Those who teach and research the history of Central America will welcome the insightful contributions of Erik Ching's Authoritarian El Salvador. The author gives us a sense of the historic weight favoring authoritarian forms of political governance that trumped a brief democratic respite from 1927 to 1931. The historic leverage of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century patronage networks that ruled over all Salvadorans regardless of class or ethnicity returned with renewed vigor with General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez's successful coup in 1931.
Ching builds his analysis around five arguments. First, a long-standing system of nondemocratic authoritarianism dated back to the early days of the republic. Next, a strange but consistent disconnect existed between what actors promised in their speeches and what they accomplished. This distance between rhetoric and reality mattered, and this cultural exchange stands guard against an overly materialistic explanation of events. Thirdly, peasant communities practiced the same exclusionary politics as their elite counterparts. Any pretension to challenge this political model would require a seismic shift in cultural and political expectations among Salvadorans. Fourth, the historic conflicts between ladino and indigenous communities are material and cannot be dismissed. Ching utilizes this insight to push for a historiographical reassessment of the 1932 massacre. Lastly, Martínez juggled the real threat of massive repression with a modicum of promised reform to sustain his rule.
Ching makes clever use of sparse sources to piece together how the powerful clientelist system worked at the municipal level, and how these local networks interfaced and became powerful regional brokers that bargained for national power and largess. Ching argues persuasively that 1898 was a defining moment: the centralizing power of the state was solidified when General Tomás Regalado overthrew President Rafael Gutiérrez. No other presidential coup took place during the next three decades, as the emerging national apparatus overwhelmed municipal and regional networks.
Two moments in Ching's analysis capture the reader's attention: the Pío Romero Bosque presidency (1927–1931) and the massacre of 1932 that solidified General Martínez's control. First, how in the world did Pío Romero Bosque, as president, lead El Salvador to challenge the patronage system and introduce a relatively free democratic election in March 1931? Ideas mattered, leadership made a difference, and the impact of similar experiments among El Salvador's Central American neighbors may have influenced Romero Bosque. When Arturo Araujo, the pro-labor presidential candidate, won the election, the military led by General Martínez stepped in and crushed the democratic aspirations of the new country, in December 1931. Romero Bosque's inspired ideas could not overcome the nation's deep authoritarian traditions.
New archival sources accessed by Ching enrich and enliven the intense historiographical debate surrounding the indigenous uprising in western El Salvador that led to the events of 1932. There is a breathtaking quality to Ching's analysis as he unravels the layers of historiographical interpretation that have convinced generations (myself included!) that Salvadoran military forces crushed a communist-inspired insurgency that led to the disappearance of indigenous peoples and culture. Au contraire, declares Ching: it was most likely the convergence of a cofradía-based village riot with national politics that led to the murderous military repression. Military leaders then pursued mild social reforms to respond to the demands for justice among the indigenous peoples who had fought over natural resources with their historic ladino adversaries. By the 1950s, residents of the heavily repressed municipality of Izalco still identified themselves as indigenous and utilized their contacts with the military government to challenge ladino aggression.
El Salvador's devastating civil war, from 1981 to 1992, put an end to five decades of military rule. One cannot escape the inevitable counterfactual that emerges from Ching's exploration in Authoritarian El Salvador. What might have happened had the Salvadoran military sustained Romero Bosque's democratic experiment? Ching's insights give us great pause to consider the future of El Salvador's political landscape.
