Local Actors as Global Critics

Personal Reflexive Statement

I remember the first time I told my uncle Freddy that I wanted to interview longtime Salvadoran activists in District of Columbia. He was thrilled. He asked if I wanted to interview him, and I explained that it would help me a lot if he could introduce me to nonfamily members. Looking back, I wish I had done that interview even when he could not be a participant in this project. He was passionate and devoted to his work as an activist and now, I can admire the energy it took from him. Our last “lucha” (struggle) was the 2007 presidential elections in El Salvador. He volunteered me to oversee electoral fraud and said this would be a great experience that I would not forget. He was right. He was a seasoned activist and throughout his life continued to fight for change and social justice. I hope his struggles resonate in the people whose lives he helped make better. May he peacefully rest in a better place.

Introduction

While the concept of transnationalism—broadly defined as a series of economic, sociocultural, and political practices and processes which transcend the confines of the territorially bounded jurisdiction of the nation-state and are an essential part of the normal lives of those involved (M. P. Smith and Guarnizo 1998:5)—has successfully captured the various ties immigrants maintain across multiple borders, there is less discussion on the worldviews or mind-sets that maintain this way of life. In a useful formulation, Vertovec (1999) suggests that one of the dimensions of transnationalism, the “transnational consciousness,” reflects an individual’s awareness of simultaneously belonging in two places—the homeland and the hostland. In short, transnational consciousness captures the idea of a critical mind-set that expands borders. Yet empirically, the concept of transnational consciousness has not been widely applied in migration scholarship because the idea of consciousness is most often linked to mobilization practices, which is more compatible with social movement theory. I seek to bridge the field of transnationalism and social movement studies by outlining the role transnational consciousness plays in the lives of politically active immigrants. Following Milkman and Wong (2001:111), I focus on seasoned activists, that is, immigrants who escaped political persecution in their homeland and carried their advocacy and organizing expertise into the host society. ¹

Examining the experiences of seasoned activists in Washington, DC fills some gaps in transnationalism scholarship. These activists have an ongoing contentious relationship with the right-wing homeland government of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party ² —many escaped political repression during the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s and continued their activism in the United States to oppose the authoritarian regime—yet their evolving practices, particularly their shift to local work in recent years is only beginning to emerge. Miller (2011, 2013) finds that Salvadorans, through efforts such as creating the Salvadoran American Day festival and the institutionalization of Salvadoran American organizations, are integrating into the civic and political landscape of Los Angeles. However, most scholarly work on Salvadorans situates their experience in the 1980s and 1990s when they were involved in transnational advocacy work (see Coutin 1998, 2000; Hamilton and Chinchilla 2001) or examines their recent attempts to challenge the right-wing government during presidential elections in El Salvador (see Gonzales 2009; Perla 2010). While useful, these accounts treat Salvadoran activists as working for the betterment of their homeland rather than accounting for how local work in the hostland strengthens their activists’ roots, making them better activists from afar because they are able to “see” the scheme behind the government’s actions, especially at a time when the Salvadoran government is courting expatriate communities. Indeed, my argument is that despite the homeland government’s efforts to reach out to emigrants, seasoned activists’ approach a post–civil war context by arming themselves with an ideological tool that resembles Vertovec’s (1999) notion of a transnational consciousness. This critical stance is formed by being embedded in a contentious transnational terrain—that is, in the last two decades, seasoned activists have shifted their organizing work from transnational to local and in the process have sharpened their critiques of the homeland government; thus employing a transnational consciousness helps them make sense of the systemic failures of being both “here” and “there” and in particular, problematize how individual remittances (i.e., money sent home) and temporary protected status (TPS) disempower their compatriots. Nevertheless, it is through their local work, particularly aiding migrants during an anti-immigrant climate, that they attempt to ameliorate the experience of marginalization.

