Yvon Grenier (Auth.) - The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador - Ideology and Political Will
Yvon Grenier (Auth.) - The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador - Ideology and Political Will
Yvon Grenier (Auth.) - The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador - Ideology and Political Will
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The Emergence
of Insurgency in
EI Salvador
Ideology and Political Will
Yvon Grenier
Associate Professor of Political Science
St Francis Xavier University
Antigonish
Nova Scotia
10987654321
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
For Norine and Francis Michel
'Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling
their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
back . .. soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are
dangerous for good or bad.'
Introduction 1
VIi
viii Content
Conclusion 157
Figure
ix
Foreword
Many scholars are growing increasingly frustrated by studies
of revolution that rely upon structural conditions such as land
tenure, poverty and inequality. Despite decades of effort,
social scientists seem no closer to predicting or explaining
revolution. What we need to do is to go back to the drawing
board and find additional variables that may yield more
satisfying results. Social injustice is nothing new in Latin
America. Conversely revolts, and especially full-fledged revo-
lutions, are few and far between. This suggests that political
variables must be analysed more seriously, something that
students of the 'Great Revolutions' (France, Russia and
China) have understood sooner than Latin Americanists.
Furthermore it should not mean focusing only on the state,
as in the old dichotomy 'civil society' versus 'the state'. It also
means studying the agents of social and political change, their
beliefs and ideologies, the particular structure of incentives in
their environment, and so on.
In this path-breaking work, Yvon Grenier, one of the lead-
ing younger-generation Canadian political scientists, offers a
new interpretation of the civil war in EI Salvador, one that
also appears promising for the understanding of other coun-
tries in the region and beyond. He focuses on the role of
ideology, especially as it relates to activists within revolution-
ary parties, universities and the church. He demonstrates
convincingly that, in the case of EI Salvador at least, ideas
matter and actors matter. As Grenier asserts in his conclu-
sion: 'Central American political actors are power seekers,
not solely social class spokespersons. Their political agenda is
shaped by a variety of conditioning factors; not just those
derived from some compelling socioeconomic "reality".' In
short, the point is to 'bring the actor back in'.
This is undoubtedly a controversial book, one that ques-
tions the dominant paradigm in the area. I have no doubt
that many scholars will take issue with some of the ideas
Xl
xii Foreword
MITCHELL A. SELIGSON
Daniel H. Wallace Professor of Political Science, and
Research Professor at the University Center for International
Studies, University of Pittsburgh
List of Abbreviations
ADUES Asociacion de Docentes de la Universidad de El
Salvador (Association of Professors of the Uni-
versity of El Salvador)
AGEUS Asociacion General de Estudiantes Universitar-
ios Salvadorefios (General Association of Salva-
doran University Students)
ANDES Asociacion N acional de Educadores Salvadore-
fios (National Association of Salvadoran Educa-
tors)
ANEP Asociacion Nacional de la Empresa Privada
(National Association for Private Enterprise)
ARENA Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (National
Republican Alliance)
ASTUES Asociacion de Trabajadores de la Universidad de
El Salvador (Association of Workers of the Uni-
versity of El Salvador)
BPR Bloque Popular Revolucionario (People's Revo-
lutionary Bloc)
CAPUES Consejo Administrative Provisional de La Uni-
versidad de El Salvador (Provisional Administra-
tion Council of the University of El Salvador)
CEB Christian Base Communities
CELAM Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana (Latin
American Conference of Bishops)
CONIP Conferencia N acional de la Iglesia Popular
(National Conference of the Popular Church)
CPD Comision Politico-Diplomatica (Politico-Diplo-
matic Commission)
CRM Coordinacion Revolucionaria de las Masas
(Revolutionary Coordination of the Masses)
DRU Directorio Revolucconario Unificado (Unified
Revolutionary Directorate)
EPL Ejercito Popular de Liberacion (Popular Army of
Liberation)
XlII
xiv List of Abbreviations
xv
xvi List of Abbreviations
1
2 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
peace. The FMLN is not only a strong political party but also
an essential actor in the democratic reconstruction of the
country. It is an invaluable counterweight to the ultraconser-
vative ARENA government, whose antidemocratic bent must
be permanently kept in check. Few observers of Salvadoran
politics need to be reminded that the overwhelming respons-
ibility for the widespread violation of human rights in the
country falls plainly on the lap of the extreme right. Finally,
it is easy but not advisable to seize the moral high ground
against people who have had the courage to put their lives on
the line in the name of values that are mostly admirable.
