Growing Up in Guerrilla Camps The Long-Term Impact of Being A Child Soldier in El Salvador's Civil War - DIKSON-GOMEZ

Growing up in Guerrilla Camps: The Long-Term Impact of Being a Child Soldier in El
Salvador's Civil War

Author(s): Julia Dickson-Gómez
Source: Ethos, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Dec., 2002), pp. 327-356
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651878
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Growing Up in Guerrila Camps:
The Long-Term Impact of Being a
Child Soldier in El Salvador's Civil
War
JULIA DICKSON-GOMEZ
ABSTRACT Many recent wars are characterized by high levels

of civilian casualties, a large proportion of whom are women
and children. Furthermore, an estimated 300,000 children are
actively participating in 36 ongoing or recently ended conflicts
around the world. However, there is a dearth of research on the
long-term effects of war trauma experienced in childhood or
children's active participation in armed conflicts. This article
explores the long-term effects of children's active participation
in the war in El Salvador by examining four young adults who
fought with the guerrilla army as children and adolescents.
Comparing these four cases with members of the community
who joined andfought with the guerrilla as adults, it will be ar-
gued that traumatic experiences were even more devastating
when they occurred in early childhood as they destroyed the abil-
ity to establish basic trust in competent and nurturing caretak-
ers. Becoming a soldier created additional conflicts as these
adolescent soldiers behaved in ways they felt were morally in-
correct. Adolescent soldiers were also not given the opportunity
to develop autonomy and learn adult peace-time roles. Both the
psychological trauma suffered as children as well as continued
economic scarcity and violence contribute to these campesinos'
difficulties in creating meaningful lives as adults.
i n estimated 300,000 children are actively participating in 36

ongoing or recently ended conflicts in Asia, Europe, Africa, the
Americas, and the former Soviet Union. In Sierra Leone some
80 percent of all rebel soldiers were aged seven to 14 (Boothby
and Knudson 2000). The ready availability of weapons has
Ethos 30(4):327-356. Copyright ? 2003, American Anthropological Association.
328 ? ETHOS
contributed to the recruitment of child soldiers. The new generation of inex-

pensive assault rifles, with their lightweight designs, can be carried,
stripped, and reassembled by children aged ten years or younger (Barnett
1999; Boutwell and Klare 2000). Nearly all these wars take place in develop-
ing countries where resources for health care and education are extremely
limited. In such unstable environments, children are extremely vulnerable
to forced or "voluntary" recruitment to armed groups. They may become
separated from family members when fleeing from their homes, or parents
or caretakers may be killed, leaving children alone and unprotected. Ex-
treme poverty may lead other children to join for economic benefits to their
families. Still others are kidnapped from their homes and forced to fight
(Boothby and Knudson 2000). In all cases of voluntary or involuntary re-
cruitment, children do not have many options, and they lack the maturity to
make decisions of such magnitude.
This article explores the long-term effects of children's active partici-
pation in the war in El Salvador by looking at young adults who fought with
the guerrilla army as children and adolescents. It will be argued that early
war experiences required a developmental adjustment that profoundly
changed the personality and worldview of these young adults. The article
explores two questions: (1) the relationship between the child's develop-
mental stage and traumatic experiences in determining the long-term ef-
fects of trauma; (2) the unique conflicts and dilemmas faced by children
who participate as soldiers as opposed to those who are more passive vic-
tims of war.
The data reported in this article were gathered between 1996 and
1997 in a "repopulated" community in rural El Salvador and include a
series of interviews with young adults who had essentially grown up in the
guerrilla camps of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front),
some of whom eventually served as combatants in early adolescence (12
to 16 years old). Four of these individuals (three men, one woman) are
presented here as case studies. These four were chosen because they all
had moved back to the community at the end of the war and had lived
some years in childhood and adolescence in the guerrilla camps. There
were two other young adults living in the community who grew up in the
guerrilla camps but refused to be interviewed about their experiences. To-
gether, these cases suggest developmental conflicts that are unique to
those who participated as child soldiers. The interviews were part of a
larger project concerning the psychosocial effects of war on a repopulated
community. Many men and women who were connected with the guerrilla
camps as adults, as well as children who were toddlers or preschoolers
during the war, were also interviewed. Young men and women who had
left the community at the beginning of the war and avoided living in the
guerrilla camps were also interviewed. Interviews with community members
Growing Up in Guerrilla Camps * 329
of different ages allow a perspective on the effects of similar war events

experienced at particular developmental stages, in this case the effects of
such experiences in childhood and adolescence.
The Peace Accords officially ended the war in El Salvador in 1992.
Many of the young adults who were child soldiers stopped fighting for the
guerrilla even earlier than this. They had all, therefore, at the time of field-
work spent at least five years reintegrating with society. It will be argued
that the "social" factors that mitigate against easy reintegration of adoles-
cent soldiers into their communities, for example, lack of job skills, cannot
be understood apart from "psychological" factors. Both are intimately
linked. Growing up as a soldier in FMLN camps interrupted these chil-
dren's formation of integrated ego identities that in turn has made integra-
tion into social roles difficult if not impossible for many now that they are
young adults. That many have continued "the way of the gun" is indicated
by the high levels of violent crime and proliferation of gangs. In fact, the
incidence of violent crime in urban El Salvador is among the highest in the
Western hemisphere, surpassing even Medellin, Colombia (Cruz 1996).
Clearly the long-term problems faced by child soldiers are psychosocial in
nature, and an understanding of the intrapsychic conflicts present in
many of these young people after leaving combat may help solve some of
the social problems that continue to plague the societies in which they
live.
CHILDREN AND WAR IN EL SALVADOR
El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s constitutes one of the largest popu-
lation upheavals in recent history, with up to 40 percent of its 5.2 million
population having relocated (Aguayo and Weiss 1988). Estimates of deaths
in the 12 years of civil war reach 80,000, a large percentage of whom were
civilians not connected to either the revolutionary FMLN or the armed
forces of El Salvador. The early 1980s were characterized by large num-
bers of mutilation killings and "disappearances" designed to create terror
in the population and suppress growing political organization and popular
unrest among the Salvadoran people. In 1981, the government initiated
aggressive attempts to depopulate rural areas in order to destroy what it
perceived as the social and material base of the opposition movement. The
Legal Aide office of the Archdiocese of El Salvador reported 12,501 killings
of civilians not engaged in combat during 1981. In 1984 and 1985, the
government escalated its attack against people in the war zones by begin-
ning intensive bombardment of civilians using U.S. technology. Many peo-
ple were forced to abandon their communities and take refuge in the
surrounding mountains for days or weeks at a time and to flee in long lines
called guindas.
330 ? ETHOS
Children were often witnesses to mutilations and murders of their

