El Salvador, the smallest and the most densely populated state in the region of Central America, was gripped by a civil war in the 1980s that resulted in the exodus of more than a million people. This thesis explores the causes that led to the exodus. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part contains a historical and theoretical analysis of El Salvador from the time of conquest until the 1980s. An examination of the historical background of the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador during this period sets the scene for an account of the mass exodus of Salvadorans in the 1980s. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative study of Salvadoran refugees, which concentrates on their experiences before and after arriving in Australia. The study explores both the reasons for the Salvadorans’ becoming refugees and their resettlement in Melbourne. In an effort to explain some of the reasons for the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s, some concepts and ideas from different theoretical perspectives are utilized: modernisation theory, world-systems theory, dependency theory, elite theory, Foco theory of revolution and economic rationalism. The historical account covers the period from the expansion of the European world economy in the 16th century up to the political conflict of the 1980s. When the Salvadorans began to arrive in Melbourne, the micro-economic agenda in Australia was based on economic rationalism. This shifted the focus away from the state and onto a market-based approach that emphasised vigorous competition and fore grounded a non-collective social framework. The changes to policies in the welfare and immigration areas resulting from this shift are examined for their impact on the resettlement experiences of Salvadoran refugees. The United States foreign policy is also delineated because of the impact it had on the political, economic and social situation in El Salvador. The thesis focused on the time-period from the 1823 Monroe Doctrine to the era of the Cold War of ‘containment of communism’. The Catholic Church has also played a major influence in the political, social and religious life of Salvadorans. The changes that occurred in the post-1965 renewal of the Catholic Church were influential in the political struggles in El Salvador. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative research study of a small group of 14 Salvadoran refugees. Participants were selected from different professional, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. The study examines their flight from El Salvador, their arrival in Australia and their long-term experiences of resettlement. Tracking the experiences of refugees over a considerable period of time has seldom been the focus of a research study in Australia. The Salvadorans have been under-researched and no longitudinal studies have been conducted. The Salvadorans who took part in the study became refugees for diverse reasons ranging from political/religious reasons to random repression but certainly not for economic reasons. Their past experiences have influenced their resettlement in Australia and their attempts to build their lives anew have been fraught with difficulties. The difficulties in acquiring a working knowledge of the English language have often led to a downgrading in their professional and employment qualifications, isolation from the mainstream community and the experience of loneliness for the older generation. In addition, many of the participants still experience fear both in Australia and in their home country when they return for a visit. The findings indicate that the provision of extra services, such as counselling, could facilitate their resettlement and integration into Australian society.

This study addresses a concern for the experience of participants in Canadian Government sponsored language and job-training programs for recent immigrants, specifically El Salvadoran refugees. The research has sought to uncover, through interviews with two former students, some of their impressions and insights concerning their participation in a Canadian government sponsored language and job-training program. The interviews were structured to account for historical, cultural, political, ideological and educational events and influences in El Salvador and Canada that contributed to the formation of their subjective experience within the context of the Canadian programs in which they participated. Analysis of the interview transcripts and notes made during and after the interviews revealed several emergent themes. These were: political activity and war, teachers as leaders, religion, what is good teaching, adjustment to Canada, values and hopes, and the need for ESL and job-training programs. In the views of the two informants, the teacher-student relationship, based on awareness, communication and respect emerged as a very important feature of successful pedagogy . The findings are related and discussed in relation to Canadian society. The instructional implications are discussed with reference to relevant pedagogical approaches.

This study addresses a concern for the experience of participants in Canadian Government sponsored language and job-training programs for recent immigrants, specifically El Salvadoran refugees. The research has sought to uncover, through interviews with two former students, some of their impressions and insights concerning their participation in a Canadian government sponsored language and job-training program. The interviews were structured to account for historical, cultural, political, ideological and educational events and influences in El Salvador and Canada that contributed to the formation of their subjective experience within the context of the Canadian programs in which they participated. Analysis of the interview transcripts and notes made during and after the interviews revealed several emergent themes. These were: political activity and war, teachers as leaders, religion, what is good teaching, adjustment to Canada, values and hopes, and the need for ESL and job-training programs. In the views of the two informants, the teacher-student relationship, based on awareness, communication and respect emerged as a very important feature of successful pedagogy . The findings are related and discussed in relation to Canadian society. The instructional implications are discussed with reference to relevant pedagogical approaches. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Geography, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: In the midst of historical ruptures and transfiguration caused by a globalization that has restructured new realities marked by violence, Central American and Chicanos realities have come into contact in a global space such the United States. Thus, the interdependence between these two cultures is so close that the literary influences are unavoidable. We argue that there is an asymmetrical relationship in the narrative of globalization, which sets new unpublished orders and generates perceptions of reality. The ideological dimensions of globalization that have caused systemic violence can be traced through military interventions and economic ventures. Thus, the subject of our research is assumed as a literary whole within certain social facts, i.e., as a symbolic aspect of the processes of violence within a culture undermined by globalization. Hence, in using theory of violence by Slavoj Ziek and theory of globalization by Manuel Castells, Tony Shirato, Jenn Webb, James Petra, and Henry Veltmeyer, we explore the narrative and criticism of U.S-Central Americans and Chicano in order to expose the forces of systemic violence that globalization produces. Our results show that, historically, globalization has formulated epistemologies via violence for Chicanos and U.S-Central Americans; such violence marks both groups, allowing for solidarity, through discursive practices of resistance, to take place in the textual space as well as in the real world. Such solidarity disrupts the textual borders, creating a dialogue of mutual understanding. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Spanish 2011

