How to Read Equipo Maíz

Abstract

This article examines the work of the popular education collective Equipo Maíz headquartered in El Salvador. Equipo Maíz is noteworthy for its contributions to the analysis of Salvadoran and Central American politics, economics, and society since its formation in the early 1980s. This article situates the Equipo Maíz project, which uses plainspoken text paired with political cartooning, within a deep historical memory of opposition geared at demystifying the fictions that sustain capitalist sociality and its class antagonisms. Drawing on examples from Equipo Maíz’s weekly newsletter La página de Maíz and other select publications, the article demonstrates how the collective addresses a variably literate Salvadoran readership with the goal of imparting radical interpretative strategies geared toward the creation of an engaged political culture, despite the challenges of a closed media system.