family members and neighbors during the early period of oppression. They
were also occasionally victims. As one example among many, the execu-
tion by guillotine of seven children under 13 years was documented be-
tween June and August 1981 (America's Watch 1982). Children were also
victims of government strategies to depopulate rural zones where they
were caught in the crossfire. They were recruited by both the FMLN and
armed forces or killed as suspected subversives or army deserters. In its
1987 report on Salvadoran human rights, America's Watch discussed the
use of children by both sides of the conflict. Children were used by the
Armed Forces as soldiers and informers. Children were paid to point out
suspected subversives. This practice created a dangerous situation for the
child. "Officers know that taking a child or adult noncombatant out with
them, and exposing him or her to the eyes of possible informants, places
that person in danger of being persecuted or even killed by the FMLN on
suspicion of being an army collaborator" (America's Watch 1987). The
same report criticized the guerrilla's involvement of boys in the conflict.
"The FMLN has recruited children for armed military duties and support
activities as messengers and pathfinders. The Americas Watch knows of
cases in which boys as young as 11 years old have been used on a full time
basis as messengers, and we have seen boys who appear to be under 15
years of age armed and dressed in FMLN uniforms in the company of guer-
rillas." The majority of women and girls who joined the FMLN participated
in supporting roles, cooking and sewing uniforms. Others took a more ac-
tive role as medics or in logistics, carrying supplies and coordinating the
movements of soldiers. A minority of women and girls fought as combatants.
Children's experiences of the war in the community studied here par-
allel the participation of children in the country at large. Many adolescents
and young men died in the war. Others left with their families to live in
the capital and never returned to the community after the war. A group of
about 20 of these young men retained ties to the community and visited
on weekends to drink guaro (hard liquor), play soccer, and swim. Many of
these young men were also interviewed. While they were witness to the
FMLN's early organizing in the community and witnessed the mutilation
killings of their neighbors and family members, most escaped life in the
guerrilla camps and subsequent participation as soldiers.
Many young men, both those living in the community as well as those
who lived in San Salvador, recalled "meetings" called by the FMLN who
were especially interested in youth and held training exercises below the
soccer field. They reported that they participated at first, that it made
them "feel like a man." They were unaware of the seriousness of these
activities, however, and repression soon followed. The community, which
had over 100 families at the beginning of the war, was divided. Some were
sympathetic to the FMLN while others organized in ORDEN (National

Democratic Organization) a right wing, paramilitary group. The sound of
dogs at night alerted neighbors to the presence of armed men knocking on
the doors of houses, looking for subversives or informants. Dead and mu-
tilated bodies appeared on the streets.
Many families with the resources to do so left the community after
months of this kind of terror. Others without resources remained in the
community until the armed forces came one day, locked all the people
they found remaining in the community in a church, and held them there
for several hours. They murdered all those they found in the surrounding
hills who were trying to flee. The community members were told that the
army would return in a few days and that any found still living in the
community would be killed. Those remaining left for the mountains to live
under the protection of the guerrilla.
About half of the community at the time of fieldwork were beneficiar-
ies of land reform. Land was offered to ex-combatants of the FMLN, their
support population, and demobilized soldiers of the armed forces as part
of the peace accords. Beneficiaries received on average five manzanas (or
about five football fields of land). While women who actively participated
with the FMLN, even in noncombatant support functions, were also sup-
posed to receive land as part of the peace accords, in practice they were
more often than not excluded. The distribution of land was carried out by
the nongovernmental organizations that were formed out of the various
branches of the FMLN. NGOs have also provided education, health serv-
ices, and loans to the repopulated communities they represent. Two of the
three young men who are a focus of this article received land; the other
man and the woman did not. Those men who received land still found it
difficult to support their families, as plots were small and the soil rocky
and infertile. Most community members reported that the community had
been more prosperous before the war. Many families made and sold candy
around the country. Others worked as farm laborers on large farms that
have been broken up as part of the land reform. There is no need for hired
labor to farm the small plots cultivated in the present and no money to pay
their wages.
While the young people whose lives are examined in this article strug-
gle with their experiences of the war and an increasingly precarious eco-
nomic situation, in many ways they are the lucky few who have survived
and been reintegrated into what remains of their families and community.
Gang violence is an increasing problem in El Salvador and affects many of
these young adults' contemporaries. The police estimate that there are
over 20,000 gang members in the country. Youth gangs first began to
emerge in the 1970s, but it was not until the end of the war that large
numbers of young people began to get involved. Many in El Salvador argue
332 ? ETHOS
that these gangs are made up of ex-guerrilleros or ex-soldiers. Hundreds

