Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Author(s): Mo Hume
Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 35, No. 5, Violence: Power, Force, and Social
Transformation (Sep., 2008), pp. 59-76
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Latin American Perspectives
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The Myths of Violence
Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador
by
Mo Hume
Empirical data gathered in El Salvador indicate that knowledge about violence there
is built upon an exclusionary and highly masculinist logic. Violence has come to be per
ceived as normal through a political project that has actively employed terror to pursue
its ends. This process has been made possible by a legitimization of violence as a key ele
ment of male gender identity. Political circumstances in El Salvador, principally the war,
have both nourished and reinforced a sense of gender identity based on polarization,
exclusion, and hegemony.
The economic, social, and political effects of the violent conflicts of past
decades still reverberate throughout much of Latin America. The effects of lim
ited (post)transition politics, thwarted opportunities for transforming the land
scapes of conflict, and aggressive neoliberalism have combined to deepen
historic structural inequalities in the region. In El Salvador, one of the most note
worthy and destructive characteristics of the period following the signing of the
peace accords in 1992 has been continued high levels of violence. With the end of
the war came a real hope for change in this small Central American republic. The
struggle had been long and hard, with huge costs in both human and material
terms. Around 80,000 people were killed and many more wounded. On a politi
cal level, the conflict had a deeply divisive effect on Salvadoran society, and the
country remains one of the most politically polarized in the region in the post
war period. A commonsense vision of "peace" is generally held up as antitheti
cal to war, but ongoing crime and violence both undermine the experience and
existence of peace and call into question its very meaning. In 2006, the average
number of murders per 100,000 citizens was 55.3 (OCAVI, 2007). El Salvador
stands out in "peace" as one of the most violent nations in the world. This ongo
ing postwar violence creates what Miguel Huezo Mixco (2000) has termed a crit
ical "paradox": efforts to achieve peace have only succeeded in increasing
violence and crime in El Salvador.
This article considers the historical context of postwar violence in El Salvador.
Recognizing the limitations of the term "postwar violence," I seek not to look at
the multiple causes of this problem but to explore the broad context in which
Mo Hume is a lecturer in politics at the University of Glasgow. She thanks Ronaldo Munck and
David Featherstone for their constructive engagement with these issues and their encourage
ment to develop some of these ideas in a more critical manner. She also thanks the reviewers for
their helpful comments and Armin Tchami for his patience. The research was made possible by
the generous support of the Economic and Social Research Council.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 162, Vol. 35 No. 5, September 2008 59-76
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X08321957
? 2008 Latin American Perspectives
59
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60 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 61
Scholars have identified the need to distinguish current from past patterns
of violence, often distinguishing between "political" violence during conflict
and more "social" or "economic" forms (Pereira and Davis, 2000; Moser and
Mcllwaine, 2004). In much of Latin America, "new expressions" of violence
have emerged alongside periods of democratic opening, peace building, and
economic liberalization (Cruz, 2003: 18). Existing conflicts, however, remain
"open" (Vilas, 1995: 183). In this context, Kooning and Kruijt (1999: 11) argue
that violence has become a "normal option" for many people in the region,
pointing to a broader "democratization" of aggression and force. While the
ubiquity and lethality of violence point to a certain normalization and, indeed,
the development of a "culture of violence" (Cruz and Gonz?lez, 1997; Torres
Rivas, 1999), we should be wary of simplistic explanatory frameworks that
risk pathologizing a people or rendering violence an inevitable outcome of
history. The recent literature is divided in its efforts to understand violence.
High levels of crime and aggression have been linked to the exclusionary
political economy of neoliberalism (Bourgois, 2001), the history of conflict and
militarized violence (Pereira and Davis, 2000), "fragile" democracies and
weak or failed states (Kooning and Kruijt, 1999 and 2004), and issues of cul
ture (Cruz and Gonz?lez, 1997). What unites this scholarship is an agreement
that violence is complex and multidimensional and rarely "coalesces" along a
single axis of conflict (P?caut, 1999).
It is precisely the variation and contestation of violence that hold a key to
understanding it. Not all violence is deemed normal. It is rare for violence to
be assessed merely in terms of the harm it causes, and neutral accounts of vio
lence do not exist. Some are deemed more "normal" than others. "Normal"
here refers not only to the frequency of the act but also to its perceived
legitimacy.
