Reclaiming the Self: Political Prisoners, Gender, and Subjectivity in Post-War El Salvador

Abstract

This study analyzes the lived experience of former political prisoners in El Salvador. Based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and focus groups, it inquires into how women and men who survived political imprisonment and torture during El Salvador's civil war (1980-1992) make sense of their experience and reclaim power over their lives in similar and different ways. It also explores the role of social organization and survivors' notions of memory and justice in shaping that process. This research is important in light of the government-sanctioned state of impunity surrounding past systematic human rights violations and survivors’ persistent struggle to attain justice and truth. At the Latin American level, it is important because it considers the aftermath of Cold War authoritarianism and countries’ subsequent transitions to democracy, which they are still working to implement. This research speaks to various gaps in our knowledge: (1) our sociological knowledge on torture and the possibilities for agency in its aftermath; (2) how equating the “gender question” with women only and with sexual violence has been problematic in transitional justice and can be overcome; (3) debates about the efficacy of traditional transitional justice mechanisms (trials and truth commissions); and (4) the reduced number of studies on political prisoners in Latin America, especially those considering how collective efforts affect survivors’ sense of recovery and wellbeing. My empirical results propose that: (1) political prisoners find productive and creative ways to enact agency, despite their trauma and what most theory on torture claims; (2) gender is more productively analyzed in this context in a relational way, by considering femininities and masculinities as part of the gender question, and analyzing how abuse has structured vulnerability and agency for all individuals; (3) transitional justice should consider a wider spectrum of rights and justice than is usually done (also prioritizing economic, social, and cultural rights, and including restorative justice ideals); and (4) notions of the collective (solidarity and belonging) have strongly informed survivors' elaborations of the self, becoming an “antidote” to the detrimental effects of torture and serving survivors’ sense of recovery at various points in time.