Salvadorans are the fourth largest Latino immigrant group and yet, they are largely absent in social movement scholarship. In Wiltfang and McAdam’s (1991) study of the Sanctuary movement in Tucson, Arizona, Salvadorans are omitted as participants since the authors assess the costs and risks that American activists confronted by being involved. Gamson (1991) and Nepstad (1997) apply social movement theory to the Central American experience but the focus is on the Catholic Church. I seek to fill these gaps by focusing on long-term seasoned activists, specifically, how despite transitioning to local organizing work continue to maintain sharpened critiques of their homeland government, while simultaneously battling hostland challenges hindering Salvadoran immigrants. My focus is their mind frame, ³ what I refer to as the transnational consciousness, because it provides longtime activists a unique understanding of the homeland and hostland contexts and see these as interwoven—creating challenges for immigrants but allowing activists to become better at what they do and remain entrenched in the “struggle.” In short, the transnational consciousness provides the on-the-ground lens for seasoned activists to continue organizing in a post–civil war context.

I shall investigate these processes in various steps. I begin with an overview of seasoned activists’ long-standing organizing work while focusing on how individual remittances and a temporary status shape the post–civil war Salvadoran context. Then, I situate Vertovec’s (1999) concept of transnational consciousness within social movement literature on oppositional worldviews to provide a framework for understanding the evolution of Salvadorans’ critical stances. Through interview data, I argue that seasoned activists use hostland local work to ameliorate the conditions faced by the most marginalized members of the Salvadoran diaspora in DC precisely because they can capitalize on their transnational consciousness to understand the ramifications of individual remittances and temporary legal provisions in the lives of their compatriots.

Background

Transnational Consciousness as a Mobilizing Lens

While transnational behavior has been widely studied—examples abound including buying homes, participating in the civic life of multiple nations, entrepreneurial ventures across borders, and organizing homeland associations to improve the sending society’s infrastructure—very little is known on how activists maintain transnational mind-sets even when they stopped being transnational organizers. Vertovec (1999) uncovered the notion of transnational consciousness claiming this worldview gives immigrants a sense of belonging in various places. Yet, work on immigrant political transnationalism (Baker-Cristales 2008; Itzigsohn and Villacres 2008; Popkin 2003) does not incorporate this concept, focusing more on state-led transnational efforts that woo emigrants through mechanisms such as the expansion of dual-citizenship rights, lobbying on behalf of emigrant’s legality and increasing consular services. Despite the fact that these works offer sharp critiques of state-led efforts engaging transnational actors, they tend to downplay emigrant’s agency even when there are clear instances of conflict, ⁷ thereby inadvertently pacifying critical stances toward homeland government efforts. As a counterpoint, social movement work on oppositional consciousness (see Kwon 2008; Mansbridge and Morris 2001; Morris 1992; Negron-Gonzales 2013), or the ability of groups to become aware of injustices and concurrently act to end them, outlines the ways in which actors’ critical stances help them contest structural inequities. As Whittier (2009:107) notes, “[a]ttributing the difficulties in one’s life to structural rather than personal causes (seeing the personal as political) is an important component of oppositional consciousness and helps motivate people to participate in collective action aimed at changing circumstances.” Therefore, understanding how consciousness operates is crucial to understanding activists’ contending transnational practices.

Although oppositional consciousness is important for collective action, I prefer to use transnational consciousness to frame the Salvadoran experience because it captures a “sense of belonging” that transgresses borders. With transnational consciousness, I seek to understand Salvadorans’ consciousness rising in a more global scale, that is, see its presence in how critical views toward the homeland government maintain an activist way of being even when direct action against the nation-state diffuses. Moreover, these critical views of the homeland enhance the on-the-ground community work that activists engage in (in the hostland). Examining the transnational consciousness of seasoned activists allows me to see how dynamic these actors are in adapting their critical stances to reflect the post–civil war period and fully develop Vertovec’s (1999) concept.

As a disclaimer, I cannot account for how seasoned activists employ a transnational consciousness in the last two elections (2009 and 2014) won by FMLN candidates, primarily because my data was collected two years prior to this recent change. However, I am able to examine how seasoned activists shift organizing practices, from national to transnational to local, and point to a sustained consciousness that helps them remain committed despite battling an ARENA-backed government who held power for more than two decades. Following Hirsch (1990) and Taylor and Whittier (1992) who argue consciousness raising is an instrumental process for mobilization, I argue seasoned activists’ transnational consciousness helps them mobilize for immigrant rights and contest homeland government policies (i.e., individual remittances and TPS) that hurt emigrants. With this lens, they become more efficient as organizers and continue to see the need to work alongside their compatriots.

