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Laying the Groundwork: The Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Michael W. Foley
Michael W. Foley*
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America in Washington (DC)
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Extract

The armed conflict that wracked El Salvador from 1980 to the signing of the Peace Accords in January 1992 began and ended in a still unresolved struggle over civil society: over what expression civil society would be allowed to take, over its influence in public debate, over who would control it, and how. If the Right fought to protect its own economic power, it fought first of all on the ground of civil society, attempting by all means available to subordinate, or subdue, the forces unleashed via the wave of organizing by church groups, unions, and the Left in the 1960s (Baloyra, 1982; Lungo U., 1987; Montgomery, 1995). The targets of the famous “death squads,” which emerged well before the eruption of civil war in 1981, were preponderantly representatives of organized civil society: union leaders, teachers, community organizers, health workers, catechists. While political militants have been the most prominent among recent victims of the violence carried out by resurgent death squads, the struggle going on in El Salvador today is essentially a struggle over the character and direction of the new civil society that has arisen in the wake of the war and the Peace Accords.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 67 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1996

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