My point is rather to satisfy a limited academic ambition: to
show that some of the basic premises embraced by most of my
colleagues are mistaken. And though the demonstration is
limited to the Salvadoran case, my kicking the tyres will
hopefully prove useful for a clearer understanding of other
insurgencies in particular and radical political mobilisation
(left or right) in general.
Finally, it must be pointed out that this book is conceived
as an essay, in the sense suggested by the first practitioner of
the genre, Montaigne: an initial or tentative attempt to scru-
tinise an overlooked or contentious dimension of a problem.
A much more ambitious work would be needed to challenge
systematically what we like to call the 'dominant paradigm' in
the discipline. Nevertheless I think that this essay presents
sufficient ideas and empirical material to question the validity
of some assumptions about the root causes of revolt in EI
Salvador.
* * *
The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador draws on more
than ten years of research on politics in EI Salvador.6 Many
people enriched this book by contributing their time and
insights. Jean Daudelin, Steve Holloway, Jacques Zylberberg
Mitch Seligson and Alberto Cuzan were especially helpful
with encouragement and judicious comments. Lisa
Kowalchuk helped me, through a vigorous electronic
Introduction 7
9
10 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
* * *
In sum, revolt or insurgency is a complex and always unique
phenomenon - there is no historical law of revolt. Insurgency
is made by insurgents, whose political motivations are shaped
by such a wide array of factors that it is pointless to reduce
insurgency only, or even primarily, to redundant conditions of
injustice. Injustice enters into the equation, but so does ideo-
logy, and of course the proper conditions favourable to ideo-
logy's mobilisational capacity. From the domestic structural
conditions of revolt, the case is made here that our attention
30 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
The internal war covers the first period, the second period
and part of the third period (until the new government rein-
stalls what Tilly (1978) called the 'unique sovereignty' over
the national territory).
Ideology arguably plays an important role in all stages of the
process, but the proposition that the key impact of ideologies is
during the last stage is the least contentious. 63 Even structur-
alists such as Theda Skocpol, who provocatively asserted in her
famous State and Social Revolutions that 'revolutions are not
made; they come',64 subsequently admitted that ideologies 'do
independently affect the scope of transformations that revolu-
tionary politicians attempt to institute when they rise to state
power amidst ongoing social revolutions' .65 Some authors con-
template the possibility that ideology does affect the chances of
building a strong opposition coalition, as well as the capacity of
the regime to maintain itself in power.66
Challenging the Dominant Paradigm 31
35
36 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
mE INSURGENTS
1960s and 1970s, along with the emergence of the 'new left' in
Western countries, were largely revolts in the family; that is,
revolts against the PC's (Communist Party's) moderate poli-
ticS.24 It was also a serious matter of concern in both the
universities and the Catholic Church for decades. In that
sense the seeds of the 1970s insurgency in Central America
had been germinating for a very long time.
The 1960s and 1970s brought new generations of leaders
who were ideologically stimulated by events unfolding within
and beyond the national borders (primarily the Cuban Revo-
lution, aptly called the 'Cuban crucible' by Jorge Castaneda,
1994). They consequently radicalised their forebears' dis-
courses, and above all acted on these discourses.
