Hume

The Myths of Violence: Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador
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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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.
Keywords: El Salvador, Masculinities, Violence, Gender, Subaltern
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
60 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
the violence emerges and is assigned meaning. In this way, I am attempting

not to temporally bind violence as a postwar phenomenon but to address
important historical continuities in the way it is understood and rationalized.
Galtung (1990) reminds us that the study of violence is essentially about two
problems: the use of violence and the legitimation of that use. Increasing vio
lence has presented a challenge to the region in both conceptual and political
terms. Historical frameworks for understanding violence in the post-cold-war
period are limited, and a new analytical vocabulary is needed urgently.
Political responses to growing violence have been, at best, fragmented and, at
worst, have exacerbated existing tensions (Hume, 2007b).
I do not pretend to provide such a vocabulary, but I do point to the neces
sity of addressing the "myths" of violence. By "myths" I mean the accepted
(and often unquestioned) norms and values that shape both the ontological
and epistemological appreciation of violence. The implicit tension between
the act of violence and its representation compels us to address the multilay
ered silences that nourish hegemonic "truths" about violence. I am influenced
here by Spivak's (1988) notion of "epistemic violence," in which systems of
knowledge depend on silencing and alienating subaltern groups in order to
normalize and naturalize exploitative systems. Samuel and Thompson (1990:
18) remind us that "the powerful have a breathtaking ability to stamp their
own meanings on the past." I contend here that it is necessary to listen to the
stories of violence that are often hidden and ignored?to acknowledge the
"presence of the absent" in official histories of violence (Gaborit, 2007). By
foregrounding the importance of these historically unspoken subaltern narra
tives, I propose an alternative analytical project.
A key contention of this approach is that it is useful both analytically and
politically to draw on the lessons of feminism. Feminist scholarship and action
have endeavored to explode the many myths about violence and expose its
ordinariness (Segal, 1995). This is not a simple exercise in reducing the analy
sis of violence to its gendered expressions but a critical exploration of the way
violence is understood and enacted on an everyday basis. I introduce the
debate by showing how commonsense notions of violence are constructed,
focusing on the fact that they rest upon subaltern silences for their reproduc
tion. I then expose the family as a key site of violence, particularly its gen
dered forms. I argue that gender identities are intimately linked to the
performance of violence and, in particular, address the issue of male violence.
This leads into a discussion of the collusion and impunity by which broader
social and political structures reinforce gender hierarchies and the practice of
violence. Finally, I explore how the state and the community foster violence.
The discussion draws upon the life histories of Salvadoran men and women
who have lived with conflict from an early age and generated their own
understanding of violence. These were gathered in two marginal communities
in Greater San Salvador, El Boulevar and La Via, as well as among the men of
a self-help group for those who had been convicted of domestic violence.1 The
narratives reflect the many and often contested realities that inform notions of
violence in El Salvador. They point to lives of brutality and exclusion that
reveal both the destructive and the productive potential of violence.
Recognizing the potency of violence in everyday relations may be uncomfort
able, and acknowledging that violence "works" and is functional in certain
Hume / THE MYTHS OF VIOLENCE 61
circumstances may offend our need to "tame" it (Nordstrom, 1997: 16).

Nonetheless, conceding its ordinariness is critical to understanding its power.
WHOSE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE MATTERS?
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).
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.
VIOLENCE, HEGEMONY, AND MASCULINITY
The hegemonic ordering of Salvadoran society and, specifically, its promo

