Twenty years after peace accords were signed, many aspects of El Salvador’s long civil war remain murky.

Twenty years after peace accords were signed, many aspects of El Salvador’s long civil war remain murky.

An outspoken champion for the people who were suffering during El Salvador's brutal civil war, Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was murdered on March 24, 1980.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, the Jesuit philosopher-theologian martyred for his work on behalf of Latin America's oppressed peoples.While serving as president of the Jesuit-run University of Central America in the midst of El Salvador's brutal civil war, Ellacuría was also a prolific writer. His advocacy on behalf of the country's persecuted majority provoked the enmity of the Salvadoran political establishment. On November 16, 1989, members of the Salvadoran military entered the university's campus and murdered Ellacuría, along with five other Jesuit priests and two women.Kevin F. Burke, SJ, shows why Ellacuría is significant not only as a martyr but also as a theologian. Ellacuría effectively integrated philosophy, history, anthropology, and sociopolitical analysis into his theological reflections on salvation, spirituality, and the church to create an original contribution to liberation theology.Ellacuría's writings directly address one of the most vexing issues in theology today: can theologians account for the demands arising from both the particularity of their various social-historical situations and also the universal claims of Christian revelation? Burke explains how Ellacuría bases theology in a philosophy of historical reality-the \"ground beneath the cross\"-and interprets the suffering of \"the crucified peoples\" in the light of Jesus' crucifixion. Ellacuría thus inserts the theological realities of salvation and transcendence squarely within the course of human events, and he connects these to the Christian mandate to \"take the crucified peoples down from their crosses.\" Placing Ellacuría's thought in the context of historical trends within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly Vatican II and the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, Burke argues that Ellacuría makes a distinctive contribution to contemporary Catholic theology.

About the Book After El Salvador's brutal civil war ended in 1992, crime rates shot up. People began to speak of the peace as worse than the war. This study examines how narratives of post-conflict violence, told by ordinary people, offered ways of coping with uncertainty during a stunted transition to democracy. Book Synopsis El Salvador's civil war, which left at least 75,000 people dead and displaced more than a million, ended in 1992. The accord between the government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has been lauded as a model post-Cold War peace agreement. But after the conflict stopped, crime rates shot up. The number of murder victims surpassed wartime death tolls. Those who once feared the police and the state became frustrated by their lack of action. Peace was not what Salvadorans had hoped it would be. Citizens began saying to each other, "It's worse than the war." El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty, and the Transition to Democracy challenges the pronouncements of policy analysts and politicians by examining Salvadoran daily life as told by ordinary people who have limited influence or affluence. Anthropologist Ellen Moodie spent much of the decade after the war gathering crime stories from various neighborhoods in the capital city of San Salvador. True accounts of theft, assaults, and murders were shared across kitchen tables, on street corners, and in the news media. This postconflict storytelling reframed violent acts, rendering them as driven by common criminality rather than political ideology. Moodie shows how public dangers narrated in terms of private experience shaped a new interpretation of individual risk. These narratives of postwar violence--occurring at the intersection of self and other, citizen and state, the powerful and the powerless--offered ways of coping with uncertainty during a stunted transition to democracy. Review Quotes "In this compelling and original book, anthropologist Ellen Moodie analyzes crime stories that circulated in El Salvador in the postwar period. Her goal is not to understand crime per se, or even public perceptions of crime, but rather to make sense of the postwar period itself. . . . Beautifully written, El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace moves in time and space, returning repeatedly to sites and moments that symbolize hopes and disappointments."-- "Susan Bibler Coutin, University of California, Irvine""Moodie's study provides a fascinating account of how daily micro relations between individuals permeate macro features of a society. The book also demonstrates the possibilities opened up by the kind of qualitative methodological approach adopted by Moodie, going beyond the statistical data on El Salvador's rates of crime and homicide, to tell the story of how ordinary people's experiences of violent crime are constructed and the hidden and changing political consequences of such constructions."-- "Bulletin of Latin American Research" About the Author Ellen Moodie is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

