A Sanctuary of Impunity: Wartime El Salvador in the Fiction of Mario Bencastro

This analysis stems from a renewed sense of urgency to understand the roots of violence in Central America deemed critical by late globalization and migration. More specifically, this article utilizes the concept of impunity not merely as an element of culture but rather as a defining structure of everyday human interactions in wartime El Salvador, as presented by Mario Bencastro's Árbol de la Vida: Historias de la guerra civil (1993) and Disparo en la catedral (1990). As a cornerstone of these literary representations, I argue, impunity presents such ostensibly disparate locations as the office of the Human Rights Commission, army barracks, and a chapel as an interconnected web of lawlessness. Thus, Bencastro's fiction offers a holistic view of wartime El Salvador, in which the characters must negotiate the impunity that characterizes the social imaginary.