics of guerilla relations. **Ixi1 r eu

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It uses the conce; ts of hegemony, fields b e t w e e n the G u e r r i l l a A rm> o f the

of power and habitus to aralyze the dy- P o o r a n d t h e G u a t e m a l a n t r00Ps

namics of guerilla strategies and efforts w h o actual l> c a r r i e d o u t scorchedto implement them in the Peoples Revo- e a r t h operations. Critiquing thelutionary Army (ERP) in northern Morazaa naivete and pro-guerrilla stanceEl Salvador. The author argues that the o f h u m a n rights groups (and si-guerrilla strategies involved them in a multaneouslj undermining theirdouble process of hegemony construe- credibilin). Stoll argues that thetion: hegemony over civilians and hege- ixil area was uninvolved in themony over their own combatants. This conflict until the Guerrilla Armydouble process was crucial if ERP guerril- of the Poor appeared on the scenelas were to compete on the field of power and "provoked" the state to re-dominated by the US-backed Salva- spond w ith repression, thus forc-doran military. ing previously neutral peasants to

lake sides in the conflict: "Judg-ing from their stories the main reason Ixils cast their lot w ith the guerrillas

journal of latin amencan anthropology 4(1):2-45 copyright ;•• 1999, american anthropological association

2 journal of latin american anthropology

leigh binford university of Connecticut

was [sic] the coercive pressures created by the blows and counterblows oftwo military forces, a dilemma Nebajenos typically describe as being en-tre dosfuegos (between two fires).... Hence, just because an insurgencygrows rapidly does not mean that it represents popular aspirations and hasbroad popular support" (1992:20, c.f, p. 91, emphasis in the original).

I am supportive of Stoll's effort to counteract analyses that paint theworld in black and white termswhich hold Latin American gov-ernments able to do no right andrevolutionaries no wrong. If, infact, this necessary correctivelay at the heart of his argument,I would have little objection.However, by parceling out re-sponsibility for the death tollequally between revolutionarieswho struggled to alter a highlyexploitative economic systemand a military that killed thou-sands of uninvolved civilians inorder to defend it, Stoll producesa work of historical revisionismwhich in the end serves to dis-credit all armed movements for

resumenEste articulo ofrece una expl icacionmatizada de la politico interna de relacionesguerrilleras. Utiliza los conceptos dehegemonia, campos de poder y habituipara analizar las dindmicas de estrategiasguerrilleras y esfuerzos para implementaias enel EJerdtoRevolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) enla parte norte de Morazan, El Salvador. Elautor sostiene que las estrategiasguerrilleras los involucraron en unproceso doble de construccion dehegemonia hegemonia sobre civiles yhegemonia sobre sus propios combatientes.Este proceso doble hubiera sido critico si lasguerrillas del ERP pensaban competir en elcampo de poder dominado por los militarejSalvadorenos, apoyados por los EEUU.

social change. For a logical,though unstated, implication of his argument is that an\ mass movement

hegemony in the interior of the salvadoran revolution 3

that aims to alter the balance of power must develop openly in civil societyand gain a mass following through pacific (nonviolent) action before takingup arms as a desperate response to unprovoked violence on the part of thestate. In fact, few if any contemporary neocolonial states have allowedsuch challenges to develop openly. By employing their self-proclaimedmonopoly on the legitimate use of force, states systematically repress lead-ers and force oppositional movements underground long before those move-ments develop the majority following that Stoll deems their legitimate task.

Apart from numerous methodological questions I have about StolPswork, it seems to me that the principal failing involves a lack of strategicvision, i.e., a failure to analyze the national situation in Guatemala and thespecific role of the EGP and the Ixil zone within a much larger and verycomplex social field. In the pages that follow, I attempt to demonstrate howwe can usefully approach guerrilla-civilian relations by grounding our analy-sis in two concepts: fields of power and hegemony. Rather than the Ixilregion of Guatemala, however, my focus will be on northern Morazan, ElSalvador, an area controlled from 1983 to 1992 by the EjercitoRevolucionario del Pueblo (henceforth ERP), one of five political-mili-tary organizations that made up the Frente Farabundo Marti para laLiberacion Nacional or FMLN.1

Basically, I shall argue that within areas over which it exercised nomi-nal day-to-day control, the ERP confronted a civilian population diversifiedalong lines of age, gender, and political orientation. Although the guerrillasfunctioned as a quasi-state and dominated through force when necessary,attainment of their strategic objectives, if not their very survival, was tied tothe development of a modicum of hegemony over civilians, who served as arecruitment pool and supplied food, labor, information and other forms ofassistance crucial to the struggle. However, I will also argue that hegemonyover civilians depended on the ERP leadership's exercise of hegemonyover rebel troops and support personnel. Though incorporation into the ERPwas voluntary, such hegemony could not be assumed but had to be createdor deepened where it already existed. In short, maximizing its position onthe military-political field of power (see below) of northern Morazan andcontesting that field with the Fuerzas Armadas de El Salvador (El Salva-doran Armed Forces, henceforth FAES) led the ERP leadership to embark,at a particular moment of the conflict, on a double process of hegemonyconstruction, in which the successful exercise of hegemony over civiliansrequired the ERP leadership to deepen its hegemony over guerrilla combat-ants as well.

journal of latin american anthropology

differentiation in the interior of the revolutionFollowing the decline of the indigo industry in the last century, northern

Morazan became an economic backwater and a low priority for the Salva-doran state, which partly explains the historically poor road, health andeducational infrastructure there. Northern Morazan's heavily broken ter-rain and thin soils made it unfit for the large-scale production of coffee,cotton or sugar cane that formed the foundation of the nation's post-WWIIagro-export economy (Williams 1986).: Rather, the land in northern Morazan\\ as divided into hundreds of small properties (and a few large ones) whoseowners combined subsistence production of corn and beans with small-scale cattle raising, petty production and processing of henequen and sugarcane, logging in the higher altitudes (of growing importance following theSecond World War) and seasonal wage labor to zones of export agricultureon the coast and in the central cordillera. Government officials apparentlysaw little reason to invest in Morazan's infrastructure or social services. In1970 Morazan rivaled Chalatenango as the Salvadoran department with theleast access to electricity, education and public health services; the poorestquality housing stock; and the worst roads (El Salvador Ministerio de Economia1974). Accordingto the 1971 nationalcensus, only 17 of156,000 people re-siding in Morazandepartment had ac-quired any post-sec-ondary educationwhatsoever (El Sal-vador Ministerio deE c o n o m i a1974:260). In ElSalvador: Land-scape and Society,David Browning in-cluded Morazanwithin the tierraolvidada.

For most ofthe post-WWIIperiod northernMorazan was a

Honduras

San MguelLa UniCn

Map 1. Northern Morazan• -Municipal Centers• - Departmental

Capital


bulwark of (often passive) support for the National Conciliation Party, closelyallied to the Salvadoran Armed Forces (Baloyra 1982). In this socially andeconomically marginalized zone, political party development was attenu-ated, and the Treasury Police and National Guard, which maintained small,permanent barracks in most municipal centers, closely controlled elections.The local Catholic priest rather than political parties played the major, albeitindirect, role in political socialization. There are some important excep-tions- a mayoral victory by the Party of Renovating Action (PAR) inJocoaitique in the 1950s3 and the formation of Christian Democratic Party(PDC) clubs in some municipalities in the 1970s.

The progressive political education of Morazanian peasants was a productof the Second Vatican Council (1962-1967) and the Latin American Bish-ops' Council held in Medellin, Colombia in 1968. In El Salvador groupswithin the Catholic church which followed liberation theology began topractice a "preferential option for the poor" that legitimized struggles forbetter wages and working conditions, and for land reform. One consequencewas the creation of peasant training centers in each of the country's fivedioceses (Richard and Melendez 1982).

Most writing on liberation theology in El Salvador has focused on thework of Jose Incencio Alas and Rutilio Grande in the diocese of San Salva-dor, where they had the support of progressive Archbishop Chavez yGonzalez (archbishop from 1939-1977). Nationally the training centers alsoplayed an important role "in spreading progressive pastoral and social ideasoutside the Archdiocese of San Salvador, since most of the other dioceseshad conservative bishops who prevented individual pastoral agents fromforming CEBs [Christian Base Communities] or other parish-based projects"(Peterson 1997:56; see Richard and Melendez 1982:61, 72-74).4

Peasant-catechists in northern Morazan usually attended Centro Reinode la Paz (better known as El Castano) in Chirilagua, San Miguel wherethey gained experience in public speaking and organizing techniques andlearned how to interpret their poverty and marginalization in the context ofthe Bible (see Peterson 1997:55-58). Many current and former catechistsnow use terms like "awakening" or "rebirth" to describe their experiencesin the centers and they explain how they returned to northern Morazananxious to share their new knowledge.5 However, Father Andres Argueta,the conservative Jocoaitique priest who had sent them to be trained ascatechists on orders from his superior, strived to keep progressive politicsout of church practice. He used his authority over the catechists to sup-press their liberatory message for several years.

This changed in 1973. Miguel Ventura, a young, radical priest of peas-


ant origin trained in San Salvador's San Jose de la Montana seminary,arrived to take charge of the new Torola parish, carved out of Argueta'sJocoaitique-centered domain through the reassignment of the municipalitiesof Villa El Rosario, Torola and San Fernando. Ventura provided encourage-ment and direction for the work of the catechists. He also enlarged theirranks by sending more peasants to El Castano and other training centers.Against Argueta's single-minded concern with spiritual growth, he promotedthe discourse of the integral development of the whole person, a key fea-ture of liberation theology's doctrine. Ventura also visited the most remotecommunities, where his friendliness, humility and refusal to charge formasses, baptisms and weddings distinguished him from his predecessor.The National Guard began to monitor these "threatening" church activities,and Father Argueta denounced Father Ventura from his pulpit in Jocoaitique.

In 1975 Ventura was transferred south of the Torola River to Osicalaparish. In 1977, following an armed confrontation between the ERP and theSalvadoran military in Osicala, he was seized by the National Guard, se-verely tortured, and forced into exile following his release.6 ProgressiveCatholicism in northern Morazan possessed a solid constituency at the timeof Ventura's departure, but absent his leadership and subject to escalatingstate repression, it never developed to its full potential. After Ventura leftthe area, many progressive Catholics, among them a number of the mostdynamic peasant catechists, joined ERP Military Committees, initiated in1975, and began to prepare for the civil war predicted by ERP founderRafael Arce Zablah.7

From 1975 to 1980 "Chele Cesar" (Santo Lino Ramirez) and "Balta"(Juan Ramon Medrano), the former an ERP military trainer and the latter apolitical organizer, periodically traveled to northern Morazan from San Miguel(Medrano y Raudales 1994). They passed as cattle buyers by day, and bynight they imparted military training and political orientation to ERP MilitaryCommittees throughout the zone. In 1978 the ERP formed the February28th Popular Leagues (LP-28), an open mass organization that served asa recruiting ground for the clandestine Military Committees and a pressuregroup on the government. LP-28 members were frequently trucked to SanMiguel, San Salvador and other cities where they occupied churches andgovernment offices and marched with other popular organizations to pro-test government policies and human rights violations. During these actions,peasants from northern Morazan became the targets of violent reprisalsfrom the military and security forces. Some even died when governmenttroops fired on demonstrators. Often, the survivors returned to northernMorazan with a different conception of the Salvadoran state, which they

hegemony in the interior of the salvadoran revolution

shared with friends and family members, or, in several instances, in risky, openmeetings in town plazas.