Through its mobilisational work in the civil society, the
Catholic Church, after Medellin, offered to the emerging
revolutionary coalition a bridge to the excluded masses,
mainly through the colleges, universities, unions and Chris-
tian Base Communites (CEBs). The Communist Party pro-
vided ideological and organisational skills, as well as useful
connections with sundry left-wing organisations at home and
abroad. The universities were, rallying points, the milieu in
which most of the politico-military organisations were con-
ceived. The university-based sectors of the opposition were
the most radical and the most readily keen to advocate
violence.
This does not necessarily mean that the Farabundo Marti
Front for National Liberation (FMLN) was exclusively a uni-
versity guerrilla organisation, as the Mexican intellectual
Gabriel Zaid (1988) has suggested. Regional and local lea-
ders of the FMLN were also recruited from unions and
popular organisations. This being said, union leaders or
'delegates of the word' were often educated and converted
politically either directly at the university or indirectly
through contact with university actors. By 'the university' we
mean primarily the National University - the University of EI
Salvador, UES - which until the foundation in 1965 and
expansion in the 1970s of the Jesuit-led Central American
University 'Jose Simeon Canas' was the unique institution of
From Causes to 'Causers' 45
Notes
1 1 + = best score; 7 - = worst score
2 Change in status since the previous year owing to reevaluation by
Freedom House; this does not imply any change in the country.
Source: Freedom House, Freedom at Issue (Jan.-Feb. 1973-86),
quoted in Statistical Abstract of Latin America, voLl5, table 1003.
* * *
In sum, much has to be learned about the insurgents before
one can speculate on the roots of revolt in EI Salvador. They
had their own distinct environment, and they responded to
intellectual stimuli from their own milieu and far beyond their
national borders. Their ideological dispositions were also the
product of a complex interplay of factors, some emanating
from various dimensions of the national formation, some
from a generational politico-cultural repertoire, and some
from specific conjunctures in the three organisations identi-
fied at the beginning of this chapter. The following chapters
are devoted to exploring more specifically the particular orga-
nisational and ideological context into which insurgency was
born.
3 Revolution within the
Revolution
67
68 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
THEFMLN
TheFDR
A LENINIST VANGUARD
to bring out, before all the peoples of the world, the heroic
struggle of the Salvadoran people who, in the context of the
Central American revolutionary struggle, are increasingly
implicated in the various levels of the people's protracted
popular war, a war that is primarily based on revolutionary
armed struggle and indissolubly linked to other forms of
struggle of the popular masses in their march towards
Popular Revolution and Socialism?O
Vanguardism
From their formation in the early 1970s until the end of the
1980s the different factions of the FMLN openly proclaimed
themselves as the vanguard of the Salvadoran people. For
tactical reasons the insurgents could have formed an alliance
with civilian sectors, or even with dissident members of the
army,35 but they remained dogmatically convinced of their
privileged status as the vanguard of the people. This is prob-
ably the most resilient feature of Leninism, and the FMLN,
even at the expense of increasingly evident political costs
(permanent fragmentation and uneasy connection with the
masses), stuck to it until the end of the war. In its year-end
message transmitted on Radio Venceremos in January 1990,
the FMLN was still emphasising its leading role, and not just
in the Salvadoran struggle:
An Agrarian Revolution?
They may have been right in foreseeing the farce that would
take place, but their position can hardly be seen as the result
of an a posteriori radicalisation, once all the peaceful avenues
had been explored. One can easily speculate that the insur-
gents' position would have been the same, or even more
blunt, if there had been a prospect of fair elections. The
argument for late, incremental radicalisation may apply to
some Christian democrats, a handful of social democrats or
perhaps even the Communist Party before its adoption of
armed struggle, but it does not apply to the politico-military
organisations that emerged during this decade and eventually
formed the FMLN.
