TY - JOUR
T1 - Intersectional justice denied
T2 - Racist warring masculinity, negative peace, and violence in post-peace accords El Salvador
AU - Velásquez Estrada, R. Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to many people who helped develop the central argument of this essay. These include Charles R. Hale, Shannon Speed, Kamala Visweswaran, Ted Gordon, Kathleen Steward, Ellen Moodie, Sarah Ihmoud, and Anthony Dest. I am indebted to AA anonymous reviewers and to editor Elizabeth Chin for their thoughtful critiques of this article. I know it has improved significantly because of them. Finally, I am grateful to my Salvadoran interlocutors, including Uzziel Peña and Guadalupe Orellana, who continue to answer my questions even when they think the answers are obvious.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the American Anthropological Association.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - The skyrocketing violence in Central America calls upon scholars to examine the needed conditions for peace. This article challenges the assumption that the absence of violence among factions in conflict is the chief goal around which peacemaking efforts should operate. Based on ethnographic research with women relatives of male gang members and civil war veterans in El Salvador, I argue that the 1992 Salvadoran Peace Accords that ended twelve years of civil war developed a male-centered notion of negative peace that ended the armed conflict while naturalizing racialized state violence as part of security measures and ongoing violence against women as low-grade part of everyday life. In the post-accords era, gang members advance their version of negative peace, promising to protect women and the nation while continuing to oppress their women relatives. I suggest that the effective path to attain substantive peace is to proactively engage in intersectional justice to redress multiple and intersecting forms of violence. The consequences of peacemaking efforts without this attention will result in continued massive killing and immigration to the United States.
AB - The skyrocketing violence in Central America calls upon scholars to examine the needed conditions for peace. This article challenges the assumption that the absence of violence among factions in conflict is the chief goal around which peacemaking efforts should operate. Based on ethnographic research with women relatives of male gang members and civil war veterans in El Salvador, I argue that the 1992 Salvadoran Peace Accords that ended twelve years of civil war developed a male-centered notion of negative peace that ended the armed conflict while naturalizing racialized state violence as part of security measures and ongoing violence against women as low-grade part of everyday life. In the post-accords era, gang members advance their version of negative peace, promising to protect women and the nation while continuing to oppress their women relatives. I suggest that the effective path to attain substantive peace is to proactively engage in intersectional justice to redress multiple and intersecting forms of violence. The consequences of peacemaking efforts without this attention will result in continued massive killing and immigration to the United States.
KW - gang violence
KW - grassroots peacemaking
KW - intersectional justice
KW - racist warring masculinity
KW - violence against women
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U2 - 10.1111/aman.13680
DO - 10.1111/aman.13680
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124544729
VL - 124
SP - 39
EP - 52
JO - American Anthropologist
JF - American Anthropologist
SN - 1548-1433
IS - 1
ER -