tion of particular understandings of violence has important implications for
the way citizens understand the world around them. This is a highly gendered
process. Dominant ways of being a man are privileged and validated in this
setting, thus reproducing power differentials and gender inequalities. The
process is both ontological and epistemological. It affects both the way in
which citizens coexist in a social group and the ways in which notions of vio
lence are constructed, internalized, and reproduced. Connell (1987) has
extended the concept of hegemony to refer to dominant notions of masculin
ity, where violence becomes a key expression of masculine behavior and a
mechanism for ensuring continued male privilege. The concept of hegemony,
as originally developed by Gramsci (1971), refers to the dynamic process by
which groups create and sustain power. It goes beyond the material holding
of power to include "the process by which 'normal' and ideal definitions
emerge" (Barrett, 2001: 79). A commonsense notion of violence emerges that is
organized around competing narratives of violence rather than violence as
opposed to nonviolence (Hume, 2007a).
Philippe Bourgois's (2001) typology of violence in El Salvador, which
includes direct political, structural, everyday, and symbolic violence, helps to
illuminate how the knowledge, practice, and legitimation of violence are
linked. In particular, Bourdieu's (1979; 2001) notion of "symbolic violence"
provides a potent framework for understanding how violence is internalized
and replicated by both elite and subaltern groups in Salvadoran society.
Symbolic violence can be understood as a means of naturalizing unequal
power structures to the point of rendering them inevitable and unquestioned.
In this way, for example, the "division between the sexes appears to be 'in the
order of things', as people sometimes say to refer to what is normal, natural,
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.
THE FAMILY AS A SITE OF PRIVATE VIOLENCE
The potency of violence as functional is particularly clear in examining

gender relations. The most powerful finding of feminist research is that
women are most likely to be assaulted by men known to them. This runs con
trary to the popular assumption that violence is something "committed by
strangers in public places" (Stanko, 1990: 78). Feminist research reminds us to
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
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
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.
MINIMIZING "NORMAL" VIOLENCE AND IMPUNITY
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.
Meche (El Boulevar) asked, "What is a woman in the hands of a man?"

highlighting both the deep fear that she feels and her sense of impotence. Jelin
(1997: 71) argues that male domination over women is institutionally estab
lished, creating structural limitations on women's opportunities within the
social order. The privacy of family life serves as a justification for limiting the
intervention of the state in this sphere, and the continued "dichotomization of
life into public and private leads to a mutilation of women's citizenship."
It is also indicative of a complicit silence regarding the dynamics of gender
relations. Society knows that such violence exists, but the repertoire of expla
nations mentioned earlier serves to justify nonintervention. "In that case
[intrafamily violence], I would like to get involved but you can't" (Patricia,
focus group, La Via). Nonintervention is also evident in wider community
dynamics, where silence in the face of violence is employed as a survival strat
egy. Many commentators have emphasized the importance of visibility in rais
ing awareness about a particular type of violence (Moser and Winton, 2002),
but in the communities under study this is more a matter of ignoring a prob
lem than of not seeing it.
STRUCTURES OF COLLUSION
This enforcing of silence cannot be divorced from broader structures of con

trol throughout Salvadoran society, where silence works not only to contain
violence but also to reproduce and to negate it. Women's fear of reporting vio
lence is nourished by wider patterns of aggression. Enrique (El Boulevar) said
that men in his community not only intimidated women into silence with fur
ther violence but also threatened them with engaging the local gang. A
woman will move quickly to get him out of jail, he said, "because he says to
her, you get me out or I will tell the gangs, you know, that's the threat. She
prefers to get him out." Indeed, interview evidence from women suggests that
even collusion with the police itself is not uncommon. One woman explained
that on the one occasion she had reported her husband, the police had criti
cized her for leaving her children alone to go out and call them from a public
telephone. Despite important changes in the law, women are still expected to
maintain a strict silence with regard to men's use of violence, and, indeed, one
woman was beaten by her partner when she intervened to protect her sister,
whose husband was hitting her with a hammer on the street. In a self-help
group for men convicted of domestic violence, few men recognized their use
of violence as their reason for having to attend the weekly sessions. Instead,
many blamed their partners for reporting them to the authorities: "It's her
fault that I'm here" (Alonso, focus group, 2002).
Blaming women for men's violence is not uncommon, and men often draw
upon a repertoire of gendered codes to legitimize their violence and enforce
social notions of "appropriate" behavior for women. One man offered as an
explanation for having murdered his wife that he had found her with another
man. This was an attempt not only to rationalize the horror of his act but to
achieve some kind of empathy with the other men in the group. So-called
crimes of passion have been romanticized throughout history. The policing of
women's behavior is key to this dynamic, and it is popularly believed that

