The Socioeconomic Implications of Dollarization in El Salvador

This study argues that the costs associated with El Salvador's dollarization clearly outweigh the benefits and that the decision to dollarize was prompted not only by the need to promote economic growth, but also by the impluse to serve the interests of the financial sector and the large entrepreneurs who control the ruling ARENA party. Although the policy facilitates investment and international financial transactions, it has a negative effect on the poor by increasing inequality. To develop this argument, the authors discuss the socioeconomic and political situation in El Salvador at the time of dollarization, examine the Law of Monetary Integration, and analyze die effect of the dollarization policy on the poor.     

The New Left and Health Care Reform in El Salvador

After a decade of civil war and four consecutive conservative administrations, El Salvador's leftist FMLN won its first presidential election in 2009. How has public policy changed under this New Left government, and why? This article addresses the question in the area of public health care. An alliance of health sector leaders with both technocratic and diplomatic abilities capitalized on the policy window opened by the FMLN's electoral victory and worked within the parameters set by President Mauricio Funes, the FMLN, and civil society to universalize health care. The new minister of health, a professional highly esteemed inside and outside the country, was able to engage both a large social movement protesting neoliberal policy and an energetic health diplomat sent by the Pan American Health Organization. In designing its reform, this alliance benefited from international as well as “bottom‐up” policy diffusion.     

Civil Society Engagement in Trade Negotiations: CAFTA Opposition Movements in El Salvador

This article analyzes civil society participation in the free trade debate by focusing on networks that opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in El Salvador. Drawing on documents, direct observation, and semistructured interviews with civil society leaders, two kinds of opposition coalitions are identified. "Critic negotiators," emphasizing active engagement and policy research, used the limited participation space opened by authorities to push for reform. "Transgressive resisters," repudiating the formal consultation process, deployed confrontational tactics and posed more fundamental challenges. This work uses social movement theory to explore coalition resource mobilization, the role of movement entrepreneurs, strategic decisionmaking, mechanisms linking local and transnational activists, and the dynamics of intramovement competition.     

The Salience of Ideology: Fifteen Years of Presidential Elections in El Salvador

The victory of the FMLN in El Salvador's presidential elections of March 2009 has been considered remarkable, given the dominance of ARENA in four consecutive presidential races from 1989 to 2004. Using individual‐level data, this article examines the determinants of electoral support for both parties over the past 15 years. Several statistical models illuminate some of the factors that led to ARENA's dominance and ultimate defeat. A combination of variables associated with different theoretical models of voting helps explain the choices made by Salvadoran voters over the years. The most consistent predictors of vote have been voters' self‐reported ideology and their evaluation of the incumbent government's performance. The 2009 turnaround relates to fundamental changes in the national and international context, and also to the selection of candidates.     

Horizontal Accountability in Transitional Democracies: The Human Rights Ombudsman in El Salvador and Guatemala

Postwar El Salvador and Guatemala have undertaken to reform and democratize the state and to support the rule of law. Each country entered the 1990s hobbled by a legacy of authoritarian rule, while a corrupt and politicized judiciary offered virtually no check on the abuse of power. Because the judiciary has performed poorly as an institution of horizontal accountability, this article examines the performance of a new "accountability agency," the Human Rights Ombudsman. The article discusses the context in which the office was established and developed in each country, perceptions of its performance, and political responses as the office began to perform its function of holding public officials accountable in their exercise of power. Unfortunately, this new office may fall prey to the same weaknesses that have plagued older institutions in both countries.     

‘(Young) Men With Big Guns’: Reflexive Encounters with Violence and Youth in El Salvador

The phenomenon of youth gangs has emerged as one of the most visible and feared expressions of violence in El Salvador in recent years. This article explores the process of researching violence associated with gangs from a feminist perspective, focusing on the challenges presented by conducting research in a context where popular perceptions of violence often reflect wider hegemonic social discourses concerning gender and youth, and where there exists a gap between actual violence and its representation. The article addresses the tensions that can emerge between the research process and popular conceptualisations of violence through an exploration of issues of researcher identity, subjectivity and constructions of ‘other’. It documents a research process that came to be shaped – theoretically and practically – by both individual and collective representations of violence, and shows how youth violence and youth gangs, in particular, concretely come to provide a central epistemological axis for societal fears and insecurities.     

Photographing Children in Mexico City's Red‐Light Districts

This paper analyses Mexican photographer Maya Goded's representations of children living in one of Mexico City's red‐light districts. Drawing on interviews with the photographer, the practical and ethical difficulties in portraying vulnerable children are analysed to examine the representational limitations of photography in confrontation with child sex exploitation. Through close visual analysis of the images, the paper examines the children's representations as both externalised repositories of their parents' aspirations and their keen imitators. The figure of the child becomes a locus for interpolating critiques of sex work, demonstrating how photographs forge a cultural space where they become politically salient records of vulnerability in the face of neoliberal deregulation and economic rationality.