Critical Code Switching: The Effects of
Democratization in El Salvador
Dean Search
Dr. Hilary Parsons Dick
Conflict and Inequality in Latin America
29 April 2013
Critical code switching was the main focus of Ellen Moodie’s composition of El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty and the Transition to Democracy. This term surfaced after a peace agreement ended the civil war in El Salvador in 1992. When a civil war ends there is the common belief that all violence ends. However, this was not the case in El Salvador and violence continued after peace was supposedly established. In order to diverge the attention of continued violence within its country, El Salvador’s government sought to “re-label” the
…show more content…
This was exemplified when there were executions of 22 members of the FMLN between June and September of 1993 (Witte 2011). This suggested a renewal of death squad style assassinations and hinted at the everlasting presence of political crime in El Salvador.
In addition, Cristiani’s exploitation of his people through critical code switching laid a foundation of resentment between the citizens of El Salvador and their government. The citizens witnessed the political crime continuing past what they thought was a peace agreement and Cristiani simply deflected their concerns by attributing it as random, non-critical crime. Therefore, the divide between the government and its people was widening and impeding their goal of democratization. A specific example of the civilian’s resentment was when El Salvador’s legislature passed an amnesty law that granted freedom of persecution to all war criminals. This occurred in 1993 after a UN supervised, Truth Commission investigated human right abuses committed during El Salvador’s civil war (McPhaul 2013). By failing to bring the war criminals to justice and downplaying the atrocities they committed and were continuing to commit post-war, Cristiani and the government had injected a sense of resentment into the people that sought retribution. As governing leader, Cristiani had to deal with the
Americas Watch. 1991. El Salvador’s Decade of Terror: Human Rights since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
El Salvador is a country known for its beautiful beaches, mountainous landscape, and coffee export. Unfortunately, this perfect picture is only a wall that hides the true violence that occurs in the country. El Salvador’s violence is an ongoing cycle, so how does today’s violence differ and compare from the violence in the 1980’s? The differences and similarities of violence in El Salvador from now and then involve root cause, political involvement, and economic issues.
Imagine living in a country where you know you could die at any moment but don’t know how much longer till it happens. That was how much of the population of El Salvador used to feel when the government could not control the big coffee corporations. These out of control corporations, highly feared that the people would want to revolt against them so they hired murderers to kill innocent people to spread fear in the minds of the people of El Salvador. Fear, hate, and sorrow were the common feelings felt by the poor and innocent major population of El Salvador caused by the evil wrongdoings of the government during October 1979 – 16 January 1992. This is how the main character, Jose Luis, of the novel “Mother Tongue” by Demetria Martinez, felt before escaping his beautiful yet over constantly dangerous country, which depended on its cash crop, coffee beans to sell on a foreign market as the country’s main income. However, following the stock-market crash of 1929, a drop in coffee prices became apparent and affected everyone in El Salvador, but the poor especially. Making things worse, the glorious United States was funding the men whom were doing all the innocent killings with more weapons and money to increase their military power. So for Jose Luis the safe haven that he had escaped to was also blatantly funding the war that was killing so many innocent people he knew and had forced him to escape for his own safety. With nowhere else to go in order to find safety the United
About eleven years after the Massacre took place; a survivor named Rufina Amaya Márquez came forward and shared her story, an eye witness account of what happened at El Mozote (Danner 7). Much of the world, including the United States refused to believe her (Danner 8). The United States knew the Salvadoran government and the military were fighting left-wing rebels, who, they believed to be pro-communist, but when Rufina’s story appeared on the
and a woman lay work were raped and killed by El Salvador’s national guard soldiers. Many of the innocent murders were
For twelve years (1980-1992), El Salvador suffered this brutal civil war and saw some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin American history. The government refused to attend peace talks by the FMLN and the FMLN refused to participate in elections knowing it results would be rigged. The military tried to kill all suspected rebels and the FMLN damaged anything that supported the government’s economy. Throughout the war there was so much human rights violations such as subjecting civilians to torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, mutilation, mass rape, massacres, summary executions, landmines and indiscriminate bombing. As the result, by the end of the civil war about 75,000 people were killed, sadly most of which were civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. The intensity of military repression and constant fear provoked massive northern migration to the United States. By the mid-1980s almost one-fifth of the Salvadoran population was living in the United
The first Ley Anti-Mara was immediately controversial. It criminalized gang association, allowing El Salvadoran police forces to arrest and imprison suspected gang members on the spot. The law also allowed the courts to try suspected gang members under the age of eighteen as adults. Moreover, the Ley Anti-Mara spells out a list of criminal offenses such as harassing a person on neighborhood streets in a threatening manner, fighting in groups of two or more in a public setting, and communicating or identifying themselves with maras by way of signs or tattoos.
