Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Expands and challenges the dominant narrative of the Salvadoran insurgency and civil war, emphasizing the central role played by various cohorts of urban and peasant intellectuals.
Examines the overlooked roles that both peasant leaders—particularly in Chalatenango, a northern region in El Salvador—and Catholic intellectuals played in the origins of the Salvadoran insurgency.
Introduces the notion of a "pedagogy of revolution" as a category of historical analysis, which informed the ideology and politics of both the insurgency and revolutionary social movements in 1970s El Salvador.
Examines the reverberations of the Cuban revolution and U.S. Cold War foreign policy in Salvadoran politics in the 1960s and 1970s.
Draws on new interviews and previously unavailable archival sources to offer fresh insights into the history of the civil war in El Salvador.

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Description

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance offers a ground-up history and fresh interpretation of the polarization and mobilization that brought El Salvador to the eve of civil war in 1980. Challenging the dominant narrative that university students and political dissidents primarily formed the Salvadoran guerrillas, Joaquín Chávez argues that El Salvador's socioeconomic and political crises of the 1970s fomented a groundswell of urban and peasant intellectuals who collaborated to spur larger revolutionary social movements.

Drawing on new archival sources and in-depth interviews, Poets and Prophets of the Resistance contests the idea that urban militants and Roman Catholic priests influenced by Liberation Theology single-handedly organized and politicized peasant groups. Chávez shows instead how peasant intellectuals acted as political catalysts among their own communities first, particularly in the region of Chalatenango, laying the groundwork for the peasant movements that were to come. In this way, he contends, the Salvadoran insurgency emerged in a dialogue between urban and peasant intellectuals working together to create and execute a common revolutionary strategy—one that drew on cultures of resistance deeply rooted in the country's history, poetry, and religion. Focusing on this cross-pollination, this book introduces the idea that a "pedagogy of revolution" originated in this historical alliance between urban and peasant, making use of secular and Catholic pedagogies such as radio schools, literacy programs, and rural cooperatives. This pedagogy became more and more radicalized over time as it pushed back against the increasingly repressive structures of 1970s El Salvador.

Teasing out the roles of little-known groups such as the politically active "La Masacuata" literary movement, the contributions of Catholic Action intellectuals to the New Left, and the overlooked efforts of peasant leaders, Poets and Prophets of the Resistance demonstrates how trans-class political and cultural interactions drove the revolutionary mobilizations that anticipated the Salvadoran civil war.

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Intellectuals of the Resistance
Chapter One: Dreaming of Reform
Chapter Two: University Apostles
Chapter Three: Peasant Intellectuals in Chalatenango
Chapter Four: La Masacuata's War
Chapter Five: The Making of the Internal Enemy
Chapter Six: Insurgent Intellectuals
Chapter Seven: Crisis and Rural Insurgency
Conclusion: From Resistance to War
Acronyms
Diagrams
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Author Information

Joaquín M. Chávez, Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago

Joaquín M. Chávez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance

Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Reviews and Awards

"The author provides a model for understanding the intersection of 'old' and 'new' Lefts in building a powerful revolutionary movement that scholars elsewhere will want to emulate. This is a key work for understanding the origins and evolution of one of Latin America's best-organized social movements." - M. Becker, CHOICE

"A splendid achievement. This illuminating book radically decenters the narrative of one of the most important episodes of the Cold War in Latin America, putting peasant intellectuals at the center of the story" - Héctor Lindo-Fuentes, Fordham University

"Bringing to light the neglected pre-history of the Salvadoran Civil War, this remarkable book addresses unanswered questions about its surprising origins. Why was social mobilization so resilient in the face of massive state repression? How was widespread protest so quickly transformed into a powerful insurgency? Drawing on detailed oral histories and unexploited archives, Chávez shows how peasant intellectuals built alliances with urban activists and progressive Catholics to organize protests and then armed rebellion" - Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University

"A path-breaking study that helps us understand the political roots and leadership of one of Latin America's most unique insurgencies. By carefully reconstructing the formation of leaders and their organic connections to different organizations, opposition movements, and social sectors (especially peasants), Chávez has not only made a tremendous contribution to the study of the Salvadoran revolution but also, through his method and resourceful research, to the study of all revolutions in Latin America" - Aldo Lauria-Santiago, Rutgers University

"Poets and Prophets of the Resistance is a powerful account of the intellectual and political world of El Salvador's Left-a universe of ferment against centuries of inequality that brought the country to civil war. Chávez's measured prose brings to life the brave intellectuals who breathed a new history into El Salvador" - Vijay Prashad, author of The Death of the Nation and the Future of Arab Revolution

"Joaquín Chávez's book is a remarkable achievement both for the depth of breadth of its archival and oral historical research and for its interpretive reach. His empirically grounded argument highlighting the exceptionally important role of peasant intellectuals in the origins of the Salvadoran mobilization and insurgency is a major contribution to the extant historiography." - Jeffrey L. Gould, Harvard University

"this book greatly enriches our understanding of the cultural roots of revolution in El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America." - Roger Atwood, Times Literary Supplement