men have the "right" to punish women who deviate from the acceptable
notions of femininity. As one woman remarked, "When you get married they
say that no man has a right to mistreat a woman, except in cases of infidelity,"
linking the accepted use of violence with the policing of women's sexuality.
Indeed, a recent survey in El Salvador found that 32.7 percent of men believed
that "a man can punish a woman if she is unfaithful to him." Half of them con
sidered women's infidelity more serious than that of men (Orellana and
Arana, 2003: 88). This "sexual double standard" places value on women's
chastity on one hand and men's virility on the other (Chant with Craske, 2003:
141). This has significant implications for the way society recognizes and reg
ulates sexual behavior and for the regulation of sexual violence. In the face of
intimidation and threats, women's recourse to justice is highly restricted,
while men can openly call on other social groups to silence women who are
effectively defending their rights.
Nonetheless, it is worth reminding ourselves that notions of masculinity are
not monolithic. The boundaries of the normal can and do change. To borrow
from Gutmann (1996:245), "As social actors, men and women are presented with
stages and scripts not of their own choosing. What they do creatively within
these social and cultural constraints, and how originally they perform their roles,
however, is not preordained. There is room to maneuver." The challenge is to dis
sect the larger systems of oppression and exploitation that allow violence to be
an acceptable and routine element of everyday social and political interaction.
These hierarchies of violence explain violence in certain circumstances and
within relationships. The levels of violence apparent in the communities under
study (and, indeed, in the wider society) suggest the existence of few nonviolent
alternatives for resolving conflict. Such an approach does not aim to excuse indi
vidual men (and women) of responsibility for their actions but to ask why much
of society continues to minimize that responsibility.
Jabri (1996: 48) argues that the notions of "public" and "private" are "insep
arably connected" and "the tyrannies and servilities of one are the tyrannies
and servilities of the other." This distinction is indicative of the pattern of gen
dered norms that give precedence to the public realm. Unless an act is recog
nized as violence, it will not be defined as such. Historically masculinist
epistemologies have privileged the public realm and therefore overlooked the
many types of violence that affect women and children. This is a telling state
ment about male privilege. Separating the domestic from the public is more
than a statement of legality. It is a statement of power.
FUNCTIONAL VIOLENCE?
According to the Central American University's Human Rights Institute,

there is little discernible difference between the "point of departure and the
point of arrival; the issues are the same: the majority of the population is
excluded and vulnerable" (IDHUCA, 2002: 2). El Salvador remains highly
unequal, ranking 0.54 on the GINI index (against the Latin American average of
0.47), and over 40 percent of its people live in poverty (UNODC, 2007). It is not
my intention to criminalize the poor by implying a simple causal relationship
between high levels of violence and underdevelopment (Evans, 2007). Instead,

I wish to emphasize that the role of the state and elite groups in embedding
violence in Salvadoran political, social, and economic life should not be
underestimated. Economics, politics, and violence have been a potent and
destructive combination in Salvadoran history. The state has been the central
protagonist in the campaign of brutality against the Salvadoran population
and, in doing so, has had a key role in the production of narratives of violence,
fear, and uncertainty. This process does not take place at an abstract discursive
level. Rather, it has very real material implications for El Salvador's citizens
and is facilitated through a continued political economy of exclusion.
Since independence, the use of force has become embedded in many
aspects of everyday life, and the struggle for interpretive control of El
Salvador's "official" history has been key to this process. Fomenting violent
conflict was an important tool for the political survival of the Salvadoran state.
The bipolar construction of los malos (the bad) and los buenos (the good) was
used by the state as a discursive tool for spreading fear and legitimizing
repression (Mart?n-Bar?, 1983). As part of the rhetoric of "anticommunism," it
provided a rationale for state-sanctioned force. The organization of the state as
a "protection racket" in which the military served the economic interests of
the elite in exchange for the control of the state created conditions of gover
nance in which the use of violence was "a currency of relations between state
and non-state elites" (Stanley, 1996: 7).
Historical data on rates of violence and crime are scarce, though it is widely
agreed that state-sponsored violence was widespread from independence on
(Alvarenga, 1996; Dunkerley, 1996). The state used extreme terror in order to
ensure the continued hegemony of small agro-export elite, "one of the small
est, most omnipotent, pugnacious and reactionary in the world" (Dunkerley,
1982: 7). This group of people, popularly referred to as the "14 families," cre
ated the conditions for maximum control over the resources of the nation at
the expense of the masses. Indeed, many retain this dominant position today,
having merely transferred their interests to international capital and real
estate (Estudios Centroamericanos, 1999). Historically, then, violence and eco
nomic oppression have been intertwined.
The collective memory of military repression has proved important for the
development of a society based on polarization and violence in El Salvador.
One of the most brutal examples of the massification of violence in this con
text was the killing of some 30,000 indigenous people by military forces after
a tentative uprising in January 1932. By a rough estimate, this constituted
some 2 percent of the population (Stanley, 1996, citing Paige, 1994: 2). This
episode, which has become widely known as La Matanza, has been judged as
"perhaps the single most important event in Salvadoran history." As
Dunkerley (1982: 9) puts it, "it is indelibly etched into the nation's collective
memory both as a momentous occurrence in itself and as the matrix through
which all succeeding developments have been understood." Following La
Matanza, the Salvadoran military took control of the apparatus of the state
while the elite maintained control of capital. Continued repression and the
indiscriminate use of violence became part of everyday life during the decades
of military rule. Far from being reactionary, the excesses of violence perpetrated
by the military were strategic and calculated to demonstrate the existence of a
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):
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
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
alternatives to violence. Civil society organizations and human rights groups