 In 1984, eight-year-old Guadalupe Maravilla left his family and joined a group of other children fleeing their homes in El Salvador. The Central American country was in the midst of a brutal civil war, a profoundly traumatic experience that’s left an indelible impact on the artist and one that guides his broad, multi-disciplinary practice to this day. Now based in Brooklyn, Maravilla works across painting, sculpture, and sound-based performances all veiled with autobiography, whether informed by the Mayan architecture and stone totems that surrounded him as a child or his cancer diagnosis as a young adult. More

From 1980 until 1992, a brutal civil war was fought in the small Central American country of El Salvador. Tarnished Brass looks at America's involvement in the conflict; the United States provided funding, arms, and training support to the Salvadoran military. It also examines current issues affecting both countries--twenty-six years later, gang violence has replaced and even surpassed the brutality of both the Salvadoran military and the guerrilla factions during their prolonged conflict. The war and its aftermath are told through the perspectives of a US Army officer, a guerrilla leader, and a refugee turned gang member. By giving voice to all three, it looks not only at history but at the current crises. Today, El Salvador has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world, and the influence of MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) has spread beyond its borders to many cities in the United States. Tarnished Brass is a timely examination of a conflict fought over thirty years ago that continues to resonate today. Though a work of fiction, the author draws upon his experiences in-country to write a story that will definitely resonate with readers looking to understand past US foreign policy as well as current events. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Max L. Knight is a graduate of Texas A&M University (Class of '73) and a career Army officer and counterintelligence specialist. He has published two previous books: Silver Taps, a memoir of his relationship with his father and a tribute to his alma mater, and Palo Duro, a novel of westward expansion and the Plains Indian Wars. | Author: Max L. Knight | Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc. | Publication Date: Jul 02, 2019 | Number of Pages: 116 pages | Language: English | Binding: Hardcover | ISBN-10: 1644246430 | ISBN-13: 9781644246436

Well over two decades have passed since El Salvador’s brutal civil war. And while the country still bears the scars of its past, El Salvador is looking to the future.

Beautiful Juayua Cascades in Sonsonate - El Salvador. This was our first trip to this country. I must say that I was bit worried about going there , I heard that after 12 years if very brutal civil war ( 1980 – 92 ) and history of gangs it was not very safe. We met couple that know a lot about El Salvador and they give us few pointers. I was very pleasantly surprised , it was very nice and safe. In addition official currency of El Salvador is … $ US – so that makes it easy for most of us. Something interesting – look at the cascades, they are starting not from the top of the cliff but from layer of porous rock that water is sipping through. That is often associated with active volcanic geology of the area ( similar to waterfalls in Iceland )

Well over two decades have passed since El Salvador’s brutal civil war. And while the country still bears the scars of its past, El Salvador is looking to the future.

In the 1960s and 1970s, El Salvador's reigning military regime instituted a series of reforms that sought to modernize the country and undermine ideological radicalism, the most ambitious of which was an education initiative. It was multifaceted, but its most controversial component was the use of televisions in classrooms. Launched in 1968 and lasting until the eve of civil war in the late 1970s, the reform resulted in students receiving instruction through programs broadcast from the capital city of San Salvador. The Salvadoran teachers' union opposed the content and the method of the reform and launched two massive strikes. The military regime answered with repressive violence, further alienating educators and pushing many of them into guerrilla fronts.In this thoughtful collaborative study, the authors examine the processes by which education reform became entwined in debates over theories of modernization and the politics of anticommunism. Further analysis examines how the movement pushed the country into the type of brutal infighting that was taking place throughout the third world as the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struggled to impose their political philosophies on developing countries.