Methodology

Through in-depth, semi-structured, and open-ended interviews of 25 individuals affiliated with nonprofit organizations, Salvadorans articulate critical stances on two key issues—individual remittances and TPS. During 2007–2008, participants were recruited through snowball sampling and interviewed in various settings such as coffee shops, restaurants, conference rooms, and private residences. Interviews were tape-recorded and on average lasted an hour (the extent to which I probed was limited because participants had time constraints). Participant observation field notes and newspaper reports complemented the interview data.

Transcripts from the interviews were coded, memoed, and analyzed using Nvivo software. The data were organized around the following categories: who shares similar insights and what explains their commonality, how do they describe their organizing work, and what are the ways they describe their relationship with the United States and Salvadoran governments. Although this is part of a larger project in which I created a typology of three actors, my focus here is on the seasoned activists’ experiences. To protect their anonymity, I use pseudonyms to identify seasoned activists in the analysis and do not disclose the names of the nonprofits they are a part of.

Most of the participants in the sample are well educated; 19 have professional degrees from the United States while the rest have taken basic level English classes, and 20 obtained a high-school degree from El Salvador. On average, the participants were residents of the metro DC area for 20 years and the median age is 45. They report earnings of US$50,000 or more. Nineteen participants are men and six are women. Fourteen are married, seven are single, and four are divorced.

Work on political participation shows the leadership base is often more upwardly mobile than those whom they serve (Chung 2007; Nepstad 2007), and seasoned activists are not the exception. In comparing themselves to Salvadoran immigrants, seasoned activists were aware of their privileged position (relative to the newcomers) and attributed it to their legal status and occupations. While their characteristics may underlie a unique standpoint, I do not seek to make claims on their positionality as activists vis-à-vis the immigrants but rather suggest long-standing activists’ work unfolds a consciousness that both defines them and gives meaning to their organizing experiences. As “persistent activists,” they continue fighting and challenging their homeland government. This is the story I tell.

“Always be an Activist”

I migrated to the United States because of the civil war; I want to say it was 1979. It was a tense moment where professors and students were being persecuted, and I was afraid of being killed or recruited. ⁸

Upon sharing his reason for migrating to the DC metro area, Edgardo, a man in his early 50s who works for a tenants association, claims that his passion for activism is rooted in surviving the civil war. Indeed, his account resonates with what other seasoned activists describe the civil war as they recall various incidents where someone they knew was tortured, raped, and/or killed by military forces and, at that point, realized that an end to violence would have to come from grassroots mobilization efforts. Dario, now in his 40s and working at a day laborer center, joined student organizations in high school and received death threats because of his involvement. Nevertheless, he says the experience “formed my political consciousness … I have always been involved and from what I remember, I have always been an activist.” Dario notes his consciousness raising was intensified in college: “seeing the injustices of the system marked me for life and it wasn’t until I entered college that I learned to understand the situation in my country so in a sense I got the language to define my activism.” Dario’s experience in his homeland reflects the early involvement of seasoned activists as many participated in grassroots efforts in college and continue to define themselves as “always being activists.”

Building from this organizing experience, seasoned activists’ transplant their rich organizing history to transnational efforts in the United States. For instance, Salvador, a male in his 40s, participated in several political activities (i.e., lobbying the U.S. government to end military aid to El Salvador, rallying in the United States against human rights abuses in El Salvador, and being involved in lawsuits to demand fair asylum laws) and notes this transnational work was invaluable because it sharpened his skills to fight for social change. After having been habituated into organizing work during the Salvadoran civil war (Salvador migrated to the United States because he was persecuted for being part of a religious youth group), transnational advocacy work suits his sense of social justice. Sol, another well-known community organizer in the area who was also politically persecuted, became a spokesperson in the solidarity efforts and a founder of the FMLN subcommittees in the DC area. Sol feels her past organizing work opened her eyes and says “here I am trying to uplift my community, trying to support them and walk with them throughout the years and with all the difficulties we encounter.”

