Dividing the Isthmus: Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures, and Cultures

CHAPTER 6. “Departamento 15”: Salvadoran Transnational Migration and Narration

T he political, economic, and demographic crises in the isthmus during the 1980s and 1990s forced many Central Americans to relocate permanently throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia , Canada, and elsewhere. Many people never returned to the isthmus but became part of an expansive Central American diaspora. It is estimated that “between 1820 and 1993, over one million immigrants from Central America legally resettle[d] in the United States” (Pinderhughes , Córdova, and del Pinal 2002), without counting an even larger number of undocumented Central Americans who also made their way to the United States in those years.1 Sarah Mahler predicts that in the future Central American “regional migration to certain poles of opportunity . . . will persist and evolve as a consequence of myriad factors including disparities in prosperity as well as political and environmental stability between countries” (2000). Regional economic, political, social , and environmental crises will continue to be determining factors in people’s decisions to emigrate from the Central American isthmus and resettle in specific locations in the United States and elsewhere. This chapter focuses on Salvadoran transnational migration and cultural production in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, examining the construction of an expansive Salvadoran diasporic imaginary now configured across the world. Coming to America: Salvadoran Transnational Migration The history of Salvadoran transnational migration to the United States does not begin with the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s but dates to CHAPTER 6 “Departamento 15”: Salvadoran Transnational Migration and Narration 168 Dividing the Isthmus the nineteenth century, when Salvadoran émigrés began to travel to U.S. industrial centers tied to agricultural production in Central America. In The Salvadoran Americans (2005), Carlos Córdova identifies at least six waves of Salvadoran migration to the United States (2005, 60–68). First, in the late nineteenth century, members of the Central American elite classes, political dissidents, workers in transnational companies (fruit, coffee, railroads, and the Panama Canal), and others resettled in port cities such as San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York (Córdova 2005, 60–62; see also Pinderhughes, Córdova, and del Pinal 2002). Coffee-processing plants owned by mjb, Hills Brothers, and Folgers in San Francisco attracted émigrés already linked to the international coffee industry. In the 1930s and 1940s, a second wave of Central American immigrants included “men and women from the urban middle and upper classes who had relatively high levels of education—intellectuals, teachers, labor organizers, political dissidents, and exiled military officers who were not in agreement with their national governments,” as well as others who were part of the dominant class, yet sought their luck elsewhere (Córdova 2005, 61–62; see also Pinderhughes, Córdova, and del Pinal 2002). In the 1940s, in the midst of a third migration wave, many found work in local “shipyards and other industries suffering from shortage of laborers,” which was especially acute during World War II (Córdova 1987, 22). Along gendered lines of labor division, Central American women migrants began to work in textile factories and men in construction and shipping (Córdova 2005, 62). At the end of the war, with the return of U.S. GIs, some Central Americans also returned to their countries, leaving behind family and other social networks that would assist future migrants and build ties with other Latino ethnic groups (63). It was to these social networks that the fourth Central American migration wave of the 1960s and 1970s gravitated. With the political crises and civil wars intensifying in Central America in the late 1970s and 1980s, a fifth wave of refugees and exiles arrived in the United States, where they were for the most part denied political asylum and documented status due to U.S. economic, military, and ideological support of right-wing governments (see chapter 5). It is estimated that half of the Central American population currently living in the United States arrived as of the 1980s. Many immigrants who came to the United States as of the 1980s remained undocumented or were granted tps, or Temporary Protected Status, which gave renewable temporary stay permits for immigrants fleeing economic, political, and environmental crises in Central America. “Departamento 15” 169 By the late 1990s, over 800,000 Salvadorans were living in Los Angeles alone; more than 400,000 lived in the San Francisco Bay Area; and 150,000 Salvadorans lived in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.2 In 2006, the total population of...