In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Political Movements and Violence in Central America
  • M. Gabriela Torres
Charles D. Brockett , Political Movements and Violence in Central America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Figures, tables, maps, bibliography, index, 380 pp.; hardcover $75, paperback $29.99.

The issue at the core of Charles Brockett's detailed analysis of the major trends in mass political movements in Guatemala and El Salvador is the paradoxical relationship between these types of contentious movements and repression. Using primarily domestic sources of political activity and state-sponsored violence data for both countries, Brockett finds that the impact of repression on the development of political movements cannot be generalized. Whether state-sponsored violence will quash social movements or spur them further to radicalize depends on a number of variables, including the degree and coherence of the repressive tactics wielded; the level of political activity at the time that repression is applied; and a complex range of motivations, emotions, associations, and relationships that are unique to the individuals involved in political movements.

Brockett's book is structured in four discrete narrative segments: a general theoretical discussion of the literature on contentious movements (chapters 1, 2, and 5), a historical description of the development of contentious movements in Guatemala and El Salvador (chapters 3 and 4), a discussion of historical changes in political opportunities and their relationship to the cycles of contention that developed in those countries (chapters 4 to 8), and an analysis of the relationship between state-sponsored violence and the rise and fall of contentious movements in the region (chapters 9 through 11).

Brockett's examination of the literature on protest and contentious movements is key to understanding the particular salience of Guatemala and El Salvador as exemplary case studies of how political activity and repression are related. According to the author, studies of the rise and fall of such movements must consider not only the influence of ideology and perceived grievances, socioeconomic or sociopolitical, but also the particular historical configurations of social networks, self-interest, emotion, and political opportunities. Brockett's data substantiate a strong link between changes in political opportunities faced by popular movements—defined by the degree of openness in a country's institutional system, fissures or cohesions in national and international elites, and the state's repressive abilities and inclinations (pp. 16–17)—and the development of contentious cycles.

Using the experiences of Guatemala and El Salvador, Brockett documents that political opportunities are necessary to allow a cycle of contention to arise and persist. This conclusion has implications beyond the theoretical literature. Focusing on political opportunity as a key determinant [End Page 188] can suggest prescriptive changes in the approach that is commonly taken by the current influx of democratic development projects in the region. Strengthening civil society through a revamping of security services, organizational and technical support to nongovernmental organizations, and electoral procedures and laws may not be all that is needed to support the long-term endurance of popular movements that can cement the culture of civil society.

Brockett's discussion of the close, contradictory, and ultimately productive relationship that existed between popular movements and revolutionary organizations in Guatemala and El Salvador also has inferences beyond the popular protest literature. Brockett found that it was not possible for the researcher accurately to define the authors or conspirators of the different types of contentious activities, nonviolent, illegal, and violent (p. 171), because of the tangled relationship between popular movements outraged and aggrieved by unimaginable levels of repression, and the revolutionary movements that either supported them or developed from them through the repression of nonviolent protest. Implicit in Brockett's analysis is the understanding that popular movements—organized labor, student and academic movements, and ethnic and peasant organizations—in both countries were strongly influenced by the ideologies and organizational drive of revolutionary movements that had greater proclivity to engage in violent and illegal activities. Yet because Brockett frames revolutionary activity in a continuum of contentious activity, his approach moves away from the dichotomized study of civil war politics that has been applied by some analysts of the area (Stoll 1993).

For Guatemala from 1955 to 1985 and El Salvador from 1960 to 1990, Brockett's study identifies...

pdf

Share