From Exodus to Exitus Causes of post-war violence in El ... - eDoc

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20 Heidrun Zinecker it is people with considerable initiative and single-mindedness who migrate – it is often those who are leading figures in the comunidades – then this too favours the stability of the oligarchic system, even if it is also bad news for the social capital of the comunidades. It is not the poorest people who migrate abroad; they would not be able to raise the USD 5,000-10,000 that they need for the unofficial guides who lead them across the borders (coyotes): one across the Mexican border and one across the border to the USA. In countries with a particularly high poverty rate the poor are too poor to be able to afford the cost of migration, especially to the USA. Despite the high costs incurred by each migration, it is above all the second and third quintiles from the bottom that migrate to the USA, although in comparison to their counterparts in Central America (except in Costa Rica) they are relatively well off. Honduran migration specialist Ricardo Puerta assumes that first of all it is the lower middle class, once upwardly mobile but whose ascent has been brought to a halt, which is migrating to the USA (Puerta 2007). Remittances therefore act as an outlet for oligarchic structures, as they reduce poverty, general inequality and unemployment, by taking them elsewhere. Remittances help to legitimize oligarchic structures, by ensuring that the channelling of discontent otherwise present in precarious distribution ratios among the lower classes especially, who might call the ruling oligarchy and rent acquisition into question, does not manifest itself. Thanks to remittances the oligarchy can dispense with the risk, which would be entailed by rejecting the rent economy and turning towards a market economy. Hypothesis 2: Remittances lead to violence, by creating economic structures which suggest violence for reasons of deprivation or frustration as a way of accessing the market to those who do not receive remittances. Even if Salvadorans get work in El Salvador, it is not worth it for them in view of the radical drop in wages in their own country and the lucrative alternatives offered in the USA. If working at home is no longer worth it, and those affected are “wealthy” enough to migrate and find work abroad, then this alternative is a lucrative one for them. If on the contrary they are too poor to migrate, or if they cannot spare enough to meet the other costs associated with migration, or if they are deported home from the country to which they were headed, and can then no longer find any work there, they feel themselves compelled to choose another alternative. Those who receive remittances can afford to buy a designer T-shirt, but the poor have to make do with an ordinary one. Those who receive remittances can afford a pick-up truck, and the poor only a horse. This causes frustration. Those frustrated in this way look for a substitute for accessing the market, to replace or complement working at home or abroad. Violence steps forward. Not without reason is violence in El Salvador increasingly to be blamed on economic interests. Maras offer an economically better life, not only in the USA, but also in the home country. In this way young people who remain in El Salvador can, as long as they are mara members, compete with their emigré friends, or with friends at home who do receive remittances, as far as standard of living is concerned, even if they do not receive any remittances themselves. Since 1989 wages in El Salvador have fallen drastically: the medium real wages by more than 12 % and the minimum wages by almost 17 % (PNUD 2005 c: 13, 26). In the USA
From Exodus to Exitus 21 Salvadorans earn more than six times as much as their fellow countrymen in El Salvador. With regard to the Human Development Index, Salvadoran migrants in the USA rank about 24 places ahead in comparison to their compatriots in El Salvador (PNUD 2005 c: 93). If they are deported, those returning home experience frustration and deprivation, which leads to their no longer wanting to start from where they left off and seeking – violent – alternatives to enable them to achieve the same living standards as they did while in the USA. El Salvador is a classic example of how relative deprivation at a comparatively low level, i.e. without there being any great difference from the deprived individual’s surroundings, can happen and bring about the same consequences as absolute or relative deprivation on a high level – among other things, violence. Consumer choice and expectations are extremely high in El Salvador because of the value of remittances, however the opportunity for everyone to satisfy these, especially for young people, is comparatively limited, with the result that crime, including violence, is perceived to be the only chance of meeting expectations and standards set by other people. In addition to the bipolarity between the highest and lowest quintiles, which can provoke political discontent, but which does not do so in El Salvador, because the civil war, having broken out on this basis and failed in its objective, left only weariness in its wake, there are in El Salvador remarkable differences in income and consumption within and between the second and third quintiles from the bottom. It is not so much the economic cost-benefit calculation per se which encourages violence in El Salvador. Instead, relative to the surroundings – to the related and well-documented migrations to the USA and also to those returning home from their own or the next higher quintile – it is the real or at least perceived low standard of living, which arouses strong senses of deprivation and frustration similar to those aroused by poverty or great inequality. Unlike absolute deprivation and even unlike relative deprivation at a high level, relative deprivation at a low level – although it does not cause any less frustration – cannot be politically channelled and therefore vents itself in violent crime. Hypothesis 3: Migration and remittances lead to violence, by generating and sustaining a social void in their immediate context in the countries sending and receiving people and funds, which on the one hand destroys social capital and causes anomie, and on the other hand creates the need for new social capital and structure. However the new social capital is ungovernable, because it is linked with a violence which can only provide itself with a partial structure and otherwise generates anomic violence. The migration of the social context, and the possibility continually explored by Salvadorans of migrating themselves, destroys social networks and leads to a social void, which paradoxically manifests itself in the densely populated urban centres themselves. The majority of Salvadorans feel themselves abandoned by relatives and friends, and uprooted by their own or other people’s migration. They are always “in transit”, with the feeling that they may have to move on again tomorrow. This reduces any sense of belonging to a nation or a community or any community spirit, especially since it is precisely the individuals with leadership skills who leave the comunidades. Salvadorans therefore are under the impression that they have no nation (González, L. 2006). As a result those affected seek a
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