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Peasants into Rebels: Community and Class in Rural El Salvador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

A. Douglas Kincaid
A. Douglas Kincaid
Affiliation:
Florida International University
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Extract

The venerable conservative credentials of “communitye” have been challenged vigorously and often in recent years. Perhaps nowhere has its conceptual renovation gone further than in studies of peasants and social change. Where once the solidarity of peasant communities was analyzed as an impediment to economic development and societal modernization, a growing body of work now portrays such solidarity as the basis of revolutionary upheaval from eighteenth-century France to contemporary Vietnam.

Type
How Peasants Rebel
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 466 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

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References

The research on which this work is based was conducted with support from the Inter-American Foundation, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, and the Central American University Confederation (CSUCA). Helpful advice or comments were offered by Marc Edelman, Alejandro Portes, Sally Ward, and the reviewers for this journal; responsibility for the final product, however, rests solely with the author. An earlier version of this study was presented at the Twenty-eighth Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 5–9 March 1985.

1 Principal works from which this summary is derived include JrMoore, Barrington, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Wolf, Eric, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar; Scott, James, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and idem, “Hegemony and the Peasantry,” Politics and Society 7:3 (1977), 267–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A more recent statement of the radical potential of traditional communities (urban as well as rural) can be found in Calhoun, Craig J., The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and idem, “The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed Language,” American Journal of Sociology, 88:5 (1983), 886–914CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For sociologists, the classic contrasts are those of Ferdinand Tonnies (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft) and Emile Durkheim (“mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity”). Within the discipline of anthropology, the early writings of Eric Wolf contrasted “closed, corporate communities” of peasants with “open communities” in which peasants, if present, were only one of a number of subgroups. See, for example, his “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 13 (Spring 1957), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further confusion may arise from the common usage of community to signify both a spatially bounded area of residence and the bonds of solidarity among its inhabitants. While the emphasis of the community-solidarity theories outlined above is clearly on the latter aspect, the relationship between these meanings of community may be of substantial interest for our historical analysis. Thus both are retained in the present work, though with an effort to ensure that the context of each reference to community makes clear which is meant.

3 Moore, , Social Origins, 468–77Google Scholar; Calhoun, , “Radicalism of Tradition,” 897Google Scholar.

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6 Calhoun, , “Radicalism of Tradition,” 908–9Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 911.

8 Popkin, Samuel, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

9 See Migdal, Joel, Peasants, Politics, and Revolution: Pressures toward Political and Social Change in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Skocpol, Theda, “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?” Comparative Politics, 14:3 (1982), 351–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 A vast debate concerns the correct definition of peasant and its relationship to categories of social class. The range of definitions has encompassed a wide scope of economic, cultural, and geographic criteria deployed in varying combinations. Here we will simply take peasants to be rural cultivators from whom an economic surplus is extracted in one form or another, freely or coercively, by nonproducing classes, and will employ other terms to characterize the various class and other structural differentiations such a broad conception inevitably encloses. This usage is thus primarily descriptive rather than theoretical; it certainly does not obviate the need for clear theoretical concepts, but neither does it forestall the contrast of theories of peasant mobilization as a matter of definition. For a recent review of alternative conceptions of peasants and peasant economy, see Heynig, Klaus, “The Principal Schools of Thought on the Peasant Economy,” CEPAL Review, no. 16 (1982), 113–39Google Scholar.

13 For our purpose, this method has obvious advantages over the more usual strategy of cross-national comparisons (such as those of Moore, Paige, and Skocpol, among others), which involve risky assumptions if one is attempting to evaluate the changing relevance of a particular theory over time (e.g., with respect to the evolution of capitalist development).

14 Ruhl, J. Mark, “Understanding Central American Politics,” Latin American Research Review, 19:3 (1984), 143–52Google Scholar.

15 Perhaps the most straightforward example is Samaniego, Carlos, “Movimiento campesino o lucha del proletariado rural en El Salvador,” Estudios sociales centroamericanos, no. 25 (1980), 125–44Google Scholar.

16 See MacLeod, Murdo, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic Survey, 1520–1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 38–56Google Scholar; and Sherman, William, Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 20–63Google Scholar.

17 For discussion of the Salvadoran cacao economy, see Browning, David, El Salvador: Landscape and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 52–65Google Scholar; and MacLeod, , Spanish Central America, 80–95Google Scholar. Competition from other producing regions in the Spanish empire may have contributed to the decline of Salvadoran cacao as well.

