The CEBs as Minor Utopia: a Salvadoran Case

• In Event: Minor Utopias and the Left

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Comunidades Eclesiales de Base of Northern Morazán and their social experiments. Although individual motivations varied, middle peasants often experienced what amounted to a religious conversion from traditional Catholicism to the Iglesia Popular as expressed through the CEBs. They voluntarily ceded their land to the landless and joined in collective harvests with their neighbors. Up to one-third of the regional population [55,000] sought to remake their society as they promoted new, egalitarian social relations. This moment in 1974 was an example of minor utopia in which heightened levels of horizontal and cross-class communication and action flourished. Within a year, however, a significant number of catechists had joined a guerrilla organization and stopped working in the CBCs. By 1978, military repression had severely weakened the communities and by the next year there was a near state of civil war in the villages between local guerrillas and paramilitaries, backed by the National Guard. Yet peasant testimonies reveal a historical time displacement as they place the onset of repression earlier than its November 1977 origin, thereby justifying their voluntary and conscious option to join the guerrillas as a response to state terror. During the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992), Northern Morazán became a guerrilla bastion.

Author

• Jeffrey L Gould, Indiana University