of Salvadorans who were involved in gangs in the United States have been
deported to El Salvador and make up some of the more violent elements.
Still others have joined without any experience in the FMLN, Armed
Forces, or American gangs (Radio Netherlands 1998). Eighty percent of
gang members are males, ranging in age from 11 to 26. Violence takes a
huge toll on gang members, and hundreds are killed or wounded every
year. Homicides of young gang members involved in "territory wars" av-
eraged four per month in 2000 in the greater metropolitan area of San
Salvador (La Prensa Grafica, November 27, 2000). In a survey conducted
in 2000 in the greater metropolitan area of San Salvador with nearly 1,000
gang members in the greater metropolitan area of San Salvador, 64.1 per-
cent of the men surveyed reported that they had been stabbed in the last
year, and 59 percent reported that they had been shot (Sangacruz Giralt
and Concha-Eastman 2001). Young people say that they turn to gangs in
search of the respect, solidarity, and support that they have been unable
to find in family, community, work, or schools. Clearly problems of rein-
tegration of child soldiers into society continue to plague El Salvador in
peace.
THE CASES
The young adults who are the focus of this article left with their fami-
lies to live in the guerrilla camps. They were constantly on the move, suf-
fering hunger and sickness as they followed the guerrilla with their parents
and grandparents. They were often targets of military violence. Three of
the young adults eventually decided to participate actively in the guerrilla
after having lived for a number of years as support population.
Jose
Jose, 20 years old, was living with his paternal grandparents and 16-
year-old sister during the period of study. He had been raised by his grand-
mother since the time that he was a toddler when she, accusing his mother
of neglect, removed him from his mother's care. His mother and father
were separated, and so his grandmother took on the responsibility of rais-
ing him, as men in rural El Salvador do not customarily take responsibility
for raising their children. When Jose was four years old, his father was
assassinated by members of the death squad, his mutilated body parts left
on the side of the road as a warning to others. Jose lost four other paternal
uncles in the same period and fled with his grandparents to the Cerro
Guazapa where they lived under the protection of the guerrilla camps.
He spoke of fleeing with his grandmother in guindas and witnessed two
massacres of civilians that he somehow managed to survive. In one of

these, government troops lined on opposite embankments of a road and
fired on the civilian population trapped in the middle. They lined up the
bodies of the dead and survivors alike, doused them with gasoline, and set
them on fire. He and his grandmother hid under a bush while listening to
the screams.
At the age of 13 he "involved" himself and became a soldier with the
FMLN. He requested that they remove his grandparents from the camp to
refugee camps in the capital while he remained behind to fight. He partici-
pated in the 1989 offensive on the capital and saw many of his age-mates
die. He left the FMLN profoundly disillusioned as he felt that the they had
sacrificed untrained and unprepared youth. He moved back to the com-
munity, la Pepa, with his grandparents shortly thereafter.
Samuel
Samuel's father was also assassinated by paramilitary troops when

Samuel was only six years old. His family also moved to Guazapa to live in
guerrilla camps. He decided to join the guerrilla at the age of 11 to help
provide for his fatherless and impoverished family and to avenge the death
of his father. He first worked as a messenger and then as a combatant. He
left for a refugee camp with the rest of his family and then moved back to
the community at the age of 15. He talked of often being stopped by gov-
ernment troops as he carried supplies (cooking oil, rice, and beans often
received as donations from the catholic church) from the municipal town-
ship back to the community. Once he was imprisoned and then tortured
with another adolescent as suspected "subversives" supplying the guerril-
las. The other boy was covered in honey and tied to a post on a fire ant
hill. A day later he was shot and killed.
Elva
Elva is the only one of the young adults presented in this article not born
in la Pepa. Her family lived in an area in the east of the country where
much of the heaviest conflict occurred. Two of her brothers, who had be-
gun to organize with the FMLN, had "disappeared," and so she and the rest
of her family moved to San Salvador when she was ten. The death squads
were still looking for them in San Salvador because of another brother's
involvement with the FMLN, and so she left for the Cerro Guazapa when
she was 13 years old. First she worked as "support personnel" making
tortillas and cooking for the troops. Later, she became trained as a medic
and still later carried a gun. She became pregnant at the age of 15 and left
her baby son in the care of her mother while she went back to Guazapa.
Within a year she met the man she lived with at the time of fieldwork and
334 ? ETHOS
became pregnant. They left for San Salvador to live with her family and
later repopulated la Pepa.
Lucas
Lucas witnessed his father's decapitation at the age of seven. He was