18 In Guatemala and elsewhere, the decline of cacao was accompanied by the displacement of Indian producer communities and the creation of large Spanish-owned cattle haciendas. See Browning, , El Salvador, 52–65Google Scholar; and MacLeod, , Spanish Central America, 80–95Google Scholar.

19 Macal, Mario Flores, “La hacienda colonial en El Salvador: Sus orígenes,” Estudios societies centroamericanos, no. 25 (1980), 355–82Google Scholar; also Browning, , El Salvador, 66–77Google Scholar.

20 Browning, , El Salvador, 76Google Scholar.

21 See ibid., 111–33, for detailed discussion of the varieties of land-tenure arrangements and corresponding local social structures during the late colonial period.

22 Macal, Flores, “La hacienda colonial,” 365–66Google Scholar.

23 Concerning these conflicts, see Wortman, Miles, Government and Society in Central America, 1680–1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 195–267Google Scholar; and Rivas, Edelberto Torres and Pinto, Julio César, La formación del estado nacional en Centroamérica (San José: Institute Centroamericano de Administracíon Pública, 1983)Google Scholar.

24 Domínguez Sosa, Julio Alberto, Ensayo histórico sobre las tribus Nonualcas y sit caudillo Anastasio Aquino (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 164), 44–47Google Scholar; Browning, , El Salvador, 140–41Google Scholar.

25 In general, intraelite conflicts and independence movements in Central America were tempered by elite apprehensions of the possible consequences of massive popular mobilization for their positions of dominance (Rivas, Torres and Pinto, , La formación del estado, 106–7)Google Scholar.

26 Sosa, Domínguez, Ensayo histórico, 44–47Google Scholar.

27 The description of the Nonualco rebellion presented here is drawn mainly from the text and documentary appendices of Sosa, Domínguez, Ensayo histórico, esp. 78–95Google Scholar. See also Calderón, Julio César, Episodios nacionales: Anastasio Aquino y el porqué de su rebelión en 1833 en Santiago Nonualco (San Salvador: Imprenta Moreno, 1957)Google Scholar.

28 Sosa, Domínguez, Ensayo hist00F3;rico, 94–95Google Scholar.

29 Cf. the appended documents and interviews in Domínguez Sosa, Ensayo histórico.

30 Ibid.

31 Aquino's movement bears an instructive contrast to the Tzeltal rebellion in Chiapas (then part of Guatemala) in 1712. In that uprising, Tzeltal village leaders played an instrumental role in the initial phase of mobilization against the Spaniards, but were subsequently shunted aside in an effort led by a Tzeltal prophet, Sebastian Gomez, to form a pan-Indian theocratic state modelled on the Catholic Church. The withdrawal of community support for Gomez's movement contributed to the later defeat of the rebellion; at the same time, Gomez found little success in efforts to recruit support among non-Tzeltal Indian villages. While the lesser initial roles of the Nonualco traditional leaders may be ascribed to the intracommunity levelling effect of closer integration into the colonial economy, via indigo, the two cases underscore the extreme difficulty faced by peasants in sustaining autonomous, supralocal organizations. On the Tzeltal rebellion, see Klein, Herbert S., “Peasant Communities in Revolt: The Tzeltal Republic of 1712,” Pacific Historical Review, 35:3 (1966), 247–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wasserstrom, Robert, Class and Society in Central Chiapas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

32 Four years after the Nonualco rebellion, a series of revolts in highland Guatemalan Indian communities weakened the Liberal regime of that country and paved the way for the restoration of Conservative domination under the dictatorship of a mestizo farmer-turned-general, Rafael Carrera. While few would define the outcome as a social revolution, it did significantly retard the advance of agrarian capitalism while protecting the rights and resources of highland communities in that country. See Ralph JrWoodward, Lee, “Social Revolution in Guatemala: The Carrera Revolt,” in Rodriguez, Mario et al. , Applied Enlightenment: Nineteenth-Century Liberalism (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1972), 45–70Google Scholar; and Smith, Carol A., “Local History in Global Context: Social and Economic Transitions in Western Guatemala,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26:2 (1984), 193–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 For details of the rise of the Salvadoran coffee economy, see Browning, , El Salvador, 155–221Google Scholar; Menjívar, Rafael, Acumulación originaria y desarrollo del capitalismo en El Salvador (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1980)Google Scholar; and Burns, E. Bradford, “The Modernization of Underdevelopment: El Salvador, 1858–1931,” The Journal of Developing Areas, 18:3 (1984), 293–316Google Scholar. For a comparative perspective encompassing coffee development in the rest of Central America, see Cardoso, Ciro F. S., “Historia económica del café en Centroamérica,” Estudios sociales centroamericanos, no. 10 (1975), 9–55Google Scholar; and Cardoso, Ciro F. S. and Brignoli, Héctor Pérez, Centroamérica y la economía occidental (1520–1930) (San José: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 1977), 208–74Google Scholar.