A major contribution of feminism has been to reject and reeval?ate much of
our "knowledge" about violence. Segal (1995: 234) states that the "first job of
feminists was to expose the myths" about violence. More than simply recog
nizing the multiple forms of violence that have been and continue to be hid
den from the public eye, this political project has also exposed and challenged
the localized persistence of inequalities that limit the broader human condi
tion (Campbell and Wasco, 2000). This makes it important to address not only
the material consequences of violence but also the logics within which it is
controlled. Analyzing the discourse around violence reveals much about
society's threshold for tolerating and contesting it (Kelly and Radford, 1996).
This exposes the power dynamics behind the very recognition of an act as vio
lent. It is essential to examine the ways in which cultural practices and belief
systems "can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form"
(Galtung, 1990: 291). Failing to acknowledge particular acts as violent not only
minimizes people's experience and denies them a voice but actively under
mines their pursuit of justice (Hume, 2004).
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62 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
There is no singular account of violence, and what is left out of the "official"
accounts is as at least as important as what is included. The "essential fact" of
violence is that not all citizens "recognize the same acts as violent, accordingly
such acts may be justified in different and even contradictory ways" (Torres
Rivas, 1999: 286). As Munck (in this issue) says, moral tension is inherent in all
violence, and the struggle for interpretation and analytical clarity often gener
ates conflictive assessments of violence. Feldman (1991; 2000), examining
Northern Ireland, argues that the dominant morality of violence is as much
about legitimating one act of violence over another as about the practice of
nonviolence.
In the politics of "peace" in El Salvador, the war remains a "contested past,"
where both sides continue to compete for ownership of the "official" version
of history (see Dawson, 2005, on Northern Ireland).2 Citizens still seek mini
mal acknowledgment of past state brutalities (Gaborit, 2007). Subaltern
groups in Salvadoran society, historically marginalized and denied a voice,
have been confronted with high levels of violence throughout their lives.
These same groups?peasants, workers, women and youth, to name but a
few?are also those least likely to have access to formal channels of justice.
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 63
to the point of being inevitable" (Bourdieu, 2001: 8). Exposing issues of sym
bolic violence invites us to examine how official knowledges work as instru
ments of normalization and limit individual and societal capacity to recognize
an act as violent. This process of "misrecognition" is not accidental but serves
to embed "symbolic violence" so that the "dominated" accept as legitimate
their own condition of domination and act as agents in its reproduction
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:167; see also Bourgois, 2001). The contribution
of feminism to this debate has been crucial for recognizing how dominant
patriarchal epistemologies limit what we know about violence and revealing
male domination as a key problem and consequence of violence (Campbell
and Wasco, 2000; Bourdieu, 2001; Burman, Batchelor, and Brown, 2001).
Hegemonic epistemologies of violence become not only normalized but
accepted as common sense, and this makes challenging them all the more dif
ficult. In El Salvador, Alvarenga (1996: 62) argues that state terror(ism) became
"part of the everyday and also fully integrated into a national culture, based
on the resolution of social conflict in all realms of power relations."3 Although
I recognize that the relationship between power and violence is far from
straightforward, violence has been a key resource for individuals and groups
wishing to secure domination and authority in both public and private realms.
For example, rape and torture have been commonly used as instruments with
which to exercise authority, demonstrate ownership, and demand respect
(Alvarenga, 1996). Nevertheless, these particularly gendered crimes are rarely
considered noteworthy or, indeed, recognized as violent (Hume, 2004). Tombs
(2006) indicates that gendered violence such as rape was systematically
excluded from the Truth Commission Report in El Salvador, despite the evi
dence of such crimes' having taken place. The glaring omission of such vio
lences demonstrates the hegemonic tone of gender relations in El Salvador.
It is, therefore, urgent to address not only the multiple forms of violence but
the processes by which they are internalized and reproduced. Dominant dis
course and hegemonic myths concerning violence influence the way individu
als and groups interact in a social context, creating the unspoken rules under
which social relations are enacted. The normalization of violence in the El
Salvador context affects individuals' ability to recognize this harmful force,
particularly its gendered expressions, which have become embedded in the
construction of both men's and women's gendered identities (Hume, 2004).
