Gordimer’s aftermath: from South Africa to Central America

‘No time like the present’ is a remarkable novel. The book offers a sobering but balanced account of post-apartheid South Africa as seen through the eyes of a group of former ANC militants. Though the book also offers the recurrent motive of the broken dreams, Gordimer moves beyond the trope of disillusionment to consider how militants’ lives were shaped by the experiences of the revolutionary process they participated in. She ponders the reminiscences, debates and contradictions that former ANC militants grapple with as they try to build up a ‘normal’ life in the new South Africa, a country which continues to hold enormous socio-economical differences and now witnesses an unprecedented crime wave. Gordimer describes how scores of Zimbabwean refugees that flood the country live in abominable circumstances and are treated as second-rate citizens, in what some of the former militants interpret as a new form of apartheid. As a protagonist states in the books: ‘we are all pissed off with what is becoming of the country’.

The unfolding postwar political events within ‘their’ ANC party lead to further confusion and bewilderment, and sometimes drive deep wedges between the former militants. For example, the book elaborates extensively on the corruption scandals that involve ANC leadership figures. Individual militants respond very differently to corruption allegations directed against their former comrades. According to some it is a good sign: the country is finally preoccupied with the ‘normal’ problems of an African country. Though for some former militants the ANC internal problems are an additional motivation to seek migration opportunities outside of South Africa, someone else admonishes: ‘don’t allow bad politics to drive you out of the country of your heart’. Gordimer, who besides writing many award-winning novels was also an anti-apartheid activist, describes the South African aftermath without embellishments, but also bereft of excessive moral censorship. In its accomplished human measure, the book transcends into an account that balances the residual passions of past struggles with the everyday moral dilemmas of urban middle-class life in Africa. No doubt South Africa will continue to reinvent itself. And ‘normalcy’ will not be an option.

If you click the present link you will find a much more accomplished review of Gordimer’s book. What struck me in particular were the many parallels between Gordimer’s fictionalized account and the aftermath of the revolutions in Central America. The disenchantments and re-accommodations that Gordimer describes are remarkably similar to what occurred amongst former militants of revolutionary movements in Central America. Great collective accomplishment like the revolutionary take-over in Nicaragua and the negotiated settlements in El Salvador and Guatemala were followed by a period of confusion in which leadership, militancy and constituencies became uncertain of its common goals and its new postwar roles. Nonetheless, as Gordimer portrays for South Africa’s ANC, some kind of ‘silblinghood of comrades’ did remain, a sort of revolutionary kinship as ‘a meaning of life that could not be erased’. Also in Central America’s troubled post-insurgency, for many militants involved ‘the most definite self comes from the struggle'. What is unclear and indeed heavily contested is what exactly this might mean today. 

The Tiniest Place at LAFF

‘The tiniest place” (El lugar más pequeño) is an extraordinary documentary on the aftermath of war in the tiny village of Cinquera, El Salvador. Tatiana Sánchez Huezo, the director of the film, grew up in Mexico, but her family has roots in this isolated town destroyed during El Salvador’s civil war. Sánchez Huezo cinematographic return to Cinquera evokes Juan Rulfo’s famous novel ‘Pedro Páramo'. In Rulfo’s novel, the main character returns to his hometown of Comala to find it in inhabited by ghosts. Sánchez Huezo does encounter people of flesh and blood in Cinquera. However, in the course of the film she shows us the extent to which rebuilders of Cinquera actually live with the past and especially with their loved-ones that were killed during the war. The paused and timeless photography of daily life in Cinquera contrasts, at once painfully and soothingly, with the inner life of its inhabitants. They endeavor to find life in the aftermath of war, making sense of what they gained in the course of their struggle, and, above all, trying to find a place for what was lost.

Reviews

Ruby Sander's Review in movie2movie (NL)

Sheri Linden's Review in The Hollywood Reporter

‘The Tiniest Place” shows at the Latin American Film Festival (LAFF) in Utrecht on Thursday April 19 (17:30) and Saturday April 21 (15:00).

Saturday after the film, there will be a panel organized by La Chispa, featuring Carlos Morales, a Salvadoran who lived with the people of Cinquera during the war, and Michelle Melara, a Salvadoran sociologist.

HISTORIA, SOCIEDAD Y MEMORIAS: el conflicto armado en el 20 aniversario de los Acuerdos de Paz

El seminario, que significó además el lanzamiento público de la Unidad de Investigación sobre la Guerra Civil Salvadoreña (UIGCS), se ha constituido como el evento académico de mayor envergadura realizado sobre la historia del conflicto armado salvadoreño (1980-1992) y sus secuelas. Durante tres días expusieron académicos de universidades de España, México, Costa Rica, Alemania, Holanda, Francia, Estados Unidos y un nutrido contingente de académicos salvadoreños sobre diversos temas relacionados con el conflicto. Hubo además una significativa participación de instituciones gubernamentales y privados y del público en general. Para 2012, la UIGCS proyecta realizar varias publicaciones en torno a los resultados del seminario.