I have sketched the process through which state repression forced under-ground a counter-hegemonic project promoted by sectors within the Catholicchurch and led participating peasants to join an armed revolutionary movement.For most of its practitioners, liberation theology was not about seizing statepower, but it did demystify long-standing supernaturalist explanations of thesources of wealth and poverty. Challenging the conservative wing of the Catholicchurch in rural El Salvador also involved challenging the weak hegemony exer-cised by the state, given the church's historic role in political socialization. How-ever, many people in northern Morazan, who over time might have becomeinspired by the liberationist project and might have adopted both the discursiveterms in which affiliates to it interpreted their social world and the concreteactivities in which they engaged, were frightened away by government propa-ganda, threats and repression centered on progressive Catholic beliefs, activi-ties and personnel. In my view, this history of Christian organization attenuatedby state-sponsored repression goes far to account for the highly differentiatedpolitical terrain over which the ERP exercised day-to-day authority from 1983until January 1992.8

Carmen Mercedes Letona ("Comandante Luisa"), who for much of thewar headed the ERP's political section in northern Morazan, displayed an acuteunderstanding of this situation when she divided civilians into the viejocontingente (old contingent) of dependable FMLN supporters, and theatrasados (backward elements) which "have developed some resentment asa result of their own situations." She noted of the latter groups that "becausethey have not had a concrete political practice that might raise their levels ofconsciousness, their lives have turned around hiding and fleeing [from the army]"(FMLN 1987:23).9 Many in the viejo contingente cut their political teeth onliberation theology, disseminated by Miguel Ventura and dozens of peasantcatechist assistants, while the atrasados were the principal objects of the ERP'scounter-hegemonic political project that I will discuss below (See CEBESn.d:24).

hegemony and fields of powerTo situate that project, both temporally and spatially, it will help us to

think of northern Morazan as a field of power (Roseberry 1994) situated


near the bottom of a series of interlinked but hierarchically-ordered powerfields. My analysis here owes much to William Roseberry and to PierreBourdieu's investigations of intellectual, educational, religious and economicfields as semi-autonomous components of an overall social field of power.For Bourdieu, each field is a social site in which actors occupying "posi-tions" endowed with different amounts and types of "capital" (economic,cultural and/or symbolic) struggle against one another in order to improvetheir positions within the field (i.e., to obtain more capital) or to change thefield's rules or its boundaries (Bourdieu 1988,1990a, 1990b; Robbins 1991).10

The rules that govern struggles in social fields are skewed in favor of domi-nant groups as one of the fruits of their victories in prior struggles.

Bourdieu tends to focus on the analysis of particular French intellectual,artistic, economic or religious social fields. I am more interested in articu-lating local, regional, and global developments across fields or nesting fieldswithin one another in the manner of Eric Wolf (1982), Sidney Mintz (1985)or, more recently, Florencia Mallon (1995). To this end I argue that the fieldof political-military power in northern Morazan was affected by U.S.government policy and even the civilian population of the United States,insofar as the U.S. population (or, rather, sectors of it) pressured the execu-tive and legislative branches to reduce or eliminate military assistance to ElSalvador. J. Michael Waller (1991) manifested a curious awareness of thiswhen he labeled the U.S. Central America movement the "North Ameri-can Front of El Salvador's Guerrilla War." But Waller treated the NorthAmerican front simplistically as part of a vast global revolutionary con-spiracy rather than the product of a partial rupture in U.S. imperial hege-mony (For an alternative analysis see Smith 1996). I am driving at the pointthat we need to nest our analyses of local and regional fields of power inmore encompassing national, international and even global contexts, evenas we hone in on local/regional situations.

Another key concept for Bourdieu, and a useful one for thinking aboutsocial fields of power, is that of habitus. The habitus consists of mentalstructures that take the form of "durable dispositions;" they are sociallyinculcated, with some priority given to early experience, and incline actorstoward selecting operational strategies (economic, marital, consumptive, etc.)congruent with their positions in the social fields in which the habitus wasformed (Bourdieu 1977:85-86). Workers and bosses or peasants and haci-enda owners will see the world somewhat differently because thoseworldviews represent the structured form of distinct (and antagonistic) classexperiences. Nonetheless, since the dominant group exercises more influ-ence in historically structuring the field within which subordinate groups are


formed and within which they must operate, the habituses of the latter willnecessarily internalize features of that domination. Their subordinate posi-tion is, after all, an objective fact within which they were constituted andwith which they must contend daily. Though habitus shapes understanding,it does not precisely determine it, since each social actor occupies a varietyof social positions (ethnic, religious, class, gender, etc.), each of which (orsome combination thereof) provides the basis for ideological constructionas well as "a base for symbolic struggles for the power to produce and toimpose a vision of the legitimate world" (Bourdieu 1990b: 131).

Habitus can help us to understand how struggles can be meaningful totheir participants even as they are usually constrained by the historical agencyof the dominant, rule-setting group (e.g., Willis 1977) because it conceptu-ally maps the limits of the assumed (orthodoxy), the debatable (heterodoxy)and the unspeakable or unthinkable (doxa). Though he did not do so, Will-iam Roseberry (1994:360-61) could have invoked Bourdieu when he de-fined hegemony as the manner in which "the words, images, symbols, forms,organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate populationsto talk about, understand, confront, accommodate themselves to, or resisttheir domination are shaped by the process of domination itself." Roseberryopined that, "What hegemony constructs...is not a shared ideology but acommon meaningful and material framework for living through, talking about,and acting upon social orders characterized by domination." This, I believe,is precisely what Bourdieu attempts to get at. Both Bourdieu and Roseberryimply that hegemonic domination does not terminate with revolutionary vic-tory but persists into the post revolutionary period as a residual presencederiving from the objective conditions of domination under which both revo-lutionary and nonrevolutionary subjects were formed.

military strategies and fields of power innorthern morazan

Now let us turn to the analysis of the wartime field of political-eco-nomic power in northern Morazan, bringing in, only insofar as necessary,those larger social fields in which northern Morazan was embedded (butwith respect to which it occupied a relative autonomy deriving from itsspecific history and internal social relations)." This field ofpower wasreconfigured four times between the mid-1970s and 1992. Taking some


liberties with the FMLN's chronology (FMLN n.d.a), these periods can bedefined as follows: (1) Years of Active Clandestinity (pre-1980), (2) ActiveResistance (1980-82), (3) Military Initiative (mid-1982 to 1983), and (4)Heightened Guerrilla Control (1984-1992). It is convenient to break the lastperiod into sub-periods (4a) 1984-89 and (4b) 1990-92, the dividing linebeing the repatriation between November 1989 and March 1990 of 8,400Morazanian refugees from a United Nations-sponsored refugee camp innearby Colomoncagua, Honduras to Meanguera, Morazan, where theyformed Segundo Montes City, named after one of the Jesuit priests assassi-nated on 16 November 1989 at the Central American University.12 Theregional field of power was reconfigured in each period on the basis of theresults of the previous period's struggles both in northern Morazan and inmore encompassing fields of power.

For instance, between 1980-82 the FAES committed numerous civilianmassacres in order to "drain the sea of civilians" and isolate the guerrillas(Binford 1996:100-5). That strategy responded, in part, to the earlier fail-ures of ORDEN, the National Guard and the Treasury Police to containpeasant political mobilization. The ERP responded to large-scale govern-ment military operations with a largely defensive battle plan ("Active Resis-tance," where the motto was "resist, develop and advance") in order toavoid annihilation (FMLN n.d.a:20). At least sixty percent of the pre-civilwar population left the zone or sought refuge in municipal centers wheresoldiers and security force personnel compelled them to form civil defensepatrols. During this period the military struggle took precedence for both theERP and the FAES, at least at the regional level.

The ERP launched a counteroffensive (phase of "Military Initiative")in June of 1982. By the end of 1983, it had eliminated all army and securityforce installations from northern Morazan, thus reconfiguring the field ofmilitary power to its advantage. From late 1983 or early 1984, the begin-ning of the period of "Heightened Guerrilla Control," a dual power or "mul-tiple sovereignty" situation existed there. Despite Timothy Wickham-Crowley's doubts (1989), I believe that had the FMLN sustained its militaryoffensive, it would have won a clear victory at that time, which quite possi-bly would have been followed by direct U.S. military intervention.13

By mid-1984, however, the window of opportunity had been slammedshut by the U.S. government. George Bush visited El Salvador in Decem-ber of 1983 to caution military and business sectors on the need for a reduc-tion in urban repression. And in June of 1984 Napoleon Duarte was electedpresident in what Edward Herman and Frank Broadhead (1984) cynicallybut accurately termed "demonstration elections." Elections (the first of which


took place in March 1982 for a Constituent Assembly which appointed aninterim president) provided the excuse that congresspeople from both Re-publican and Democratic parties were looking to open wide the aid spigot,and avoid being blamed for "losing" El Salvador to communism (as if thecountry was their's to lose). Military and economic assistance increasedfrom $25 million in 1980 to $500-600 million annually in the mid-1980s. ElSalvador, a country about the size of Massachusetts, became one of theworld's largest recipients of U.S. military aid. This money provided U.S.military advisors the leverage they needed to "convert" their Salvadoranproteges to "low intensity warfare," one of the Defense Department's moststriking oxymorons (See the articles in Manwaring and Prisk 1988).

In El Salvador, low intensity warfare combined bombing of rural areas,military civic-action programs, civil defense, long range reconnaissancepatrols into guerrilla-held territories and lightening strikes by helicopter-bornespecial forces troops against concentrations of FMLN guerrillas located bySalvadoran and U.S. intelligence sources. Briefly put, the objective was 1)to clear the guerrillas out of conflictive areas, restore government servicesand institute civil patrols as a first line of defense and 2) to break up concen-trations of guerrillas in their rearguard areas and keep them on the run.Ultimately the military hoped to reassert government control in large areasof the country and hem-up the rebels in the mountainous regions ofChalatenango, Cabanas, San Miguel and Morazan, where they would besubject to continuous harassment and gradual elimination. The strategy de-pended on a doubling of the size of the army and a massive increase in theair force and airtransport capability paid for with U.S. military aid (Schwarz1991; Byrne 1996; FMLN n.d.a).

The U.S. military banked on the fundamental social and political con-servatism of peasants, semi-proletarians and rural workers. Whatever theeffects of the war and their responses to it, rural dwellers originated in "pre-existing social groups whose mentality, ideology and aims," according toGramsci, "they conserve for a time" (paraphrased by Roseberry 1994:360).U.S. Defense Department strategists reasoned that even if many civiliansin war zones had lost confidence in the government, they might continue tointerpret their realities in the terms that it had promoted historically. For thisreason they were considered potentially recuperable by liberal projects.14

The U.S. government, working through the Salvadoran Armed Forces,rewrote the rules of social struggle in the mi\ita.ry-po\itica\ field of power innorthern Morazan and elsewhere in El Salvador. Had the ERP and otherFMLN groups not devised an effective counter-response, investing scarceresources in novel ways to counteract the government threat, they might


well have lost the war in the mid- to late 1980s. The encampments of largeunits that fought the pitched battles of 1982-83 were particularly vulnerableto aerial assaults and helicopter-assisted encirclement operations.15 How-ever, by 1986 the guerrillas had made a successful transition from a war ofposition (large units defending territory) to a war of movement (small-scaleguerrilla warfare, hit-and-run operations, sabotage) expanded to previouslyuntouched areas of the national territory (Binford 1996:144-8; MacLean1987; Harnecker 1993:252-274; Villalobos 1986; Byrne 1996). The war ofmovement reduced the effectiveness of air force bombing and eliminatedthe large encampments that were the initial targets of air mobile operations.Hit-and-run operations, the strategic placement of land mines and economicand infrastructural sabotage, combined with the occasional spectacular at-tack on an important military base, extracting high costs from the bourgeoi-sie and military alike. The civil war remained at a stalemate for the duration,despite an estimated total U.S. investment (1980-92 military and economicaid) of $6 billion (Schwarz 1991:2-3).

poder de doble caraThe FMLN promoted civilian organization in controlled and conflictive

zones as a strategic response to low intensity warfare. In "poder de doblecard''' (power with two faces or two sides) the FMLN instructed civiliansto present a pretense of political neutrality (false face) but to struggle fortheir legal rights when government troops passed through on operations andto reveal their politically-committed (true) face to FMLN forces when theyreturned after the soldiers departed. To reduce the likelihood of governmentreprisals against civilians residing in conflictive areas, the FMLN urgedcivilians to cooperate with government troops and to accept the materialand nonmaterial assistance given to them during military civic action pro-grams. Civilians were also to insist on their political neutrality, i.e., their rightto organize collectively in order to address fundamental war-related prob-lems, the right to reside in conflict zones, and to resist FAES efforts toremove them to cities and displaced-persons camps.

