El Salvador, geographically the smallest and most densely populated nation in Latin America, is often described as one of the most violent countries in the region. The majority of countries in Latin America and indeed in the rest of the world have experienced a significant increase in violence and crime since the 1950s, a trend often associated with the expansion of urban spaces and social exclusion. In this sense, rising levels of social violence in El Salvador are part of a regional and global trend.[1] Of course, this makes the dimensions of the problem in El Salvador no less staggering. During the first half of the 1990s the homicide rate reached 139 per 100,000 inhabitants, by 2000 it had decreased to 44 per 100,000.[2] Despite this dramatic drop in homicides, the total number of violent crimes remained relatively unchanged, from 58,108 in 1996 to 53,204 in 2000 with 38% of all violent crime involving the use of firearms.[3]
A study published in 1998 by the Institute of Public Opinion (IUODOP) of the Central American University asked participants if various scenarios warranted a violent response or if they would condone a violent response under those circumstances. Their answers reflected exceedingly high levels of acceptance toward violent cultural attitudes.[4] A second report, issued in 2003, by the same institution concluded, “Approval toward the use of violence is the general dominant orientation among Salvadoran citizens.”[5] Apparently, many Salvadorans continue to accept the widespread use of violence, despite the implementation of numerous violence prevention programs by nongovernmental and governmental organizations.
Why is violence so pervasive in Salvadoran society? Why do Salvadorans seem to have high levels of tolerance toward violent conduct? Understanding the high levels of social violence and the acceptance of violent norms in Salvadoran society must begin with a consideration of the historical and cultural processes associated with violence—authoritarianism, state terror, political violence and others. Yet formative periods of El Salvador’s experience with violence, particularly the civil war (1980-1992), must not be analyzed in temporal isolation. Instead, serious reflection must consider the psychosocial consequences of the traumas, such as patterns of violence in conflict resolution and coping with the lingering ordeal of war. These traumas are exacerbated in El Salvador by widespread social and economic exclusion, which have generated more social violence in the postwar era: youth violence; domestic violence; and increases in organized crime that elicit violent reactions by both the state and gangs.
The prevailing cycle of political violence during the 20th century first sprung roots with the foundation of the liberal state during the presidency of Rafael Zaldívar (1876-1885).[6] The reorganization of the state encompassed a series of economic, social and political reforms along with the creation of a new hegemony. The most salient reforms of Zaldívar’s regime were the introduction of coffee as a monoculture, the expropriation of indigenous lands and the creation of a repressive security apparatus composed of a permanent army, police and paramilitary forces.
With the expansion of the coffee economy between 1885 and 1932, the governing regimes confronted the growing social and ethnic conflicts with unmeasured repression. The ruling oligarchy not only exercised its dominance through coercion—state terror and terrorism—but also through consent, achieved mainly with a national ideology based on three central components: social exclusion, racism and anti-communism. Social exclusion came in the way of privileges for the propertied elite and deprivation of basic human needs for the vast majority of the population. Racism spanned from institutional racial discrimination to gross human rights violations against indigenous and mestizo cultures, the 1932 ethnocide against the Pipiles being only the most prominent example. And anti-communism became the dominant pretext to impede democratic participation and to persecute dissidence, especially after La Matanza (The Massacre) in 1932.
This type of state hegemony created a cycle of mass political violence. Rebellion and resistance by the indigenous and ladino peasantry, middle class intellectuals and urban workers periodically challenged state terror and terrorism. At least two crises of hegemony in the original liberal state model resulted from such contestations. The first was the indigenous uprising and subsequent massacre in 1932. The dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in the 1930s and 1940s prevailed in that crisis through the perpetration of genocide and the militarization of the state. The second instance of a crisis of hegemony in the Salvadoran state was the civil war. Resolution of that crisis took final form in political negotiation between the government of President Alfredo Cristiani and the insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), resulting in the 1992 peace accords.
The cycles of state repression and popular resistance or rebellion consolidated a cultural pattern that mediated class and ethnic conflicts with violence. Political violence included illegal arrest, “disappearances,” torture, assassinations and eventually mass killings. Violence also became internalized in diverse social environs, such as the community, the family and the educational system—violence against women, domestic violence, child abuse and corporal punishment in schools.
