EL SALVADOR

THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
Goals of the Martín-Baró Fund
1. To develop a holistic perspective for understanding the
connections between state and institutional
violence and repression, and the mental health of communities
and individuals;
2. To support innovative projects that explore the power of
community to foster healing within individuals and communities
trying to recover from experiences of institutional violence,
repression, and social injustice;
3. To build collaborative relationships among the Fund, its grantees,
and its contributors for mutual education and empowerment; and
4. To develop social consciousness within the United States
regarding the psychological consequences of structural
violence, repression, and social injustice.
vidual and society and emerges within an
historical context; psychosocial trauma,
he wrote, is “the concrete crystallization
in individuals of aberrant and dehumanizing
social relations.” He contended that
mental health cannot be seen as separate
from the social order, challenging psychologists
to address not only the individual
and social effects of war and other
human rights violations, but also, in his
words, to “construct a new person in a
new society.”
Since 2004, the fund has supported
CBC in its psychosocial work with women
survivors of massacres and families
of victims in the rural communities of
Arcatao, Nueva Trinidad and Perquín
in the northwest part of the country for
two three-year funding cycles. During
this time CBC staff trained local community
workers who accompanied survivors
in their communities as they mourned
those massacred and disappeared during
the armed conflict and sought to rethread
community. Group-based activities facilitated
by CBC staff included creative play,
traditional medicines and acupressure.
CBC also provided psychosocial
accompaniment for the exhumation
of remains. The exhumation work was
done in collaboration with an experienced
Guatemalan forensic anthropological
team. In 2007, CBC inaugurated
the Museo de la Memoria (Memory
Museum) and published a community
resource, Cuarenta Días con la Memoria:
Memoria Sobreviviente de Arcatao (Forty
Days of Memory: Survival Memory
of Arcatao), as well as other testimonial
materials.
Toward the end of the grant cycle provided
by the fund, CBC was charting new
directions, creating actions at the local,
municipal, and national levels, demonstrating
its work with survivors to justice
authorities, landowners, and other committees.
CBC workers had been invited to
Chile and Brazil to share their experiences
at international meetings on historical
memory and mental health. In 2008,
CBC staff visited Boston to participate in
the fund’s Bowl-a-thon, its signature fundraising
event, and had the opportunity
to share firsthand reports on their project
activities with members of the fund and
with Boston College students.
More recently, CBC has added new
programs in the areas of masculinities
and peace-building among others. The
educational and political campaigns of
their Masculinities Program mobilize
Salvadoran men to say no to violence
against women, and yes to gender equity.
It incorporates Martín-Baró’s concept
of de-ideologization to expose cultural
assumptions held by many Salvadorans
about gender-based violence with the
aim of constructing alternative forms of
masculinity. CBC members have systematized
and disseminated this experience
in journal articles and other publications.
CBC is, in Martín-Baró’s words, constructing
new people in a new El Salvador.
At the same time, CBC embodies the
spirit of the work and political commitment
of Ignacio Martín-Baró and
remains one of the most successful partnerships
that the fund has established in
El Salvador. Defying the historical discontinuity
that characterizes many community
organizations, CBC has worked
with Salvadoran men and women for
more than 15 years to provide educational
and psychosocial resources.
Working under extreme constraints
and with meager budgets, community
organizations in El Salvador and beyond
are supported by funders and advocates
who not only understand the goals of
the grantees, but also work to accompany
them on their journey to a more
just society. The Ignacio Martín-Baró
Fund exemplifies how small individual
donations informed by pragmatic solidarity
and the liberation psychology of
its namesake can have a larger impact
around the world.
M. Brinton Lykes is Professor of Community
Cultural Psychology, Associate
Director of the Center for Human Rights
& International Justice at Boston
College, and co-founder of the Ignacio
Martín-Baró Fund. She also accompanies
Mayan women and children
and transnational and mixed-status
migrant families in participatory and
action research processes.
Nelson Portillo is a Salvadoran social
psychologist and Assistant Professor of
the Practice in the Counseling, Educational,
and Developmental Psychology
Department in the Lynch School of
Education at Boston College. He joined
the Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund in 2014
and currently serves as the chair of its
Fundraising Committee.
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