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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Fate of Many, the Brutality of Others: Human Rights Documentation and the Margins of Subjectivity in El Salvador A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Information Studies by Mario Hugo Ramirez 2017 © Copyright by Mario Hugo Ramirez 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Fate of Many, the Brutality of Others: Human Rights Documentation and the Margins of Subjectivity in El Salvador by Mario Hugo Ramirez Doctor of Philosophy in Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Michelle L. Caswell, Chair Taking a critical archival studies approach, this dissertation engages critical discourse analysis as a means of analyzing the analogous treatment and representation of political dissidents from the civil war and alleged gang members in post-conflict El Salvador through the medium of human rights documentation. By analyzing a cross section of records, including case files, reports, videos and newspapers from three nongovernmental human rights organizations (the Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador, the Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho and Servicio Social Pasionista) and one dedicated archival repository (Centro de Información, Documentación y Apoyo a la Investigación) in San Salvador, El Salvador, it plots the recurrent discursive formations that evoke the socio-political and cultural marginality of those targeted for human rights violations. ii Furthermore, this dissertation examines how human rights records engender a critical reflection on continuities of violence in the country that perpetuate these parallel discourses of ontological expendability for those “victims” of human rights violations deemed most abject to the body politic, and on the persistence of discourses of social and political subversion. It poses an argument for “subversion” as a power inflected, multi-faceted and ideologically perpetuated discourse that is evident in human rights records and popular texts that cuts across both the civil war and post-conflict era in El Salvador, and has material repercussions that are embodied in socially and politically sanctioned human rights violations and abuses. In addition, it maintains that human rights records are critical tools in combating the dehumanization of victims, in disinterring standard definitions of the “human” in human rights and in providing an avenue towards subjectivity that contradicts the silencing and ontological erasure of individuals. iii The dissertation by Mario Hugo Ramirez is approved. Johanna R. Drucker Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland Ellen Moodie Michelle L. Caswell, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Research Questions……………………………………………………………………..... 8 Methodology…………………...………………………………………………………… 8 Limitations……………………………………………………………………………… 24 Chapter Outline…………………..……………………………………………………... 25 Chapter One: A History of Violence: Conflict and Criminality in El Salvador…………………………………………...……………………………………...… 30 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...…… 30 Looking Towards the Past to Spite the Future: El Salvador’s Legacies of Repression.... 31 Summary…………...………………………………………………………………...…. 52 Chapter Two: “Así como matamos los terroristas, así los vamos a matar todos ustedes”: Civil War, Dissidence and the Repression of Difference……………………...…... 55 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………... 55 Communism and Subversion in Central America: Defining and Confronting the Enemy Within…………………………………………….…………………...………………... 57 El Salvador: Specters of Communism …………………………………………………. 65 “Los Cantos de Sirena de Subversion”: Civil War and the Subversive Self……………………………………………..…………………………………....….. 86 Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador: Exhuming Subversion….………...... 96 Subversion within the Ranks: The Persecution of the Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador and the Case of Herbert Anaya Sanabria……………………………….... 105 Summary……………...……………………………………………………..……...…. 117 Chapter Three: The Most Unsympathetic of Victims, the Most Monstrous of Citizens: Pandilleros and the Limits of Human Rights Discourse..…………………. 120 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….…... 120 Heirs to an Inimical Violence: Maras, Criminality and Post-Conflict Subversion...…. 123 v Elimination, Dehumanization and Dispossession: Assailing the Stranger Within….… 138 The Subject Presumed to Kill: Human Rights Records and the Reach for Ontological Integrity………………………………………………………………………………... 157 Summary………………….………………………………………………………...…. 184 Chapter Four: At the Interstices of Impunity and Reconciliation: El Salvador’s Reckoning with Human Rights..