This article analyzes the political emergence of El Salvador's “post‐postwar generation” through a consideration of activists’ relationships to a political and revolutionary “party line,” la línea. This generation comprises people born at the end of, or after, the 1980–92 civil war. They have little or no memory of the war but have grown up in intense violence. The authors worked with members of this generation in distinct sites: in Segundo Montes Community, in a corner of the country once guerrilla territory, and in San Salvador, among middle‐class activists. Their self‐recognition as politically consequential, echoing youth around the globe, first developed through moments of hope—in memory of struggle and in the electoral victory of the party of former revolutionaries—and then through frustration, as those in power, including ex‐guerrilla leaders, resisted opening to new generations and proved themselves as corrupt as their predecessors.
In this article I consider the desires of participants in a particular sister-community relationship. I suggest that experiences of Illinois parishioners who have been visiting, and assisting, rural Salvadorans over the past 20 years may help us to understand both the possibilities and the limits of such encounters. I probe the limits by examining an incident that took place in July 2010. In thinking through my discomfort with a request for money, in the context of a larger history of global relationships and the ethics of such missions, I have come to believe that the disparities between the visitors and visited-economic, geographic, cultural, political-is not something to overcome. Rather, these differences are necessary for sister-community relationships.
This article reviews the recent and emerging post-Cold War sociocultural anthropology research on Central America, defined as the five countries that share a common colonial and postcolonial history: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Following a consideration of the foundational literature widely engaged by scholars to theorize regional processes, three sections reflect major themes of investigation in the area: political economy, including environmental concerns and migration; political, ethnic, and religious subjectivities; and violence, democracy, and in/security, including gangs. We conclude that the well-developed anthropology of Central America has made key contributions to disciplinary analyses and debates, especially in the fields of political and economic anthropology and in terms of furthering studies of violence, migration, neoliberalism, and postconflict democracy. Anthropologists working in the region have been at the forefront of public and "engaged" anthropology, recognizing the political contexts and power relations in which knowledge is produced.
HomelandSecurity lawyers routinely ask experts in immigration court cases about compensation for their labor. The suggestion is that if money has been exchanged, perhaps their opinions have been bought. Meanwhile, pro bono offerings can be seen as "activism"-motivated beyond the court-framed "truth." Even as I offer many declarations pro bono, I have come to recognize, uneasily, my role in an extended network of coyote types who convey people to safety. In this contribution, I delve into personal discomfort as I consider the expert's position in the political economy of migrant movement today. [asylum, economy, money, testimony, El Salvador] D ecember 2018. An urgent e-mail from the lawyer intruded on finals week: Was I available-next week? As it happened, I would be visiting my sister in Bethesda, Maryland, for the holidays, and this hearing would take place in nearby Arlington, Virginia.The case was unremarkable in El Salvador's economy of risk. The client had fled a rural village in the center of the country several years earlier. Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members had demanded renta (extortion) from the client's mother who ran a tiny tienda (shop) in her home. If she did not pay, they would kill him. In his mid-twenties, he was her youngest. 1 They had killed others in that village, on her street. She could not pay. He fled.His chances for asylum were low, not because he had not been persecuted, not because he would not face danger if deported back home, but because young Central American men are not favored in U.S. immigration court. Extortion cases are not either. The judicial logic is that if your business is being extorted, just get out of that business.That is not gang logic.
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