The atrocities committed by the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of El Salvador during the country’s civil war (1979–92) triggered the creation of numerous solidarity organizations. Although many of these organizations were based in the United States, the movement was transnational from the beginning. Indeed, the Salvadoran solidarity movement took a form that was different from its Nicaraguan and Guatemalan counterparts—more centralized and integrated with the Salvadoran revolutionary movement. While Salvadoran immigrant activists founded their own organizations, they also reached out to North American citizens from diverse sectors, encouraging them to form their own organizations and creating a coalition between both groups to address the injustices committed by the Salvadoran and U.S. governments.
In doing so, the Salvadorans were drawing on their own recent history of grassroots political mobilization, especially the first successful nationwide strike against the military dictatorship, launched in 1968 by the National Association of Salvadoran Educators–21st of June (ANDES–21 de Junio). The strike galvanized support from students, parents, unions, and university students, creating the template for how to successfully challenge the dictatorship by creating blocs of organizations, with each bloc targeting a particular sector of society. In the United States, this approach was re-created with blocs linked to one of the factions of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Salvadorans and other Central Americans had established a strong presence in the United States, making up a significant portion of the Latino population in San Francisco’s Mission District, where the Central American solidarity movement first emerged.1 At the end of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, most Salvadoran migrants were fleeing the intensifying repression of the dictatorship (1932–92). The movement took a qualitative leap strategically in 1980, when it began focusing on mobilizing North Americans who would pressure their own government to end military aid to El Salvador. A huge tactical advance also accompanied this escalation, as this strategy was put into effect by creating large national organizations with centralized leadership structures connected to local chapters, which replaced the small, decentralized committees that had existed until then. These organizations worked to amplify Salvadoran activists’ calls to change U.S. policy and actively sought to stop the Reagan administration’s aid to the Salvadoran government.
Much of these organizations’ success has been a result of their mobilizing methods, which are based on a model of creating transnational bonds between Central and North American citizens. Organizations like the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the SHARE Foundation, New El Salvador Today (NEST), Medical Aid for El Salvador, Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN), El Rescate, and Movimiento Amplio en Solidaridad con el Pueblo Salvadoreño (MASPS) organized U.S. speaking tours of Salvadorans and disseminated refugees’ testimonies. Later in the 1980s, they took delegations to El Salvador so that activists could learn firsthand about the Salvadoran struggle.
The Salvadorans provided the signal flare—that is, the denunciation, on the ground information, moral imperative, and the call to action—while the North Americans provided the social networks, political capital, and knowledge of U.S. government and society, while also offering support to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who poured into the United States during the 1980s. Creating direct people-to-people links intensified North Americans’ solidarity with Salvadorans, as both groups worked together in coordinated fashion to achieve a common goal: ending U.S. support to the Salvadoran government. This human bond, forged in political struggle, has played a vital role in this transnational movement’s history and has been key to its effectiveness and longevity. It will continue to be the cornerstone of the movement’s success.
Héctor Perla Jr. is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The first U.S.-born Salvadoran to earn a doctorate in political science, he works with various grassroots Central American social justice organizations, including many of those mentioned in this article.
1. Cecilia Menjívar, Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America (University of California Press, 2000).