Transplanting the Organizing Seed into Immigrant Rights Work

When I interviewed seasoned activists, they were involved in a wide range of immigrant justice efforts such as establishing day laborer centers, advocating for affordable housing, petitioning driver’s licenses for the undocumented, and rallying for immigration reform. During the interviews, many of them mentioned they continue to be involved because it allows them to transplant their organizing seed in the metro DC area. However, I argue in this section that while this transition to local work may reflect seasoned activists’ choices, these choices were structured by post–civil war changes compelling them to become local participants.

An external force shaping seasoned activists’ transition into local work is the continuing hegemonic power of ARENA. Although seasoned activists challenged the military-backed Salvadoran regime in the 80s and 90s, these entities continue to hold political office, winning four presidential elections (from 1989 to 2009) in the post–civil war period. ARENA’s strategy after the peace agreements was to win over expatriates and implemented several top-down efforts: establishing consular offices to “help” undocumented Salvadorans secure TPS, working with hometown associations on collaborative projects, and campaigning in the diaspora. ⁹ To avoid “selling out,” seasoned activists distanced themselves from these collaborative projects and instead channeled their accumulated experience into local work. In many ways, their solidarity efforts, which were once geared toward bettering the homeland for expatriates, have transitioned toward helping immigrants navigate the hostland.

An incident in the 90s threatening the Salvadoran community opens an opportunity for seasoned activists to engage in local work. In 1991, the local police shot a Salvadoran man in Mount Pleasant, a DC neighborhood with a significant Salvadoran population. This event reinforced the ways that Salvadorans were being mistreated in the capital of the United States, prompting community leaders to restructure their organizations and prioritize local concerns rather than solely focusing on refugee rights. By the 90s, people like Salvador transitioned to immigrant rights issues and he tells his story:

[The refugee-based organization] experienced a big change in the beginning of the nineties in the sense that the leaders had one foot here and one in El Salvador. When I came to [the refugee-based organization] I wanted it to be a space to help Salvadorans that were here in the U.S. and so we did that transition and the directorate was in agreement. It has become part of the mainstream and we do nonprofit work to render services. Like other community organizations, we have government-based contracts, get money from private foundations and we collect small fees for the services we provide. We also do activities to fundraise and that is typical of a nonprofit organization in this country.

I find seasoned activists’ transition to local politics is both a result of opportunities opening in the DC area and a response to post–civil war Salvadoran politics. The absence of the civil war as a mobilizing issue created a vacuum within organizing work, prompting nonprofits to lose support and funding and forcing them to restructure. Because seasoned activists learned to navigate U.S. government structures, advocating for refugee rights, and responding to the Mount Pleasant riots, they were equipped to deal with immigrant rights. As their discontent toward the homeland ruling power grew, especially since the right-wing government continued to win the presidential seat, they learned to navigate the local structures. In doing this transition, seasoned activists continue replenishing their rich skill sets into local work. But, even as they engage in immigrant rights’ efforts, seasoned activists maintain a transnational worldview that provides them with a roadmap for action and sustains their long-standing culture of resistance.

The Persistence of Transnationalism: Critiques of the Homeland Government

Despite doing local work, seasoned activists serve as watchdogs ¹⁰ of the Salvadoran government. In doing so, their oppositional politics is less rooted in transnational activism and more geared toward maintaining a critical lens. In fact, seasoned activists’ criticisms of the Salvadoran government are reflected in two themes commonly discussed in the interviews; namely, the costs of remittances and TPS were repeatedly addressed. These narratives depict seasoned activists as global critics—allowing them to reflect on both their past migration experience and their current work with immigrants to critique their homeland government. With a transnational consciousness in place, they can understand the ramifications of systemic challenges while working toward lessening the impact on migrants.

Alleviating Migrant’s Burdens through Local Impact

Seasoned activists’ local work takes up the bulk of their time. During my fieldwork, seasoned activists were especially concerned with anti-immigration legislation, part of their organizing efforts entailed expanding services to the undocumented and engaging in rallies, protests, and advocacy on behalf of immigrants. Seasoned activists capitalize on their indigenous resources, that is their long-standing organizing experiences and a degree of astuteness (Dorrington 1992), to fight for change. The following respondent, Rodrigo, a male in his 40s who runs a pro-immigrant coalition, notes as follows:

There are a wide variety of organizations and I think what unites us is that Salvadoran identity and so we care about it and want to maintain it. We want to be informed of what goes on in El Salvador but what also unites us is that we want to fulfill the immediate needs of the community when it comes to immigration, housing and health. Those three areas are crucial but maybe the immigration issue is the most important one that we try to address. I think the immigration issue is the glue that has made us all work together to address it.