Algunas reseñas del evento:
Por Fernando de Dios en Contrapunto
Por Michael Allison en Al Jazeera

Nuevos horizontes en el estudio de conflicto salvadoreño....

Del 15 al 17 de febrero de 2012 se celebra en San Salvador el Seminario internacional: “Historia, sociedad  y memorias: el conflicto armado salvadoreño en el 20 aniversario de los Acuerdos de Paz”. El evento, que cuenta con una amplia participación de académicos nacionales e internacionales, busca retomar preguntas tales como ¿Cuál es el estado del conocimiento sobre el conflicto armado en el presente? ¿Cuáles son los principales enfoques teóricos y metodológicos con los que se han abordado las investigaciones? Con base a lo anterior ¿Es posible definir una agenda de investigación para el futuro inmediato?

La sede del evento es el Museo Nacional de Antropología (MUNA). 

Pulse para el programa completo del evento.

El Salvador's Post-Insurgent Lives

On August 31, I gave a research progress presentation at the IS Academy "Human Security in Fragile States", which had organized a research seminar to discuss progress on different associated research projects. My presentation focussed on understanding the long-term reintegration processes that former FMLN combatants dealt with in the postwar years.

IS Academy presentation 31-08-2011

La reinserción posguerra y el movimiento de veteranos del FMLN

En el marco del Foro 'Movimientos Sociales en El Salvador', celebrado en la Universidad de El Salvador (UES) del 25 al 28 de mayo del 2011, moderé un panel con representantes de distintos grupos del movimiento de veteranos del FMLN. También presenté un avance de mis resultados de investigación sobre la reinserción en El Salvador.

presentación UES 27-05-2011

Compelling new book on Chalatenango's insurgent communities

Everyday Revolutionaries provides a longitudinal and rigorous analysis of the legacies of war in a community racked by political violence. By exploring political processes in one of El Salvador’s former war zones—a region known for its peasant revolutionary participation—Irina Carlota Silber offers a searing portrait of the entangled aftermaths of confrontation and displacement, aftermaths that have produced continued deception and marginalization.

Silber provides one of the first rubrics for understanding and contextualizing postwar disillusionment, drawing on her ethnographic fieldwork and research on immigration to the United States by former insurgents. With an eye for gendered experiences,  she unmasks how community members are asked, contradictorily and in different contexts, to relinquish their identities as “revolutionaries” and to develop a new sense of themselves as productive yet marginal postwar citizens via the same “participation” that fueled their revolutionary action. Beautifully written and offering rich stories of hope and despair, Everyday Revolutionaries contributes to important debates in public anthropology and the ethics of engaged research practices. 


For more info, click here

---

About the Author:IRINA CARLOTA (LOTTI) SILBER is an associate professor of anthropology in the department of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at City College of New York. 

Revolution Revisited - Understanding Reintegration and Post-Insurgent Politics in El Salvador

In armed conflicts, State sovereignty becomes explicitly contested by emerging political actors. While competing to gain control over territory and inhabitants, armed groups create (rudimentary) systems of governance, which operate parallel to the State, itself often in the hands of a particular group or factions. This political arrangement, sometimes referred to as ‘rebel governance’, accommodates several functions, such as ensuring control over key resources for warfare and ideological showcasing. But what happens when the armed conflict ends by means of a negotiated peace settlement that demobilizes and reintegrates the armed groups into society?  A frequent assumption is that parallel sovereignty tends to disappear as the newly reformed State absorbs the former insurgents. A retrospect of the reintegration process of El Salvador’s FMLN insurgents, from the 1992 peace accords to present day, challenges this assumption. The social and political networks forged during the war did not simply reintegrate to ‘dissolve’ into larger society. Veterans, from rank-and-file to comandantes, sought to translate the social, cultural and symbolic capital acquired in the insurgency into strategies for economical survival and / or social ascendency. Electoral competition in a polarized and distrustful political environment allowed for the emergence of an intricate system of competing sovereignties, partially embedded in the State, partially functioning parallel to it. While competing for power with political contenders, the veterans’ create new forms of patronage and community control, framed within a shared revolutionary history. El Salvador’s case illustrates the need to revise the premises of post war reintegration as a bound and individualized process. The study proposes the inclusion of two new tools in the analysis, design and evaluation of reintegration programmes: 1) patron-client network theory and 2) a historicized understanding of the insurgents’ political and moral economy.

¡Para hacer la guerra, no te andaban pidiendo papeles!

Reflexión sobre algunas prácticas de posguerra asociadas a la izquierda partidaria salvadoreña.

Jornadas Ignacio Ellacuría, Universidad “José Simeón Cañas” -UCA, 4 de febrero 2010

Ralph Sprenkels

El énfasis que muchos analistas tienden a hacer en las interpretaciones de carácter ideológico de la política (sea éstas liberales, marxistas o anti-comunistas) conlleva un riesgo de restar capacidad para documentar, interpretar y entender las prácticas políticas que se dan en el país. Estas prácticas constituyen aspectos fundamentales de cómo vivimos y sentimos la política, y nos tienen mucho que enseñar sobre el carácter de los procesos políticos de la posguerra, la llamada transición política.