34 Browning, , El Salvador, 169–71Google Scholar.

35 Torres, Abelardo, “More from This Land,” Americas, 14:8 (1962), 9Google Scholar.

36 The concentration of economic and political power in the hands of Salvadoran coffee planters produced the purest oligarchical structure in Central America. See Rivas, Edelberto Torres, “Síntesis histórica del proceso político,” in Centroamérica hoy, Rivas, E. Torres et al. (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1975), pp. 9–118Google Scholar.

37 Vejar, Rafael Guidos, El ascenso del militarismo en El Salvador (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1982), 92–131Google Scholar. Nothing like a pluralistic, competitive party system was contemplated, of course; demagoguery and clientelism were the predominant styles. See also Munro, Dana G., The Five Republics of Central America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1918), 107Google Scholar.

38 Menjívar, Rafael, Formacién y lucha del proletariado industrial salvadoreno (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1981), 49–102Google Scholar.

39 Dalton, Roque, Miguel Marmol: Los sucesos de 1932 in El Salvador (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1982), 143–57Google Scholar; Menjívar, , Formación y lucha, 49–68Google Scholar.

40 Anderson, Thomas, Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), 27Google Scholar; Menjívar, , Formación y lucha, 66, 67Google Scholar.

41 Anderson states that 80,000 agricultural workers were organized by the FRTS in the course of a few months in 1930, but this is undoubtedly too high (Matanza, 40). A principal PCS leader of the period, Miguel Marmol, estimates that by 1932 the combined urban and rural strength of the FRTS was 75,000 (Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 144Google Scholar). While a reliable estimate may be impossible to produce at this point, suffice it to observe that by all accounts the Salvadoran oligarchy was suddenly confronted by a massive, militant popular mobilization.

42 Anderson, , Matanza, 40–63Google Scholar; Vejar, Guidos, Ascenso del militarismo, 158–83Google Scholar.

43 For accounts of the rebellion, see Anderson, , Matanza, 83–146Google Scholar; Gómez, Jorge Arias, Fara-bundo Marti: Esbozo biográfico (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1972), 129–57Google Scholar; and Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 267–368Google Scholar.

44 Though massive unemployment is conventionally described as an effect of the depression in the coffee economy, one must be skeptical of the claim that the aggregate demand for labor declined significantly, since many estate owners sought to maintain or increase production levels after the collapse of the international market price. Only in 1932 did Salvadoran coffee output fall, and then only for one year and for political, not market, reasons. See the figures provided by Vejar, Guidos, Ascenso del militarismo, 141–43Google Scholar. The adjustment to low prices logically implied an attack on wage rates in order to sustain estate profits.

45 Marmol noted this omission. See Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 320, 330Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., 111–18.

47 Ibid., 123.

48 Anderson, , Malanza, 19Google Scholar; Vejar, Guidos, Ascenso del militarismo, 187Google Scholar.

49 Anderson, , Matanza, 24–25, 69–71Google Scholar.

50 Anderson consistently errs in this regard; for example, see Matanza, 70.

51 See Montes, Segundo, El compadrazgo: Una estructura del poder en El Salvador (San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana Editores, 1979), 182Google Scholar; Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 251–53, 264–67Google Scholar; and Vejar, Guidos, Ascenso del militarismo, 189Google Scholar. Marmol relates that on one occasion, after convincing a peasant group in Ahuachapan to desist from demonstrating outside the town's military barracks, he was sent back by the peasants with a warning to the party that if it “persisted in throwing water on the fire, the next pacifist messenger—including if it were me—would run the risk that ‘the machete would strike him before falling on the class enemy.’”

52 These contrasting forms of community-based peasant organization bear striking similarity to changing forms of peasant mobilization in France during 1848–51. See Margadant, Ted, French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

53 Despite Anderson's occasional disclaimers, this is precisely the impression conveyed by his book, which relies heavily on elite informants.

54 Cuenca, Abel, El Salvador: Una democracia cafetalera (Mexico: Ala Revolucionaria Radical (ARR) Centra Editorial, 1962)Google Scholar; and Marroquín, Alejandro D., “Estudio sobre la crisis de los anos treinta en El Salvador,” Anuario de estudios centroamericanos, 3 (1977), 115–60Google Scholar.