Che Guevara (1968 [orig. 1961]:74-102) long ago noted that a stable,sympathetic and organized civilian population presented revolutionary forceswith many advantages. This was certainly the case in northern Morazan.The advantages included 1) relief from having to protect civilians during


FAES operations, 2) protest of military human rights violations such as arbi-trary captures and tortures, which were a regular part of government mili-tary operations throughout the country, and 3) regularization of civilian as-sistance rendered openly or clandestinely by the more politically-committedsectors to the FMLN war effort. Among these we can count peasant-produced food, transport services, armaments manufacture and storage,smuggling of materiel in and out of the zone, and information about thestrength and location of government forces.

Another key feature of poder de doble cara involved the organizationand politicization of the politically "backward" sectors of the peasantry,unable to envision alternatives, had remained in northern Morazan followingthe mass exodus in the early 1980s. They continued to cultivate corn, beansand sorghum. In the mid-1980s both the FAES and the FMLN competed toexercise hegemony over these groups. The FAES used civic-action projectsand propaganda that blamed the FMLN for the war and the suffering thataccompanied it. The FMLN used activities carried out by the guerrilla'spropaganda section and the political programs generated by the implemen-tation of the doble cara strategy. Doble cara held out the potential ofpolitically incorporating and "activating" such civilians. And, in the process,it changed their consciousness and obtained (or deepened) their commit-ment to the revolution. Carmen Mercedes Letona stated as much in Elpoder popular de doble cara, the key document detailing the strategy andits rationale.

Basically we want to develop an effective model of organi-zation in order to integrate and mobilize the masses inour [war] fronts and rear guard areas to struggle for theirjust demands, to educate them and raise their levels of con-sciousness and establish the political bases for their partici-pation in the war....In essence this type of organization is a school for the massesthat will prepare them for the future and educate them innew values. They will discover through practice that the planfor the exercise of power promoted by the FMLN is superiorbecause it breaks with centuries-old domination and givesthe humble peasant the right to express himself and to choose.(FMLN 1987:26,33)

She also noted that "In this organizational process we attempt not onlyto integrate the advanced masses but to attract the backward masses and


to neutralize reactionary elements...." (31). In short, "poderde doble card"defined an applied sociology. Its object was to incorporate, ideologically andbehaviorally, resistant peasants (the atrasados) into the revolutionary pro-cess. It detailed the steps to be taken in order for the ERP to strengthen itshegemony in the interior of the revolution.

doble cara and the limits of forceThe FMLN adjusted doble cara to conform to the characteristics of

the local social field (FMLN 1987:19). In northern Morazan the ERP'spolitical organizers served as its "extension agents," charged with workingwith civilians as well as with guerrilla combatants and support personnel.These men (mostly) and women came from both urban intellectual (mainlystudent) and rural farming backgrounds. They functioned as interlocutorsbetween zonal military commanders and the civilian population. They servedas local agents of social control, maintaining social peace and policing politi-cal disobedience. Thus apart from their other duties, they investigated ac-cusations of theft, rape and collaboration with government forces. Homi-cide, rape and betrayal often resulted in execution; chronic theft, prostitu-tion and other ERP-defined violations were punished by expulsion fromnorthern Morazan. A shifting political terrain along with a lack of time,resources and experience complicated investigations, leading both civiliansand combatants to question some decisions handed down by zonal com-manders (Binford n.d.: chap. 5; Garaizabal and Vazquez 1994). However,most civilians most of the time seem to have recognized the ERP as thelegitimate authority in northern Morazan. And many people sought out po-litical activists to resolve disputes and investigate abuses.16 Most ERP"laws" were compatible with both Salvadoran legal codes and peasantmorality. Moreover, a generally shared notion of the limits of acceptablecomportment and the belief that violators of those limits might be punishedprovided a modicum of social stability that made civilian life in a war zoneslightly more predictable and thus tolerable.

On the other hand, some people resisted collaborating with the guerril-las for fear of becoming the targets of FAES reprisals when the militaryinvaded the zone.17 When the ERP sought to force compliance throughdictates that exceeded the authority that local residents were willing to grant,then civilians simply left the area. This occurred during the ERP's forced


recruitment campaign carried out from March to September of 1984. Thecampaign was aimed at replacing rebel combat forces depleted during the1982-83 offensive that cleared the zone of military and civil defense forces.According to "Nassar," all males between the ages of 12 and 30 were taken toa military school and given political, cultural, and (for those who becameconscientized) military training. Both "Nassar" and "Dina," an ERP politicalofficer from San Salvador, evaluated the campaign as positive- even thoughfew forced recruits chose to remain in the guerrilla- because it provided previ-ously unorganized rural youth with a more realistic vision of the FMLN thanthat disseminated in government propaganda.18

Notwithstanding these benefits, forced recruitment proved a political aswell as a public relations disaster. Like the Sandinistas' forced recruitment ofNicaraguan youth during the U.S.-sponsored Contra War (see Lancaster 1992),the FMLN campaign provoked massive resistance on the part of the subjectpopulation. Several thousand civilians left northern Morazan in order to avoidthe seizure of their children and in the process deprived the ERP of importantsources of material and nonmaterial assistance. Many who remained drewaway from the guerrillas and from the progressive church as well, when someguerrilla catechists were convinced to use their links to the population to sup-port the recruitment campaign (CEBES n.d.: 19,33). Moreover, the campaignbecame a political liability in another field of power relevant to the war whenU.S. newspapers published interviews with irate persons who had taken ref-uge in refugee camps in San Miguel and elsewhere. U.S. diplomats confidentlyopined that forced recruitment was a sign "that the guerrillas were losing popu-lar support" following Duarte's election, and "were having a harder time wag-ing their usual rural warfare" (McCarthy 1984; see Lemoyne 1984a), in theseways justifying higher levels of congressional funding for the Salvadoran gov-ernment and military. In early October of 1984 the FMLN terminated forcedrecruitment (Lemoyne 1984b) and embarked on a concerted program to deepencivilian participation in the war effort through less coercive, political and ideo-logical, means.19

forming revolutionary subjects:the erp and popular organizations

The ERP employed a variety of methods in order to engender a revolu-tionary consciousness among northern Morazan's youth and adults. Manychildren eight to fourteen years old, orphaned when their parents were


murdered by soldiers during Salvadoran military operations, spent severalyears in the Escuela de Menores (Youth School) located for a time inAgua Blanca, a northern Morazanian canton of the municipality ofCacaopera. There they learned reading and writing, mathematics and so-cial science from ERP educators and received a strong political indoctrina-tion. According to one informant, most joined combat forces by the age oftwelve because "there was a need for combatants." At the end of theirtraining, students swore allegiance to the FMLN in a ceremony accompa-nied by flags and posters and overseen by top ERP brass such as JoaquinVillalobos ("Atilio") and Jorge Melendez ("Jonas").20

An important medium aimed at the civilian population both inside andoutside the war zone was the clandestine Radio Venceremos. Its personnelemployed radio theater, front line reportage from correspondents, politicalmusic, interviews with combatants and even youth-designed and -directedprograms to engender and strengthen revolutionary morale (HenriquezConsalvi 1992; Lopez Vigil 1991). Film collectives such as Cero a la Izquierdaand later the Radio Venceremos Network produced films such as Carta aMorazan (Letter to Morazan) and Decision a Veneer (Decision to Win)(Mraz 1982), which aired internationally. Late in the war they were shownon portable televisions trucked around to guerrilla camps and civilian com-munities alike.21 Finally, the ERP propaganda section organized politicaltheater and dances presided over by Los Torogoces, an ERP peasant band(guitars, baso, violin) which sang about fallen comrades, military victories(the death of Domingo Monterrosa in 1984, the eradication of a company ofgovernment soldiers at Moscarron near San Fernando in 1982), combatantlove and the future society that the people, working together, would create(Gonzalez 1994).22

However, the work of the propaganda section was dictated by the dy-namic of the war and ground to a halt when the FAES invaded the zone(see Lievens 1989). Then the guerrillas melted into the bushes leaving thecivilian population vulnerable to military threats and reprisals- and some-times resenting that fact (FMLN 1987:23). Equally important, few of theabove-mentioned methods of consciousness-raising penetrated to the coreof inhabitants' daily practices, leaving the pre-existing habitus more or lessunchallenged.

As I understand it, doble cara entailed an effort to infuse politics byreconfiguring practices rather than projecting messages- in song or by meansof political chats-which individuals could take or leave as they saw fit. Wemight say that the ERP pursued a "practice theory" approach to the cre-ation of revolutionary subjectivities. This would include convincing peopleto alter their relationship to their objective situation, thus changing that situ-


ation in the process. Representations more appropriate to that situation-those promoted by the FMLN- would then stand a better change of be-coming generalized. The representations would reinforce practices and themilitary's real and symbolic power would suffer continuous erosion. AsBourdieu (1990b: 137) noted, "To change the world, one has to change theways of making the world, that is, the vision of the world and the practicaloperations by which groups are produced and reproduced."

The method involved organizing civilians to confront collectively theeconomic, health and educational crises exacerbated by the Salvadoranmilitary blockade (that had the goal of making life so miserable that theywould be compelled to leave the area). Political activists encouraged theERP's reliable base de apoyo (support base) in each populated area toform local councils in order to identify common problems and seek collec-tive solutions. For instance, parents' concerns over the absence of school-ing might be addressed by setting up primary school classes taught by someliterate member of the community; the teacher would receive food andother economic assistance through communally-generated donations. In orderto reduce food shortages the community might make a collective appeal tothe International Red Cross for a fertilizer donation with the council takingcharge of distribution. As the model evolved two concepts provided its ori-entation: participative democracy and self management. Each implied in-volvement- an acceptance of more responsibility for one's situation, and anactive effort to confront and resolve difficulties rather than lament them.

In order to take advantage of the political opening and to facilitate theparticipation of atrasados who sometimes blamed the guerrillas for theirsuffering, the ERP kept a prudent distance from the day-to-day operationsof the organizations. Rather, ERP political organizers met with small groupsof the most politically-committed civilians and urged them to volunteer forleadership positions in local citizen councils (referred to as directivascomunales). On the other hand, the progressive church remained closelyinvolved. The following statement articulates clearly the convergence be-tween the goals of CEBES and the doble car a strategy.

