Beyond Displacement

Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War

Molly Todd

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780299250041
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299250034
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

During the civil war that wracked El Salvador from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, the Salvadoran military tried to stamp out dissidence and insurgency through an aggressive campaign of crop-burning, kidnapping, rape, killing, torture, and gruesome bodily mutilations. Even as human rights violations drew world attention, repression and war displaced more than a quarter of El Salvador's population, both inside the country and beyond its borders. Beyond Displacement examines how the peasant campesinos of war-torn northern El Salvador responded to violence by taking to the hills. Molly Todd demonstrates that their flight was not hasty and chaotic, but was a deliberate strategy that grew out of a longer history of collective organization, mobilization, and self-defense.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: A People without History
• 1. Remapping the Tierra Olvidada
• 2. Organizing Flight: The Guinda System
• 3. Internationalizing La Guinda
• 4. The Politics of Exile
• 5. Salvadorans to the Soul: Citizen Refugees and La Lucha
• 6. (Re)Writing National History from Exile
• 7. ¡Retorno! The Grassroots Repopulation Movement
• Conclusion: Campesinos, Collective Organization, and Social Change
• Notes
• References
• Index