Intro: What would it look like if we valued group narratives over individual ones? In this post Jacey Anderson (graduate student of History at Montana State University) describes the methods of collaborative, multi-generational workshops she co-facilitated in El Salvador in January 2019. Using their long-standing relationships with the community of Arcatao, Dr. Molly Todd (professor of history at Montana State University), Barbara Mergen Alvarado (bilingual and multicultural educator), and Jacey explore how to use the lessons they learned from the people of Arcatao to design highly participatory historic memory workshops.

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” -Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

We met behind the church during mass. Most of the community was either inside worshipping or in the fields working, leaving the town square in Arcatao, Chalatenango, El Salvador quieter than usual. Aside from the red political party flags flying from rooftops as a reminder of the upcoming election, little had changed since the time I briefly lived here several years ago. Sipping from a lukewarm water bottle flavored with an instant coffee packet, I opened my notebook to begin brainstorming with my advisor and collaborator Dr. Molly Todd

Through conversations with the community, and our past experiences living here on separate occasions, Molly and I knew three things:

1. Arcatao is an organized community with a strong background in historic memory work.

2. We were there to facilitate three historic memory workshops.

3. The community asked that we include the youth in these workshops and that we do not focus on stories of trauma.

During the Salvadoran Civil War (1980 to 1992), many civilians experienced state-sponsored violence and thousands fled their homes as refugees. Others were internally displaced, seeking shelter in the mountains and moving when necessary.[1] The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)  formed in 1980, and led the leftist guerilla movement.[2] As part of Cold War geopolitics, the United States Government sent one to two million dollars every day to support the right-wing militarized Salvadoran Government.[3] Amidst the conflict, groups of people in El Salvador organized to advocate and educate themselves. Grassroots Solidarity groups in the U.S. and El Salvador formed a political voice to speak out against violence both the U.S. and Salvadoran governments were committing against the Salvadoran people.[4]

Taking this information, as well as discussions we had with Barb and our Public History Lab[5] team into account, Molly and I began to make an outline of what the workshops might look like. We tried to mirror how the community ran their own meetings and workshops, which oftentimes used popular education methods. 

Popular education is a philosophy, tool, and pedagogy that aims to draw from people’s experiences and connect them to each other and the larger community to try to find common ground and understand structures of inequality.[6] The “educators” and the “students” are equal in the knowledge creation process.[7] Though not a requirement for the popular education process, workshops that use these tools often include movement and engaging materials with little text.[8]

For our workshops, this meant opening up with a dinámica, or icebreaker. In each workshop, we sat in a circle and went around answering a simple question like, “What is your favorite fruit?” or “What part of you itches right now?” This set the tone that each person would have the chance to be an equal participant and share their voice. After participating in the dinámica ourselves, Molly, Barb, and I briefly explained the potential process and outcomes of the workshop, we emphasized this was a pilot project and encouraged any feedback along the way.

Taking the community request seriously, we began by having participants silently think of a moment of strength in their lives. This could range from overcoming an obstacle to a time they felt proud of themselves. We handed out paper, crayons, and markers and asked participants to take some time to draw something that represented this moment. Drawings ranged from elaborate family portraits to simple lines representing a tree.

Next, we counted off to form random pairs. Partners moved to sit with one another and share what their drawing represented. While people visited, Molly, Barb, and I spread out laminated prints of photos from the MSU Project Solidarity archive.[9] These images were from both amateur and professional photographers who spent time in El Salvador during the 1980s. Each participant selected a photograph from the pile that connected to their drawing in some way. In the same pairs, they shared their photos and found one to three similarities between their stories.

Finally, we came together as a large group and shared these similarities. After significant discussion and debate, the group created a title that embraced the major themes they noticed. With the end goal of a group-curated poster, participants pooled their drawings and photographs together and selected several that matched their title. The workshops concluded with a discussion of their final poster, what this poster could potentially be used for, and what they would like to see in future workshops.

Molly and I brought the group posters to the Public History at Montana State University where students recreated the posters using Adobe InDesign. We sent digital drafts to several participants. The printed versions are currently on their way to El Salvador and should arrive in Arcatao by late February.

The traditional academic oral history process is between one interviewer and one narrator. While this method allows individuals normally left out of historic narratives to share their stories, it privileges the individual narrative over the community narrative and can discourage reserved people, or people who do not believe their stories matter, from participating. These workshops experimented with an alternative route. In these highly participatory, multigenerational workshops, participants were able to work together to make meaning of a violent past and offer solidarity and support to one another as people shared stories of navigating war, displacement, and trauma. Several participants stressed the urgency of passing their history to the next generation. “They need to know their education, food, and well-being were not free,” one woman shared.

Each workshop varied in demographics, number of participants, and final narratives; however, the similarities between groups were more striking. Although these workshops focused on past moments of strength and resilience, each workshop’s discussion naturally turned to critiquing present-day struggles of immigration, climate change, and lack of youth involvement in community organizing. Many stories highlighted the struggle and violence in the war era, yet there was a common theme: each group viewed this same era as a golden age of organization. While we intentionally did not capture the individual stories shared in pairs to create space for more candid connections to form, we heard powerful narratives that stemmed from the roots of Salvadoran culture and community.

These workshops were funded through the Whiting Foundation’s Public Engagement Fellowship. For more information about solidarity work, or if you’re interested in attending a popular education workshop, visit elsalvadorsolidarity.org.

[1] Molly Todd, Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War, (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison: 2010).

[2] Greg Randin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, (Metropolitan Books: 2006).

[3] Hillary Goodfriend, “El Salvador’s New Battlefield,” Jacobin, January 17, 2017.

[4] SHARE El Salvador, accessed April 1, 2019, http://share-elsalvador.org/history.html.

[5] The Public History Lab is a co-curricular internship experience for select undergraduate and graduate students. The goal of the lab is to facilitate connections and collaborations between university scholars, students, and community members, and to continue to emphasize the power and value of the humanities in today’s world.

[6] Daniel Kerr, “Allan Nevins Is Not My Grandfather: The Roots of Radical Oral History Practice in the United States,” The Oral History Review, (2016), Vol. 43, No. 2, 368.

[7] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (New York: 1994).

[8] US-El Salvador Sister Cities, the organization Barb, Molly, and Jacey have been involved with for years, recently began a Popular Education Program that hosts workshops in the US and El Salvador. This year’s work is focused on incorporating historic memory work into the workshops. For more information visit https://www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org/contact/.

[9] Project Solidarity is a branch of the Public History Lab that works closely with US-El Salvador Sister Cities. Its goal is to collect and preserve photographs, artifacts, and documents from solidarity activists who worked in El Salvador during the conflict period. Molly and I selected between 100-200 printed and laminated photos from this collection to bring to the workshops.