Download or read book The Salvadoran Crucible written by Brian D'Haeseleer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1979, with El Salvador growing ever more unstable and ripe for revolution, the United States undertook a counterinsurgency intervention that over the following decade would become Washington’s largest nation-building effort since Vietnam. In 2003, policymakers looked to this “successful” undertaking as a model for US intervention in Iraq. In fact, Brian D’Haeseleer argues in The Salvadoran Crucible, the US counterinsurgency in El Salvador produced no more than a stalemate, and in the process inflicted tremendous suffering on Salvadorans for a limited amount of foreign policy gains. D’Haeseleer’s book is a deeply informed, dispassionate account of how the Salvadoran venture took shape, what it actually accomplished, and what lessons it holds. A historical analysis of the origins of US counterinsurgency policy provides context for understanding how precedents informed US intervention in El Salvador. What follows is a detailed, in-depth view of how the counterinsurgency unfolded—the nature, logic, and effectiveness of the policies, initiatives, and operations promoted by American strategists. D’Haeseleer’s account disputes the “success” narrative by showing that El Salvador’s achievements, mainly the spread of democracy, occurred as a result not of the American intervention but of the insurgents’ war against the state. Most significantly, The Salvadoran Crucible contends that the reforms enacted during the war failed to address the underlying causes of the conflict, which today continue to reverberate in El Salvador. The book thus suggests a reassessment of the history of American counterinsurgency, and a course-correction for the future.
Download or read book The Salvadoran Crucible written by Brian D'Haeseleer and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1979 and 1992 the United States engaged in its largest counterinsurgency (COIN) and nation-building exercise since the debacle in South Vietnam. For over twelve years, Washington attempted to establish a moderate government in El Salvador and defeat an insurgency by providing American military aid and training, holding elections, initiating development projects, and carrying out socioeconomic reforms. While the U.S. prevented its Salvadoran ally from economic and political collapse, Washington's efforts did not lead to the resolution of the conflict. Arguably, it prolonged the bloodshed and failed address the grievances that fueled the violence. The inability to address the latter continues to plague El Salvador more than two decades after the end of hostilities. Yet, American military strategists and writers hold up the U.S. effort in El Salvador as a successful application of counterinsurgency. Washington's undertaking in this country has also informed its more recent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, a close examination of the U.S. intervention in El Salvador is required to assess the success narrative and whether it offers instructive lessons for future contingencies.
Download or read book The Urban Crucible written by Gary B. Nash and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.
Download or read book Stories of Civil War in El Salvador written by Erik Ching and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: El Salvador's civil war began in 1980 and ended twelve bloody years later. It saw extreme violence on both sides, including the terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers, and the death and disappearance of more than 75,000 people. Examining El Salvador's vibrant life-story literature written in the aftermath of this terrible conflict--including memoirs and testimonials--Erik Ching seeks to understand how the war has come to be remembered and rebattled by Salvadorans and what that means for their society today. Ching identifies four memory communities that dominate national postwar views: civilian elites, military officers, guerrilla commanders, and working class and poor testimonialists. Pushing distinct and divergent stories, these groups are today engaged in what Ching terms a "narrative battle" for control over the memory of the war. Their ongoing publications in the marketplace of ideas tend to direct Salvadorans' attempts to negotiate the war's meaning and legacy, and Ching suggests that a more open, coordinated reconciliation process is needed in this postconflict society. In the meantime, El Salvador, fractured by conflicting interpretations of its national trauma, is hindered in dealing with the immediate problems posed by the nexus of neoliberalism, gang violence, and outmigration.
Download or read book El Salvador written by David Francois and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2023-03-24 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A severe social and political crisis in El Salvador during politicians, religious figures and activists through strikes but organized the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) and launched an armed insurrection against the government in early 1981. Within months, the FMLN established itself in control over two departments which it was to guerrillas support base in the countryside. Although bombardments, strafing, shelling, summary execution of anybody captured, and massacres of civilians became the norm of the day, the FMLN continued growing in strength and by 1983, reached the peak of its power and control over the countryside. El Salvador, Volume 1: Crisis, Coup and Uprising 1970-1983 is the first inclusive and incisive military history of this incredibly vicious, merciless war: one of two major conflicts fought in Central America during the 1980s within the context of the Cold War. Based on official documentation and carefully cross-referenced secondary sources, it is lavishly illustrated with original photographs and custom-drawn color profiles and is an indispensable single-point source of reference.
