Customer Reviews

Negotiating Peace in El Salvador: Civil-Military Relations and the Conspiracy to End the War (International Political Economy)

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The peace process in El Salvador was very difficult to understand for outsiders, even Salvadorans like me. This book succeeds in claryfing not only the actual events, but also the underlying motives and incentives for each of the parties involved.

The book begins with a good historical analysis, which puts into perspective all the decisions taken during the actual peace negotiations. Once the historical motivation is clear, the actual strategies for the negotiation begin to make perfect sense.

All in all, this book really shines at explaining the underlying interests of the parties and the tactics they resorted to in achieving a truly remarkable agreement.

Let me begin with a quibble. The book is filled acronyms. Ms. Juhn makes an attempt to identify these with a beginning listing but may acronyms are omitted. The same problem is repeated with the names of the persons involved. These problems result perhaps because the author is too familiar with her subject matter. It makes for opaque reading at times.

The book would also benefit from additional critical analysis or more exposition of the forces at work on people at an individual level. But, this information may not have been abundantly available.

My biggest problem is with the author's cavalier minimization of the social forces at work and the implications of not addressing these in the final peace accords. For example the author says "There are no villains and no heroes in this story. History is the procession of people fighting to preserve a way of life or to change it. This is no less true in El Salvador than it was in the United States during its own civil war."

I suppose the author would not be an admirer of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. There is a powerful vector in human history that is propelled by people's being marginalized and humiliated. Individually a person may be made to feel worthless or deficient. When many people experience this emotion together, as a result of the same causes, powerful social forces may be set in motion.

Too what extent is the current gang violence in El Salvador the result of the failure of the peace process to hold accountable those responsible for the death squads? What will be the long term consequences of the continued concentration of wealth in a few hands?

I appreciate the author's efforts but must express my reservations.

This book is an excellent study of the behind-the-scenes policy making during the Salvadoran peace process. The author obviously had access to many of the persons involved in the process. It is also lacks the left-wing bias found in much of the U.S. literature on El Salvador. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the Salvadoran Civil War as well as for those who study the topic of negotiated settlements to civil conflicts.