Revolution and Accommodation. Post-Insurgency in El Salvador

In 1980, El Salvador fragmented revolutionary movement united to form the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN). This Front subsequently fought a war against the U.S. backed Salvadoran military which culminated in military stalemate. After the 1992 Peace Accords, the guerrilla army demobilized and the FMLN became a political party. Though the right-wing government party won the elections in subsequent years, the FMLN soon consolidated itself as the main opposition party. From 1997 on, it won several important municipalities. In 2009, the FMLN won the presidential elections and constituted the first left-wing government in the country’s history. This study presents a retrospective analysis of the postwar legacy of El Salvador’s insurgent movement. It demonstrates how and why the insurgent relations forged during the war continued to be highly relevant throughout the postwar period, and how these internal relations shaped the development of the former insurgents as a political electoral force. At war’s end, the former insurgents sought different ways of collective and individual accommodation to the emerging circumstances. Different insurgents leaders and subgroups held different cards that facilitated–or hindered–social, political and economic ascendency in the postwar context. Drawing on Bourdieu and others, this study looks at post-insurgency as a social field: a historically constructed space of relationships between multiple social agents that were previously connected through participation in insurgency. This perspective emphasizes the importance of the movement’s internal relations and of its modifications over time. The study of internal relations of a movement that operated clandestinely for large part of its existence is a delicate and complicated task. Hence, the study offers three detailed longitudinal case studies providing a window into parts of the movement, drawing on the disciplines of social history and political ethnography. The case studies treat postwar affairs in a peasant community founded by the insurgent movement, a review of the life trajectories of guerrilla fighters identified from historical photographs, and an inside account of the movement of FMLN veterans and their political activities, respectively. These case studies show how post-insurgent accommodations led to more pronounced internal inequalities, growing postwar disillusionment and the rise of patronage and clientelism in different segments of the movement. The contentious accommodation of internal relations played a key role in the postwar development of El Salvador’s former insurgent movement. This finding holds broader relevance for research on post-insurgent transitions. It posits the need to look beyond the strictly military and political aspects of insurgency and pay attention to the insurgents’ social history, including clandestine connections, in research on post-insurgent transitions. It challenges social scientists to consider the myriad ways in which insurgent networks may reconvert to adapt to the emerging circumstances of peace, and how such reconversions may impact on post-war societies. The interpersonal relations shaped in the insurgent movement might well constitute one of the most enduring legacies of insurgency in its aftermath. In the case of El Salvador, it has been a crucial part of what former insurgents worked with to gain postwar ascendency.