Voices of War: The Unacknowledged History of Violence Against Women During El Salvador’s Armed Conflict

• In Event: Mujeres en Lucha Contra la Violencia de Género

Abstract

At the end of the armed conflict in El Salvador that took place at the dusk of the twentieth century, the warring parties set up a truth commission to deal with a past plagued by systematic and widespread human rights violations. Nevertheless, the Truth Commission for El Salvador did not address violence against women in its final report, leaving those crimes unacknowledged by the state. This was because both the armed conflict and the subsequent peace process in El Salvador were controlled predominantly by men and, thus, their approach towards women’s issues when developing public policies was patriarchal and androcentric. The fact that such a foundational document failed to acknowledge these crimes continued to promote a deep-seated culture of machismo and gender-based violence. This culture, exacerbated during the war and ignored during the peace process, helped El Salvador to become one of the countries with the highest rates of violence against females in the world. As an example, during 2017, 3,605 killings were perpetrated in the country, and 429 of these deaths were feminicides. Therefore, to recognize the suffering of women during the armed conflict, my paper aims to analyze the causes and consequences of one of the most hidden aspects of the recent past in El Salvador. An “official” history which does not recognizes the agonies endured by at least half of the population within El Salvador cannot be deemed as representative of the whole population.

Author

• Paula S Cuellar Cuellar, University of Minnesota