La línea, los Indignados, and the Post-Postwar Generation in El Salvador

This article analyzes the political emergence of El Salvador's “post-postwar generation” through a consideration of activists’ relationships to a political and revolutionary “party line,” la línea. This generation comprises people born at the end of, or after, the 1980–92 civil war. They have little or no memory of the war but have grown up in intense violence. The authors worked with members of this generation in distinct sites: in Segundo Montes Community, in a corner of the country once guerrilla territory, and in San Salvador, among middle-class activists. Their self-recognition as politically consequential, echoing youth around the globe, first developed through moments of hope—in memory of struggle and in the electoral victory of the party of former revolutionaries—and then through frustration, as those in power, including ex-guerrilla leaders, resisted opening to new generations and proved themselves as corrupt as their predecessors.