Big Books Small Country

On the 1st of June 2019, El Salvador elected their 46th President – a politician and businessman by the name of Nayib Bukele. Just 37 years old, Bukele is something of a political outsider who emerged from the political peripheries to clinch over 50% of the ballot.

Leader of the centre-right GANA Party, Bukele’s election represents a break away from the dominance of the two largest parties in El Salvador. Promising a “new era” for the country, Latin America’s first millennial president has pledged to tackle gang violence and corruption.

Blaming previous administrations for leaving El Salvador "in ruins", Bukele aims to attract investment from abroad and bolster the country’s tourism industry.

During his inauguration speech, he said:

“El Salvador – as we know it – is a country that has suffered a lot. It’s a country that we’ve had to rebuild. It’s a country that’s weathered earthquakes, a country that’s faced corrupt governments…”

Yet, of course, El Salvador has overcome worse than this.

The El Salvadoran Civil War

Photo by Giuseppe Dezza

From late 1979 to early 1992, El Salvador endured one of Central America’s bloodiest civil wars. Spanning much of the latter years of the 20th century, the conflict embroiled much of the nation and saw foreign mercenaries and paramilitary death squads kill between 70,000 and 80,000 people.

A gruesome part of the region’s history and an indelible mark on the USA’s Reaganite foreign policy in regard to stamping out communism across Latin America, the impact and influence of the conflict is still being found in aspects of the country’s cultural sphere to this day.

I’ve touched on the El Salvadoran Civil War in a previous blog on US interventionism and it’s a topic that I find hugely interesting in the sense that it was an internal power struggle as much as it was a proxy battleground of the Cold War.

I’m interested in how the conflict influenced literature during the struggle, immediately afterwards and years later down the line. So, I’ve looked at books by two authors that perfectly encapsulate the overriding sense of terror, anger and fear that underpinned the conflict. These are the big books of a small country...

First up, I’ll be looking at Joan Didion’s journalist work, Salvador, a number of brief essays compiled by the American journalist during a quick visit to the country at the height of the conflict. Here, Didion’s objective gaze is rocked by introspective feelings of fear, paranoia and guilt as she shines the spotlight on America’s involvement in the fighting.

Next, I’ll talk about the short story, Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in El Salvador. Published shortly after the conflict in 1997 by Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, Revulsion is widely thought to be one of the most controversial books ever to emerge from Latin America. In the story, Moya’s protagonist, Vega, harnesses his inner Thomas Bernhard and systematically condemns every single aspect of Salvadoran society – a documented rant that led to death threats, book burnings and finally, hope.

In the final instalment of this El Salvador series, I’ll be looking at another of Moya’s stories which was published much later in 2013. The Dream of my Return follows the story of Erasmo Aragon, a paranoid, delusional writer who dreams of one day returning to his homeland – El Salvador. Although, the trauma of his past stands firmly in his way.

I hope you find these brief reviews interesting. Without any first-hand experience of El Salvador, I’ve tried to stick as much to the safety of textual and contextual analysis as possible.