In 1976 President Molina's attempt at 'agrarian transforma-
tion', a timid reform opposed by the private sector but
supported by reformist sectors such as the UCA, the Christ-
ian Democratic Party and the Communist Party, was imme-
diately denounced by the BPR as 'a politico-economic,
counterrevolutionary measure of imperialism in our coun-
try,.71 The position vis-a-vis the coup of 1979 and the reform-
ist72 civil-military junta that emerged from this successful
coup is even more enlightening. An FPL leader recalled that
Revolution within the Revolution 87
The Clash
97
98 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
Socioeconomic
development
setting invites all actors who have mastered the art of political
discourse (including, nowadays, social scientists) and who
enjoy organisational resources to participate actively in
politics.
This leads to the third factor: universities offer distinctive
mobilisational resources in a critical society. Three factors are
easily identifiable: the university's autonomy, the organisa-
tional configuration of the university community, and a spe-
cific disposition to act as society's vanguard in experimenting
with new social and political formulae.
The university's autonomy means that it can provide a
sanctuary for opponents of the state and a comparatively
secure base to plan and conduct political activities. In EI
Salvador this autonomy has been recognised, more or less
formally, numerous times since the end of the nineteenth
century, but it was enshrined for the first time in the political
constitution of 1950 (Article 205). The political advantages
stemming from autonomous status are contingent upon
the government's goodwill. As in most Latin American
countries where the rule of law is not solidly established,
university autonomy in EI Salvador has never been a right;
only a privilege, very much like the fuero (privilege) of
the colonial period. This privilege can be removed at any
time by the state or ignored by political and military actors,
especially during times of extreme political tension. In
EI Salvador, autonomy was respected most in the 1950s,
when all parties openly recruited on the campus, but in
1960, 1972-79, 1980-84 and 1989-90 the government des-
patched soldiers to occupy the campus, where they acted
like a ragtag army from the Middle Ages, pillaging and
looting everything in sight.
As regards the organisational configuration of the univer-
sity community, it must be pointed out that no other organ-
ised community, with the possible exception of the army,
possesses a greater degree of social density and such suitable
conditions for the aggregation of political actors. As Lipset
has observed:
104 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
The 1980s
VANGUARDISM
the nature of the state ... defines the possibility ... of UES
participation in its plans. In order to define the nature of
the state, the interests it fundamentally represents must be
identified; if they are those of the majority, the state's and
the university's interests converge and the possibility for
cooperation are real ... [W]ith the current state, which
denies liberty, violates human rights and disregards the
interests of the broad majority, a relation of confrontation
122 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
* * *
The particularity of the UES's disposition lies in internal and
external factors. The conviction that it is the people's critical
conscience has been strengthened by (1) more than a century
of virtual exclusivity as an institution of higher education; (2)
successive generations of politicians entrusting the university
to create or develop the nation; and (3), more recently, Marx-
ist-Leninist ideology, which grants its believers a 'scientific'
and exclusive access to 'reality'.
Two parallels can be drawn here. First, there is the obvious
parallel between the UES's and the FMLN's ideological dis-
positions. Both have been marred by exactly the same brand
of dogmatism and vanguardism. Second, the parallel between
the events at the UES and the ones that shook the national
128 Emergence of Insurgency in EI Salvador
129
130 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
sense for at least three reasons. First, it is well known that the
Church has played a key role in the political development of
the whole region over the past five centuries. Chapter 4 high-
lighted the early convergence of the state, the university and
the Church in a common project of nation bUilding.
Second, priests are natural leaders in popular communities,
where lay intellectuals have little access or authority. 'Intellec-
tual priests' (such as Jesuits at the UCA and the Externado San
Jose) are, as historian Jean Meyer points out, 'the only intel-
lectuals who are close to the popular masses', by virtue oftheir
priestly function. 4 An FPL leader readily recognised that,
'because many of us came from the Social-Christian sector ...
it was easy for us to reach out to the peasants'.s To formulate
the argument in Gino Germani's sociological terms, the
Church was one of the few organisations able to bring about a
'primary' political mobilisation in Latin America: that is, a
mobilisation favouring the political inclusion of social sectors
previously excluded from the polity (roughly, the poor).6 The
Church has also, to continue with Germani's terminology, been
one of the most efficient catalysts of 'secondary' political mobil-
isation: that is, the mobilisation of sectors at one time included
in the polity but displaced or destabilised by social change (the
middle sectors, unionised workers and so on).