After studying the seminal period of Salvadoran liberalism (1885-1932), historian Patricia Alvarenga concludes that there is an “irresoluble conflict between liberal ethics and a system of domination that closed channels toward social consensus.” She argues that both state representatives and subaltern sectors used “covert terror” to deal with social and political conflict.7 The clandestine use of terror became a sort of duplicitous moral standard, a perverse ethics of violence, permeating important sectors of Salvadoran society. The civil war would later firmly establish this culture of violence.
In 1980, mounting social and ethnic conflict during decades of authoritarian rule finally erupted into a protracted civil war. The 12-year conflict caused at least 70,000 deaths, 500,000 refugees, tens of thousands of wounded and maimed, thousands of “disappeared” and a deep-seated psychosocial trauma that will plague Salvadorans for several generations. Besides destroying the social fabric and the national economy, the civil war also implanted fundamental features of the culture of violence: the use of terror and terrorism as a method for dealing with social conflict, the lack of value and respect for human life, and the proliferation and use of firearms.
The UN-sponsored Truth Commission Report (TCR) provides a synthesis of the roots and legacy of the civil war’s political violence. The TCR prominently cites the lack of guarantees for human rights and the organization of society under the domination of the military establishment without an inkling of legal order; the complete control of civilian authorities by “certain elements of the armed forces.” The report’s findings determined that El Salvador lacked the judicial, legislative or executive capacities to control the growing military domination of society. As a result, death squads organized by civilians and military personnel wrought terror with total impunity. Lastly, the TCR points to the role of the conflict’s escalation in allowing the armed forces and the insurgent forces to become the real representatives of a “primitive” state not subject to political or institutional restraint. A situation that permitted them to actuate with “abject impunity.”[8]
Even though the TCR is widely considered the most objective, comprehensive and impartial analysis of the civil war’s political violence, there is one glaring omission. The report is devoid of any mention regarding the responsibility of the U.S. government in supporting, arming and training the Salvadoran Armed Forces as they systematically perpetrated crimes against humanity. The omission is perhaps attributable to the climate of international consensus in favor of a negotiated solution to the war at the time of the TCR. Nonetheless, the right-wing governments of President Alfredo Cristiani and President Calderón Sol in the 1990s never implemented the recommendations issued by the TCR concerning the eradication and prevention of institutional impunity.[9] In fact, in March 1993 their party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), rushed to approve an amnesty law to impede the prosecution of war criminals. What’s more, ARENA and the FMLN refused to ban from political life any of the leaders mentioned in the TCR as suspected war criminals.
Yet, to this day, various social organizations continue to work against impunity and in favor of reparations for victims of state terror. And on December 6, 2003, San Salvador inaugurated a public monument with the names of more than 25,000 victims of state agents—military, police and paramilitary forces. Noticeably absent from the unveiling ceremony were any government officials or representatives of political parties.
According to Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, the state should be considered an “educator.” Meaning that state institutions indeed provide a rationalization for the economic and the sociopolitical processes occurring in society. When viewed through this Gramscian lens, the Salvadoran state educated society in the systematic use of political violence and its rationalization. The Salvadoran state also did the disservice of legitimizing impunity by refusing to prosecute crimes against humanity and by refusing to incorporate the TCR’s recommendations, causing its citizens further psychosocial discord.[10]
Ignacio Martín-Baró, one of the six Jesuit priests assassinated by the Salvadoran Army’s U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion in 1989, had extensively studied the psychosocial effects of political repression on the Salvadoran population. According to Martín-Baró, these effects are different among the repressor, the victim and the spectator. For the repressor, the effects include both a cognitive dissonance—a psychic discomfort of an individual facing two or more contradictory thoughts—and the learning of violent behaviors.[11] Cognitive dissonance, a term coined by psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1950s, implies an “incongruity or an inconsistency with the self…an imbalance that the individual feels compelled to overcome.” Military training attempts to negate this impulse through the dehumanization of the “victim,” causing a progressive distancing between repressor and victim. When the repressor fails to distance himself from the victim, this can sometimes cause the repressor to turn against those forcing him to use violence. These psychosocial conditions may account for the high incidence of former state agents’ involvement in violent crime and violent protest.