Furthermore, historic patterns of gendered discourse not only render such vio
lence "private" but also minimize its significance in national accounts of vio
lence. Considering the family and community as sites in which identity is
formed but also as sites of violence makes it possible to challenge accepted cat
egories of history and draws out elements of a national (gendered) culture.
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64 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
analyze which types of violence appear more normal than others, and the
family is the single most dangerous place for women and children (Kimmel,
2000). Radford and Kelly (1998: 73) point out that the twin concepts of "nor
malization" and "resistance" are relevant at both the macro and the micro
level in informing "local climates of tolerance and intolerance." Challenging
that which is deemed as "normal" undermines the acceptance of certain forms
of aggression. The women's movement in El Salvador has challenged and
resisted the pervasiveness and routinization of violence within the family in
recent years. Despite important legislative changes, normative notions of
appropriate behavior for men and women still make violence "acceptable" in
certain contexts to the point that it is not always recognized as violence
(Hume, 2004). Important to this analysis is unpacking popular conceptualiza
tions of real violence as "mindless," "incomprehensible," and "unpredictable"
(Dobash and Dobash, 1998: 141).
There exists a certain irony in the fact that people use and condemn violence
at the same time. To make sense of violence is to expose this inconsistency.
Accounts of violence are affected not only by individual subjectivity but also by
the dominant cultural and social mores that shape normative behavior. Violence
has been awarded a degree of functionality throughout Salvadoran history, par
ticularly in familial relations, where it is considered an important element of
good parenting. One woman recalled that, when her own mother punished her
by breaking her arm, a neighbor said, "You should learn to punish children.
Children aren't punished like animals; you should have got the belt and hit her
two or three times, not flattened her" (Maria Dolores, El Boulevar). This advice
was not seen as extreme; indeed, it was perceived as calming the excesses of the
mother's punishment. There are hierarchies of violence in which individuals
who have economic/social/political power consider it legitimate to use violence.
Indeed, Savenije and Andrade-Eekhoff (2003: 145) link this to notions of prop
erty: "Intimate relations are often confused with property relations." This ten
dency is not limited to familial relations but part of the tone of economic relations
in El Salvador (Alvarenga, 1996). In this particular example, violence against
children, from a parent's perspective, appears to makes sense. The objective is
clear, and the relationship between the parent and child is perceived as such that
the parent has a right/duty to bring the child up well. Violence is seen as being
effective because it gets results quickly. Esteban (El Boulevar) says:
I always punished them with the belt. Look, it's rubbish that some kids are going
to pay attention just because you don't let them watch television. Don't talk shit.
It's a lie. Or because you say I am not going to buy you cake. You have to pun
ish them, hit them where it hurts. It is necessary to use the belt on your children,
and don't talk to me about traumas. I am old, and I received those kinds of bru
tal punishments.
Such values are central to the reproduction of violence. They have become
deeply entrenched in ways of thinking about and understanding the world,
with the result that this man actively supports the use of violence against
children. He sees it as his duty as a father to discipline his children with vio
lence. He was subjected to violence and feels that it did him more good than
harm, so he continues to apply the same logic to his own parenting. Such values
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 65
are necessary to provide order to a messy reality. Value systems, however, are
not set in stone, and in this case the value involved is a mythical one. The per
ceived functionality of violence is passed on through the generations until it
becomes an element of normative behavior. While the notion that violence is
functional may be resonant in popular discourse, this is merely an enduring
social myth that serves to normalize this negative force in everyday life.
One of the most enduring myths of violence is its centrality to the perfor
mance of masculinity. Alvarenga (1996: 124) describes how corporal punish
ment was used by landowners to "make men" out of their employees and
reports that rape was a widespread practice whereby men took advantage of
their "property." The raping of women cut across class boundaries and was
rarely considered violence. Women were treated as men's property in both
legal and symbolic terms. They were not regarded as full citizens, and to this
day violence remains an important obstacle to women's citizenship.4
Although women have been key protagonists in social and political processes,
their histories are often ignored or accorded little significance (see Thomson,
1986; V?squez, Iba?ez, and Murguialday, 1996). Ignoring the voices of women
and other subaltern groups therefore has both material and discursive reper
cussions. This highly gendered violence cuts across class and ethnic bound
aries to underpin dominant notions of maleness.