Third, the Church's time-honoured practice of participat-
ing in the ruling of Latin American societies and its unique
mobilisational capabilities were conceivably stimulated by yet
another factor: the propagation of the Theology of Liberation
in the late 1960s and 1970s. This latter factor allowed the
Church to bridge the gap between the insurgents of the time:
Marxist-Leninist students and radicalised activists in unions
and other grass-roots organisations? Interestingly enough,
the radical Church's trajectory of activity paralleled that of
Leninist activism in the universities: emerging during the
1960s, radicalisation levelled off during the 1970s and
declined during the 1980s; and this happened simultaneously
in most Latin American countries.
Those on the Catholic left never relinquished their pre-
modern longing for a 'civilisation of poverty'. The realm of
The Catholic Church, Social Change and Insurrection 131
FDR. 18 The MPSC leader, Ruben Zamora, was (and is) one
of the most able and articulate politicians in the country and
the FMLN presidential candidate during the general elec-
tions of 1995.
Of these two parties - the PDC and the MPSC - only the
latter was involved in the insurgency. Its very existence test-
ified how some sectors of the political class had indeed been
radicalised by the conflict, while the reconstructed PDC
under Duarte feruently espoused the counterinsurgency
plan (including socioeconomic reforms) promoted by the
US. Nonetheless the MPSC remained a small political vehicle
for disenchanted Christian Democratic politicians - it was
never a mass party, let alone a social or political movement.
There is no evidence that it ever mobilised significant sectors
of the population in support of the insurgency project. Its
main function in the FDR was, as pointed out in Chapter 3,
essentially diplomatic. It was supposed to bridge the gap
between the insurgency and the political class. Both the
FDR and the FMLN failed to achieve this important task.
Far more important for the politicisation of urban middle
class was the mobilisation of students and youths through the
UCA, the Extemado San Jose, and the various Catholic
youth and lay organisations (such as Justice and Peace).
Because these youths - and quite a few professors - tended
to be much more militant and radical than, say, dissident
Christian Democratic politicians, they had much more of an
impact on the emergence and development of insurgency,
something that is typically overlooked by analysts.
* * *
In sum, the available evidence does not allow us to assert
much more than the following propositions: (1) the country-
side was the scene of the expansion of the insurgency, not
the scene of its emergence; (2) only a tiny minority of
rural dwellers joined the insurgency, mostly young men and
teenagers, and this as a result of a multiple set of incentives,
most of which probably resulted from the war itself; (3) all
136 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
VANGUARDISM
The CEBs
The Magisterium
Social Projection
a barely literate peasant can paint the walls [that is, cover
the walls with graffiti]. On the other hand a peasant can not
analyse reality from a theoretical perspective. This must be
done by university people, because this kind of analysis can
change the social structure. .. [W]hen university people go
on painting the walls they do not respect the division of
labour and end up being not very efficient in the overall
struggle for social change. Still, there is something that only
university people can do: profound analysis, and the ela-
boration of solutions.?4
* * *
The crisis affecting the Salvadoran Catholic Church was not a
unique phenomenon. It was a regional episode, generated by
a combination of mutually enforcing factors: the raising of
expectations in the 1960s and early 1970s in the wake of
unprecedented economic growth and social mobilisation; the
parallel development of bureaucratic and sometimes mobil-
isational authoritarian regimes; and the upsurge of repres-
sion, urban insurgency and death squad - all this in the
enduring context of social inequality and exclusion of the
many based on economic, cultural, gender and ethnic preju-
dices. The radicalisation of some sectors of the Catholic
Church was also related to the countercultural trends of the
late 1960s, to which Latin American cultural elites were
exposed. Indeed the two most obvious factors explaining the
decline of the Popular Church in Latin America were demo-
cratisation on the one hand, and the demise of the counter-
156 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
157
158 Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador
Introduction
163
164 Notes and References
22. See for instance Juan Antonio Morales and Gary McMahon
(eds), Economic Policy and the Transition to Democracy, The
Latin American Experience (New York: Macmillan/St Martin's
Press, 1996).