…………………………………………….....………... 188 Introduction…………………………………………………………………….……… 188 El Salvador in the Wake of the Monstrous: Human Rights, Archives and Precarity..... 190 Summary……………………………………………………………………....………. 206 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………................. 210 Appendix A: Figures….……………………………………………………….……………... 220 Appendix B: Interview Protocol….………………………………………………..……...… 251 References: Primary Sources….………………………………………….......…………....... 254 References: Secondary Sources…….………………….………………….……...………..... 258 vi List of Figures See Appendix A Figures 1-2 “Alerta de la Frente Unido Anticomunista al pueblo Salvadoreño, La reforma universitaria y los comunistas que la dirige: Conozcalos” Figure 3 “Queremos la libertad de…,” La Cronica, October 17, 1978 Figure 4 “Crece el número de detenidos,” La Cronica, November 9, 1978 Figure 5 “Torturan presos,” La Cronica, December 18, 1978 Figure 6 “Alejandro Beltrán Peña,” July 22, 1978 Figure 7 “Jaime Hernández Ramírez,” October 22, 1979 Figures 8-9 “Proclama del Ejercito Secreto Anticomunista” Figure 10 “Documentación, 1. La ola de terror, 1.1 Comunicados de los escuadrones paramilitares, a. Comunicado del ESA, atribuyendose las acciones terroristas del 6 septiembre de 1983” Figure 11 b. Comunicado del ESA, anunciando medidas político-militarés contra el diálogo” Figures 12-13 “Fuerza armada destaca sus estracturas paramilitares,” December 27, 1988 Figure 14 “Subversivos atraviesan buses y detonan bomba,” El Diario de Hoy, ca. 1981 Figure 15 “Subversivos detienen los vehículos y piden dinero,” El Diario de Hoy December 22, 1981 Figure 16 “Boletín Informativo No. 261: Encuentran cadavers de terroristas en rastreos de osicala,” August 23, 1989 Figure 17 “Boletín de Prensa No. 321: Terroristas secuestran a siete campesinos en San Miguel,” October 23, 1989 Figures 18-20 “Resumen sobre capturas realizadas por la Policia Nacional de personas por participar en en actividades de tipo subversive – terrorista y que han manifestado haber viajado a paises comunistas, asi: A Rusia, Cuba, y Nicaragua. Periodo 15Oct1979 A la fecha”, October 15, 1979 Figures 21-23 “Capturas mas relevantes: Realizadas por la Policia Nacional desde 15Oct1979 a la fecha, de personas relacionadas con actos de subversion y terrorismo,” April 984, Fuerza Armada de El Salvador, Policia Nacional, Departamento II Informaciones vii Figure 24 “COPREFA Informa Captura de Varios Subversivos” Figure 25 “Capturan Veintidos Maestros” Figures 26-29 “Herbert Anaya: Su voz no la callarán nunca” Figures 30-31 Book 7 of images of dead and tortured victims viii VITA Mario H. Ramirez EDUCATION 2003: Master of Science in Library and Information Science, Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University, C.W. Post 1998: Master of Arts in Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley 1993: Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals Caswell, Michelle, Cifor, Marika and Ramirez, Mario H. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist. Vol. 79, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 56-81. Ramirez, Mario H. “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” The American Archivist. 78, No. 2, Fall/Winter 2015, pp. 57-74. Ramirez, Mario H. “Witness to Brutality: Documenting Torture and Truth in Post- Civil War El Salvador,” Archives without Borders/Archivos sin Fronteras, Archiefkunde 12, 2012, pp. 303-317. Ramirez, Mario H. “The Task of the Latino/a Archivist: On Archiving Identity and Community,” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2009, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5d4366f9. Conference Proceedings Cifor, Marika, Montoya, Robert D. and Ramirez, Mario H. “Developing an Undergraduate Information Studies Curriculum in Support of Social Justice,” iConference 2016 Proceedings. Ramirez, Mario H., Patrizia La Piscopia and Laurence Lepetit. “The Role of Social Media and Web 2.0 Technologies in the Protection of Cultural Heritage,” International Symposium Cultural Heritage Protection in Times of Risk: Challenges and Opportunities, November 15-17, 2012, pp. 453-460. ix Book Chapters Ramirez, Mario H. (2017), On “Monstrous” Subjects and Human Rights Documentation, in Karen F. Gracy (ed.) Emerging Trends in Archival Science, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 51-75. Ramirez, Mario H., Brannon, RaShauna, Gray, LaVerne, Morales, Miraida, Morales Myrna and Tayag, Elnora. (2016), The Social Justice Collaboratorium: Illuminating Research Pathways between Social Justice and Library and Information Studies, in Ursula Gorham, Natalie Greene Taylor , Paul T. Jaeger (ed.) Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social