Download or read book The Cold War 5 volumes written by Spencer C. Tucker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 4179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping reference work covers every aspect of the Cold War, from its ignition in the ashes of World War II, through the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War superpower face-off between the Soviet Union and the United States dominated international affairs in the second half of the 20th century and still reverberates around the world today. This comprehensive and insightful multivolume set provides authoritative entries on all aspects of this world-changing event, including wars, new military technologies, diplomatic initiatives, espionage activities, important individuals and organizations, economic developments, societal and cultural events, and more. This expansive coverage provides readers with the necessary context to understand the many facets of this complex conflict. The work begins with a preface and introduction and then offers illuminating introductory essays on the origins and course of the Cold War, which are followed by some 1,500 entries on key individuals, wars, battles, weapons systems, diplomacy, politics, economics, and art and culture. Each entry has cross-references and a list of books for further reading. The text includes more than 100 key primary source documents, a detailed chronology, a glossary, and a selective bibliography. Numerous illustrations and maps are inset throughout to provide additional context to the material.
Download or read book Cold War Crucible written by Hajimu Masuda and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After World War II, the major powers faced social upheaval at home and anticolonial wars around the globe. Alarmed by conflict in Korea that could change U.S.–Soviet relations from chilly to nuclear, ordinary people and policymakers created a fantasy of a bipolar Cold War world in which global and domestic order was paramount, Masuda Hajimu shows.
Download or read book El Salvador Blood on All Our Hands written by George Thurlow and published by Stansbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 29, 1981 American journalist George Thurlow was shot by members of the El Salvador Treasury Police on a jungle road in San Salvador. His 29-year-old driver, Gilberto Moran, was killed and Associated Press photographer Joaquin Zuniga was seriously injured in the shooting. Thurlow left El Salvador two days later to receive medical treatment in the U.S. In 2000 he began a more than two-decade search to find Gilberto Moran’s grave and some form of personal redemption. El Salvador: Blood On All Our Hands details that search and introduces us to those who fought in the civil war, U.S. aid workers helping to rebuild the tiny country, as well as every day Salvadorans who suffered through a war that killed 70,000 of their fellow citizens. Many Salvadorans have decided it is time to move on from focusing on the war as their country enters a new era. The U.S. officials who supplied weapons and encouragement to the Salvadoran government, its security forces and the murderous death squads have never been held accountable. In El Salvador a Truth Commission has identified those most responsible for the assassinations and murder of priests, journalists and opposition leaders. This book is intended to document a moment in Salvadoran history when the United States government was responsible for a cruel carnage and to illustrate how American citizens are attempting to repair the damage.
Download or read book The Crucible of Islam written by G. W. Bowersock and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little is known about sixth-century Arabia. Yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from Iberia to India. G. W. Bowersock illuminates this obscure yet most dynamic period in Islam, exploring why arid Arabia proved to be fertile ground for Muhammad’s message and why it spread so quickly to the wider world.
Download or read book Tell Mother I m in Paradise written by Ana Margarita Gasteazoro and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anna Maria Gasteazoro (1950-1993) was a Salvadoran opposition leader and renowned prisoner of conscience. In her memoirs, Tell Mother I'm in Paradise, she recounts her trajectory from a privileged Catholic upbringing in El Salvador, with stints at school abroad and early jobs, to her increasing commitment to political work after witnessing the violence and corpses in the streets of San Salvador early in the civil war, to clandestine organizing against the brutal military junta. Her inspiring and, at times, dramatic story culminates in three years as a political prisoner of conscience and then release and exile to Mexico. Readers get a sense of the upper-class milieu of well-connected parents and loving nannies and of Gasteazoro negotiating her education and freedom and exploring her talents in early years. She chronicles her growing rebellion against strictures of the Catholic Church and the conservative group Opus Dei, with which her mother was heavily involved. She was well educated and spoke perfect English and discovered a talent for organizing in administrative jobs abroad and at home. As the war progressed, she quickly became a valuable leader in the opposition movement as a member of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), a social democratic party, despite the machismo environment. She was often sent abroad as a representative. In two particularly exciting events, she served as a delegate to the Eleventh International Youth Festival in Havana in 1978 and when, with her life in danger, she donned a disguise to give a