About the Book The real story behind El Salvador's MS-13 gang and how they have perpetuated three generations of conflict and led to scores of migrants seeking a new life in the United States. Book Synopsis The story of MS-13 and its American roots One of President Donald Trump's favorite rhetorical motifs is stoking fear that members of the MS-13 gang from El Salvador intend to cross the U.S. border in force and wreak havoc on American society. It's an inaccurate scenario, and in State of War, foreign correspondent William Wheeler tells the real story: In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the repressive Salvadoran government in a brutal civil war, and many Salvadoran families fled to America--especially Los Angeles, where teenagers in poor neighborhoods founded MS-13. A decade later, the U.S. responded to rising anti-immigrant sentiment by deporting many Salvadorans back home. Ever since, El Salvador has been one of the most violent countries in the world. Wheeler interviewed gang members, frustrated intelligence officers, and crime investigators who give chilling insider reports of how corruption at the highest levels has helped the gangs become stronger, richer, and more influential than ever. State of War makes vividly clear why Salvadorans are fleeing their country, and why Trump's harsh immigration and asylum policies may only empower the gangs more. "A gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture." --Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote Review Quotes "This pocket-sized text is the best book on the unintended consequences of American foreign and domestic policy in relation to MS-13, drawing on detailed original reporting and superb synthesis of previous scholarship." --Religious Studies Review "In State of War, journalist William Wheeler provides a corrective to the overly simplistic (and often outright racist) narratives that proliferate in contemporary American politics. The book makes clear that MS-13's rise is complex, the result of several overlapping factors, including the generational trauma wrought by the civil war, the failures of interventionist U.S. foreign policy, and the Salvadoran government's own corruption. Throughout his analysis, Wheeler embeds personal accounts from former and current gang members, politicians from both El Salvador and the United States, and Salvadoran police and military personnel. Readers are left with a nuanced portrait of MS-13's rise to power in a nation mired in corruption and soaked in blood.... State of War shines a light on the dark networks that conspire to maintain power and wealth at the cost of life and liberty." --Commonweal "Journalist Wheeler combines a clear sense of geopolitical history and gutsy on-the-ground reporting, producing a compact tale of a slow-motion, violent societal collapse.... An urgent, digestible document of a violently failing state, with clear connection to flawed American policies past and present." --Kirkus Reviews "In State of War, his gripping, electrifying study of the brutal Salvadoran gang culture, William Wheeler dramatizes with almost painful immediacy a vital truth: that all the fevered talk about a 'crisis at the border' is really an ignorant lament about what three decades of US foreign policy have wrought. At its core, the so-called crisis is about what we as Americans have done to El Salvador and its Central American neighbors. To confront the savage violence ripping through those countries and sending their citizens on a desperate flight north is ultimately to find oneself gazing at the American face in the mirror. With his vivid prose and intrepid reporting, Wheeler has shown us the bloody consequences borne by real people--and given us a powerful, unforgettable book." --Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

“If I return, I know they will kill me.”

In December 1931, El Salvador's civilian president, Arturo Araujo, was overthrown in a military coup. Such an event was hardly unique in Salvadoran history, but the 1931 coup proved to be a watershed. Araujo had been the nation's first democratically elected president, and although no one could have foreseen the result, the coup led to five decades of uninterrupted military rule, the longest run in modern Latin American history. Furthermore, six weeks after coming to power, the new military regime oversaw the crackdown on a peasant rebellion in western El Salvador that is one of the worst episodes of state-sponsored repression in modern Latin American history. Democracy would not return to El Salvador until the 1990s, and only then after a brutal twelve-year civil war. In Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940, Erik Ching seeks to explain the origins of the military regime that came to power in 1931. Based on his comprehensive survey of the extant documentary record in El Salvador's national archive, Ching argues that El Salvador was typified by a longstanding tradition of authoritarianism dating back to the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The basic structures of that system were based on patron-client relationships that wove local, regional, and national political actors into complex webs of rival patronage networks. Decidedly nondemocratic in practice, the system nevertheless exhibited highly paradoxical traits: it remained steadfastly loyal to elections as the mechanism by which political aspirants acquired office, and it employed a political discourse laden with appeals to liberty and free suffrage. That blending of nondemocratic authoritarianism with populist reformism and rhetoric set the precedent for military rule for the next fifty years.