Emotional stories

a historiography of the resistance in Chalatenango, El Salvador

Abstract

This article uses the “concept of history” of Walter Benjamin, to unearth the historical importance of a moment of peasant resistance in Chalatenango, El Salvador, at the beginning of the 1980s. The communities of the northeast of this department, not only suffered a savage exploitation and repression, but also organized their own Local Popular Power. They were not "only" victims, but protagonists of their history. Although a brief experience of two years, more or less, was very important in historical terms. However, as Benjamin says, the resistances that do not end in a historically recognized success are lost to history, in fact “flashes” of history. This article analyzes the role of the historian and a process of construction of history from memory, with the peasants themselves.

Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 153, 2019: 65-91