Central to this male identity is both exposure to and use of violence. Men
are taught at an early age that they should not express emotion. They should
"be firm." The old adage "Boys don't cry" is central to what Salvadoran
society expects from men. As Beto (76 years old, El Boulevar) recalls:
[My mother] put my hands under the comal till they were covered in blisters. She
burnt me for a centavo. She hit me about 12 times with a piece of wood; she did
n't hit me with the sleeve of the machete but with whatever she found. I have
scars; my shin is broken from beatings with wood; here on my back I have two
other scars that became infected. I used to ask her why she was like that and she
would say, "Cry, you son of a bitch, cry." But I couldn't cry, I couldn't. She
wanted me to scream, but I couldn't cry. I was biting my tongue with each slap
that she gave me. . . .
I couldn't cry because I felt a lump here in my throat and that lump made me
feel as if I couldn't scream or shed tears. No, I couldn't do it. . . .
I didn't learn this, I was taught. "If you scream, I will kill you," she used to
say. So I had to cry on the inside, not on the outside but on the inside.
Both men and women actively participate in this highly gendered socializa
tion process (Welsh, 2001). Expressing emotion is regarded as expressing weak
ness, which "real" men are actively discouraged from doing. Domination and its
associated use of violence have ensured and reproduced male privilege, and this
model has been consistently reinforced by wider social and cultural practices. A
recent survey demonstrates that 61.3 percent of interviewees agree that "women
represent love and weakness and men intelligence and strength" (Orellana and
Arana, 2003: 89). This is indicative of the endurance and pervasiveness of hege
monic gendered myths. Failure to conform to this model means that manliness
is questioned, often leading to allegations of homosexuality. This does not mean
that all men use violence, but this model prescribes the accepted boundaries of
male behavior (Hume, 2004). Violence, drinking, and womanizing have become
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66 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
so bound up with dominant constructs of maleness that they are seen as natural.
This is to be expected. This model of hegemonic masculinity denies men agency,
choice, and the possibility of being different. Important to this notion of mas
culinity is that individual men cannot be held responsible for conforming to
socially prescribed roles (Greig, 2000).
Linked to this lack of accountability is the popular (mis)conception that
domestic abuse is not real violence but a "private" or "family" affair. Figures
are scarce on the incidence of violence against women in El Salvador, as in
most countries throughout the world, precisely because women are encour
aged to remain silent in order to "keep the peace" (Kelly, 2000). One source
estimates that around 57 percent of Salvadoran women suffer violence at the
hands of their male partners (Amaya C?bar and Palmieri, 2000, citing
Gonz?lez, 1997). Silencing women's experiences of violence strengthens patri
archal structures and ensures their reproduction.
Despite the fact that a focus group in El Boulevar stated that "it is rare the
home that is not affected by violence," most people still refuse to get involved
in cases of violence against women or children. The impunity that character
izes violence in the private sphere is not a problem unique to El Salvador but
a global one. There is a tacit acceptance of men's aggression, especially within
the family. This effectively denies women and children the right to have rights
and ensures impunity for many of the crimes of the private realm. Women's
position in society is structurally weaker than that of men, and their opportu
nities for agency are more limited. This has particular impact on their capa
city to defend themselves effectively against violence. Kelly (2000) reminds us
that women are active agents in resisting and surviving violence but that an
emphasis on the "agency" of the perpetrator effectively ignores such activity.
For example, narratives suggest that men have more "right" to use violence
than women because their gender identity prescribes the use of force. Women
as mothers may discipline their children with violence, since it is "for their
own good." Such notions of "right" are not just based on the legality of such
acts (for violence against women and children is now illegal) but are sup
ported by social and cultural norms. We have seen this in relation to the pun
ishment of children. According to Esteban (El Boulevar), who makes a
distinction between maltrato (abuse) of women and a golpe (thump): "This can
happen when, maybe the couple don't know each other very well, at the
beginning of a relationship perhaps, and maybe the partner is jealous or some
thing. Sometimes discomfort results in a slap." He considers this justified
"because it is just a slap because of the problem, it is not continuous."