killed with seven other people by the armed forces as they were working
on a farm. Lucas fled with his mother and two younger sisters to Guazapa
to live in the guerrilla camps. His youngest sister, one year old, died from
malnutrition as they were fleeing in guindas. His mother suffered a nerv-
ous breakdown after this event. They were removed by the armed forces
in the 1985 offensive to refugee camps. There his mother, offered a visa to
live in Canada, decided instead to return to the community. He followed
his mother and sister, assisting them planting fields and rebuilding their
home. He married early, at the age of 16, because he felt that his mentally
ill mother could not help him improve their lives.
EARLY WAR EXPERIENCES: THE DISRUPTION OF BASIC TRUST
Assuming Adult Responsibilities
All four of these young people had close family members who were
assassinated when they were very young. All had fled with what remained
of their families to live under the protection of the guerrilla camps. As
young children, they took no part in the decision to join the guerrillas and
were therefore not presented with any choice of whether to collaborate
with the guerrillas or participate in the war.
Lucas: We left here in '81; in January of '81 my dad was assassinated. [pause] They
killed him at work, on a farm. They killed him, shot him twice in the chest, and later
when they saw that he hadn't died, they decapitated him. l-e wasn't the only one who
died there on the farm. Other friends died, other friends of his who were working.
There were three other people they killed there and later when we left the farm, we
found that they had also killed old people. There were seven people in all who died.
Then we saw, I saw him, I was maybe around seven then, and mv sister saw him, who
was two years old, and another who was one, and my mother, we saw when they
knocked off his head and we, as we were small maybe it didn't cause us many problems
mentally, but my mother yes, because my mother was already suffering from her
nerves, and it shattered her nerves more and she's mentally ill.
Then from there, the Armed Forces came and said all the people should leave because
if they returned [pause], the next time they came on an invasion, if they found people
they were going to make them dirt. They were going to cut them in pieces. Children,
women, old people, whoever. They had us like 12 hours maybe in the church, detained.
Well we lived through that threat and stayed here seven days more maybe, and later
when we saw that the people were fleeing, who the guerrillas told should go with them
because if the escuadron [death squad] came, they would kill them. So as I was small,
my mom grabbed us by the hands and took us where we could leave most easily,
because of the fear that they would kill us. We left for the hills because it was where we
could escape.
While Lucas recognizes that his mother did not have many options,
he also recognizes that she, because of the trauma she had suffered, was
not able to make effective decisions or care for her children as well as she
needed to under the circumstances. All the young adults expressed this
feeling of greater responsibility for their older and traumatized caretakers,
as well as some resentment over the adult responsibilities that they were
obliged to assume too early in their lives.
Many youths in their descriptions of why they chose to join the guer-
rilla seemed to reverse roles with the adults in their families as they took
on the adult responsibilities of protecting their families and providing eco-
nomically for them. For example, Samuel described why he joined the
guerrilla as follows: "First because in the house, well we have always suf-
fered from the economic situation as one raised without a father hardly
has even daily nourishment. And well, they told me that if I joined with
them I would improve my family's economic situation. They gave me
things: clothes, beans, corn, everything for my family. That's why I went
with them."
For Elva and other girls, life in rural El Salvador has always meant
assuming adult responsibilities: before, during, and after the war. Girls are
expected to help raise younger siblings and are often responsible for mak-
ing food for the family. Elva, like many other women, spoke of not being
allowed to study and being burdened with childcare, housework, and even
work in the fields at a very young age. However, girls are not expected to
support their families economically in the absence of a father to provide
for them. That burden falls on boys who must become the "man of the
house" when the father is absent. For Elva, involving herself in a more
active way in the FMLN gave her an opportunity to study healthcare and
to have freedom she was not afforded before the war. "I became very in-
terested in health because it was a way for me to work to help the rest of
the people and to improve our lives."
Jose spoke of joining to protect his grandparents who had cared for
him since he was a toddler. He expressed the expectation of his own death
due to his participation but wished to protect his grandparents from a
similar fate. His involvement as a combatant allowed him to negotiate their
removal to a refugee camp. His life was less important than the lives of his
family members.
Jose: After a time, after I "involved" myself, when I already was armed, they took my
family to San Salvador. I requested that they take them there because I didn't want
them to be there [in the camps]. They suffered too much. They had to flee running
from one side to another. It's very difficult not to be able to defend yourself with a gun,
and the army being on top of you, wanting to kill you. So I requested that they take
them. They took my grandfather and grandmother to San Salvador to a refugee camp.
336 ? ETHOS
Interviewer: And how did they feel about your involvement?
Jose: Well, they were conscious that I had to do something for the fight but they were
conscious that, at any rate, being armed, I had to die some day because it's what I
expected because being in a war it's what you know, that you're going to die. You don't
have any hopes of living because it's the war and it's rare the person who survives. So
they took them and they didn't want to leave because they didn't want to leave me all
alone they said. But in the end they decided and I made them see that it was necessary
that they leave.
These young men, like Lucas quoted above, may have felt a greater
responsibility due to the psychological trauma their caretakers suffered,
which greatly impaired caretakers' functioning. The picture presented by
these young men, of children actively protecting traumatized adults, is in
sharp contrast to other adults' characterizations of their children's expe-
riences of the war, in which children's agency is minimized or denied.
When asked to describe their children's experiences of the war, many par-
ents said that they really had not had any. They were too young to under-
stand what was happening as they were only toddlers or young children
when in the guerrilla camps. This insistence that the children had not
suffered from the war came in spite of the fact that many of the mothers
who gave birth in the guerrilla camps told stories of giving birth in trenches
or crude shelters made of plastic in storms without any medical attention.
They also told of carrying toddlers and babies in guindas, of their young
children being present when they were captured by the army or other
security forces. They also told about being separated from their children
when they were imprisoned or when they left them in the care of relatives
living in safer areas. Parents also described how, when living in the city,
their children would occasionally hear gunshots or airplanes overhead, as,
for example, during the final offensive. Intermittent fighting and aircraft
were also heard by children whose families repopulated the community
before the end of the war. However, even after recounting such experi-
ences, parents insisted that because their children were young and did not
"understand," they were easily calmed and quickly forgot about the inci-
dents. As one father expressed, "as they were really little, they didn't pay
so much attention to that. No more than they sometimes would get a little
frightened and I with only telling them a little story, would calm them
down because, well right, they were really little."
The youth echoed these sentiments, saying that they were not as af-
fected as their caretakers because of their young years. However, this as-
sumed resiliency added to their sense of responsibility at five to seven
years for their traumatized caretakers. The death, disappearance, or as-
sassination of their children was felt to be particularly traumatizing to
mothers. Later active participation as a guerrilla soldier was also felt to be
"easier" by these youth than living with the relative helplessness of their
mainly female or elderly caretakers in the masses.
Growing Up in Guerrilla Camps ? 337
Jose: My grandmother, she's about 80 something I think, and she can't talk about the
experiences that she has had during the war because she remembers her children who
were killed. She had like 11 children, it seems, and at the start of the war our family
was very big. I had a lot of uncles but as the escuadron came and killed them, took them
in the night. She saw how the escuadron left a son all shot up and shattered. They left
him unrecognizable. She saw that, all her other sons who were killed, she saw and that
has stayed recorded in her head so that now, since then, she mentally falls apart. She
was traumatized and it's understandable because it wasn't an easy thing. Today, if you
talk of that, you make her want to cry still because it has stayed inside her.
I think that the way she experienced the war is hard and unjust. The way she suffered.
Because all the people have suffered in the war, but in different ways. There are people
who were in it as population, with children and all that who suffered greatly. Well, I
can tell you she suffered the war in a terrible way also because do you think that it
would be easy, fleeing, an airplane dropping bombs, the army behind with dead ahead.
The age, as you know, when you get up there in years, you lose strength, both mentally
as well as physically. I felt at six years that she couldn't do it anymore. She was only
with me, at night, in the day, only walking with me because I was the only one with her.
The selflessness of children in war has been described by Assal and

