From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals

Peasant Catechists in the Salvadoran Revolution

LEIGH BINFORD

“By showing us the complex interplay between peasants, peasant catechists, liberationist priests and guerrilla commanders, Binford’s study will become the foundational reference point for questions on the origins of peasant revolutionary consciousness in El Salvador.”

—Erik Ching, author of Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle over Memory

From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals explains how a group of Catholic lay catechists educated in liberation theology came to take up arms and participate on the side of the rebel Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during El Salvador’s revolutionary war (1980-92). In the process they became transformed from popular intellectuals to insurgent intellectuals who put their organizational and cognitive skills at the service of a collective effort to create a more egalitarian and democratic society. The book highlights the key roles that peasant catechists in northern Morazán played in disseminating liberation theology before the war and supporting the FMLN during it—as quartermasters, political activists, and musicians, among other roles. Throughout, From Popular to Insurgent Intellectuals highlights the dialectical nature of relations between Catholic priests and urban revolutionaries, among others, in which the latter learned from the former and vice-versa. Peasant catechists proved capable of making independent decisions based on an assessment of their needs and did not simply follow the dictates of those with superior authority, and played an important role for the duration of the twelve-year military conflict.

LEIGH BINFORD is Professor Emeritus at the CUNY College of Staten Island and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Edited by Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Dimpal Jain, and María C. Ledesma