Interestingly, his partner of over 20 years, Maria Dolores, spoke of several
episodes of violence in the course of their relationship, and the fact that the
instances of physical violence were isolated events lessened their severity in
her eyes. The violence in the relationship was minimal in comparison with
that in her relationship with a previous partner. She considered Esteban a
good man, and she loved him.
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 67
STRUCTURES OF COLLUSION
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68 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
FUNCTIONAL VIOLENCE?
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 69
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70 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
threat to the privileged position of the economic elite. In this way, violence
became functional, allowing the military to justify its usefulness to the oli
garchy and at the same time maintain its control of the state (Mason, 1999;
Williams and Walter, 1997; Stanley, 1996). The elite appear to have been con
tent to ignore military brutality in order to maintain their hegemonic position
but also to have actively bought into the rationalization and legitimization of
force as a political and economic tool. For citizens, La Matanza both demon
strated that the state was willing to employ genocidal tactics and provided a
reminder of the cost of dissent (Dunkerley, 1988: 340). "Extreme repression
helped create an impression of extreme danger" (Stanley, 1996: 53). In this
way, violence was constructed as functional and necessary for the national
interest.
For state violence to achieve a degree of functionality in El Salvador, it had
to engage local populations. It is here that violence can no longer be under
stood as merely the "problem of others, the behavior of others, the issue of
others" (Dobash and Dobash, 1998: 141). For violence to succeed, it had to
work within local worlds. The perpetrators of violence were not only invisible
death squads and uniformed combatants but neighbors, family members, and
friends. People speak about finding dead bodies strategically left in public
spaces to warn communities about the consequences of getting involved in
politics. Government-sponsored death squads used the area around El
Boulevar as a dumping ground for mutilated corpses. Throughout this time,
the military ransacked and looted the community on several occasions: "The
community was invaded by soldiers, and when they felt like it they carried
out raids, without warrants or anything. They came in and examined every
thing down to the last rag. They made us stand aside, and they took what they
liked" (Enrique, El Boulevar).
The effects of living and learning to survive in such an environment should
not be underestimated. Not only does the constant insecurity transform social
relations but widespread impunity deepens mistrust of agents of the state.
Das and Kleinman (2000) argue that in situations of extreme violence individ
uals lose a sense of the ordinary, but my empirical data indicate that instead
the context shapes and transforms what is considered ordinary, increasing
people's threshold for tolerating violence and dictating their responses.
Indeed, one of the most sustaining characteristics of survival in these com
munities has been silence and nonreaction.
State terror was a strategy calculated to inculcate silence and depoliticize
communities in times of political turmoil. Silence and isolation therefore
became important ways of coping with everyday political strife for many. In
La Via, which saw an influx of inhabitants during the war years, residents
ignored their new neighbors for fear of what their political allegiances might
be. In El Boulevar, neighbors denounced each other, and mistrust and fear
replaced historical social support networks. Interviewees told stories of ter
rible violence?both violence linked to the political conflict and that of a
more social and criminal nature. Inhabitants were divided in their alle
giance, supporting either government or left-wing forces, and were often
accused of informing on and even killing their neighbors (Enrique, El
Boulevar):
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 71
Here there were, there were people belonging to the death squads. My neighbor
behind was a real butcher. He belonged to ... a sniper squad, which was one
of the cruelest structures of the armed forces. Well, we had that neighbor there
and didn't know what was going on, then the, the, a relation of his was the one
who investigated the director of the Uni?n de Pobladores de Tugorios
[Organization of Marginal Communities?UPT] and the one that butchered him.
They killed him up here.
This strategy of total war as a means of social control at the grassroots level
was as much about instilling fear and terror in the population at large as about
wiping out specific targets. Individuals therefore began to adopt a code of
silence and minding one's own business in order to avoid problems. A
common theme that ran through many of the narratives from both communi
ties was noninvolvement in community dynamics, both past and present.
Individuals and communities learned that silence was the only option when
no one could be trusted and violence was an ever-present possibility. They tes
tified to feeling afraid of the orejas (informers), who were often neighbors or
family members: "In those days, anyone who said anything, who heard any
thing and spoke about it, was in trouble. You would find him with his ear cut
off" (Meche, El Boulevar). One woman from El Boulevar remembered that
none of her neighbors would use the communal toilets when she was there,
since they all suspected her of being a guerrilla. Gossip was the source of
much salacious information about people, and it acted as a detonator for
many physically and verbally violent reactions. Individuals were accused of
stoning their neighbors' houses, shouting insults, spreading rumors, and even
casting spells. Breaking the codes of silence in this context risked anything
from social ostracism to physical mutilation and even death. The threat of vio
lence can be just as powerful and debilitating as actual lived violence, and its
effects are long-lasting.