23. The literature on the 'lost decade' is both well-known and
abundant. For a general discussion on the demonstrative effect
of democratisation and the corollary of 'democratic waves', see
Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave, Democratization in the
Late Twentieth Century (Norman and London: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1991). Huntington identifies the following
waves: The first (long) wave of democratisation (1828-1926),
the first reverse wave (1922-42), the second (short) wave
of democratisation (1943-62), The second reverse wave
(1958-75) and the third wave of democratisation (1974-).
24. On the intricacies of measuring the gap between rich and
poor, between and within nations, see the excellent collection
of articles in Mitchell A. Seligson and John T. Passe-Smith
(eds), Development and Underdevelopment, The Political
Economy of Inequality (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne
Rienner, 1993).
25. See Juan J. Linz, 'Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration', in
Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (eds.), The Breakdown of
Democratic Regimes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1978), p. 11; Guillermo de la Dehesa, 'La crisis
economica Mexicana, una vision des de fuera', Vuelta, vol. 19,
no. 223 (June 1995), p. 37. See also Pitou van Dijck and Ruud
Buite1aar (eds), Latin America's Insertion in the World Eco-
nomy (New York: Macmillan/St Martin's Press, 1995).
26. As the elected President of Brazil, sociologist and one of the
founding fathers of dependency theory, Fernando Henrique
Cardoso now applies neoliberal policies: other times, other
paradigms'. For an overview of economic theorisation of
dependency and development in Latin America, see the
excellent collection in Jorge I. Dominguez (ed.), Essays on
Mexico, Central and South America, Scholarly Debates from the
'50s to the '90s, vol. 1 (New York and London: Garland
Publishing, 1994); see also Seligson and Passe-Smith, Devel-
opment and Underdevelopment, op. cit.
27. One can find a very polemical appraisal of this legacy in
Robert A. Packenham, The Dependency Movement, Scholar-
ship and Politics in Development Studies (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992); a more balanced overview is
available in David Lehmann, Democracy and Development in
Latin America, Economics, Politics and Religion in the Postwar
Period (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
Notes and References 169
28. Terry L. Karl, 'Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin Amer-
ica', Comparative Politics, vol. 23, no. 1 (Oct. 1990), p. 16. See
also James M. Malloy and Mitchell A. Seligson (eds),Author-
itarians and Democrats, Regime Transition in Latin America
(Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987).
29. Karen L. Remmer, 'The Political Impact of Economic Crisis
in Latin America in the '80s', American Political Science
Review, vol. 85, no. 3 (Sept. 1991), p. 795.
30. Karen L. Remmer, 'New Theoretical Perspectives on Demo-
cratization', Comparative Politics, vol. 28, no. 1 (Oct. 1995),
p.106.
31. For instance Jean Baechler argues that among the most com-
mon causes of revolution, economic deprivation and social
inequality hardly matter at all. Jean Baechler, Les phenom-
enes revolutionnaires (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1970).
32. As Claudio Veliz contends, diagnoses of the overarching pro-
blem of underdevelopment in Latin America are so general
and self-evident as to become essentially tautological or ahis-
torical. In his most recent book he compares the gloomy diag-
nosis of the state of the Latin American economy in the late
nineteenth century with a recent appraisal by ECLA: 'Only
minimal modifications are required to make these two argu-
ments, otherwise separated by a century, coalesce into a famil-
iar diagnosis that rests on capital remaining scarce,
governments continuing to be unhelpful, and bad habits stub-
bornly refusing to vanish.' Claudio Veliz, The New World of the
Gothic Fox, Culture and Economy in English and Spanish Amer-
ica (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), p. 182.