We not only had to announce hope but sow it. The situationwas really difficult because the population was internallydivided. This called for work of greater depth. In this con-text we began to develop a pastoral team with the goal ofevangelizing and promoting a clearer and more Christianconsciousness among the population. The goals were clear:the creation of community and the organization through col-


lective institutions that from below could encourage thepopulation in the task of renewing itself (n.d.: 19, emphasis inthe original)

In the early 1980s the ERP Command allowed former catechists whoworked in combat or support structures to return to full-time pastoral workunder Miguel Ventura and Rogelio Ponceele. The priests through their ser-mons and periodic visits to communities and the catechists through Cel-ebrations of the Word, Bible study and ministrations boosted the morale ofcivilians, encouraged them to organize, celebrated their projects and politi-cal victories over the army, and comforted them in their sufferings (CEBESn.d.; Lopez Vigil 1987).23

Democratic process (nomination of officers, voice or hand voting) wereundermined by a hierarchical structure of control centered in ERP politicalactivists and their superiors (political commissions and zone commanderswho worked out of guerrilla headquarters). For strategic military reasonsthe ERP simply could not allow truly autonomous sources of civilian power.The election of a person uncommitted to the revolutionary process, a per-son who sowed dissent among the civilian population or one lacking themental and physical fortitude to withstand pressure from the FAES couldhave had disastrous consequences for civilians and compas alike.24 Giventhe situation it was all but inevitable that independent civilian organizationwould be severely limited by the exigencies of the conflict. In 1991, sevenyears after the model was first put into practice, an internal ERP documentstated that "[i]n the controlled zone there exists but a single political ten-dency: the revolutionary party. The civilian population is the party's socialbase and the social organizations or guilds (gremios) are mediums of powerwith the functions of the state" (FMLN Pleno de Comite RegionalNorOriental 1991).

Notwithstanding the limits on democracy, doble cara was a strategicsuccess in northern Morazan and in other areas of eastern El Salvador(e.g., southern Usulutan, northern San Miguel) in which the ERP was ac-tive. From 1984 when political activists and collaborating civilians promotedthe first local councils, the number of groups and level of coordination amongthem increased steadily. In 1988, the process culminated in the creation ofthe Patronato de Desarrollo de las Comunidades de Morazan y SanMiguel (Community Development Council of Morazan and San Miguel orPADECOMSM), composed of fifty-five local councils coordinated fromoffices in Perqufn, Morazan (PADECOMSM 1988).25

The financial assistance and political backing obtained by councils from


international church groups, solidarity organizations and nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) contributed to their growth and consolidation. Hu-manitarian and development assistance paid for projects that alleviated someof the worst effects of the war-induced economic crisis and proved animportant attraction for previously unorganized zonal inhabitants, while in-ternational political and ideological support reduced the sense of isolationand boosted morale, especially when inhabitants had to confront abusivesoldiers dismissive of their claims to civilian status.

The first crack in the military blockade took place in 1985 when theCongregation de Madres Cristianas (Congregation of Christian Moth-ers), a nondenominational group connected to CEBES, picketed the FourthMilitary Detachment in San Francisco Gotera and forced Colonel Vargas toallow passage of truckloads of food donated by the Catholic Archbishop'soffice in San Salvador. The next year the International Red Cross donatedseveral hundred sacks of fertilizer to local community councils, soon fol-lowed by a donation of tin roofing material by Oxfam-UK. In the summerof 1988 the first foreign delegation braved military harassment and road-blocks to visit civilian organizations in Perquin, further reducing the region'sisolation.26 In June of 1991, when I began fieldwork in the area,PADECOMSM operated its Perquin office out of the abandoned home ofHildebrando Umana, a wealthy owner of a large coffee plantation and cof-fee processing plant who fled the zone when war broke out. Internationaldonors contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars for 1) primary schoolsand literacy circles, 2) health posts and centers, 3) credit for the productionof corn, sugar cane and other crops, 4) peasant leadership training, andmany other projects. With the 1991 formation of a regional Asamblea delPueblo de Morazan (Assembly of Morazanian People or APM) com-posed of representatives from PADECOMSM; Segundo Montes City;CEBES; and the Movimiento Comunal de las Mujeres [CommunalWomen's Movement or MCM]) and the release of a pamphlet, unsignedbut composed by ERP strategists, detailing an alternative development modelfor the region (Anonymous 1991), northern Morazan presented the imageof an embryonic state with a rudimentary state apparatus and a uniquepolitical economy.27

Throughout the period, the Salvadoran military referred to northernMorazanian popular organizations as FMLN "fachadas" (facades). It ar-gued that the food, medicines, fertilizers and other materiel supposedly des-tined for civilian use were being diverted to guerrilla camps, military hospi-tals and armaments workshops. Accordingly, the army destroyed crops andequipment, detained food and materiel at roadblocks, and captured and in-


terrogated- often torturing- area residents up until the signing of the PeaceAccords on 16 January 1992.28 U.S. and European church groups, solidar-ity organizations and NGOs with links to northern Morazan formed an inter-national network of supporters who disavowed U.S. and Salvadoran gov-ernment efforts to discredit civilians residing in conflict zones and regularlyinundated both their own local and national political representatives as wellas Salvadoran officials with letters, telegrams and faxes protesting FAEShuman rights violations. They gathered significant force from Reagan andBush administration officials' violations of national and international laws,the eyewitness testimony of thousands of Salvadoran refugees to the hu-man impact of U.S. military assistance and public and elite fears of U.S.involvement in another Vietnam-type situation. The U.S. Central AmericaPeace Movement exploited these opportunities, forcing the Reagan andBush administrations to expend large amounts of political capital in order tosustain their interventionist policy in El Salvador and elsewhere (see Smith1996:87-132).

Finally, let me note that the ERP extended the PADECOMSM modelto much of eastern El Salvador between 1990 and 1991 through the forma-tion of three additional regional groupings and the creation of an umbrellaorganization called the Patronatopara el Desarrollo de El Salvador (Com-munity Development Council of El Salvador or PADECOES), which had abudget of almost two million dollars, and (as of June 1991) a San Salvadoroffice which maintained regular contact with the national and internationalpress, NGOs and international solidarity groups.29

hegemony within the erpIn its efforts to exercise (or deepen) hegemony over the civilian popu-

lation of northern Morazan, the ERP leadership could not neglect its owncombatants and support personnel, many of whom rushed to join the guer-rillas in order to avenge army massacres or to avoid being killed them-selves. Probably no single event contributed as much to swell ERP ranks asthe massacre of over a thousand men, women and children by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion between 11-13 December 1981 (Danner 1994;Binford 1996). As the war dragged on, numerous war orphans and childrenof combatants also joined. Many early recruits into the Military Committeesdeveloped their social consciousness through participation in Christian Base


Communities, while many, perhaps most, of those who joined later had onlythe vaguest conceptions of Salvadoran history, the ERP's analysis of it andthe FMLN vision of postwar society.30 This potentially volatile mass had tolearn to accommodate itself to military discipline and the vertical chain ofcommand before, after as well as during battle. Thus the ERP High Com-mand set about training and politicizing its "force assets" in order to secureactive obedience to military orders and to ensure that the compas treatedthe civilian population with the proper respect.

Early in the civil war, rebel commanders assigned political cadres towork in the camps during the lulls between Salvadoran military invasionsand rebel offensives (Binford n.d.:Chap. 5). When the FMLN reconfiguredits military strategy in the mid-1980s- breaking down large units into smallones and expanding the war to previously-nonconflictive areas -all ERPcombatants were required to attend the ERP political school set up in theabandoned town of Jocoaitique, where each was expected to acquire therudiments of political education and the ability to organize the civilian popu-lation (Lievens 1989:139-142,151-153).

A key to internal discipline was the 15 Principios del CombatienteGuerrillero (15 Principles of the Guerrilla Combatant) which every com-batant had to memorize. These principles described alcoholism, drug useand robbery as "vices practiced and encouraged by the rich" (FMLN 1986:9),urged respect for enemy prisoners because "we are not a vengeful armybut an army that constructs the future for the poor," (FMLN 1986:15) andcultivated mutual respect between officers and troops (FMLN 1986:22).Although the Principles asserted that "our enlistment is voluntary as is ouracceptance of the disciplinary norms and the tasks that each of us mustcarry out as revolutionaries" (FMLN 1986: 22), it also sustained that "[a]llour activity is directed by a revolutionary ideology and party. We accept itsleadership and we share its thought" (FMLN 1986:25). An undated (thoughprobably from 1990 or 1991) pamphlet from the ERP's Cmdt. Lilian MercedesLetona Revolutionary School reinforced this last point. Though the pam-phlet drew distinctions between "bourgeois military discipline" and "revolu-tionary military discipline," it also stated that revolutionary discipline "is ver-tical" and that every unit is headed by a field officer who makes the deci-sions. "Military discipline begins with the principle that orders are not dis-cussed, assuring that the plans and decisions of the commander are carriedout in practice without vacillations [and] in an energetic manner which willpermit all the troops to act as a single body with a single head, which is theleader" (FMLN n.d.b).

Most important for my purposes here, however, is the eighth of the


fifteen principles, which treated the relationship of combatants to civilians."We must be the people's friends, understand their problems in depth, orientthem and recruit them to the struggle everywhere. In this way we willconvert our country into an immense sea of guerrillas and organized people."An even clearer statement of this policy appeared in a thirteen page FMLNmemo dated 1991. The document stated that members of the National Demo-cratic Army, the name borne by FMLN forces from 1990, should treat bothcivilians and one another courteously and respect one anothers' property. Itcharacterized contrary behavior as being typical of the enemy:

In general we believe that every act or attitude carried outby one of our companeros that departs from our revolution-ary principles and values damages our prestige and ourimage as revolutionaries, but more importantly the prestigeand image of our Revolutionary Army and of the FMLN aredamaged when these improper behaviors or deviant attitudesoccur in the presence of the civilian population. (FMLN1991b)

This message was hammered home on every possible occasion: duringpolitical training, in speeches by high-ranking commanders and in articlesand stories in El Combatiente, a widely-distributed FMLN news and infor-mation bulletin that presented revolutionary messages in simple languageand through cartoon-like stories drawing on rural speech and social rela-tions.

However, despite the rural roots of the vast majority of the combatants,the message did not always take. Rebel troops occasionally abused civil-ians: threatening them, swindling money, stealing property or raping women.When discovered, either by chance or following civilian complaints to FMLNpolitical organizers or commanders, the accused parties were investigatedand severely punished if judged guilty (Binford n.d.: Chap. 5). For instance,Karen Lievens, a Belgian journalist who worked with the ERP for threeyears beginning in November 1983, reported the expulsion of a politicalorganizer, "Alfredo," who drank alcohol (forbidden in FMLN zones of con-trol), demanded food from peasants without paying for it, and harassedwomen in the communities in which he worked (1989:130). Ipsofacto, theFMLN simply could not tolerate such indiscretions which, unpunished, wouldhave undermined its claims that its popular army was qualitatively differentfrom the abusive government military. In this sense, control of if not internalhegemony over combat and support forces played a crucial role in the doble

hegemony in the interior of the Salvadorean revolution

cara strategy.31 Where abuses were not discovered or not punished be-cause of a lack of oversight or because the perpetrators were high up in thechain of command, they often had disastrous consequences for FMLN-civilian relations.32

women and hegemony in northern morazdnWhereas the ERP and other FMLN groups expended considerable ef-

fort to engender the "common meaning and material framework" thatRoseberry judges to be the hallmark of hegemony, they made only limitedand feeble efforts to alter pre-war gender ideologies. Although FMLN pro-paganda emphasized the equality of life in the organization and especially inthe rebel camps (see Alegria and Flakoll 1983; Duntley Matos 1994:21,61;Reif 1986:160-161; Pearce 1986:274, but also Mraz 1982:39), a large gapseparated words and deeds.33 Social scientists have consistently observedthat as much as thirty percent of the guerrilla force (between combat andsupport personnel, which are not always clearly distinguished in guerrillawarfare) was female, quite possibly the highest percentage in Latin Ameri-can history (e.g., Vasquez 1997:2). Although women did fight in combatand some attained high rank and positions of considerable responsibility,most "gravitated" to support areas, working as radio operators, cooks andhealth brigadistas- wartime forms of pre-war caretaker occupations (sec-retary, domestic worker, nurse) (Rivera et al. 1995:119-120).34 Lievens(1989:124-125) recounts an experiment in which men and women reversedtasks for a short time- the women fighting and the men making tortillas, aswell as her participation in an Escuelapara Mujeres (Women's School)designed to provide ERP women with "cultural, political and military train-ing" following which they would choose the area in which they wanted towork. She concludes that "everyone agreed that women were equal beingswith full rights" but "the following step, that women might be able to carryout the same tasks as men, turned out to be much more difficult" (Lievens1989:125; c.f. Duntley Matos 1994:28-30,62-66). On the other hand, wherewomen proved capable of performing those tasks, they sometimes gainedrespect in men's eyes (Duntley Matos 1994:30; Rivera etal. 1995:178).

