Salvadoran Immigrant Activists and Political Transnationalism

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Reconciling Americas: Salvadoran Immigrant Activists and Political Transnationalism A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Arpi Misha Miller 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Reconciling Americas: Salvadoran Immigrant Activists and Political Transnationalism by Arpi Misha Miller Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Gail Kligman, Co-chair Professor Roger Waldinger, Co-chair In the 1980s, a violent civil war in El Salvador led to the mass emigration of over a million Salvadorans, many of whom fled their national territory only to seek refuge in the U.S. – the very country funding the military dictatorship in their homeland. Although many Salvadorans bunkered down in cities like Los Angeles in the years to follow, a cohort of politicized Salvadoran migrants remained entrenched in the struggle in their homeland, supporting the resistance movement there and partnering with North American activists to end U.S. military intervention. This dissertation focuses on one such group of Salvadoran immigrant activists and their quest to “reconcile their Americas,” balancing allegiances to their new hostland and their homeland after the war’s end. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on the activists’ creation of the Salvadoran-American Day festival in Los Angeles, and its institutionalization at the federal level, as a platform for visibility, political change and integration between their two ii country contexts. Drawing on over six years of ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, this dissertation teases out the activists’ subjective orientation, practical methodology, the constraints and openings for action they encounter, and the costs and benefits they experience in the course of their transnational political work. At a theoretical level, the case study contributes to an understanding of the relationship between processes of immigrant integration and transnationalism. As a narrative, it tells the story of these individuals from their experiences of mass violence in El Salvador to their ambiguous feelings about U.S. citizenship, their eventual embrace of a life lived “in-between,” and the long-awaited but complex reconciliation facilitated by the rise of a leftist political power in the homeland. iii The dissertation of Arpi Misha Miller is approved. Susan Bibler Coutin Rubén Hernández-León Gail Kligman, Committee Co-chair Roger Waldinger, Committee Co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv For my parents, Donald and Lorna Miller v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Vita xii 1. Introduction: Reconciling Americas 1 2. Methods and Historical Background 36 3. “Reinventing Ourselves”: Cultural Crisis, Dignity and the Emergence of El Día del Salvadoreño 62 4. Arriving at Symbolic Ethnicity: Collaboration, Contestation, and Constraint at Día del Salvadoreño 124 5. Dále Salvadoreño: Embodied Wisdom and ‘Transnational’ Activist Methodology 189 6. Becoming American: Exploring the Integrative Impact of Cross-Border Activism 247 7. Transnationalism’s Travails 268 8. Afterward 330 References 346 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It has become a common saying in my family that it takes a village to write a dissertation, and that has definitely been the case with the dissertation at hand. I am profoundly grateful to my co-chairs, Roger Waldinger and Gail Kligman, both of whom have believed in this project from the very start. It was in Gail’s graduate course on ethnographic field methods that I first began doing fieldwork and interviews with the participants of this study, and, along with the other students in the class, it was with Gail that I learned how to navigate entrée to a fieldsite, how to think about insider-outsider status, and how to transform memos and fieldnotes into the first stages of analysis. Gail has read myriad versions of the chapters in this dissertation in their nascent forms as conference presentations, coursework papers, and a master’s thesis. And on the final versions of the chapters, Gail has done a very close read, helping me to think beyond the field of immigration, raising questions about substance and organization, and making suggestions right down to my use of the semicolon. This, in Maya Angelou’s words, has at times led me think things like, what do you mean you don’t like my semi-colon? “I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much!” But in quiet moments of reflection, I have found that Gail’s suggestions have always been spot on, and I appreciate both the close attention to the work and her timeliness in turning around comments and encouraging me onward. Roger Waldinger is the person who formally introduced me to the field of immigration. Roger’s vast knowledge of immigration and his habit of reading about the topic well outside the field of sociology, devouring fiction, history and political science, has made him the best kind of mentor – one that orients his students well and then truly enjoys seeing what interesting corners of the subject they will uncover on their own. Roger has seen a kernel of potential in this project, ripe for development, from the very first memos that I sent him, and I can say without hesitation that he has been unfailingly supportive of my efforts to bring the work to this stage. Roger also read every chapter of this dissertation multiple times, always pushing me to see how this case fits into the vii bigger picture, and reminding me to specify the context in which the actions I have recorded are occurring. Once, at a conference session on immigration, a senior scholar said to me, “Oh you are Roger’s student? He seems so stern all the time!” Quite the contrary. Roger’s students quickly come to see that he is not only unfailingly supportive of the work but also of the person. As a father of three children to whom he is very devoted, he has encouraged me through all life’s milestones, not only the academic ones. And I continue in awe of his ability to dedicate time to his family while remaining so superhumanly productive. I am also grateful to Rubén Hernández-León and Susan Bibler Coutin for their support in signing on to this project. I am extremely thankful for Susan’s suggestions and comments on prior drafts of almost every chapter in this manuscript, particularly due to her expertise on the trajectory and nuances of the Salvadoran immigrant population in Los Angeles. I found her work to be an inspiring model, and I appreciate her anthropologist’s eye, which has allowed her to raise interesting questions and suggestions about both my data and my narrative. I also feel particularly lucky to have been trained in the UCLA sociology department, surrounded by the highest quality peers and professors. In particular, two faculty members outside my committee have been responsible for shaping the way that I think and work, Adrian Favell and Maurice Zeitlin. Adrian is blessed to be one of those academics gifted with an extraordinarily playful and creative mind. This, in turn, allows him to examine topics from multiple angles and take delight in subject matters and projects well outside his own field. As his student, I appreciated his ability to take apart a complex, multifaceted topic or field and organize it for his students with such grace and clarity. Maurice is the kind of professor who strikes terror in the minds of first-year students because of his sheer brilliance and the way his eyes land on you at the end of a question and don’t turn away until you have answered to his satisfaction. But anyone who has had the privilege of taking a course with Maurice knows that he, too, is an extraordinarily playful and creative mind. He alone taught me how to read academic work, pay attention to the details, and strap into an argument as if riding a viii roller coaster, fully taking the ride, understanding the argument from the inside before beginning to assess and critique. I also am grateful for the opportunity to do coursework and converse with Jack Katz, Rogers Brubaker, Jeff Prager and Andreas Wimmer. Finally, I am extremely grateful to the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation for a Dissertation Year fellowship, which allowed me to conduct intensive fieldwork in the year following my proposal defense. I could not have made it this far in the program without the support of a number of classmates. In particular I thank Alisa Garni, Maria Dziembowska, Cari Coe, Frank Weyher, Renee Reichl Luthra, Amada Armenta and Andrew Deener for support through the early stages of this work. In the last two years, it is my writing group that has helped me put intention into action, encouraging me nearly every day of the week to show up and make it happen. Faustina DuCrois, Nancy Yuen, Christina Chin, Leisy Abrego and Nori Milman, thank you for those countless, timed 30- minute online writing sessions and all the advice and support along the way! Finally, on the academic front, I also must thank two kindred spirits I have met outside of UCLA, who have encouraged me from the start of this project to the end – Michelle Boyd and Andrea Dyrness. Knowing that academics like you two exist makes me all the more excited to be a part of this social and intellectual world. I also appreciate my scholarly “family” in Colorado: Ashok Prasad, Ramaa Vasudevan, Sammy Zahran, Aline Beyrouti, Daniele Tavani and Silvia Minguzzi. There is another group of individuals that made this project possible in the first place, and that is the friends and “profes” in Guatemala who taught me to speak Spanish and introduced me to Central America and a view of the United States from “the outside.” In my very first Spanish class there, my instructor, Roney, asked me where I was from.

Load more