Farrell (1992) as due in large part to the degree to which children's iden-
tities are bound to their families. Children often fear losing their families
in conditions of war more than they fear for their own lives. Likewise par-
ents often put their children's lives before their own. (See also Quesada
1998; Reynolds 2000). Robben (2000) writes that the abductions of the
"disappeared" during Argentina's dirty war invaded the primary object-
relation of parent and child, disrupting "basic trust" as parents found
themselves unable to protect their children and vice versa. Basic trust is
constituted during earliest childhood when the baby learns to rely on the
primary caretaker. While this is a universal stage of ego development, its
objectification has personal, social, and cultural dimensions. A mother
who attends tenderly to the needs of her baby creates an environment
favorable for strong ego development (Winnicott 1986)-this has some-
times been called "good-enough mothering." The social dynamics of the
nuclear family further protect the baby against threatening incursions
from the outside world (Giddens 1991; Robben 2000) and influence the
form of basic trust inculcated in the child. Finally, the cultural environ-
ment influences the infant's budding self. Parents transmit certain expec-
tations about whom to trust and mistrust. From this foundation of trust in
the home, relationships are built with extended family, neighbors, friends,
and society at large.
The basic trust formed in the first years of life determines the quality
of trust experienced throughout life. Daily routines and social conventions
establish patterns of expectation and allow people to interact in ways that
renew basic trust (Giddens 1991; Robben 2000). Basic trust can disinte-
grate beyond repair after undergoing traumatic experiences as, for example,
with Holocaust survivors. The everyday routines that re-establish trust are
precisely what is destroyed in state-sponsored violence. The intimacy of
338 ? ETHOS
home and family were invaded for these campesinos, and lives were per-
manently altered as people lived in a prolonged state of emergency, living
not in villages but temporary camps, fleeing from one side of the mountain
to another, and families were separated. The destruction of basic trust
occurred for all community members, adults and children, but was per-
haps more devastating for children aged five to seven as they were still in
the stage of development in which the nuclear family mediates their inter-
actions with the outside world and before they have developed the autono-
mous identity that forms during adolescence.
Resentment
While all the youth described mental trauma in their adult caretakers,
which caused them to feel a great deal of sympathy toward them, they also
expressed some amount of resentment at having to assume adult respon-
sibilities at a very young age. During middle childhood, these children did
not have the resources to assume these responsibilities and were still de-
pendent on the adults who could no longer protect them from the outside
world. Lucas expressed resentment, although not blame, toward his
mother because of her inability to make decisions or care for her children
in the face of overwhelming trauma.
We stayed like a year in the refugee camp San Roque. From there we left for another
refugee camp because there wasn't room for all the people. They had a meeting where
they said that they wanted to see the people decide to go to Canada or Australia. And
as I was still only about nine or ten years old, I still wasn't given the choice. So my
mother said that no, that she wasn't going anywhere. That what she wanted was to
return to her canton. All that was what affected us because maybe in another country
they would have helped us more. Maybe she would have recovered from her mental
illness, because maybe she would have found good doctors and they would have helped
us. [pause] But she didn't want to, she stayed here and they took us to another refugee
camp in Santa Ana.
Lucas attributed his mother's desire to return to her community of

origin to her traumatization as this desire first manifested itself after her
infant daughter died in a guinda of malnutrition, the occasion when he felt
that she first became seriously mentally ill.
Resentment was also expressed about the decision to join the guerrillas,
a decision that was made at least in part because of the decision-making
vacuum caused by parental trauma.
Samuel: After that I remember how they had assassinated my family and well, yes, I
had to see what to do about that because it couldn't stay like that. We had to go to the
guerrilla. But that was a mentality of cipotes [kids] because then you're not thinking
anymore. You're thinking craziness but through the years a person gains experience
because a cipote of 12 years still doesn't think of what's going to happen the next day.
The long-term effects of such early responsibilities are perhaps best

understood again in terms of damage to this basic trust. Scheper-Hughes
describes mothers of the Alto Cruzeiro, Brazil, as so much in need of nur-