Generally the ERP leadership displayed little interest in altering genderideologies and considerable interest in using female recruits to further the


organization's revolutionary agenda. Rural Salvadoran women, schooled ina relatively rigid separation of male and female spheres, generally provedeasy prey. The mostly male commanders employed entrenched beliefs tocontrol female labor and female sexuality, linking mandates to the needs ofthe revolutionary struggle and putting off questions of gender equality to aremote socialist future following the final victory. At times the minority ofwomen were called upon to share their sexuality liberally with the muchmore numerous men, but as their numbers increased they were pressuredto pair up so as to counter the promiscuous image that some peasant fathershad developed of FMLN camps (Binford n.d.:Chap. 5; Duntley Matos1994:27-31; see also Vasquez 1997:7-8; Hipster 1997:7-8). The ERP com-manders also held women, never men, responsible for birth control and onoccasion pressured women to abort pregnancies in order to remain active inthe struggle (Duntley Matos 1994:28,31, 160; Rivera etal. 1995:231-232;Vazquez etal. 1996.191-192, 199). Female commanders, practically all ofurban origin, may have sympathized with their sisters, but many attainedtheir positions by proving themselves in male terms. They seldom inter-vened actively in party affairs on behalf of women's rights. Lacking aninstitutional form of support, female resistance to mandates that conflictedwith deeply felt religious and cultural beliefs was individualized and involveddropping out of the struggle for a time, if not permanently.35

Apart from the entrenched sexism of many male commanders (andcombatants), ERP leaders were unwilling to formulate, and particularly un-willing to enforce, policies that contradicted pre-existing beliefs about gen-der held by the vast majority of its affiliates and partisans, male and femalealike. I believe that is because they feared that public discussion of gender-and sexuality-related issues would generate internal dissension and a de-cline in male morale and possibly fighting strength as well. To these mostlymale commanders challenging machismo in its more virulent forms justseemed too conflict-provoking.36 It was much easier to utilize a pre-warmale hegemony over females, rooted in male and female habitus, to adaptexisting personnel to strategic and tactical necessities.

On the other hand, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to disentangle thestrategic military issues, those related to maneuvering within a particularsocial field, from the personal ones. Some male rebel leaders- and thecases do not appear to be isolated either- who were accused after the warof having been notorious wartime mujehegos (womanizers), hand-pickedyoung, attractive women to serve as their personal radio operators, trans-ferring their boyfriends to distant fronts and even occasionally sending themon dangerous combat missions in order to "eliminate" the competition.37


Still, women's political conscientization, their exploitation of previously un-available opportunities in the areas of health care, education and logistics,the self-confidence many gained in combat, and the undoubted egalitariancharacteristics of many areas of guerrilla life had repercussions for thedevelopment of a progressive feminist movement following the signing ofthe Peace Accords.

However complex and contradictory the situation of female membersof the ERP and other FMLN groups, they were probably better off, on thewhole, than women who remained in controlled zones like northern Morazanbut did not join the guerrilla forces. Duntley Matos (1994) provides detailedmaterial demonstrating the ERP's use of the Communal Women's Move-ment (MCM) to divert funds targeted for women's development into thewar effort. At times MCM administrators were not even notified of projects,drawn up in San Salvador by ERP-linked NGOs, for which they had osten-sibly solicited funding from international donor organizations.38

Apart from their economic function, organizations of rural women playedkey roles in protesting government human rights abuses and appealing forinternational sympathy and support on the basis of the ostensibly politically-neutral status of daughter, wife, mother or grandmother. During the secondhalf of the 1980s women were at the forefront of demonstrations againstthe military. Among other actions, organized northern Morazanian womensecured the release of food and materiel embargoed by the colonel of theFourth Military Detachment, refused efforts of the special forces ArceBattalion to expel them from Nahuaterique in 1985, achieved military rec-ognition of a chicken production project in El Zancudo following protests inthe Third Battalion headquarters in San Miguel in August of 1987, andmarched to demand freedom for PADECOMSM leaders captured in 1988(CEBES n.d.:36-43). Like the better known COMADRES based in SanSalvador, the Madres de la Plaza del Mayo in Argentina or the GAM andCONAVIGUA in Guatemala, women of the Congregation of ChristianMothers, the Communal Women's Movement and, after 1989, women ofSegundo Montes City suffered threats, intimidation, capture and torture bysoldiers and government officials who accused them of being FMLN sup-porters (e.g., Cooper 1988:98).

Finally, the overwhelmingly male leadership of PADECOMSM oftenused the presence of separate female organizations in northern Morazan asan excuse to minimize discussion of gender issues in the organization, whichhogged the lion's share of the external funding from the late 1980s into thepostwar period, and wielded considerable political clout in the zone. Soonafter the Congregation of Christian Mothers pioneered popular organization


in the zone, local citizens' councils formed in Perquin and the surroundingarea. According to one informant, in 1985 the two organizations were com-pletely segregated with the all-male local citizens' council composed in largepart of the husbands of the all-female Congregation of Christian Mothers.39

By 1991 PADECOMSM had become a region-wide organization with abudget of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and contained but a single fe-male among the thirty-one members of its Executive Board.40 OftenPADECOMSM administrators failed to even advise MCM headquarters,located a few hundred meters from the PADECOMSM office, of the immi-nent arrival of foreign delegations or representatives of European or U.S.NGOs. When women voiced complaints about male discrimination, theywere browbeaten with the ERP party line, often conveyed by female politi-cal organizers. The ERP removed recalcitrant individuals from leadershippositions and replaced them with more tractable women whose husbandsworked for PADECOMSM. While the frequently-made accusation thatthe women lacked the technical and organizational skills to manage theprojects they sometimes acquired was not incorrect, neither PADECOMSMnor the ERP did much to remedy the situation.

doble cara and guerrilla hegemonyIn northern Morazan doble cara accomplished many of its strategic

goals. From their creation in 1984 local councils grew rapidly in size, num-ber and degree of coordination. They attracted the participation of manypreviously unengaged people and deepened the commitment of existing ERPcivilian supporters. The council model encouraged people to take activemeasures to resolve their problems, it provided a framework through whichorganizations could channel humanitarian assistance with some assurancethat it would reach the target population, and it presented a politically-neu-tral public image that facilitated the incorporation of the politically "back-ward elements" that the ERP was concerned to reach. When soldiers in-vaded the zone and arrested civilian literacy teachers, health promoters andothers, burned newly planted fields, confiscated medicines, and destroyedsugar processing equipment, they also drove many civilians closer to theFMLN camp. On the other hand, had the FAES done nothing, the councilswould likely have developed at an even more rapid pace, further eroding themilitary's position in the northern Morazanian political-military^/^ of power.


The ERP also realized many tangible benefits from the process. Popu-lar organizations channeled an estimated twenty percent of each grant ordonation to the ERP-sometimes with the knowledge of the funders- as acontribution to the war effort.41 The opening of the zone to regular trafficthrough the restoration of bus service and the 1990 construction of a tempo-rary bridge spanning the Torola River made it much easier to smuggle money,materiel and people in and out of northern Morazan. When 8,400 refugeesreturned from the United Nations-sponsored camp in Colomoncagua, Hon-duras between November 1989 and March 1990 and formed SegundoMontes City in hills strategically-located above the Torola River, the guerril-las gained additional material resources, political support and sources ofintelligence information, an expanded recruitment base, and renewed con-tact with family members from whom many combatants had been estrangedduring the refugees' nine-year Honduran exile.42

This leads me to take up once again to the issue of the battle for hege-mony in the northern Morazan social field. To what degree werePADECOMSM (and other regional organizations) merely ERP facades?How and in what manner did the ERP exercise control over them? And towhat degree can we assert that control over civilian organization entailedhegemony over the base? I will deal briefly with each question in turn.

First, during the lulls between Salvadoran army invasions, the ERP op-erated as the dominant political authority in northern Morazan by virtue ofits monopoly over the use of force. Much public activity required the ex-plicit or tacit permission of rebel officials. Beyond this, we have seen thatthe ERP created a model of organization and assigned political activists towork with civilians in order to concretize it. To limited degrees, rebel lead-ers promoted participative democracy as a means of providing a space forcivilian self determination and self management in order to involve noncom-batants in collective practices that would benefit them materially and trans-form them ideologically. As events unfolded the ERP accommodated civil-ian organization to strategic requirements of the war effort. For instance,each of the five geographic sub-zones of PADECOMSM correspondedprecisely to one of the five military subzones into which the ERP dividednorthern Morazan, while the five organizations under the PADECOESumbrella were distributed among the five strategic zones composing theFrente Oriental Francisco Sdnchez.Ai The ERP controlled the electionprocess to guarantee that important posts would be held by members drawnfrom among its loyal supporters, who could be counted on to carry out thepolicy designed by rebel political strategists. Thus the guerrillas colonizedthe commanding heights of civilian organization in northern Morazan, de-


signed strategy and tactics, and advised, praised and sanctioned civilianadministrators.44

On the other hand, a substantial degree of autonomy existed at the locallevel, the locus of most activity, where women mixed powdered milk andsugar in the Pany Leche program designed to provide school children withtwice-a-week nutritional supplements, volunteers collaborated to repairbombed-out buildings for the installation of rudimentary rural health posts,and community members worked together to organize sugar cane harvestsand processing. In carrying out these and other activities Morazanian peas-ants organized locally, analyzed problems collectively, and worked out glitchesindependently. Neither the ERP nor PADECOMSM possessed either thewill or the personnel to supervise every step of the process.

The depth of ERP hegemony over the participants in the programs ofpopular organizations is another, difficult question. Many, perhaps most, peoplewere attracted to civilian groups by the prospect of alleviating pressingneeds for food, medicine and schooling. However, events showed that onceprograms demonstrated tangible benefits, participants were quick to defendthem from assaults by the state. On various occasions civilians traveled,often by foot, to the Fourth Military Detachment in San Francisco Gotera inorder to demand the freedom of captured leaders, the release of embar-goed food and materiel contributed by humanitarian and development agen-cies, and, toward the end of the war, the investigation of military massacrescommitted in the early 1980s (Binford 1996:122; CEBES n.d.:28). Thesecollective protests, whose participants placed themselves at considerablerisk, were among the most important fruits of civilian organization for theyprovided concrete evidence that poor people working together could winconcessions from the military. In the process, the ERP deepened and broad-ened its moral and intellectual leadership in northern Morazan. The enor-mous efforts that the FAES made to destroy popular organizations evi-dences the high levels of government concern over the political (and mili-tary) toll that it was suffering.