33. See Harry Eckstein (ed.), Internal War, Problems and
Approaches (New York: The Free Press, 1964); Yvon Grenier,
'De l'inflation revolutionnaire: Guerre Interne"Coup d'etat et
Changement Radicaux en Amerique Latine', Etudes Interna-
tionales, vol 19, no. 4 (decembre 1991) pp. 57-61. Charles
Tilly proposed 'multiple sovereignty' as yet another concept
describing the violent competition between contenders and
challengers in a polity. See Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to
Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978).
34. See Simon Schama, Citizens, A Chronicle of the French Revo-
lution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 703. See also
Honore de Balzac, Les Chouans, (1828) and Charles Tilly's
classic work on the Vendee (Cambridge: Haward University
Press, 1964)
35. See Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla: A Historical and Critical Study
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977).
170 Notes and References
76. Ibid., p. 5.
77. Cf. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 33 (Sept. 1986).
78. Miguel De Castilla Urbina, 'Aproximacion de una historia de
las Ciencias Sociales en Nicaragua', Revista de Ciencias
Sociales, vol. 33 (Sept. 1986), p. 57 (emphasis added).
79. Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, 'Ciencias sociales y sociedad en Gua-
temala', Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 33 (Sept. 1986), p.
30 (emphasis added).
80. Mario Lungo, 'EI desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en EI
Salvador y su aporte al conocimiento de la realidad del pais',
Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 33 (Sept. 1986), p. 53.
81. For Daniel Levy, 'Costa Rica's universities ... rarely exhibit
the degree of either leftism or disruption found in Colombia,
Ecuador, Mexico, or Venezuela. Student protests, demonstra-
tions, and propaganda are generally rather mild at the Uni-
versity of Costa Rica (the nation's only university until the
'70s).' Daniel C. Levy, 'Latin American Student Politics:
Beyond the '60s', in Philip B. Altbach (ed.), Student Political
Activism: An International Reference Handbook (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 322. See also Gonzalo Ramirez
Guier, 'Una interpretacion de la evoluci6n de las ciencias
sociales en Costa Rica', Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 33
(Sept. 1986), pp. 93-105.
82. Torres-Rivas, 'Ciencia y conciencia sociales', op. cit., p. 9.
83. Sergio Ramirez, '6 falsos golpes mortales contra la literatura
centroamericana', ABRA, vol. 2, no. 19 (San Salvador, Janu-
ary-February 1977), p. 10. For very similar testimonies on the
intellectual atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s by Chilean
intellectuals, see Jeffrey M. Puryear, Thinking Politics, Intel-
lectuals and Democracy in Chile, 1973-1988 (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 18 ff.
84. Torres-Rivas, 'Ciencia y conciencia sociales', op. cit., p. 12.
Richard Morse formulates the same comment about 'devel-
opmentalist' intellectuals in the 1950s and early 1960s, who
had precious little time to 'recycle and transform the ideo-
logies that they were importing'. Richard Morse, Resonancias
del nuevo mundo (Mexico: Vuelta, 1995), p. 233.
85. Zaid (1988), p. 30. Mario Vargas Llosa also recalls that: 'Until
the First World War, more or less, the Latin American
intellectual elite was almost always of the right, Franco-
phile or "hispanist" and violently and condescendingly anti-
American. " Since the Mexican revolution [1910], intellec-
tuals in Latin American became 'progressive'... They took
up anti- Americanism, coloring it with economic and political
hues.' Quoted in Castaneda (1994), p. 291.
