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This book offers novel insights about the ability of a democracy to accommodate violence. In El Salvador, the end of war has brought about a violent peace, one in which various forms of violence have become incorporated into Salvadorans' imaginaries and enactments of democracy. Based on ethnographic research, The Violence of Democracy argues that war legacies and the country's neoliberalization have enabled an intricate entanglement of violence and political life in postwar El Salvador. This volume explores various manifestations of this entanglement: the clandestine connections between violent entrepreneurs and political actors; the blurring of the licit and illicit through the consolidation of economies of violence; and the reenactment of latent wartime conflicts and political cleavages during postwar electoral seasons. The author also discusses the potential for grassroots memory work and a political party shift to foster hopeful visions of the future and, ultimately, to transform the country's violent democracy.
List of contents
1. Introduction .- 2. The Fallacy of the Telos of Transition .- 3. The Postwar Gray Zone of Politics .- 4. Neoliberalization and the Violence Within .- 5. War Reenactment through Elections .- 6. Memory Work in the Aftermath of War .- 7. The 2009 Shift .- 8. Conclusion.- 9. Epilogue.
About the author
Ainhoa Montoya is Lecturer in Latin American Studies and ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK.
Summary
Demonstrates anthropology’s ability to contribute to the study of democracy-making and explores how the notion of democracy can be imbued with diverse meanings
Ethnographically examines citizens’ practices and political subjectivities in the context of a post-war, liberal market democracy
Sheds light on the complexity of endemic violence in El Salvador and the relationship of this violence to the country’s gray domains of politics