In 1980 El Salvador’s civil war officially began. Thousands of people were kidnapped and killed. Church workers were abducted, raped and killed, yet again the peace talks did not begin until 1984 and the Peace Accords of El Salvador was not signed until 1992. Between those twelve years 75,000 people died as a result of the civil war and most of these people were completely innocent.
Throughout history, instances of genocide, mass murder, and extreme acts of violence are widespread and pervade through every culture and society. As demonstrated by Panh, Lifton, and O’Brien, similar examples of excessive violence can occur in widely different situations. In order for such violence to occur, there first must exist certain systematic factors. In this paper, I will argue that conditions of instability within a country allow for changes in belief and perception, and these changed perceptions leads to dehumanization and the loss of human rights. The Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide and the Vietnam War, all follow this pattern to some extent. First, I will compare and contrast the ways in which the Holocaust and Cambodian genocide follow this pattern, as well as explore the separate factors within each and possible solutions to these factors. Next, I will discuss the dramatically different Vietnam War, compare and contrast it to the other two, and explore how the uniqueness of the Vietnam War impacts the possible solutions for the loss of human rights within this situation.
Throughout 1939-1971, El Salvador was run by a military-style dictatorship, causing those who had land and wealth to be stripped from them just because they could. According to Encyclopedia Britannica the persistence of this dictatorship can be partly credited to Augustin Farabundo Marti, who forced the Salvadorian Communist Party (2017). Proving to be a catalyst for conflicts for years to come.
Twentieth century El Salvador is made up of violence, suffering, and hardships. After the independence of El Salvador, the elite took control of this country which produced discontent amongst the lower classes. During the 1920’s this discontent grew because of political abuse and increased poverty. According to John Chasteen in Born In Blood and Fire, Salvadoran indigenous people were pushed into volcanic land by the
The Central American counties of the Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are considered the most dangerous countries in the world that are not at war. The region is very unstable due to weak governments and gangs. The gangs in these countries rule the streets taking innocent lives, sex trafficking and rapimg women and children, while the government does little to stop them. The violence started at different times in these countries. In Honduras during the 1980s the right- winged rebel group, the Contras housed themselves in the country. El Salvador’s violence dates back to 1979 with the Civil war. This war was between the government’s military and the leftiest
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, Latin America was dominated by authoritarian military regimes and immense human rights violations. Especially in Chile and El Salvador, where human rights abuses were rampant during Pinochet’s dictatorship and the Salvadoran civil war. The region is still dealing with the legacy of terror from its authoritarian past. Cath Collins, a professor and researcher in the School of Political Science at the University of Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, runs a project mapping recent human rights trials in Chile. A recent book by Collins, Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador, describes the struggle to obtain justice for human rights violations in two countries
The author’s understanding of violence is extended beyond the text and into the political history of Latin America, full of neo-colonial repression, racial discrimination and struggles.
It is now obvious that countries in Central America have been plagued by civil war, economic crisis, election fraud to finally transition into a political system granting the population the freedom to elect their leaders. El Salvador is no different than Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. One might notice that such issues arise due to political unrest in the region (Central America), thus creating a pattern of social, political and economic instability.