turance and mothering that they are unable to nurture their sick and hun-
gry children. "The sick or hungry child's incessant demand for a mother
and mothering leads to role confusion, since it seems to remind impover-
ished women of their own unsatisfied longings for a 'good' mother, one that
many of them never had" (1990:561). Similar reactions are seen in these
young adults who are now parents. I often overheard parents tell their
children how fortunate they were compared to what they had endured in
childhood and during the war. Children's assuming responsibility for their
parents well-being creates feelings of profound insecurity. Not only is the
world unpredictable and harmful, but the only person the child can count
on to obtain needed resources or protection from harm is him- or herself
because parents are overwhelmed or unavailable.
However, I believe that the explanation provided by Scheper-Hughes
misses an important point. The "infant's incessant demands" not only re-
mind mothers of their own deprivation but their inability to provide their
children with necessities, producing intolerable guilt. This may partially
explain parents' lack of recognition of the war's impact on their surviving
children. Similarly, children resent their early involvement not only or
even mainly because their parents failed to protect them but also because
they were unable to "save" their parents and themselves due to their own
immaturity. This is clearly seen in the quotes above in which mothers and
grandparents are seen as more vulnerable than the child in spite of their
greater maturity. The children clearly wished to protect their caretakers
even sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Even the man who wished
his mother had made the decision to emigrate to Canada expressed this
wish at least partly so that she could recover from her "traumatization."
These primary bonds are culturally elaborated in rural El Salvador in
the moral imperatives of mutual care and respect where children are ex-
pected to respect the authority of parents based on the sacrifice they make
in providing care and nurturance to them. Obligations between parents
and children are mutual and necessary for the survival of the family. The
state, of course, understood the importance of these social bonds when
they forced parents to witness the torture and assassination of their chil-
dren, and children the rape of their mothers. As Argentine newspaper pub-
lisher Jacobo Timerman, who observed the devastation of a family as
members were tortured in each others presence, writes: "The entire affec-
tive world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses
with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an ob-
scene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly
an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual
sacrifice collapses" (1981:146).
340 ? ETHOS
ADOLESCENT SOLDIERS: IDENTITY DIFFUSION
Unresolved Grief and Desire for Revenge
The basic mistrust caused by the brutal murder of family members as

well as continued genocidal crime against everyone they knew and loved
was also the cause of profound identity crises as children became adoles-
cent soldiers. There was no future for these children, as they had no hope
of living to adulthood and therefore no meaning to their lives apart from
the conflict. They could imagine no role apart from the role of soldier and
no meaning apart from revenge.
Jose: Who had hopes of living? We all knew that we were going to die but just because
of this we didn't stop trying to save our skins either because if we fled from one side to
another, it was not to die. But we knew that one of these days, we weren't going to save
ourselves. I, from when I was little, I think that it harmed me a lot because when they
killed my father I was like four years old and still I remember how they left him broken.
Since the time that they killed my father I said, "Why? Why had they killed him?" I
never found an explanation since he hadn't done anything bad to anybody. I said, "Why
did they have to kill him?" And the problem was after killing him, this wasn't enough.
They went chasing all the people, the rest of the families, in general everyone here. I
didn't know, I didn't have an explanation for that or why we had to flee. But if you
didn't, you died. There were people, I knew people who said, "Well if it's my time here
to die, I'm going to die but I'm not running. The army can find me." And that's what
they did and they [the army] killed them and there wasn't salvation. Why is it that they
were going to kill us? I never found an explanation for that.
When I was about 13, then you see things differently and well, from all that, imagine
that they kill your family and all that. You say, "Well I have to do something. I'm going
to have revenge" and with that you gather even more rage, of revenge, of incorporating
and killing as well .... The army killed the majority of people and if they killed them,
they have to kill me but first I will kill some. With that mentality you gather rage and
I think that one is no longer oneself but already another person. You react in ways that
if you thought them through you wouldn't do but as you find yourself in the middle of
all this, that's how you react. That's how the majority of my companeros [age-mates]
had the courage to grab a gun at very young ages, 11 even. You were always with that
mentality that you had to avenge yourself for what they had done to you. Although
maybe the person that killed your parents wasn't even close to you, but you say "As
they are the same kind, I have to avenge myself."
The psychoanalyst Kohut (1972) locates the violent aggression of re-

venge in the process of injury, loss, humiliation, and mourning. Kohut sees
human aggression as structured along two different axes: normal aggres-
sion and pathological aggression. For Kohut, both types of aggression are
reactive, as opposed to instinctive, in nature. Normal aggression is said "to
develop from optimal frustration and is hypothesized to motivate human
beings in a variety of ways" (Moore and Fine 1990:175). Pathological ag-
gression, on the other hand, is a reaction to "less than optimal frustration
[resulting in] narcissistic injury that suffuses the individual with unforgiving
hatred, cruelty, and the need to hurt-in contrast to ordinary aggression,
which is mobilized to eliminate an obstacle to a goal" (Moore and Fine