However, I also think that FMLN hegemony benefitted from situationalresponses to extreme social stress. The motives of many participants re-mained instrumental, accompanied by only minor changes in consciousness,even if for some persons these new practices contributed to the develop-ment of the "common meaningful and material framework" that is the sinequa non of hegemony (Roseberry 1994:360-361). That that emergent frame-work never consolidated into a new "structure of feeling" (Williams 1977:132)owed much to the short duration (eight years) and limited scope of thedoble cara experiment, which failed to reverse at the regional level well-

hegemony in the interior of the Salvadorean revolution 29

entrenched cultural systems based on individualism and authoritarian con-trol.

Bourdieu has noted that habitus can change, particularly in extremeconditions, where past patterns- formed in very different circumstances-prove of limited current utility. However, internalized histories "are modifiedby the new experiences within the limits defined by their power of selec-tion...." which "brings about a unique integration, dominated by the earliestexperiences, of the experiences statistically common to members of thesame class" (Bourdieu 1990a:60). Although the war demanded novel re-sponses (to novel situations) particularly in the areas of collective action,much of the FMLN's wartime success organizing civilians can be attributedto the fact that it promoted viable solutions to practical needs by drawing onmany of the "durable dispositions" formed in the context of pre-war socialinequalities.45 When the war ended and the "external" constraints that ithad imposed were lifted, many northern Morazanians again privileged house-hold over collective production and individual over communal activity.46 Hadthe conflict lasted longer or ended differently, perhaps the changes wouldhave been more enduring, particularly among the younger generation.

The verticalism and authoritarianism practiced by the ERP during thewar- a partial product of the prewar habituses of the rebel leadership-undoubtedly contributed to the process of demobilization by restricting thepolitical space within which relatively autonomous organizations might haveproliferated. But given the conditions and the stakes, it is hard to imaginehow things might have unfolded otherwise. Just as the ERP set limits tocivilian initiative so it, too, was subject to amorphous but nonetheless quitereal rules of warfare which placed limits to its strategic maneuvering in amilitary field of power over which its day-to-day control was constantlychallenged by a repressive state supported by the world's dominant, imperi-alist power.

Civil wars are, at best, about opening up political space for the develop-ment of alternatives to capitalist social relations. They do not resolve thecontradictions that gave rise to them, even though the disruption of capitalistmarkets, flight of landlords and elimination of most signs of the state appa-ratus may provide a fertile field for social experimentation, as occurred inthe Colomoncagua refugee camp (See Cagan and Cagan 1991) and to alesser degree in northern Morazan (Macdonald and Gatehouse 1995; Th-ompson 1995). No less than the "politically-backward sectors" discussedby Carmen Mercedes Letona, many revolutionaries are imbued with men-talities, ideologies and aims which they, too, conserve for a time -"durabledispositions" or habitus (in Bourdieu's terms)- engendered by the very


prewar conditions against which they struggled. Thus sexism, paternalism,and verticalism were written into the structures through which the ERPsought to incorporate civilians and develop hegemony over their actions.We should critique these shortcomings and the rebels' repression of thosewho sought alternatives to them, but it is also important that we acknowl-edge the fact that they unfolded in situations in which strategic miscalcula-tion or tactical error often had fatal consequences for combatants, civiliansupporters and possibly even the revolutionary movement itself.

This means, of course, that in the best of cases, i.e., where leftists takepower as in Nicaragua or obtain a quota of it as in El Salvador, the end offormal military conflict opens up new struggles over the organization of thepresent (and future) society. Without doubt, popular organizations formed inthe midst of war should assume an important role in that process. But inmany cases, of which El Salvador is one, they must struggle for politicalspace against their former guerrilla allies, who demand "party discipline"and attempt to extend vertical and patriarchal forms of authority to postwarsituations where they can no longer be either compelled or justified and/ordilute demands for wealth redistribution in an effort to broaden their elec-toral appeal to the middle classes and national bourgeoisie (Petras 1997).47

At the national level this is precisely what has occurred in the case ofseveral women's organizations, whose members are frustrated by theFMLN's peacetime failure to include a women's agenda in its political plat-form (Murguialday 1997; Soledad Herrera 1997; Vasquez 1997), and amongpopular organizations which find the FMLN's "capitalist strategy," pact-mak-ing, and consensual rhetoric unresponsive to their needs (Petras 1997:46, 51).

repriseDavid Stoll described Guatemalan civilians as caught up in a vicious

struggle "between two armies," innocent victims of military repressionbrought on by a largely unsolicited guerrilla presence. I have argued that,beginning in the mid-1980s in northern Morazan, FMLN guerrillas and theSalvadoran military did, indeed, struggle to obtain the collaboration of thecivilian population. But I have also emphasized that that struggle unfoldedon afield of power not of the guerrillas' choosing. Absent the denial ofdemocracy and the suppression of organized mass movements for socialchange in El Salvador- and the history of such suppression and denial is a


very long one- the armed left either would not have developed or it wouldnot have gained the mass following that it did. That was as true in Guate-mala as well. As the military field of power assumed an increasingly im-portant role in social conflict, the ERP and other groups that composed theFMLN sought, quite naturally, to harness all potential material and nonma-terial resources ("capital" in Bourdieu's terminology) in order to defeat U.S.-backed government forces, whose dominant position allowed them to dic-tate the rules that shaped struggle in the social field there. Potential ERPresources included the support of northern Morazan's civilian population,which the guerrillas sought to broaden and deepen through the doble carastrategy. Attention to the historical dimension of the conflict and theembeddedness of local social fields in more encompassing ones allow us, Ibelieve, to move beyond the moralizing tone of Stoll's critique. Historicaland ethnographic analysis of multiple and embedded social fields shouldlead us to conclude that in civil-military conflicts civilians are never com-pletely "innocent" victims nor rebel forces the totally "free" actors that Stollseems to presume.48 The practices of civilians, leftist guerrillas and govern-ment military forces are constrained, without being determined, both bytheir durable dispositions and by the specific positions they occupy in com-plex, contemporary social fields of power.49

notesacknowledgements. My thanks to John Holloway, Sergio Tischler. Julie Cottle, Stephen

Streeter and Nancy Churchill, as well as to John Hammond, Mark Edelman and Lynn Stephen,referees for JLAA. for helpful critique and suggestions for improvement. Adam Flint hosted ashort visit to El Salvador in June 1998 during which I was able to gather materials that strength-ened several sections. This paper is based out on fieldwork carried out over twenty monthsbetween June 1991 and January 1996. Financial support was provided by the University ofConnecticut Research Foundation (1992, 1994) and a Fulbright-Hays grant (1994-95); it waswritten in Puebla, Mexico at the Benemdrita Universidad Aut6noma de Puebla where I wassupported by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencias y Tecnologia (CONACYT) during 1997-98.Thanks also to Roxanna Duntley, Phyllis Robinson. Shelli McMillan. Samuel Vidal Guzman andJacinto Marquez for their work on the project.

1 The FMLN formed in October 1980 as a coalition of five political-military organiza-tions; apart from the ERP they were the Fuerzas Populares de Liberation (FPL), the ResistenciaNacional (RN), the Partido Comunista Salvadorena (PCS) and the Partido Revolucionario deTrabajadores Centroamericanos (PRTC).


: The area around Perquin, over 3,500 feet above sea level, is the singular exception. Theresmall coffee plantations, dominated by the Umafla, G6mez and Ventura families, coexist in closeproximity to pine forests.

' This rejection of the dominant party owed much to the leadership of Dore" Castro, awealthy and sophisticated populist, who was the first northern Morazanian to serve as depart-mental governor. Many inhabitants of Jocoaitique municipality developed self-images as politi-cal rebels, which proved beneficial to the ERP when it began organizing there in the mid-1970s.The Jocoaitique hamlet of Santa Anita (code-named El Centra) became an early and importantfocus of ERP recruitment, and a number of important persons in the municipal center (a nurse,schoolteacher, and telegraph operator) assisted the rebels at great risk--at cost in several cases--to their lives.

4 An excellent example of the didactic material distributed in the schools is ConozcamosNuestra Patria (Let's Get to Know Our Fatherland) edited by the Centros Rurales de la Iglesiaen El Salvador (1974). Lengthy sections of this eighty page pamphlet deal with the history andeconomic and social development of El Salvador, as well as the nation's physical and humangeography. The longest chapter (Chapter V) treats "Means of Production" with sections dedi-cated to land, capital, labor, industry and commerce. Chapter V is followed by a "reflection" inwhich the reader is asked to ponder questions such as, "Do you believe that the system of landownership is just?" "Does Minifundismo cause rural unemployment?" "What do you view as thesolution to the unjust system of land ownership?" (1974:76).

5 For instance, Samuel Vidal Guzman, Fabio Argueta and Abraham Argueta discussed ElCastano in these terms in interviews carried out in 1994-95.

6 Ventura returned clandestinely to northern Morazan in 1982 and served both civiliansand ERP combatants for the remainder of the war.

7 I have simplified a relationship that was, in reality, quite complex. One former catechistrelated that Ventura arranged the first meeting between Arce Zablah and Christians of the basecommunity movement at the request of catechists concerned about increasing surveillance andharassment by security forces and the paramilitary Organizacion Democrdtica Nacionalista(ORDEN). Like many ERP leaders, Arce had once been a member of the progressive ChristianStudent Youth (Alegria y Flakoll 1983:26). He apparently maintained links with the Catholicchurch following the formation of the ERP in 1971 because the first meeting with Morazaniancatechists was held in April 1974 in a convent at Planes de los Renderos in San Salvador (Binfordn.d.:Chapter 4).

8 The church was not the only way station to participation in the revolution. Someinformants became radicalized as they reflected on their harsh treatment as seasonal laborers inagro-export zones or as domestics working in the wealthy San Salvador neighborhoods of SanBenito and Escalon. Another related to me how his internal map of the world was redrawn by theshort-wave broadcasts of Radio Havana.

An extended debate has existed over what rural groups are most likely to become revolu-tionaries: rural proletarians, semi-proletarians or middle peasants under duress (Wolf 1969;Wickham-Crowley 1992; Paige 1975). In the only detailed ethnographic work treating the ruralpolitics of the prewar situation, Cabarriis (1983:183-186, 366), working in rural areas of Aguilaresand El Paisnal, found that semiproletarians were more likely than rural proletarians or middlepeasants both to develop political affiliations (of any sort) and to join revolutionary organiza-tions. I cannot address the northern Morazanian situation in detail but will note that since unpaidattendance at peasant training centers presumed a margin of savings generally unavailable to thelandless and land poor, most catechists came from the middle sectors of the peasantry. My mainpoint in this section is that state repression halted a Christian-based radicalization that, consid-ering its early successes, gave every evidence of continued growth.

9 Carmen Mercedes Letona is not listed as the author of the cited work, issued by the FMLNin 1987, but it was attributed to her by several, former high-ranking ERP informants. The samepoint was mentioned frequently in CEBES's Dios en Morazan. For instance, speaking of theperiod between mid-1983 and mid-1985, the author/s stated, "Although the army entered thezone, most of the activities they carried out were designed to terrorize the population. Theycontinued with their scorched earth policies, the destruction of homes and crops, and captures


and murders of the people. All this was aimed at engendering desperation so that people wouldabandon their places of origin. With its destruction, terror and death the war had two conse-quences for the consciousness of the people: on one side, a consciousness of terror and on theother, a prejudice against the revolutionary process" (n.d:18, see also pp. 20, 23, 25-26).

10 Bourdieu's theory points us methodologically to important relationships even if someconcepts, such as "symbolic capital," overly simplify their analyses (Free 1996).