speech at a conference in Spain. As other MNR leaders were killed or disappeared, she rose to top leadership. Against the backdrop of kidnappings and disappearances of prominent members of the opposition and massive social oppression, Gasteazoro began to live a double life. As an operative in a faction of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), she organized safe houses for fellow activists and proved adept at creative content, handling whatever task was required, for example, writing for an underground radio station and producing what became an award-winning documentary film. In 1981, the notorious National Guard arrested and tortured her, and she was then sent to the women's prison at Illopango. There, she and other activists dedicated their days to organizing through the Committee of Salvadoran Political Prisoners (COPPES). Gasteazoro's love affairs, including with fellow operatives, are woven into the narrative. Accounts of the relationships help reveal her as extraordinary woman in extraordinary times who lived to the fullest in both body and spirit"--
Download or read book The Crucible of Experience written by Daniel Burston and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great rebels of psychiatry, R. D. Laing challenged prevailing models of madness and the nature and limits of psychiatric authority. In this brief and lucid book, Laing’s widely praised biographer distills the essence of Laing’s vision, which was religious and philosophical as well as psychological. The Crucible of Experience reveals Laing’s philosophical debts to existentialism and phenomenology in his theories of madness and sanity, family theory and family therapy. Daniel Burston offers the first detailed account of Laing’s practice as a therapist and of his relationships—often contentious—with his friends and sometime disciples. Burston carefully differentiates between Laing and “Laingians,” who were often clearer, more confident, and more simplistic than their teacher. While he examines Laing’s theories of madness, Burston focuses most provocatively on Laing’s views of sanity and normality and on his recognition, toward the end of his life, of the essential place of holiness in human experience. In a powerful last chapter, Burston shows that Laing foresaw the present commercialization of medicine and asked pointed questions about what the meaning of sanity and the future of psychotherapy in such a world could be. In this, as in other matters, Laing’s questions of a generation ago remain questions for our time.
Download or read book From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals written by Leigh Binford and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-09 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals explains how a group of Catholic lay catechists educated in liberation theology came to take up arms and participate on the side of the rebel FMLN during El Salvador’s revolutionary war (1980-92). In the process they became transformed from popular intellectuals to insurgent intellectuals who put their organizational and cognitive skills at the service of a collective effort to create a more egalitarian and democratic society. The book highlights the key roles that peasant catechists in northern Morazán played in disseminating liberation theology before the war and supporting the FMLN during it—as quartermasters, political activists, and musicians, among other roles. Throughout, From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals highlights the dialectical nature of relations between Catholic priests and urban revolutionaries, among others, in which the latter learned from the former and vice-versa. Peasant catechists proved capable at making independent decisions based on assessment of their needs and did not simply follow the dictates of those with superior authority, and played an important role for the duration of the twelve-year military conflict.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Central American History written by Robert Holden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interpreting the History of a Region in Crisis / Robert H. Holden -- Land and Climate: Natural Constraints and Socio-Environmental Transformations / Anthony Goebel McDermott -- Regaining Ground: Indigenous Populations and Territories / Peter H. Herlihy, Matthew L. Fahrenbruch, Taylor A. Tappan -- The Ancient Civilizations / William R. Fowler -- Marginalization, Assimilation, and Resurgence: The Indigenous Peoples since Independence / Wolfgang Gabbert -- The Spanish Conquest? / Laura E. Matthew -- Spanish Colonial Rule / Stephen Webre -- The Kingdom of Guatemala as a Cultural Crossroads / Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara -- From Kingdom to Republics, 1808-1840 / Aaron Pollack -- The Political Economy / Robert G. Williams -- State Making and Nation Building / David Díaz Arias -- Central America and the United States / Michel Gobat -- The Cold War: Authoritarianism, Empire, and Social Revolution / Joaquín M. Chávez -- Central America since the 1990s: Crime, Violence, and the Pursuit of Democracy / Christine J. Wade -- The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces / Orlando J. Pérez and Randy Pestana -- Religion, Politics, and the State / Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval -- Women and Citizenship: Feminist and Suffragist Movements, 1880-1957 / Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz -- Literature, Society, and Politics / Werner Mackenbach -- Guatemala / David Carey Jr. -- Honduras / Dario A. Euraque -- El Salvador / Erik Ching -- Nicaragua / Julie A. Charlip -- Costa Rica / Iván Molina -- Panama / Michael E. Donoghue -- Belize / Mark Moberg.