1990:175).
Similarly, Renato Rosaldo's ethnographic analysis of Ilongot head-
hunting shows headhunting as a culturally mediated response to unre-
solved grief. "The point of Ilongot headhunting ... [is] not to capture a
trophy, but to 'throw away' a body part, which by principle of sympathetic
magic represents the cathartic throwing away of certain burdens of life-
the grudge an insult created, or the grief over the death in the family"
(1993:139). The pain and confusion felt by this young man as a child at
the loss of several significant figures was turned into a desire for revenge.
The "enemy" was recognized as not necessarily those who did harm to
oneself or one's family, but as symbolically representative of them, "as
they are the same."
Grief was repressed out of necessity during the conflict. Many cam-
pesinos interviewed talked of being unable to cry or show any emotion
when soldiers or members of paramilitary forces killed or tortured neigh-
bors or even friends for fear that expression of such emotions might also
label them subversives. They were often not able to collect or properly
bury their dead, rituals that help individuals work through the grieving
process in culturally appropriate ways. Full grieving was also seen as put-
ting one in danger as it kept one from fully attending to the contingencies
of survival, as expressed in a popular saying during the war, "The dead are
not cried for, they are imitated." Even after immediate danger has passed,
however, many campesinos in the community, particularly the young
adults, were not able to experience grief and sadness fully at their losses
or the horrors they had witnessed. Jose talked about this after describing,
rather emotionlessly, a particularly gruesome massacre that he witnessed
at the age of six.
They put a bunch of people in line, sprinkled them with gasoline, and then burned
them. Some people hadn't passed away yet. They burned everyone. It was something
very disgraceful what they did. Very difficult and as you know [pause] if you have lived
through that, you have to be a little, a little hard so that it doesn't bother you all the
time because I suppose that someone a little simple, all wishy-washy, it affects their
social development because if you remember this all the time, you'll never enjoy life.
The defense against experiencing grief that was necessary to "keep

going" during the war is also necessary now. The war in many ways is not
over for this young man as remembrance of trauma is too painful to face
even today. Yolanda Gampel (2000) writes that the terrifying memories of
war trauma cannot be digested because they cannot be accommodated to
the world of safety and trust. Jose cannot assimilate his father's murder.
"Why did they kill him? I never found an explanation." Remembering thus
threatens the little amount of stability and safety he has achieved.
342 ? ETHOS
Becoming "One Who Kills"
Unresolved grief and fantasies of revenge were experienced by all the

young people who lived as children in the guerrilla camps, although these
reactions were perhaps more severe in the young people who became sol-
diers because they spent more years in the camps. Becoming a soldier,
however, created additional conflicts not faced by Lucas, who did not join
the guerrilla. In acting out revenge, the youths encountered a crisis in
identity. As the young man quoted above put it, after joining the guerrilla
he was "no longer the same person, but already someone else." Erikson
(1980) writes that the ego's ideal is guided by common images of good and
evil held by members of his society. As mentioned, the state's oppression
against campesinos violated images of the ideal individual embedded in
the context of familial relationships as parents found themselves unable to
protect children, and children found themselves unprotected. Becoming
"one who kills," however, set up a further dilemma for children as they
were now soldiers like those who assassinated and relentlessly pursued
them and their families. Revenge was seen as a particularly troublesome
motive for participation in combat as it was seen as more similar to the
"inhuman," "animal" motives of government forces. Elva even went so far
as to deny much of the violence between the FMLN and Armed Forces.
Elva: At no time I tell you sincerely that the idea was to kill soldiers. The idea was to
look for the leaders who had put them there. \Who ordered them. That's who we looked
for. Unfortunately, the leaders couldn't come without soldiers. Some soldiers had to fall
so that the big ones would fall. [We of the FMLN] had moral principals.
Interviewer: And the ideas of, of the leaders of the soldiers were?
Elva: They were in general, finish the guerrillas, finish the population, finish the eld-
erly, the children, finish almost half the population because they didn't have that idea
that we had. And we protected a great part of the population. We protected and they
never protected anyone. Where have you heard in all the history of the war that the
army protected or had asylums for orphans or elderly?
It may have been easier for Elva to rationalize her participation as

essentially nonviolent because of her primary role as health promoter.
Many older women who were also involved primarily in supportive roles
in the guerrilla camps, however, did not minimize or deny the FMLN's use
of violence in this way. Elva's participation as a combatant may have made
denial of the violence psychologically necessary because it violated Sal-
vadoran gender roles in which it is unacceptable and dangerous for a
woman to express anger or aggression.
Ideological reasons were often invoked by these youth in descriptions
of how they became involved in fighting for the guerrillas as children.
Framing participation in ideological terms was a way of contrasting one's
participation in killing from those of the governmental forces as seen in
the quote above. Ideology in many ways can be seen as a way of rational-
izing participation that was actually less a choice than an inevitability.
Jose: When I was nine they started to tell me. Well more than anything it's not what
they say, I suppose, because if you are living with the guerrillas, you are going to do
what they do, no? Because it's the army that defends you and you have to follow it
because it has defended you all the time.
Besides, the whole time you're by its side. And when you're 13 or 14 years old, an
adolescent, even 12 years old, you're already prepared mentally, and physically to
fight! Because mentally, look, I had an experience like this. When I was little, all the
children, from five years on, when they began to play, to run and all that, everyone
played war. They made guns out of branches and planks. Imagine the traumatization.
But it's how I said. Because if they are at the side of any army that defends them, they
brag about what they do and all this they already carried inside so that when they
arrived at a certain age they were prepared mentally. They knew that they had to fight.
And this was all the children, you know, because I, I remember when I was little I liked
to play like that, make wooden rifles and play fighting with the rest of the children. It's
something like, something that you already carry in your blood as one grows. Because
from when you were little, you see what they do, and you want to do it too, seeing that
it was a just and noble cause.
Play has been considered a way of mastering past experiences that

