Everyday Revolutionaries - Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador (Hardcover, New)

In Revolutionaries on the Postwar Highway: Disillusionment in El Salvador, the author chronicles the political violence, collective trauma, and continued injustice for the people of El Salvador as they transition to peace and democracy following the twelve-year civil war between the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the Salvadoran government. The book is centered largely upon twenty months of fieldwork spanning from 1993-2007 in the former war zone of Chalatenango. Following the war, this area was the focus of national and international reconstruction projects. The book is mainly structured around two central moments, the immediate postwar period of reconstruction (1993-1998), and the more recent period of emigration to the United States (2000-2007). Giving a long term view of what happens in the aftermath of a protracted war, Silber traces the lives of the rank and file members of this historic struggle for justice and reconstruction, following community members along their journey from revolutionary activists to postwar development recipients and ambivalent grassroots actors, to in many cases now undocumented migrants. Silber pays particular attention to the gendered dimensions of the clash between a revolutionary social project and the demands of postwar reconstruction and neoliberalism. She argues that the dynamics of postwar rebuilding served to remarginalize members of destroyed communities. This book will contribute to the recent wave of anthropological scholarship on political violence, providing an important case study on transitional justice and reconciliation.