11 I do not want to imply that there existed a single, uniform field of power in northernMorazan during the civil war. Rather, fields of power are multiple and cross-cutting. My focushere is on the principal forces that defined the military conflict between the FAES and FMLN(in this case the ERP faction). For instance, it would be possible, indeed desirable, to analyzewhat might be designated a gender field defined by the unequal relationships between males andfemales. I will discuss such relationships briefly in a later section but wish to note here thatthey deserve a much more detailed and finer-grained analysis. Vazquez et al. (1996) havetaken a step toward developing that analysis in their seminal Mujeres-montana: Vivencias deguerrilleras y colaboradoras del FMLN.

12 The FMLN referred to the fourth period as La Guerra Revolucionaria de todo elPueblo (Total People's War) (FMLN n.d. a:3l). In substituting "The Period of HeightenedERP Control" I employ a label with regional-historical rather than national-strategic refer-ents.

11 Wickham-Crowley argues that "collective military regimes" of the Salvadoran type"are particularly strong in the face of insurgencies" compared to "personalistic militaryregimes" like those of Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in Cuba, which frequently succumb toguerrilla forces that establish cross-class alliances to depose the dictator (1989:514, 519-20).Wickham-Crowley also agrees with Che Guevara that "one should never try to start arevolution against an elected government" by noting that as a result of the March 1982legislative assembly elections, "the military strength of the insurgency ... weakened duringthe decade, and Salvadorans consistently indicate in interviews that they want their electedofficials to fix the economy and to secure a peace" (1989:514). Wickham-Crowley downplaysthe enormous investment made by the Reagan and Bush administrations in order to maintainEl Salvador as an imperialist redoubt. Interestingly, in his Guerrillas & Revolution in LatinAmerica (1992:68-85) he limits consideration of the role o f - direct and indirect U.S.assistance to Latin American militaries to the "first wave" of guerrillas (1956-1970), failingto reassume the theme when discussion turns to the "second wave" (1970-), relevant to theSalvadoran case (especially pp. 287-292), thus ignoring the fact that both Salvadoran govern-ment military strategy and political strategy (e.g., elections) were designed in Washingtonand foisted on its "Third World" counterparts as conditions for continued U.S. military andeconomic assistance. And nowhere- neither with respect to the first or the second wave doesWickham-Crowley treat the aid rendered right-wing Central American governments by SouthKorea, Taiwan, Argentina and Israel.

14 Elsewhere (Binford 1996:145-6) 1 compare Salvadoran military strategy to B.F.Skinner's model of operant conditioning and note how the military discounted the role ofhistorical memory.

15 According to Mauricio Chavez ("Joaquin"), a former FPL commander, the FMLNreached a low point in 1985 when air force bombings and air mobile operations took serioustolls in the guerrilla ranks. Interview with Chavez, 20 June 1998, San Salvador.

16 Toward the end of the war the ERP ceded many social control matters to grassrootsorganizations such as the Patronato para el Desarrollo de las Comunidades de Morazdn ySan Miguel (PADECOMSM) and the Asamblea del Pueblo de Morazdn (APM). In April of1991, the latter disseminated a memorandum which contained its position on the felling oftrees, alcoholism, irresponsible fathers, family planning and road repair, among other issues.In mid-1992, following the Peace Accords but prior to the return of mayors to northernMorazan, 1 attended several meetings in San Fernando in which the local PADECOMSMpresident sought to litigate land inheritance disputes among feuding family members.

17 This was noted by, among others, "Ulises." a 26 year-old commander, interviewed 19November 1992 in Campamento Quincho while awaiting demobilization, and by Pedro


Rodriguez, a former catechist and ERP political organizer interviewed 21 December 1992 inPcrquin.

11 Interviews in Perqufn with "Nassar," a 28-year-old FMLN political activist, on 5November 1992 and with "Dina" on 8 November 1992. None of the political activists whom1 interviewed interpreted forced recruitment as a response to FAES forced recruitment ofcivilians in northern Morazan and other areas controlled by the FMLN, which was theexplanation that FMLN spokespersons disseminated to the international press (Lemoyne1984a).

19 U.S. journalists discussed forced recruitment only in northern Morazan, lending theappearance that it was exclusively an ERP initiative. In fact, forced recruitment was ageneralized FMLN policy which failed as badly in Chalatenango and elsewhere as in Morazan(Harnecker 1993:245-246).

10 Interview with Jacinto Marquez in Ciudad Segundo Montes, 15 July 1993.21 In the course of developing a project of El Museo de la Palabray la Imogen, Carlos

Henriquez Consalvi has collected an estimated four thousand hours of video tape and athousand hours of film produced by FMLN videographers and camerapersons. Interview, 19June 1998, San Salvador.

22 By the end of the war the Torogoces were well-known even in San Salvador due totheir many musical broadcasts on the clandestine Radio Venceremos. For a time they were ingreat demand and even recorded several cassettes of songs. Two of the band's members wereformer catechists. The ERP also organized Cutumay Camones, a slick, professional-sound-ing group, which toured Europe and the United States and recorded two records. Threemembers of Los Torogoces and two members of Cutumay Comones died in combat during thewar (Gonzalez 1994:74-84).

23 The relationship between the church and civilian population was not without contra-dictions. The church was close to the ERP Command. Though released from combat, themostly male catechists continued to carry weapons for their protection and this alienatedsome congregants. Finally, lower level commanders sometimes convinced catechists to usetheir influence with civilians to recruit them to military-related tasks. This sowed consider-able confusion among many people and played into the hands of government propagandistswho railed against the "guerrilla priests" and threatened to punish those who attended ser-vices or activities which the priests or their catechists organized or in which they partici-pated. (Interview with Miguel Ventura, 2 July 1993, San Salvador; CEBES n.d.).

24 Compa is short for companero, a term with numerous glosses (partner,mate,companion) but which here might best be understood as "comrade-in-struggle." Theterm was a standard sign of mutual recognition among Central American revolutionaries andtheir supporters.

25 In 1984 councils often formed clandestinely. A year later five councils in the vicinityof Perquin joined forces to form the Patronato de Desarrollo de las Comunidades dePerquin. These were a few of the steps on the road to the establishment of PADECOMSM in1988. Besides forty-eight local councils in Morazan, PADECOMSM represented seven coun-cils in adjacent northern San Miguel, another ERP zone of control.

26 An excellent chronology of these events, couched in the language of LiberationTheology, can be found in Dios en Morazan (CEBES n.d.).

27 ERP-linked groups in Morazan never received the levels of assistance available tocivilians linked to the FPL in eastern Chalatenango and northwestern Cabaflas. Early in thewar the FPL sponsored the formation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of ElSalvador (CISPES) in the United States and through that organization and Medical Aid to ElSalvador obtained a practical monopoly over U.S. solidarity-based assistance. ERP officialsfailed to appreciate the value of international solidarity early in the war. When they did beginto operate, later, the U.S. field of solidarity was already dominated by the FPL, albeit neitherCISPES nor Medical Aid to El Salvador officials every publicly acknowledged the limiteddestinations of the funds and materiels they collected. Much assistance channeled to ERPareas came from groups based in Europe.

In essence, then, conflicts between FMLN organizations were transmitted to solidarity


supporters, at times generating more rancor, perhaps, than they did even in El Salvador andundoubtedly weakening the solidarity lobby in the process. The situation provides an interest-ing example of the interconnectedness of distant social fields and the mutual impacts of thestruggles therein.

28 Within a short period following public announcement of its formation in April of1988, every one of the thirty-three members of PADECOMSM's Executive Board wascaptured by Salvadoran army troops and taken to the Fourth Military Detachment in SanFrancisco Gotera where they were interrogated and usually tortured.

29 Apart from PADECOMSM the groups under the PADECOES umbrella included:CODELUM, founded in 1990, which organized northern La Unidn and southern Morazan,COMUS, founded 2 June 1990, which worked in northern Usulutan, COSDECSAN, founded29 June 1991, focusing on northern San Miguel, and CODEMl which organized the residentsof Cacahuatique and was still in the process of formation when the war terminated. Nonethe-less, PADECOMSM accounted for the largest share of the PADECOES budget and providedPADECOES with many of its most experienced administrative personnel.

10 Interview with Samuel Vidal Guzman, 2 October 1995 and passing discussions withother ex-combatants. Another FMLN internal document, titled Sobre el trabajo urbano,mentioned the difficulties that urban youth had incorporating into the rural guerrilla: "[T]heyhave a romantic vision of the process [which] leads them to develop moral and paternalisticrelations toward rural militants..." (FMLN 1991a).

31 Without doubt, the most serious offense, generally punished by execution if theindividual was apprehended, was betrayal. Even if low in rank, traitors were repositories ofinvaluable knowledge of the social and geographical terrain of struggle which, shared with theFAES, could have disastrous consequences for rebel forces and their civilian supporters alike.A member of the Torogoces musical group who collaborated with the Salvadoran militaryfollowing his capture (and likely torture) was seized, tried and executed by the ERP when hemade the mistake of making an unaccompanied visit to Ciudad Segundo Monies late in thewar (Gonzalez 1994:80-82). In northern Morazan the two sides carried on a constant propa-ganda war through radio broadcasts and wall graffiti. The FAES offered money and promisedimmunity to combatants who surrendered and turned in their weapons. Their propaganda alsoemphasized the difficult living conditions of combatants and claimed that the FMLN leader-ship was getting rich off the suffering of its supporters. On its side, FMLN wall writingsfocused on the shared class identity of their "brother soldiers," emphasized that the guerrillaswere fighting for a cause rather than a "miserable salary," and urged FAES soldiers to desertand return to their homes so as not to die in a war that benefitted the rich. The propagandawar was another feature of the wartime contest for hegemony.

'2 For instance, an ERP political organizer working in Joateca in the late 1970s partici-pated in the assault, robbery and even murder of local peasants. Later, in the early 1980s, thereticence of the remaining civilians there to cooperate with ERP requests led another hard-line activist of urban Mexican origin and relatively insensitive to rural Salvadoran culture toexpel various families from northern Morazan after accusing them of pro-government sym-pathies. Also exacerbating tensions was a 1982 confrontation between Joateca civil defenseforces, organized by local National Guard personnel to protect the community from "Com-munist guerrillas," and an invading ERP unit which eradicated the civil defense to the lastman, refusing to take prisoners. According to informants (supported in their claims bytestimony collected by the Segundo Montes Human Rights Commission), the Joateca civildefense had assassinated scores of innocent men, women and children in the preceding years,some of whom were friends and relatives of the invading ERP force (Binford n.d.:Chap. 6 plusinterviews). Nonetheless, the vengeance taken by combatants violated the sixth principle ofthe combat code (FMLN 1986:15-16) not to speak of international human rights conven-tions. As a consequence of these and other errors, the FMLN never really gained a footholdin Joateca. During the March 1994 municipal and legislative elections, the FMLN polled adistant fourth in Joateca, its worst showing among northern Morazan's eight municipalities.In 1997 neither the FMLN nor the Democratic Party, formed in 1995 by former ERP and RNleaders, even ran a candidate there.


However, nothing that occurred in northern Morazan matched the massacre of thirty toforty young FMLN recruits ordered by an FPL commander working on the San Vicentevolcano, who accused them of being FAES plants. The youth had been sent to San Vicentefrom a refugee camp in San Antonio, Honduras. Following this debacle, the San Antoniorefugees passed from the FPL to the PRTC, with which they continued to identify when theyrepatriated from Honduras to Nuevo Gualcho, Usulutan, in the early 1990s. Following the endof the war, the FPL leadership, fearing the political fallout of negative publicity, continued tocover-up the event and even refused to assist surviving family members to locate and recoverthe remains. (I visited Nuevo Gualcho in October of 1994 and also discussed the case withjournalist Tom Gibb, who had gathered a substantial amount of information on the FPLcomandante who ordered the mass execution in preparation for a book about the civil war andcontrol of information.)

