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social change during civil war
social, economic, political issues in the civil war
political economic and social issues of civil war
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Political violence is a topic that is not unheard of in the ears of our generation, being quite the common factor in a never ending struggle for power-thirsty individuals and groups throughout history. Empires, spanning countless miles of land, did not come to considerable power without violence and politics playing their roles. Regardless of the size, El Salvador was no exception. Political violence has transformed this country, not only economically and culturally, but emotionally as well. Peaceful Salvadorans, including their children, were taking up arms, becoming part of guerrilla communist groups or death squads. But why would Salvadorans, who have no history of violence, join a death squad or become a member of an anti-government communist guerrilla group? In this paper, I will discuss the economic, social, and environmental problems of the country, death squads/terrorism, the reason for their existence in El Salvador, children joining death squads, the United States involvement, and El Salvador’s transitional process. I believe each one of these points have played a significant part in the history of El Salvador today. To fully understand this thesis question, some background on El Salvador is needed.
El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Central America, as well as being the smallest, having an area of 21,040 km. A long history of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions, as well as social struggles, has morphed the country drastically. Three-fourths of the population is now settled in the area west of Lake Ilopango and south of Santa Ana, having a very rugged topography comprised of volcanoes. This area also faces high rates of subduction zone and upper-crustal earthquakes, as we...
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...ador. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1996.
Rose, William I., Julian J. Bommer, Dina L. Lopez, Michael J. Carr, and Jon J. Major. "Natural hazards and risk mitigation in El Salvador." In Natural Hazards in El Salvador, Boulder, CO. The Geological Society of America, Inc., 2001.
Taylor, Robert W., and Harry E. Vanden. Defining Terrorism in El Salvador: "La Matanza." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 463: 107-112. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1043615 (accessed May 2, 2014).
Thompson, Martha . "Transition in El Salvador: A Multi-Layered Process." Development in Practice 7: 456-460. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4029015 (accessed May 4, 2014).
Valis, Noël. Fear and Torment in El Salvador. The Massachusetts Review 48: 117-131. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25091175 (accessed May 2, 2014).
Before reading this, I, like I am sure so many others, had no idea of the magnitude of injustices that can occur during these conflicts. Also, this was not very long ago, nor far away, and it speaks volumes of the differences in government ideology and politics. El Salvador is an extreme case of how a government will treat its citizens. Massacre at El Mozote truly was an eye-opener and I doubt I will soon forget it.
Although volcanoes are difficult to predict, geologists have made many efforts in order to caution the people of Orting and other surrounding towns of possible lahar slides. Residents have been made aware of emergency response plans and they know the proper precautions to take in the case of a volcanic activity emergency. Sirens have been put into place by the fire department and governing bodies of surrounding communities that detect volcanic activity and warn the community of ...
Once aligned with this organization Maria’s eyes are opened to the bigger picture of political oppression in her country. She, along with many other women of El Salvador, watch as hundreds of their men are unjustly jailed, tortured and disappeared. She was also a witness to the inhuman...
This essay will study the Central Intelligence Agency’s intervention in Guatemala, and how they assisted Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas in the coup d’état against Jacobo Arbenz. It will describe the reasons of the intervention, the United States’ interest in Guatemala, and how it affected Guatemalans. Such events help explain much about the role that the United States has in their own migration. The paper argues that the United States’ political interest in Guatemala played a fundamental role in the migration of Guatemalans to its borders. As a result of this intervention, Guatemala suffered one of its worse political periods in their history. Guatemala experienced a period of political instability that led the country into social chaos, where many Guatemalans opted to migrate to the United States.
...nuel Antonio, Newman, Edward. Democracy in Latin America: (Re)Constructing Political Society. The United Nations University Press, 2001. New York, N.Y.
Guatemala held democratic elections in 1944 and 1951, they resulted in leftist government groups holding power and rule of the country. Intervention from the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a more conservative military minded regime. A military coup took place in 1954 to over throw the elected government and install the rule of Carlos Castillo Armas. Carlos Armas was a military general before the coup and with the CIA orchestrated operation he was made President from July 8th 1954 until his assassination in 1957. Upon his assassination, similar militant minded presidents rose to power and continued to run the country. Due to the nature of military dictatorship, in 1960, social discontent began to give way to left wing militants made up of the Mayan indigenous people and rural peasantry. This is the match that lit Guatemala’s Civil War, street battles between the two groups tore the country and pressured the autocratic ruler General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes to fight harder against the civilian insurrection. Similar to the government Abductions th...