The psychosocial effects of political repression on the victim include those produced by the different levels of physical damage suffered from a violent act. And being subjected to violence increases the victim’s levels of frustration and aggression towards the repressor. In turn, the repressor escalates the levels of repression necessary to contain the growing levels of frustration and aggression.[12]
The psychosocial effects of violent repression on the spectator differ according to the degree of identification between the spectator and the victims. When spectators identify with the victims, vicarious learning occurs. In this case, the punishment applied to the victims may cause the spectators to modify their performances and adopt “clandestine attitudes,” thereby evading the repressive forces. This does not, however, necessarily alter their real behavior, which is the ultimate goal of political repression. On the contrary, it tends to increase the spectator’s aggressiveness against the repressor. When spectators do not identify with victims, then the victims are perceived, at the least, as scapegoats or persons who deserve to be punished. Regardless of identification between spectators and victims, each scenario instills the expediency of political violence and its direct application in the resolution of social conflict.[13]
The systematic and protracted use of state terror reinforced violent cultural attitudes with regard to resolving various kinds of conflict—personal, communal and social—in Salvadoran society. Indeed, the psychosocial effects of political violence not only reinforced violent cultural patterns among the direct participants of the civil war but in society as a whole.
The transition to democracy—and from war to peace—in El Salvador occurred in the context of two major socioeconomic transitions: the implementation of neoliberal economic policies and the collapse of the agricultural economy, starting in the 1980s and extending into the 1990s. Neoliberal policies such as the drastic reduction of the state apparatus, diminished investment in key social areas, attempts to privatize health care and education, mass layoffs of public workers and the privatization of the most important state assets have all deeply deteriorated most Salvadorans’ quality of life.
Neoliberal policies and the collapse of the agricultural economy generated two major transformations in El Salvador. First, there was a veritable exodus from the devastated countryside to Salvadoran urban centers, the United States and other countries. El Salvador’s cities experienced rapid and chaotic growth. In the 1970s, 84 urban centers comprised 35% of the population, but by the 1990s, these accounted for 51% of the population. The city of Soyapango, for example, registered a population growth of up to 1100% during the 1990s.[14] Second, a new financial oligarchy emerged, profiting not only from the economic transition imposed by the IMF and World Bank, but also from channeling a major source of income for the Salvadoran economy: the remittances of Salvadorans living abroad.[15] Different sources estimate that between 25% and 30% of Salvadorans now live in the United States. Los Angeles has more Salvadoran residents than any Salvadoran city except San Salvador.
Agrarian collapse, urbanization and neoliberal economics in the 1980s and 1990s pushed indicators of social exclusion to unprecedented levels. Although official government reports tend to present a rosier picture, at least half of the population is still unable to fulfill its basic nutritional requirements, 35% lack access to public health facilities, unemployment is on the rise, and living conditions in both city and countryside are rapidly deteriorating.[16]
According to some analysts, an undeniable link exists between widespread social exclusion and increasing levels of social violence. Others make no distinction between social violence and social exclusion, believing the deprived conditions that prevent the satisfaction of basic human needs should in themselves be considered a primary form of social violence [See “War and Peace…” p. 34]. Still, the deterioration of social networks, unemployment, school attendance, urban overcrowding, public housing deficits and poverty are closely related factors that link directly to social violence, specifically family and youth violence. Not surprisingly, the strains on the family unit resulting from social exclusion become instrumental in the proliferation of gangs and youth violence.[17]
The “consciousness of exclusion,” meaning the subjective perception of the socially excluded about their situation and the causes of that situation, is likely connected to the use of violence as a method of recovering social and political power.[18] The persistence of sharp inequalities between an affluent minority and the socially excluded majority along with the unfulfilled expectations of the democratic transition are sources of frustration, resentment and even aggressiveness. Ultimately, the “consciousness of exclusion” in its deeply ideological sense can even bolster the development of a “revolutionary consciousness,” which Gramsci deems decisive in creating crises of hegemony.