El concepto de transición política puede ser un tanto engañoso en el sentido de que ubique el análisis de manera artificial en una especie de continuum político, donde el punto de llegada está establecido: se transita hacia una democracia liberal occidental, o hacia el socialismo, a según la preferencia del analista. Usar estos marcos de interpretación de la política ayudan a mantener un debate (o un impasse?) ideológico y dan herramientas para medir supuestos avances y retrocesos en el proceso político salvadoreño. Sin embargo, poco nos ayudan a entender los fenómenos que viven y reproducen a diario los participantes en los partidos, las instituciones y el juego político.

En base a un trabajo etnográfico que estoy realizando con veteranos de guerra del FMLN, la presente reflexión examina algunas de las formas en que han evolucionado las relaciones y las prácticas políticas al interior de la izquierda salvadoreña. En mi trabajo de campo me relaciono tanto con veteranos que militan actualmente en el FMLN como con los que se han distanciado del partido. Las vivencias, percepciones y actitudes de los veteranos proporcionan una ventana en lo que ha significado la transición política para lo que podría llamarse la “comunidad revolucionaria” que existía en el año 1992, y que en los años posteriores se fue insertando y acomodando a la vida política basada en la competencia por los votos.

Comenzaré por presentar algunos hallazgos preliminares de la investigación de campo relacionados con el tema de las prácticas de la izquierda salvadoreña. ¿Qué tipo de cambios identifican los veteranos en las prácticas del partido de la época de la guerra a la de la posguerra? ¿De qué maneras se relacionan actualmente los veteranos con el partido? Luego presentaré algunas propuestas sobre cómo entender las prácticas identificadas en su contexto. En conclusión haré algunos apuntes sobre las posibles implicaciones de los hallazgos del estudio para las agendas de investigación académica en relación a la izquierda en el país y en el ámbito latinoamericano. 

A través de apuntes etnográficos presentaré aspectos de lo que puede llamarse “un sentimiento de abandono” de parte del partido que existe entre los veteranos combatientes. Luego analizaré algunas características del proceso de conversión del FMLN de una fuerza guerrillera a un partido legalmente constituido y la lógica de los reacomodos que esto conllevó.  Con el acceso del partido a recursos del Estado a partir de sus esfuerzos electorales, se presenta una posibilidad escalonada para algunos veteranos de “re-engancharse” con el partido de diferentes maneras. En esta lógica, las redes partidarias se entretejen con redes sociales de supervivencia, en los peldaños más bajos, y con redes que posibilitan ascenso político y profesional, en los escalafones superiores.

Si bien las prácticas identificadas pueden, de manera general, interpretarse como “clientelistas”, hace falta una especificación más precisa para entenderlas en su contexto. En este sentido propondré dos conceptos que pueden ayudar a explicar las vivencias políticas de los veteranos de guerra: el clientelismo contencioso y la política como experiencia visceral.   

Es importante tomar en cuenta que investigar las prácticas políticas requiere de otras herramientas que las que se usan para investigar la evolución ideológica. La ideología funge a menudo como caballito de batalla, y se expresa en una discusión pública que se sedimenta en discursos, comunicados, publicaciones partidarias etc. Mientras tanto, muchas de las prácticas políticas y partidarias se consideran patrimonio del ámbito interno, cuasi privado de los militantes y de la vida del partido. Documentar y estudiarlas puede requerir un acercamiento personal, íntimo con los actores políticos.

La sobredimensión de lo ideológico en el entendimiento de la política no solamente es una herencia del pasado, sino que también debe entenderse en relación a las funciones instrumentales que cumple la ideología actualmente en la construcción del partido y en la distribución del poder.  En este sentido, la etnografía política puede ayudarnos a ver más allá de los discursos oficiales de los partidos, y aportar nuevas formas de entender y explicar los procesos políticos.

El Salvador postwar transition, as seen by former FMLN guerrillas

Preliminary Project Description

The transition process that ended El Salvador’s 12 year civil war (1980-1992) was initially much praised as a “model” transition by the international community. However, growing endemic violence and strong political polarization have tempered enthusiasm, inside as well as outside the country. Therefore, this research project examines and analyses El Salvador’s fragile post war transition from a long term perspective. It focuses on the transformation of one of the key actors, the former left-wing rebels of the FMLN, in the time span of 16 years that have past since the Peace Accords (1992-2008). The research project documents and analyzes processes of political, social and economic reintegration of (former) revolutionary militants, emphasizing the actors own perspectives and interpretations. In doing so, the project reassesses earlier evaluations of El Salvador’s transition process at the light the increasingly violent and polarized context of recent years, highlighting the a long term impact of key transition components such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and transitional justice. The project’s critical long-term perspective on transitional politics aims to generate important new insights on the characteristics of post conflict state fragility, relevant for scholars as well as policy makers.