55 E.g., Dalton, Miguel Marmol; Menjívar, Formación y lucha.

56 Anderson argues that the ethnic factor was not important in the last two cases and cites as evidence the leading role of local Ladino communists (Matanza, 20, 71–72Google Scholar). However, Tacuba residents identified their attackers as Indians (naturales) and offered testimony as well to the prevalence at that time of Indian dress and language among local peasants. See Montes, , El compadrazgo, 303–23Google Scholar. For Ahuachapan, the difficulty of the PCS in controlling peasant actions there noted is indicative of autonomous local solidarity. Further indirect evidence of an Indian presence in Ahuachapan can be found in the fact that the villages to the east of the town, identified by Anderson as points of departure for those attacking it, had been among those most negatively affected by the expropriation of communal lands fifty years earlier. See Browning, , El Salvador, 206Google Scholar. Pedro Geoffroy Rivas suggests the same conclusion in “El problema agrario en El Salvador: Una visión histórica,” Estudios centroamericanos, 28:297/298 (1973), 435Google Scholar.

57 E.g., Anderson, , Matanza, 78Google Scholar; Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 277–78Google Scholar.

58 Similar arguments can be found in Rivas, Geoffroy, “El problema agrario,” 441Google Scholar; and Vejar, Guidos, Ascenso del militarismo, 189–90Google Scholar.

59 Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 267–74Google Scholar.

60 Matanza, 86.

61 Cf. Menjivar, , Formación y lucha, 79–80Google Scholar.

62 Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 247–48Google Scholar.

63 Anderson, , Matanza, 131–34Google Scholar; Dalton, , Miguel Marmol, 332–42Google Scholar.

64 For data concerning postwar transformations of the Salvadoran economy, see Menjívar, Rafael, Crisis del desarrollismo: Caso El Salvador (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1977)Google Scholar; and Hirezi, Hector Dada, La economía de El Salvador y la integración centroamericana, 1954–1960 (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1983)Google Scholar.

65 Hirezi, Dada, La economía, 39Google Scholar; CSUCA (Confederación Universitaria Centroamericana), Estructura agraria, dinámica de población y desarrollo capitalista en Centroamérica (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1978), 150–54Google Scholar. The latter study shows that coffee-growing departments became regions of attraction for internal migration during 1950–61, after having mainly experienced net out-migration between 1930 and 1950.

66 The rise and characteristics of the cotton economy are well described in Browning, , El Salvador, 226–48Google Scholar. A more recent treatment can be found in Williams, Robert G., Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), chs. 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Perhaps because of its more recent origin (sparked by the United States embargo of Cuban sugar after 1960), the sugar export boom has been less well studied in El Salvador than the markets in cotton or coffee. The summary here is based on López, Napoleon Alvarado and Olmedo, Jesús Octavio Cruz, “Conciencia y cambio social en la hacienda Tres Ceibas (El Salvador): 1955–1976” (Licenciatura thesis, University of Costa Rica, 1978)Google Scholar. Other relevant observations can be found in Durham, William A., Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), 44Google Scholar; and Lernoux, Penny, Cry of the People (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 69Google Scholar.

68 Samaniego, , ℌMovimiento campesino,” 135Google Scholar. See also Granadino, Santiago Ruiz, ℌModernización agrícola en El Salvador,” Estudios sociales centroamericanos, no. 22 (1979), 71–100Google Scholar.

69 Montes, Segundo, “Situación del agro salvadoreno y sus implicaciones sociales,” Estudios centroamericanos, 28:297/298 (1973), 458–75Google Scholar.

70 By 1969 some 300,000 Salvadorans, or about 7 percent of the Salvadoran population, resided in Honduras. The forcible return of many of these immigrants, associated with the 1969 war between the two countries, further exacerbated the demographic pressure. Concerning this and other patterns of demographic change in the Salvadoran countryside, see Durham, , Scarcity and Survival, 54–101Google Scholar.

71 Browning, , El Salvador, 256–65Google Scholar.

72 Samaniego, , “Movimiento campesino,” 132–35Google Scholar; Browning, , El Salvador, 281–92Google Scholar. As Samaniego correctly observes, the combined effect of agrarian export development and state intervention to support food production produced an increasing differentiation of the peasantry into a mass of largely proletarianized rural workers and a smaller segment of viable small farmers.