According to a recent study conducted by Wim Savenije and Katharine Andrade-Eekhoff in the metropolitan area of San Salvador, social exclusion and “perverse social organizations,” such as gangs and drug dealers, form a vicious circle in many marginal urban communities. They concluded that when “society denies social citizenship and its corresponding rights to people who live in precarious conditions, it is creating physical, social and political edges. The abandonment [of these communities] on the part of authorities allows others to assume the role of authorities, even if they are gangs, drug dealers or criminal groups.” In the five marginal communities included in their study, residents are under constant threat by gangs and drug dealers who exercise territorial control over public spaces such as alleys, entries and exits to the community, common and recreational areas. In sum, poverty, social stigmatization, overcrowding, lack of public spaces and “perverse social organizations” create formidable obstacles to achieve even basic human development in these marginal communities.[19]
Another principal factor in the vicious spiral of violence is the proliferation of firearms and explosives. Dominant cultural attitudes favor the possession, the carrying and the frequent use of guns in what is increasingly being called a “culture of arms.” Despite the massive destruction of weaponry at the end of the civil war, the postwar period brought a dramatic increase in the number of small firearms in civilian hands.[20] The national registry of firearms reported 160,000 legally registered weapons in 2003 and experts estimate that civilians illegally own at least 200,000 more. Incidences of violent crimes involving firearms are extremely high. Out of the 44 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000, 32 involved the use of guns.[21] The use of M-67 hand grenades provided by the U.S. government to the Salvadoran Armed Forces during the civil war is yet another element in this ecology of violence. Every year, an indeterminate number of these lethal artifacts are used in criminal activities or cause accidental injuries to numerous victims.
The culture of arms in contemporary Salvadoran society remains unchallenged by the tremendous lack of adequate gun control. In fact, a 1999 bill that actually facilitates the proliferation of firearms—including modified weapons (semiautomatic rifles)—passed with the backing of right-wing legislators.[22] What’s more, a powerful group of gun distributors promote firearms through unrestricted advertising in the local media, creating the impression that the acquisition of firearms is a basic need under the present state of insecurity. With increasing instances of armed violence, the state is unable to ensure the security of its citizens, which in a sense encourages or prompts citizens to buy more guns.
The state institutions that emerged during the transition to democracy have been unable to cope with the complexity of social violence in El Salvador. The drastic reduction of the state’s resources and structures, the state’s incapacity to regulate economic processes and widespread corruption perhaps explain the lack of results produced by three consecutive ARENA (1989-2004) governments on this explosive issue. Also, the government responds to contemporary violence with rather simplistic police and judicial approaches; the recently initiated “Mano Dura” (Heavy Hand) plan against the gangs is a perfect example.
ARENA’s apparent failures on these issues did not stop it from winning the March 2004 presidential election with approximately 58% of the vote. The FMLN maintained its position as the largest opposition party with 36%. The highly confrontational electoral campaign, including rhetoric by U.S. State Department officials, played on Salvadorans’ worst fears: the escalation of violence, the loss of remittances from relatives in the United States and higher levels of unemployment.
Even though President-elect Tony Saca promises to eradicate crime and violence by strengthening the public security policies of current President Francisco Flores, it is uncertain how the new ARENA government will be able to accomplish an objective that has eluded the party’s administrations for 14 years. It seems obvious that ARENA’s neoliberal policies and authoritarian inclinations have proven inadequate in addressing the deeper roots of violence and crime—namely, psychosocial trauma, social exclusion and impunity. In the meantime, tragically, violence continues to claim the lives of thousands of Salvadoran citizens.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joaquín M. Chávez is a Ph.D. candidate at New York University’s department of history. He worked as a research consultant for the United Nations Development Program in El Salvador on issues of social violence. The title of his most recent publication is Tierra, conflicto.
NOTES
1. Sergio Adorno, “Exclusión socieconómica y violencia urbana,” Dimensiones de la violencia (San Salvador: UNDP, 2003), p. 26.