This study focuses on the Salvadoran diaspora, by implementing the concepts of marginality, collective action and the Third Space together with hybridity theory. Characteristics of marginality faced by the diaspora and methods used to defy them are explored, through a qualitative analysis of previously published research. The results of this study are that members of the diaspora have challenged their position of marginality, and that the methods of defiance studied are two types of collective action. I argue that is it hybridity which opens a Third Space for defiance to existing power-structures by conjuring new negotiations against marginality.

This study examines the representations of Salvadorans and other Central Americans in film, visual, and written texts used by the Dallas chapter of CISPES during the eighties. Drawing from Susan Sontag’s scholarship on the ideological workings of war photography and Elizabeth Barnes’s work on sentimental literature, I show that pamphlets created and distributed by CISPES relied on over-saturated images and written descriptions of state-sanctioned physical violence inflicted on Central Americans in order to generate sympathy for the other. While the representations of Central Americans in CISPES pamphlets as feminized and docile subjects were strategic in showing the oppressive conditions that the U.S. helped fund, these images also overlooked the fact that Central Americans played essential roles in their fight against their countries repressions and U.S. foreign policies. As such, I turn to a medium where Salvadorans had the opportunity to speak out about their own experiences during the U.S.-backed civil war. I analyze the Dutch documentary film El Salvador: Revolution or Death? (1980) and argue that individuals showed their subjectivities and agency even when introduced as victims of state-sanctioned violence. This documentary did not solely rely on over-saturated images of violence on the Central American other—it provided peasants with an international platform to represent themselves, albeit still through a mediated form. In-between harrowing scenes showcasing dead and brutalized bodies were also instances where Salvadorans challenged assumptions of their political ineptness and reminded U.S. residents of their own prominence within the Central American solidarity movement. / text

This thesis addresses the potential for third parties to apply or make use of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law to protect civilians caught in the midst of civil war. A case study is presented of El Salvador, where conflict in the 1970s and 1980s took the lives of an estimated 75,000 people and caused immense human suffering. Of particular interest is how organizations under the aegis of the Salvadoran Catholic Church provided data on human rights violations, gathered with credible precision, to the international community. The Canadian public responded to the situation in El Salvador in a markedly different way than the Canadian government, whose pronouncements were at first ill-informed and uncritically pro-American. The question thus arises: do counter-consensus or public-pressure groups exert any influence over a state’s foreign policy and, if so, does this phenomenon contribute to conflict resolution? While there is disagreement over the actual success that public groups and interested parties have over government decision-making, this thesis demonstrates that, in fact, the counter-consensus in Canada did have a discernable impact on foreign policy during the Salvadoran conflict. These actions have potential contributions to make to conflict resolution and the search for a negotiated end to civil strife, which in the case of El Salvador was generated in the first place not by an alleged international communist conspiracy but by crippling geographies of inequality. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-26 11:52:47.301

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This dissertation analyzes the performance praxis of the Mexican poet Nahui Olin (1893-1978) and the Salvadoran guerrilla leader and author Nidia Díaz (1952-). Through their self-representation in images and texts, these two women subverted the discourse of power characteristic of their respective cultural and historical contexts. Whereas Olin carried out her “corporeal activism” through defiant eroticism; Díaz did so through her stoic stance in the face of incarceration and torture. The dissertation carries out visual analyses enriched by attention to literature, and literary analyses informed by visual culture. In their respective approaches to performance these two figures engage with their sociopolitical contexts as they relate to women’s condition and the quest for spiritual liberation. The first chapter presents the dissertation’s theoretical framework. Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Elaine Scarry’s theories are crucial to understanding the concepts of body, discourse of power, performance, and pain; Gillian Rose’s approach is essential to analyzing images; Lucia Guerra-Cunningham and Rita Felski are fundamental for addressing women’s writing. The second chapter focuses on Olin’s activism, evident in her role as a “flapper,” her transgressive nude photographs and her poems written during the Mexican post-revolutionary period and which were influenced by avant-garde movements. My analysis links the key photograph I call “Nahui Olin Andrógina” with her poetry, centering on the trope of androgyny as a mystic state. The third chapter examines the naïf self-portraits and testimonio found in Díaz’s Nunca estuve sola (in 1988), which she narrates her imprisonment during El Salvador’s civil war of the 1980’s. My analysis centers on the trope of stoicism manifested in her drawing I call “Una ‘mesías’ que deviene en la madre del pueblo” as well as in the prose of her testimonio. Olin’s erotic activism and Díaz’s armed rebellion both represent attempts to achieve human liberation, including their own as oppressed women, and suggested emancipatory paths that may serve as models for others.