73 On the origins of FECCAS, see Calderón, Walter Guerra, “Las asociaciones comunitarias en el área rural de El Salvador en la década 1960–1970” (Licenciatura thesis. University of Costa Rica, 1977), 232–47Google Scholar; and Kleinhenn, Francisco K. Chavarría and Calderón, Walter Guerra, “Estructura agraria en El Salvador: Políticas estatales y movimientos campesinos, 1880–1978” (Heredia, Costa Rica: Centra de Estudios Democráticos para la America Latina, 1978)Google Scholar.

74 Calderón, Guerra, “Las asociaciones comunitarias,” 246Google Scholar.

75 Trabajadores del Campo, Federación de (FTC), Los trabajadores del campo y la reforma agraria en El Salvador (El Salvador: n.p., 1982), 6Google Scholar.

76 Richard, Pablo and Meléndez, Guillermo, eds., La iglesia de los pobres en América Central (San José: Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1982), 73Google Scholar.

77 Carranza, Salvador, “Aguilares: Una experiencia de evangelización rural parroquial,” Estudios centroamericanos, 32:348/349 (1977), 838–54Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., 840–41.

79 Ibid., 845.

80 Ibid., 839, 844.

81 The convergence of FECCAS with the base communities occasioned major controversy within the Church. On this cruical topic, see Brockman, James R., The Word Remains: A Life ofOscar Romero (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1982), 122–30Google Scholar; and Berryman, Phillip, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), 109–15Google Scholar. See also the discussions in Montgomery, Tommie Sue, Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), 102–7, 115–17Google Scholar; Alas, Higinio, El Salvador: ¿porqué la insurrección? (San José: Permanent Secretariat of the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights in Central America, 1982), 170–84Google Scholar; and Armstrong, Robert and Shenk, Janet, El Salvador: The Face of Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1982), 78–83Google Scholar.

82 Trabajadores del Campo, Federatión de, Los trabajadores del campo, 6, 7Google Scholar.

83 On the origins of AIFLD, see Romualdi, Serafino, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), 415–33Google Scholar.

84 Calderón, Guerra, “Las asociaciones comunitarias.” 248–55Google Scholar. See also Wheaton, Philip, Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: A Program of Rural Pacification (Washington, D.C.: Ecumenical Program for Interamerican Communication and Action (EPICA) Task Force, 1980)Google Scholar.

85 Calderón, Guerra, “Las asociaciones comunitarias,” 250Google Scholar.

86 For obvious reasons, ORDEN has not been much studied. A summary account of its reation and purposes can be found in Armstrong, and Shenk, , El Salvador, 77–78Google Scholar.

87 Montgomery estimates that 5–10 percent were participating as repressive agents (Revolution in El Salvador, 207).

88 See the accounts of Armstrong and Shenk, El Salvador; Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador; Baloyra, Enrique, El Salvador in Transition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Dunkerley, James, The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador (London: Verso Editions, 1982)Google Scholar.

89 On the origins and projected impact of the law, see the special issue, published soon after the enactment, of Estudios centroamericanos, 31:335–336 (1976)Google Scholar. Reflecting the rapidity of the project's demise, the following issue (no. 337) constitutes a post-mortem on modifications introduced in the interim.

90 A good guide to the complex family tree of popular and revolutionary organizations can be found in Montgomery, , Revolution in El Salvador, 119–57Google Scholar. For a more critical view, see Zaid, Gabriel, “Enemy Colleagues,” Dissent, 29:1 (1982), 13–40Google Scholar.

91 See the interviews with FPL and BPR leaders in Rodríguez, Mario Menéndez, El Salvador: una auténtica guerra civil (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1980)Google Scholar; and also Trabajadores del Campo, Federación de, Los trabajadores del campo, 7–8Google Scholar.

92 FECCAS-UTC, “FECCAS-UTC a los cristianos en El Salvador y Centroamérica,” Estudios centroamericanos, 33:359 (1978), 777Google Scholar.

93 Peasant mobilization in the northern highland region has received considerable attention through the work of journalists reporting from FMLN-controlled territory in the civil war. Among the most informative recent accounts are those of Robert McCartney in the Washington Post, 7 11 1985, pp. A1, A35Google Scholar; 8 November 1985, pp. A1, A36; 9 November 1985, pp. A1, A17; 10 November 1985, pp. A1, A24; Lemoyne, James in the New York Times, 24 12 1985, p. A–4Google Scholar; 26 December 1985, p. A–12; and Golden, Tim in the Miami Herald, 19 01 1986, p. C–4Google Scholar. For a longer treatment, see Doljanin, Nicolas, Chalatenango, la guerra descalza (Mexico City: El Dia, 1982)Google Scholar. One must be cautious, however, in extrapolating the dynamics of sustaining peasant support for a full-blown insurgency (i.e., considerations such as logistics, security, and local administration) to account for a prior phase of mass mobilization. In our view, the latter is the more important problem for explanation. A similar view of the debate on the nature of peasant mobilization in the Vietnamese revolution is expressed in Skocpol, , “What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?” 362–66Google Scholar.