Imagine yourself as an Ixil Mayan at the local marketplace. You wander around the stalls, viewing the hand-crafted goods. As the midday sun beats down on you, the sound of footsteps coming towards you becomes audible among the chatter of your fellow Mayans. Suddenly, the voices stop, and a gunshot echoes in the air. For what seems like an eternity, the marketplace is drowned in the slight whimpers of children as their mothers’ skirts muffle their moaning. You are still frozen in your place in front a stall. Then, a quick moment of common sense drives you to hide behind a wall. Before you know what is happening, the space around the market is filled with screams. A man falls down beside you with his eyes rolled back and a gaping wound in his chest. Blood trickles through the wall. The pleading cries of the women have a chilling effect. As more bodies fall down beside you, you suddenly become aware of an officer standing above you. A gun is pointed at you. Up until now, you didn’t think of running, but once the trigger is pulled, you know you don’t have a chance. Moments later, you are gone. The genocide that occurred in Guatemala tragically cost thousands of Ixil Mayan lives and ruined many others.
Political violence is action taken to achieve political goals that may include armed revolution, civil strife, terrorism, war or other such activities that could result in injury, loss of property or loss of life. Political violence often occurs as a result of groups or individuals believing that the current political systems or anti-democratic leadership, often being dictatorial in nature, will not respond to their political ambitions or demands, nor accept their political objectives or recognize their grievances. Formally organized groups, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), businesses and collectives of individual citizens are non-state actors, that being that they are not locally, nationally or internationally recognized legitimate civilian or military authorities. The Cotonou Agreement of 2000 defines non-state actors as being those parties belonging to the private sector, economic and social partners and civil society in all its forms according to national characteristics. Historical observation shows that nation states with political institutions that are not capable of, or that are resistant to recognizing and addressing societies issues and grievances are more likely to see political violence manifest as a result of disparity amongst the population. This essay will examine why non-state political violence occurs including root and trigger causes by looking at the motivations that inspire groups and individuals to resort to non-conforming behaviors that manifest as occurrences of non-state political violence. Using terrorism and Islamic militancy on the one side, and human rights and basic freedoms on the other as examples, it will look at these two primary kinds of political violence that are most prevalent in the world ...
During 1979-1992 El Salvador was engaged in a civil war, with the government fighting the rural indigenous citizens. Violence and gang culture were taking over the country and creating a cycle that can’t be easily broken. El Salvador’s citizens were searching for new power, opportunities, and a way out of poverty.
She argues that these major terrorist events would not have been successful without the use of crime. She goes further to say that crime and corruption facilitates terrorism. Here you see that terrorist use crime and corruption to increase their utility, which resulted in grave terrorist attacks. As far as crime goes, we see that their use in terror tactics are detrimental to states as well. In the article; “The Logic of Cartel Car Bombings in Mexico”, the use of terror tactics by Mexican cartels as a way of constraining the state was explored. The author argued that violence is used as a medium to create a cooperative target, in furthering this notion we find that the there is a positive
El Salvador has a large presence of mountains and is also known as the Land of Volcanoes. Hence, most part of it is on a fertile volcanic plateau about 2,000 ft (607 m) high.
There are forty-two volcanoes in Mexico. Mexico’s volcanoes are on the North American Continental tectonic plate. Out of all the volcanoes the three most active are Popocatepetl, El Chichon, and Colima. El Chichon had its last eruption in 1982. No one living near this mountain saw it coming because its last eruption was one hundred and thirty years earlier and was minor. They also ignored the earthquake on the night of March twenty-eighth. But in the morning no one could miss the ash and debris in the air. Most of the two thousand people that died, died from breathing in the harmful gases. It cooled the whole earth the following year. When it erupted in 1982 it created a three hundred meter deep crater. Before the eruption in 1982 El Chichon
El Salvador, 6 April 1992--Three siblings died near the Guazapa volcano last weekend when they stepped on a mine planted during the period of civil warfare. Ironically, their parents had returned to the area only a few days earlier. The children were four, six and eight years old. Parts from the three children's bodies were found as far as 30 metres from the explosion site. (qtd. in Grant 25)
Terrorism is one of the most extensively discussed issues of our time and at the same time it is also one of the least understood. The term itself “terrorism” means many different things to different people, cultures, and races. As a result, trying to define or classify terrorism with one universal definition is nearly impossible. The definition of terrorism used in this research is a reflection of much of the Western and American way of defining it. The definition of terrorism is,
The word terrorism was first used during the French Revolution from the reign of terror inflicted by the French from 1784-1804 ("International Affairs"). It was used to describe the violent acts perpetrated on the French that inflicted terror on the various peoples and instilled fear within them. However, at the time it had a more positive connotation than the term that instills fear today. During the French Revolution this was because it referred to state-sponsored terrorism in order to show the need of state instead of anarchy, sometimes promoted by other groups (Hoffman 2). Therefore, even though terrorism has taken a new nature, terrorism can refer to official governments or guerrilla groups operating outside national governments ("International Affairs"). In order to encompass terrorism’s various sectors and explain it to the public, in both positive and negative aspects, many analysts have tried to put it into a few words. Terrorism is a method used by tightly of loosely organized groups operation within states or international territories that are systematic in using deliberate acts of violence or threats in order to instill...