strive to dismantle the hegemony of official constructs of history in which cit
izens are denied justice and recognition. The dismantling of wider structures
of impunity, from the state to the family, is an ongoing struggle in the postwar
period. These struggles may hold the key to uncovering the present absences
in our knowledge of this deeply destructive force.
NOTES
1. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

2. This was poignantly symbolized in the fifteenth-anniversary events commemorating the
signing of the peace accords. In the morning, members of the Nationalist Republican Alliance
party (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista?ARENA) gathered at the Major Roberto D'Aubuisson
monument, where they sang their party anthem, which includes the words "El Salvador will be
the communists' grave/' In the afternoon, the Frente Farabundo Mart? de Liberaci?n Nacional
(Farabundo Mart? National Liberation Front?FMLN) gathered its supporters in the central
plaza of San Salvador. Finally, Tony Saca, the country's president, gathered international leaders
and representatives from the negotiating team. This segregation was not merely a consequence
of the war but an expression of the polarization that has marked Salvadoran life since the for
mation of the nation-state in 1821.
3. This historiography of violence in El Salvador between 1880 and 1932 makes the distinc
tion between state terror and state terrorism, the former being institutionalized and the latter
outside the law.
4. Contesting violence against women has been a major issue for the Salvadoran women's
movement. It has successfully advocated for legislative changes and for breaking the silence on
violence against women. One ongoing campaign financed by Oxfam America attacks the multi
dimensionality of violence, raising awareness among the general population and among institu
tions of state such as the police, the Attorney General's Office, the human rights ombudsman,
and the family courts. For more information, see http://www.unavidadiferente.org.
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The Myths of Violence: Gender, Conflict, and Community in El Salvador

Keywords: El Salvador, Masculinities, Violence, Gender, Subaltern

the violence emerges and is assigned meaning. In this way, I am attempting

circumstances may offend our need to "tame" it (Nordstrom, 1997: 16).

WHOSE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE MATTERS?

VIOLENCE, HEGEMONY, AND MASCULINITY

The hegemonic ordering of Salvadoran society and, specifically, its promo

THE FAMILY AS A SITE OF PRIVATE VIOLENCE

The potency of violence as functional is particularly clear in examining

MINIMIZING "NORMAL" VIOLENCE AND IMPUNITY

Meche (El Boulevar) asked, "What is a woman in the hands of a man?"

This enforcing of silence cannot be divorced from broader structures of con

women's behavior is key to this dynamic, and it is popularly believed that

According to the Central American University's Human Rights Institute,

between high levels of violence and underdevelopment (Evans, 2007). Instead,

alternatives to violence. Civil society organizations and human rights groups

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

Campbell, Rebecca and Sharon Wasco

IDHUCA (Instituto de Dereches Humanos, Universidad Centroamericana "Jos? Simeon Ca?as")

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