Javier works for an organization that helps migrants defend their rights and teaches them the laws that protect them in case they are mistreated, underpaid, or not paid at all. He has seen cases where employers will not pay TPS workers because they know that their work authorization will expire. As a result, TPS holders ask the organization to intervene because if they are not paid, they cannot cover the renewal fees. Thus, the organization steps in so that Salvadorans in liminal status are not taken advantage of. Indeed, seasoned activists use their lobbying power to push for TPS as a pathway to residency and allow TPS holders to enjoy the benefits of a permanent status. Another organization offers health care services at affordable costs because it is mindful that TPS holders do not earn living wages to pay for health insurance. While these local efforts are taken on by seasoned activists to help immigrants reduce the costs of being in the United States, a transnational consciousness helps develop the kind of mind-set that can see the causes and effects of a global phenomenon. As far as seasoned activists are concerned, it becomes their job to step in because the United States and El Salvador have essentially failed these migrants.

Despite these efforts, seasoned activists resent their homeland government for pushing emigrants out into the abyss of the metro DC area ¹⁷ and focusing on short-term solutions (like renewing TPS) rather than long-term concerns (like immigration reform). Salvador provides the following analysis of immigration:

We don’t get involved in transnational work but we definitely think that in the end the ultimate solution to the immigration problem is in the sending countries because that is the place where people can make a better living and stay there. Now that the war is over, they should not be pushed out and face extreme conditions here.

Discussion and Conclusion

Seasoned activists react to global processes by becoming the service provider to a group they see as the victim of both nations—they believe policies like TPS only limit immigrants’ progress; that they marginalize and disenfranchise them in the nations that immigrants help sustain the most. As such, seasoned activists are wary of policies only offering temporary relief because they see them as band-aid solutions. As they attempt to ease some of the problems that Salvadorans encounter, they simultaneously use a transnational lens to be mindful that the local troubles of immigrants are attached to global processes. That is, by building on their transnational consciousness, seasoned activists sustain commitment to social justice work allowing them to generate local action to reduce global impact.

In large part, their organizing work reflects their own transformation as activists who no longer foresee a return to their homeland. But, by remaining vigilant, seasoned activists are framing themselves as global citizens. My approach shows seasoned activists’ lives are embedded in a transnational social field that forms both critical views toward their homeland government and local organizing work. While recognizing that seasoned activists opposed their government for a long time, focusing on their views of remittances and TPS shows their discontent in a post–civil war context.

I apply the concept of transnational consciousness to understand how political agents give meaning to their experiences. A caveat to this study is the recent developments shaping the sociopolitical context of El Salvador, namely the presidential victory of an FMLN candidate. It is unclear if seasoned activists will continue to exhibit a transnational consciousness if they do not oppose the new political party. Indeed, when I revisited the field site in 2010, seasoned activists seemed hopeful; I saw some of them drafting proposals for TPS to become a permanent residency because they felt empowered by a new political party. However, they were skeptical of transformative changes occurring; they did not see a viable alternative to remittances and recognized that systemic inequalities could not be alleviated by a leftist presidency. With ongoing migration of Salvadorans to the United States, I think many seasoned activists are silently watching the new sociopolitical environment with hope and trepidation.

This article captures how changes in the post–civil war context give root to consciousness building and local action. I apply Vertovec’s (1999) concept to shed light on the Salvadoran experience, showing how seasoned activists sustain commitment to social justice issues, while expanding the transnational framework by empirically applying the concept to seasoned activists’ views of TPS and remittances. However, this analysis leaves room for comparative work that can help unpack how other Salvadoran actors (i.e., charity-driven, TPS holders, undocumented workers, etc.) display their transnational consciousness. Additionally, the analysis can expand to other areas of Salvadoran concentration. With this exploration, I showed how leaders make sense of their work and as they evolve into other forms of organizing, how they are able to maintain a critical lens that situates them as global actors.