Event Title
“Total rejection” vs. “seat-at-the-table” – Two approaches to the challenge of CAFTA
Location
Lindy C. Boggs Conference Center, Room 256
Session
Session Two: Post-1980 Central American Solidarity
Start Date
16-10-2010 9:15 AM
End Date
16-10-2010 11:30 AM
Description
This paper, which is part of a broader research project exploring how war-displaced campesinos (roughly translated, peasants) in Latin America utilized national and international solidarity networks to garner both short- and long-term benefits, examines how displaced Salvadoran campesinos forged strategic relations with solidary United States citizens via Ciudades Hermanas (Sister Cities). Using dozens of oral histories, along with archival materials from Central America, the United States and Europe, I trace the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network through 25 years. More specifically, I examine shifts in organizational focus over time: from the narrow foundational objective of ensuring the physical security of specific repopulated communities in the midst of civil war; to the promotion of national peace and democratization efforts; to countering more regional and global threats (e.g., privatization of public services, exploitation of natural resources, and free trade agreements). I also explore how and why U.S. and Salvadoran narratives of Sister Cities diverge. Why, for example, have longtime U.S. participants’ narratives focused on specific (often horrific) events and emphasized drastic differences between then and now, whereas Salvadoran narratives have tended to feature patterns and continuities? I show that even as U.S. participants today debate how to “stay relevant” in peacetime, Salvadorans utilize the network in much the same way they did upon its founding in the mid-1980s: as a tool to heighten their visibility within the national arena and to strengthen their resistance to ongoing state-sponsored marginalization and repression.
“Total rejection” vs. “seat-at-the-table” – Two approaches to the challenge of CAFTA
Lindy C. Boggs Conference Center, Room 256
This paper, which is part of a broader research project exploring how war-displaced campesinos (roughly translated, peasants) in Latin America utilized national and international solidarity networks to garner both short- and long-term benefits, examines how displaced Salvadoran campesinos forged strategic relations with solidary United States citizens via Ciudades Hermanas (Sister Cities). Using dozens of oral histories, along with archival materials from Central America, the United States and Europe, I trace the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network through 25 years. More specifically, I examine shifts in organizational focus over time: from the narrow foundational objective of ensuring the physical security of specific repopulated communities in the midst of civil war; to the promotion of national peace and democratization efforts; to countering more regional and global threats (e.g., privatization of public services, exploitation of natural resources, and free trade agreements). I also explore how and why U.S. and Salvadoran narratives of Sister Cities diverge. Why, for example, have longtime U.S. participants’ narratives focused on specific (often horrific) events and emphasized drastic differences between then and now, whereas Salvadoran narratives have tended to feature patterns and continuities? I show that even as U.S. participants today debate how to “stay relevant” in peacetime, Salvadorans utilize the network in much the same way they did upon its founding in the mid-1980s: as a tool to heighten their visibility within the national arena and to strengthen their resistance to ongoing state-sponsored marginalization and repression.