As these few examples indicate, guerrilla abuses did occur and historical memory de-mands that, no less than FAES violations of human rights, they be discussed openly. As formerFPL commandante Mauricio Chavez noted in an interview, "all of us who have participatedin the war know too well that we cannot assume positions of moral superiority over anyone,because war is a bloody experience from which only those who did nothing escape with cleanhands" (Binford 1998). Despite Wickham-Crowley's (1991:50) assertion that the FMLNcommitted "many thousands of admitted 'executions'" against the citizenry, I found that onthe whole FMLN policy and actions tended to be extremely supportive of civilians andrespectful of local customs and beliefs. And there is simply no comparison between cases ofabuse such as those mentioned above and the repeated maltreatment of noncombatants by theFAES. After the war the United Nations-sponsored Truth Commission assigned 95 percent ofthe more than 6,000 cases of human rights violations investigated to the Salvadoran army(85 percent) or paramilitary groups connected to it (10 percent) and only 5 percent to theFMLN (Naciones Unidas 1993).

33 Indeed, one interviewee with considerable experience of camp life stated repeatedlythat in the guerrilla forces, women were equal only insofar as they died the same way as men!

34 In the mid-1980s when the FMLN changed its strategy, every structure (health,propaganda, etc.) had to be light and mobile and provide for its own security, with theconsequence that "every compa would have to be able to defend herself militarily" (Lievens1989:140-141). Nonetheless, the disproportionately high percentage of women in the lower-ranking support sector had ramifications after the war when higher-ranking guerrillas enjoyedbetter reinsertion terms (Vazquez 1997:9; Vazquez et al. 1996:220). It is important to notethat the authors of the most comprehensive study of women in war zones provide evidenceto the effect that guerrilla camps became more egalitarian when they were reduced in size inresponse to the conversion to guerrilla war in the mid-1980s (Vazquez et al. 1996:111).

35 Many ERP women who became pregnant during the war gave birth in theColomoncagua refugee camp and soon thereafter returned to the front, leaving the infants inthe care of relatives. Others remained in Colomoncagua until the 1989 repatriation. Resis-tance did take forms other than flight to a safer social arena. One female francotirador(sharpshooter), whose nickname of "Matacuilios" (loosely translated as "Enemykiller") wasbased on her supposedly having killed seven enemy soldiers in a single day, refused to pair upwith any male guerrilla in order to show that she did not need a man.

36 My use of "machismo" is not intended to reference a single, widely shared LatinAmerican or Salvadoran ideology, but is a loose gloss for a variety of ideas and behaviors thatsustain male dominance. For an excellent discussion of the problems involved in the unquali-fied use of the term see Guttman (1996).

37 More generally, one female informant stated that male combatants referred to newfemale arrivals in camp as culos (asses). When male competition for female attentionappeared to get out of hand, commanders generally took the path of least resistance andremoved the woman by reassigning her to another war front. L6pez Vigil (1991) discusses thejealousies and bad feelings that developed among male members of the Radio Venceremoscollective who vied for the affections of "Mariposa" whom the commanders eventuallyremoved from the scene.


38 In one case cited by Duntley Matos and discussed extensively in the area aroundPerqufn, the MCM learned that it had submitted a project only when the funders requested afinal report regarding the use of the funds.

39 Interview with Lola Carrillo, 11 December 1992, Perquin.40 Interview with Kathleen Lynch, 16 July 1991, Perquin. More generally, Reif

(1986:161) noted a similar division of labor in the FMLN/FDR: "While the FMLN/FDRtacitly support women's issues and encourage women to share tasks and leadership with men,they do not seem to have a formal feminist agenda, leaving such concerns to their affiliatedwomen's groups."

41 The figure is a general one based on discussions with several civilian leaders; it mayhave been higher or lower depending on FMLN financial needs and civilian negotiatingabilities. ERP attempts to continue to extract its quota following the signing of the PeaceAccords led to problems both with funders, who demanded higher standards of accountabilityfrom civilian organizations, and with many recipients, who felt that the rules of the game hadchanged and that the ERP should look to its international supporters for postwar financialbacking.

42 During the war the Colomoncagua refugee camp carried out many functions of aclandestine satellite guerrilla community, an extension into Honduras of the northern Morazansocial field. Several former ERP guerrillas maintained that without the human and materialresources contributed by the Colomoncagua refugees the ERP would have had great difficultysustaining a consistently high level of military activity. Despite its obvious importance, thestrategic role of Colomoncagua falls outside the main focus of this paper.

41 Interview with "Dina," 5 December 1992, Perqufn. Interview with "Carlos," July1992, San Salvador. It seems clear that the success of the council model in the northernMorazan rearguard encouraged the ERP to expand it to other areas where day-to-day rebelcontrol was less secure.

44 I do not want to suggest that civilian members of PADECOMSM and other civilianorganizations were mere puppets lacking individual initiative or the power of decision. Day-to-day administrators, many with only a few years of formal schooling, developed impressiveplanning, logistical, problem-solving and public relations skills which they have employed togood benefit in the postwar period in individual enterprises, municipal administrations andnongovernmental organizations, apart from the popular organizations in which some con-tinue to work. Thus another product of wartime popular organization was the developmentof a homegrown cadre of generally progressive managers, technicians and bureaucrats withroots among peasants and rural workers.

45 Wickham-Crowley (1991:33) contrasts "predatory authority," based largely onviolence, with "rational authority," based on exchange. The exercise of rational authority,the basis for legitimacy, requires governments to defend the civilian population, maintaininternal peace and order and contribute to material security- all features of a panhistorical,pancultural social contract. Wickham-Crowley simply takes for granted that exchange rela-tions are asymmetrical and materially favor the dominant classes. His examination of legiti-mate and illegitimate authority presumes rational actors who know their interests and areunencumbered with ideological baggage; he never asks just why workers and peasants would bewilling to give so much more than they receive.

Wickham-Crowley (1991:38-44) goes on to note that where states become predatoryor otherwise violate the terms of the "implicit social contract," citizens may shift theirallegiances to revolutionaries, especially if the rebels are able to provide for defense, internalsecurity and contributions to material security. Undoubtedly, rational calculation was at workin northern Morazan, but the terms that actors wielded in those calculations were historicalproducts of, among other things, political struggle, a point that both Bourdieu and Roseberrymake clear. Centering the analysis of civilian-guerrilla relations on a hypothetical "socialcontract" does not eliminate the need to subject the terms of that contract to criticalhistorical and cultural examination, for which the concept of hegemony is quite useful.Finally, positing a uniform social contract oversimplifies a complex social situation in whichcivilians collaborated with guerrilla forces for many different reasons.


46 The slow pace of the land program and the paucity of funds available for the reinser-tion of combatants into civilian society, not to speak of the minuscule assistance provided tocivilians, also affected the ERP's hold on its wartime supporters. To this must be added theERP's abandonment of the FMLN, its incorporation into the Democratic Party and thatparty's steady march to the right. Nonetheless, the FMLN, of which the ERP remained a partat the time, won five of eight mayorships in the March 1994 elections held more than twoyears after the end of the conflict. In March 1995 the ERP (and the RN) left the FMLN toform the Democratic Party and in June betrayed the interests of northern Morazan's poor byvoting with ARENA to raise the regressive value added tax (IVA) from ten to thirteen percent.The split from the FMLN and this conservative turn exacerbated political divisions on the leftin northern Morazan. In 1997 municipal elections the FMLN retained but two of thesemayorships (Meanguera and Jocoaitique), while the Democratic Party won only in Villa ElRosario. Nationwide the Democratic Party obtained only 13,533 votes, a mere 1.2 percent ofthe 1,119,603 votes cast. It would have lost its legal registration for having less than 3 percentof the vote but for the 39,838 votes (3.55 percent of the total) acquired by PD-PDC coalitioncandidates. It is likely that the Democratic Party experienced a backlash against its detailed,public airing of supposed FPL, PC and PRTC wartime and postwar human rights violations,made on the eve of the 1997 elections (Partido Dem6crata 1997). By June of 1998 manyformer supporters had abandoned the party, the future survival of which is questionable.

Finally, it is important to note that many young people passed their formative years inthe Colomoncagua, Honduras refugee camp where all work was collective and the moneyeconomy nonexistent (This camp was supported by donations from the United Nations and anumber of international NGOs). Since the refugees returned in November 1989 to March 1990to form Ciudad Segundo Montes, these youth have struggled unsuccessfully to preserve thecollective features of the social fabric in which they were raised. The intensity and density ofsocial relations in Colomoncagua made of it a much more likely setting for the inculcation ofa different set of "durable dispositions" than the rebel controlled area of northern Morazan.

47 According to Petras, the FMLN "is largely a party of the upwardly mobile, lowermiddle class, ex-combatants set on the new course of finding a niche in the society and in theinterstices of the 'neoliberal' economy. In large part, the FMLN looks to the Center politi-cally and upward to the national bourgeois for political and social alliances.... The FMLN hasincreased its electoral position and influence in local and national government. However, theadvance of its 'capitalist strategy' increasingly dilutes its welfare program: the party of socialdemocracy increasingly resembles a social-liberal party" (1997:43, 46).

Petras's assessment, while not without merit, overly simplifies the situation. For sometime the FMLN has been internally divided between what some refer to as the "progressives"or "renovators," led by the recently-elected party chair Facundo Guardado, and "the orthodoxwing," presided over by former chair Salvador Sanchez Ceren (Lindo 1998, CIDAI 1998). Thescission recently became public when members of the "orthodox line" argued in an anonymousdocument ofthe need to return to the socialist values that provided the organization'shistorical orientation (Anonymous 1998).

The Centro de Information, Documentation y Apoyo a la Investigation (CIDAI) of theUCA maintains that the ideological problems ofthe left are compounded by its failure torenew the leadership, i.e., to "retire" some of the wartime comandantes who currentlydominate the party heights and replace them with younger people: "At bottom, the FMLNhas the problem of coming to terms with the values and commitments that it championed inthe past. Up to now the Frente has not made a responsible effort to begin a self-evaluationwhich surely would aid it not only in reaffirming its most cherished values, but in weighing thereal capacity of its current leaders in order to carry forward the necessary institutionalrenewal... There is no doubt that it is urgent that the party ofthe left begin to renew itsexecutive leadership, which supposes, in many cases, their replacement by younger leaders lessbound to ideological and political principles resistant to change" (1998:3).

48 Innocence has a plurality of connotations which are frequently confused or juxtaposedwhen discussion turns to the role of civilians in civil-military conflicts. In the North reference


to "innocent" victims of human rights violations generally suggests not only innocence in thepolitico-legal sense of people who had done nothing to merit their repression, but also inno-cence in the sense of ingenousness, possessed of a guileless childlike quality. Such characteriza-tions are little more than exercises in colonial discourse that for centries have been used bywealthy groups to justify their right to intervene and decide for those supposedly lackingrational decision-making power of their own.

49 Though Stoll castigates EGP guerrillas for provoking military reprisals among otherwiseuncommitted rural dwellers, he never explains why the military's response was so indiscriminateand so vicious. He analyzes revolutionary attacks on the army near civilian settlements as atactical move to force people to choose sides. The military's violent responses hover in thebackground as an obvious response that requires no sustained discussion. In my examination ofthe El Mozote massacre (Binford 1996:37-47), I made an attempt, albeit partial and inadequate,to address the issue of repressive military forces, incorporating both national and internationaldimensions.

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