Download or read book Law and Religion in a Secular Age written by Rafael Domingo and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and Religion in a Secular Age seeks to restore the connection between spirituality and justice, religion and law, theology and jurisprudence, and natural law and positive law by building a new bridge suitable for pluralistic societies in the secular age. The author argues for a multidimensional view of reality that includes legal, political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of human nature and society. Each of these dimensions of life needs to recognize the existence, influence, and function of the others, which act as a filter or check on the excesses of each other. This multidimensionality of reality clarifies why no legal theory can fully account for law from the legal dimension alone, just as no moral theory makes perfect sense of morality from the moral dimension?and, for that matter, nothing in physics can fully interpret the physical dimension of reality. The premises of a legal system cannot be fully explained by the legal dimension alone because the fundamental conditions and qualities of justice, freedom, and dignity touch all the dimensions of reality in which the human person acts, including the moral and the spiritual, not just the legal. Building on this multidimensional theory of reality, the author explores the core differences and the essential interconnections between law, morality, religion, and spirituality and some of the legal implications of these connections. Rafael Domingo reminds readers of the vital role of religion in shaping the conceptual framework of Western legal systems, underscores the spirit of Christianity that inspired legal institutions, principles, and values, and recalls the contributions of specific Christian jurists as central figures for the development of justice in society. Law and Religion in a Secular Age aims to be a valuable antidote against the dominant legal positivism that has cornered public morality, the defiant secularism that has marginalized religion, and any other legal doctrine that diminishes the spiritual dimension of law and justice.
Download or read book Masters of War written by Clara Nieto and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Masters of War, Clara Nieto adeptly presents the parallel histories of the countries of Latin America, histories that are intertwined, each reflecting the United States’ "coherent policy of intervention" set into motion by the Monroe Doctrine. As the value of this continued policy comes increasingly into question, Nieto argues for the need to evaluate the alarming precedent set in Latin America: the institution of client dictatorships, the roles played by the interests of U.S. corporations, the enormous tolls taken on civilian populations, and the irreversible disruption of regional stability. Drawing from an impressive array of documents and sources as well as from her unique first-hand insights as a participant in crucial meetings and negotiations in the region from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, Nieto chronicles the Cuban Revolution, the CIA-sponsored coup against popularly elected President Allende in Chile, the U.S. invasions of Panama and Grenada, U.S. support for the cultivation and training of paramilitary death squads in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Colombia, as well as similarly severe but less well-known situations in other countries such as Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, and Guatemala. Masters of War offers, from an informed perspective, perhaps for the first time, a distanced, objective analysis of recent Latin American history. Clara Nieto’s depth of knowledge and understanding is an invaluable resource at a time when the media is seen as unapologetically aligned with the interests of major corporations and policymakers, and the American public has reached a new height of apprehension regarding the intentions behind and consequences of its government’s policies.
Download or read book Latin American History at the Movies written by Donald F. Stevens and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-08-12 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Movies are meant to be entertaining, but they can also be educational. People are naturally curious to know how much of what they see on their screens might be historically true. In Latin American History at the Movies, experts on Latin America focus on five centuries of history as portrayed in feature films. An introduction on the visual presentation of the past in movies sets the stage for essays that explore sixteen of the best feature films on Latin America made from the 1980s to the present.
Download or read book Blessed Are the Activists written by Michael J. Cangemi and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the history of Catholic activism to mitigate human rights abuses in Guatemala and the failed US policies in the country and region during the 1970s and 1980s Blessed Are the Activists examines US Catholic activists' influence on US-Guatemalan relations during the Guatemalan civil war's most violent years in the 1970s and 1980s. Cangemi argues that Catholic activists' definition of human rights, advocacy methods, and structure caused them to act as a transnational human rights NGO that engaged Guatemalan and US government officials on human rights issues, reported on Guatemala's human rights violations, and criticized US foreign policy decisions as a contributing factor in Guatemala's inequality, poverty, and violence. His work foregrounds how Catholic activists emphasized dignity for Guatemala's poorest citizens and the connections they made between justice, solidarity, and peace and brought Guatemala's violence, poverty, and inequality to greater global attention, often at great personal risk. Cangemi pays considerable attention to multiple facets of the strained US-Guatemala diplomatic relationship, including how and why Guatemala's military dictatorship exposed the internal flaws within the Carter administration's decision to link military aid to human rights and how internal foreign policy debates in the Carter and Reagan administrations helped to intensify Guatemala's bloody civil war. He also includes interviews conducted with Guatemalan genocide survivors and refugees to provide firsthand accounts of the consequences of those policymaking decisions. Finally, he offers readers an in-depth examination of the US Catholic press's sharp rebukes of US policies on Guatemala and all of Central America when the broader Roman Catholic Church began to move farther toward the ideological right under John Paul II. Blessed Are the Activists offers rich, original research and a gripping narrative. With Guatemala and other countries in Latin America still experiencing human rights abuses, this book will continue to provide context. It will appeal to a broad swath of readers, from scholars to the general public and students.