94 Armstrong, and Shenk, , El Salvador, 100–102Google Scholar.

95 Baloyra, , El Salvador in Transition, 90, 91, 109Google Scholar.

96 Montgomery estimates that 40 percent of UCS affiliates aligned themselves with FAPU in the wake of the split, while the remainder elected to continue their collaboration with the reform (Revolution in El Salvador, 123, 213). See also Wheaton, , Agrarian Reform, 17, 18Google Scholar; and Baloyra, , El Salvador in Transition, 138–39Google Scholar.

97 Samaniego, , “Movimiento campesino,” 140–41Google Scholar. See also López, Alvarado and Olmedo, Cruz, “Conciencia y cambio social,” 140Google Scholar.

98 Calderón, Guerra, “Las asociaciones comunitarias,” 255Google Scholar.

99 Cf. Armstrong, and Shenk, , El Salvador, 100Google Scholar.

100 A similar interpretation of the basis of the Catholic Left's peasant strength has been argued by Scheuermeier, Andreas, “Movimientos campesinos en Centroamérica” (paper presented to the Fifteenth Latin American Sociology Congress, Managua, Nicaragua, 11 1983)Google Scholar.

101 An enlightening comparison in this regard is to the Catholic Left peasant movement in neighboring Honduras; it emerged in the early 1960s under the same initiatives that gave rise to FECCAS, also benefitted from the mobilization efforts of the popular Church, and by the 1970s constituted the most aggressive and second-largest peasant organization in the country. Nevertheless, in the context of much lower levels of violence and repression than those of El Salvador and a genuine, though seriously flawed, agrarian reform program, the Honduran movement has consistently pursued structural change through a reformist strategy. See White, Robert A., “Structural Factors in Rural Development: The Church and the Peasant in Honduras” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1977)Google Scholar; and Ruhl, J. Mark, “The Influence of Agrarian Structure on Political Stability in Honduras,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, 26:1 (1984), 33–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar.

103 Such a view is implied, for instance, in Calhoun's revision of Marx concerning French peasants in 1848: “They may have been a class in itself but they were only communities for themselves” [emphasis in original]. See “Radicalism of Tradition,” 898.

104 It is quite conceivable, however, that further historical research would reveal a religious element in the local bonds and leadership of the Nonualco rebellion. Such factors played important roles in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian peasant revolts in Guatemala. See Wasserstrom, Class and Society in Central Chiapas; and Miceli, Keith, “Rafael Carrera: Defender and Promoter of Peasant Interests in Guatemala, 1837–1848,” The Americas, 31:1 (1974), 72–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 This issue has generated voluminous discussion in Latin America. For Central America, see Lernoux, Cry of the People; Brockman, The Word Remains; Richards and Melendez, La iglesia de los pobres; and Berryman, Religious Roots of Rebellion.

106 Rivas, Edelberto Torres, “Escenarios, sujetos, desenlaces (reflexiones sobre la crisis centroamericana),” Working Paper no. 68 (Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 1986), 18Google Scholar.

107 Paige, Jeffrey, “Social Theory and Peasant Revolution in Vietnam and Guatemala,” Theory and Society, 12:6 (1983), 699–737CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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109 See, for example, Guest, Avery M., “The Mediate Community: The Nature of Local and Extra-Local Ties within the Metropolis” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., 08 1985)Google Scholar.

110 Roberts, Bryan, Cities of Peasants: The Political Economy of Urbanization in the Third World (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar; Castells, Manuel, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Portes, Alejandro, “Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Last Decades,” Latin American Research Review, 20:3 (1985), 7–40Google Scholar.

111 Collier, David, Squatters and Oligarchs: Authoritarian Rule and Policy Change in Peru (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Portes, Alejandro and Walton, John, Urban Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

112 An initial discussion of this topic can be found in Smith, Carol, “What Is the Informal Sector and How Does It Affect Peripheral Capitalism?” (paper presented at conference on “New Directions in Immigration and Ethnicity Research,” Duke University, 05 1981)Google Scholar.