Notes and References 185
86. The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 4 April 1996, p. A16.
87. In a way, the ideological construct la realidad is structurally
similar to the new catchword of (mostly Western) 'armchair
decolonisers': postcolonialism. As Jasper Goss points out,
'the problem of whether postcolonialism is a material condi-
tion ... or a strategy to arrive at a broader postcolonial con-
dition or both, is unclear.' What is more, 'postcolonial
critics ... have guaranteed themselves the position of armchair
decolonisers, with the primacy of a textual role being the most
prominent in anti-colonial struggle.' One again, intellectual
ambiguity supplies the fig leaf for an unambiguous enterprise
of self-promotion. Jasper Goss, 'Postcolonialism: Subverting
Whose Empire?' Third World Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 2 (1996),
pp.239-50.
88. Daniel Pecaut, Entre Ie peuple et La nation: Les intellectuels et
la politique au Bresil (Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences
de l'homme, 1989), p. ix.
89. Mario Benedetti, 'Situacion del intelectual en la America
Latina', Literatura y arte nuevo en Cuba, quoted in Douglas
Salamanca, 'Literatura, Sandinismo y Compromiso', Revista
lberoamericana, vol. 157 (Oct.-Dec. 1991), p. 854.
90. Arturo Arias, 'Literary Production and Political Crisis in
Central America', International Political Science Review, vol.
12, no. 1 (1991), p. 19.
91. Quoted in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1958), p. 143.
92. Castilla Urbina, )\proximacion', op. cit., p. 62. This theoret-
ical undertaking was made possible, according to the author,
by Fonseca's mastery of 'dialectic materialism and the polit-
ical economy of Marx and Engels', in addition to a 'profound
knowledge of the history of Nicaragua and of the wars of
liberation of other peoples'.
93. UCA, Universidad y sociedad, lecturas para el curso de
admision a la UCA (San Salvador: UCA editores, 1989),
p.199.
94. Jon Sobrino, 'Inspiracion cristiana de la Universidad', ECA,
no. 468 (Oct. 1987), p. 701 (emphasis added).
95. Editorial, '1982, ano decisivo para El Salvador', ECA nos
399-400 (Jan.-Feb. 1982), p. 8.
96. La realidad is practically an icon for the Mexican writer
Rosario Castellanos, who advocates ['art engage. 'Now, com-
mitted with what? With La realidad. The political commitment
[of the artist] consists in transcribing with the best and richest
esthetic means ... this reality that we have managed to
186 Notes and References
Conclusion
1. The idea that politics can become its own environment was
first formulated by Professor Jacques Zylberberg in a con-
versation with the author.
2. Castellanos Moya (1993, p. 21) contends that 'the de-ideolo-
gisation of the right has been a less perceptible and uniform
process' than the de-ideologisation of the left.
3. For Castellanos Moya (ibid., p. 18), 'right now, the fact that
people question and raise doubts about the viability of poli-
tical assassination (in EI Salvador] to solve political contro-
versy, would indicate a new attitude, a mutation'.
Select Bibliography
215
216 Select Bibliography
219
220 Index
Sobrino, Jon 64, 147, 150 Vargas Llosa, Mario 29, 170
Sollers, Philippe 172 (n.56) (n.43), 184 (n.85)
Somoza, Anastasio 81, 82 Veliz, Claudio 104, 169 (n.32)
Sung, Kim II 74 Villalobos, Joaquin 87, 89, 106,
Swift, Jonathan 26 187 (n.8)
Tilly, Charles 16, 30, 43, 159, 169 Walker, Thomas W. 163-4 (n.3)
(n.33) Walton, John 24
Tocqueville, Alexis de 5, 12, 48 Weber, Alfred 36
Tolstoi, Leon 63 Weber, Max 28, 72
Torres-Rivas, Edelberto 51,59, Webre, Stephen 163 (n.1)
60,61,90 Wickham-Crowley, Timothy 175
Trudeau, Pierre-E. 13 (n.8), 189 (n.32), 191 (n.58)
TIinnermann, Carlos 199 (n.23) Wright Mills, C. 28