In addition, formal community structures in El Boulevar such as the junta
directiva (community residents' board) were monopolized by dominant polit
ical interests throughout the war years. In El Boulevar, members of
Organizaci?n Democr?tica Nacionalista (ORDEN) chose and changed the
members of the directive at will and informed on their neighbors: "Here they
were supposedly protecting the people, the community, but more than any
thing else they were informers. People didn't have a voice or a vote" (Enrique,
El Boulevar). This co-opted structure not only failed to represent the commu
nity but also actively worked to instill fear and mistrust in its inhabitants.
Continued high levels of violence and crime in the postwar era demon
strate that many communities have not been able to recover the trust of their
neighbors and that the silence learned in the war has become the ordinary.
There have been few opportunities to (re)build social trust since the signing of
the peace accords. While political violence has disappeared, silence remains a
defining characteristic of social relations (Meche, El Boulevar):
I say to my kids that living is not just about living; you have to learn how to live.
Learning how to live means only talking about good things, nothing dangerous.
It is better not to talk about dangerous things because, in the first instance, you
don't know who you are talking to, and another thing is that you can't do any
thing. If you just speak for the sake of it, you might offend the other person, and
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72 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
when they look for revenge, how do you defend yourself? That's how you have
to know how to learn to live.
This narrative reveals three key themes that are relevant to addressing the
topic of what makes violence possible. First, the degree of mistrust reveals
deep divisions that may be rooted in history. Second, there is the issue of feel
ing impotent against the enormity of violence. This does not mean that citi
zens do not resist and challenge violence but points to a larger structure of
impunity that still characterizes the Salvadoran state. Third, there is the issue
of revenge and the perceived inevitability of violence. Against this backdrop,
silence has multiple functions, and a code of silence still exists when address
ing issues of contemporary violence. A distinction should be made between
using silence as a survival strategy against violence and the silencing of vio
lence. Postwar El Salvador continues to be polarized by crime and violence.
For many citizens, continued fear makes the survival practices learned during
the war useful today. Enduring silences and the fragmentation of everyday
life are indicative not only of the indelible mark on social attitudes and behav
ior left by exposure to long-term political violence but also of continued expo
sure to terror. The immediacy of violence and a respect for authoritarian
practices that privilege order over civil liberties and human rights undermines
the very possibility of a democratic project.
CONCLUSIONS
Clutterbuck (1987: 101) argues that "violence or force may be the same in
any number of circumstances, but the legality of its use may differ. . . . The
'right' to use force does not make it right." This contestation over the "right
ness" or "wrongness" of violence goes to the heart of understanding its
destructive and productive potential. Analytical endeavors cannot escape the
inherent moral tension in the production of violence. I have explored some of
the ways in which violence is made possible in El Salvador, emphasizing the
discursive as well as the material practices of violence. It is an urgent task to
develop new political and analytical tools with which to approach postwar
violences. In an attempt to begin this exercise, I have explored some of the
myths and the symbolic structures of violence, examining the family, the state,
and the community as productive sites of violence. I have argued that upset
ting dominant myths of violence to explore its ordinariness can reveal some of
the hidden ways in which violence acquires legitimacy. Notions of normalized
violence have been revealed to reproduce hierarchies based on class, ethnicity,
and gender. A key focus has been on masculine domination as both a discur
sive and a material tool for legitimizing the practice of violence.
This reality is not, however, uncontested, and violence is not an inevitable
outcome of a monolithic and unchanging culture. Structures of domination
have been disputed and challenged by subaltern groups on multiple levels
throughout Salvadoran history. The revolutionary project of the 1980s con
tested the political and economic hegemony of the military and the oligarchy,
albeit within a broader context of violent struggle. More recently, the women's
movement has contested male hegemony and encouraged men to think about
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 73
NOTES
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74 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
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Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 75
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76 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
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