Grassroots Peacemaking: The Paradox of Reconciliation in El Salvador

The author's exploration of postwar "Reconciliation" in El Salvador started thousands of miles away, in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2004. Her ethnographic research suggests that the negative attitudes of Salvadoran ex-combatants toward the word "reconciliation" are not directed at the concept per se. Rather, they convey a critique of the state's understanding of the term and its actions toward that end. The next section will contextualize the causes of El Salvador's civil war and offer an account of the premises and applications of state-led reconciliation practices. Then she examines how discourses of political stability and wartime rhetoric propagated by El Salvador's mainstream political parties create a space for grassroots alternatives to state-led reconciliation efforts. Finally, she explores how ex-combatants understand reconciliation and how grassroots peacemaking efforts reveal their resistance to top-down projects through their own approach to reconstructing social networks.