2. William Godnick, “Las armas ligeras y pequeñas en centroamérica,” Dimensiones de la violencia, p. 99.
3. Angel Saldomando, “Violencia e inseguridad en la america central: de la guerra a la gestión cotidiana de la violencia,” Violencia en una sociedad en transición (San Salvador: UNDP, 1998), p. 77. Also see UNDP, El Salvador, armas de fuego y violencia (San Salvador: UNDP, 2003), p. 164.
4. José Miguel Cruz, “Los factores posibilitadores de la violencia en El Salvador,” Violencia en una sociedad en transición, pp. 91-93.
5. UNDP, El Salvador, armas de fuego y violencia, p. 142.
6. Patricia Alvarenga, Cultura y ética de la violencia El Salvador, 1880-1932 (San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1996), pp. 44-45.
7. Patricia Alvarenga, Cultura y ética, p. 349.
8. The Commission worked with a sample of 22,000 denunciations of “grave human right violations,” occurring between 1980 and July 1991, and with 18,000 denunciations obtained from indirect sources. From the total denunciations, 60% correspond to extra judicial executions; 25% to forced disappearances; and more than 20% to torture. Of the total number of denunciations, 85% implicated state agents: the armed forces, 60%; security forces, 25%; paramilitary forces, 20%; and death squads, 10%. The FMLN was implicated in 5% of cases. Truth Commissions: Reports: El Salvador, United States Institute of Peace, 2001, .
9. Among the recommendations of the TCR are the non-participation in public administration and political life of persons accused of human rights violations, compensation to victims of state violence and measures to promote national reconciliation—monument to victims, a day of national mourning, promoting peace education etc.
10. Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 76.
11. Ignacio Martín-Baró, “The Psychological Value of Violent Political Repression,” Writings for a Liberation Psychology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 155-57.
12. Ignacio Martín-Baró, “The Psychological Value of Violent Political Repression,” pp. 150-62.
13. Ignacio Martín-Baró, “The Psychological Value of Violent Political Repression,” pp. 163-64.
14. Rubén Zamora, “Participación y democracia en El Salvador,” Pasos hacia una nueva convivencia: Democracia y participación en centroamerica, Eds. Ricardo Córdova Macías, et al (San Salvador: FUNDAUNGO, 2001), p. 74.
15. Currently, the $2 billion sent by Salvadorans living in the United States in remittances to their families in El Salvador represents 15% of the GNP. See Joaquín Mauricio Chávez Aguilar, “Dimensión histórica de los acuerdos de paz,” A 10 años de los acuerdos de paz de El Salvador (San Salvador: CEPAZ, 2002), pp. 44-45.
16. The Survey of Homes of 1997 (“Encuesta de hogares y propósitos multiples”) conducted by the Salvadoran government. Cited in Carlos Guillermo Ramos, “Marginación, exclusión social y violencia,” Violencia en una sociedad en transición ensayos (San Salvador: UNDP, 2000) pp. 19-37.
17. Not necessarily of the family structure, but other factors such as adult supervision, protection and emotional support of children. See Marcela Smutt and Jenny Miranda, El fenómeno de las pandillas en El Salvador (San Salvador: FLACSO, 1998), p. 10.
18. Carlos Guillermo Ramos, “Marginación, exclusión social y violencia,” p. 42.
19. Wim Savenije and Katharine Andrade-Eekhoff, Conviviendo en la orilla: violencia y exclusión social en el área metropolitana de San Salvador (San Salvador: FLACSO, 2003), pp. 153-159, 204.
20. In 1993 the UN Security Council reported the destruction of the FMLN arsenal (a total of 10,230 weapons). See Joaquín Mauricio Chávez Aguilar, “El Control de armas y la violencia,” VIII Coloquio: Violencia y salud (San Salvador: University of El Salvador, 1999), p. 67.
21. William Godnick, “Las armas ligeras y pequeñas en centroamérica,” Dimensiones de la violencia, pp. 93 and 99.
22. The “Law of Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Similar Articles” was approved in June 1999 by the National Assembly with the backing of ARENA and the Party for National Conciliation (PCN).