proved too difficult (Erikson 1980). Assal and Farrel (1992) therefore
speculate that playing war games helped Lebanese children restore a sense
of mastery and push away the terror of frequent bombardment. A second
function of play is preparation for the future, a way of learning technical
mastery of toys and things, and of experimenting with new roles (Erikson
1980). Jose's play was clearly seen by him as practical, "psychological"
preparation for his future role as soldier, much as a little girl in more nor-
mal circumstances plays with dolls to prepare for her future role as
mother. Becoming a soldier was inevitable and natural to him and other
little boys growing up in the camps.
Many youth expressed great disillusionment with revolutionary ideol-
ogy after the war and felt that not much that had been promised by FMLN
leadership had been gained. This disillusionment was common for almost
all campesinos in the community interviewed but was perhaps greater for
youth because they had even less control and choice over their participa-
tion. Although they felt ideologically sympathetic to the cause of the FMLN
and their participation was "voluntary," growing up in guerrilla camps in
reality gave them few options other than becoming a soldier. When social
justice was not achieved by FMLN leadership after the war, young adults
felt this as a betrayal to an even greater extent than the rest of the popu-
lation. This greater disillusionment is also a result of the destruction of
basic trust that, because it occurred early in their development, has been
even more difficult for these young people to recover.
Jose: Some people blame them [a branch of the FMLN] for not having done anything
to help people who put in their grain of sand for the fight. I know plenty of compafieros
who are sorry they fought and say that if they ask them to fight in another war, they're
344 ? ETHOS
not crazy enough to do it because after the war people say that we're even more
screwed now, because, imagine, the war was fought supposedly for the land because
the land before belonged to the rich. During the war, the people in the communities
didn't have problems working the land because the owners were far away. But now that
they negotiated the lands there are a bunch of problems. The people see it like this, if
they fought for the land, it wasn't so that now they would come to negotiate with us. It
needed to be given to the poor.
Women and girls generally felt this disillusion to an even greater ex-
tent than boys because they often faced additional betrayals by FMLN
leadership. First, many women and girls suffered sexual victimization in
the guerrilla camps (Garaizabal and Vazquez 1994). Second, the greater
gender equality promoted by the FMLN during the war has not material-
ized in peace. As mentioned, many women who participated in the FMLN
were overlooked by FMLN leaders in the land distribution after the war.
Further, many women have been penalized by being outspoken and politi-
cally active since the end of war, skills that were encouraged during the
war.
Autonomy and Control
The exaggerated discipline of the guerrilla camps left little room for
male adolescents to develop concepts of autonomy and control. They were
not given a chance to practice and learn how to be campesino adults, dedi-
cated to subsistence agriculture. They were also not given a chance to
learn socially acceptable use of alcohol or tobacco, as these were prohib-
ited. They had not learned how to be adults in peace time, yet they were
also not prepared to return to the role of the child, as they had assumed
adult responsibilities during the war.
Jose: But here there's a problem because the people, imagine that, after 12 years of war,
to stop living a daily life without fighting but instead working, the people weren't pre-
pared. They didn't return from the war educated, they returned traumatized. Because
there are people, as much in the army as in the guerrillas, who got used to being given
food to eat, and I think that's why there's so much crime.
During the resettlement here, everyone smoked, everyone drank and because they
weren't prepared to work, they got involved in robbing, which was the easiest thing for
them. I know plenty of compaieros who were here, that now in San Salvador are in jail
for robbing cars.
The compafieros, at least where they were during the war, didn't have so much liberty
to do what they wanted. Or they didn't have access because here we're close to town
and you can send someone to buy liquor, cigarettes, marijuana even. During the disar-
mament they gave them like an incentive. They gave them 15 thousand colones [about
US$1,500], a table, a pump to fumigate crops and everything they needed to farm. Well
those 15 thousand colones, some compafieros used to destroy their lives more because
imagine with all that money, you can buy guaro, marijuana in huge quantities and they
were destroying themselves. It was rare for anyone to know how to invest all that
money, and the majority lost it and became drunks and smokers. Before giving them
that money, I think they should have had a project to orient them how to invest the
money, how to live better and things like this, a rehabilitation program as much psy-
chological as how to develop [economically] better.
Jose recognizes that rehabilitation for the adolescent soldiers is not

just a matter of providing economic opportunities. Not being prepared to
work for him was as much a result of trauma as lack of education or job
skills. Erikson (1980) writes that the loss of identity is often expressed as
a hostility toward the roles offered as proper or desirable in one's family
or immediate community. Additionally, government forces labeled all
campesinos, and especially adolescent campesinos, as violent "subver-
sives" who would destroy the Salvadoran family and state, a negative label
given more weight by the government's genocidal campaign against cam-
pesinos. The stigmatized role of guerrilla soldier and the lack of prepara-
tion for a new, adult peacetime identity has led many youth to choose the
negative identity of the "irresponsible" and "violent" marero (delin-
quent/gang member). This is in sharp contrast to the role of "protector" of
the family assumed in earlier years.
Irresponsibility often refers to young men who drink and do not sup-
port the children they may have by many different women. Violence is a
more serious problem. Many youth described the behavior of their com-
pafieros as being animal-like, in similar terms to the way the violence of
the armed forces and death squads was described.
Lucas: Now things are just like they were during the war with crime and so forth. Did
you hear about the families that were assassinated?
Interviewer: Yeah. They were from Ilopango, right?
Lucas: There was one family of seven from Ilopango that they killed about a week ago
and then about three days ago a family of three killed in Aguilares. They killed the
parents and the children, everyone who was in the house. Whenever I hear of crimes
so cruel, I think they must have been committed by the ex-combatants of the guerrilla
or the armed forces. They left the war with mental problems. It harmed them psycho-
logically so they think nothing of killing people and only think about taking money.
* * *
Jose: In the war, I'm not going to say that we were saints because one always does bad
things but also obliged by the circumstances one finds oneself in, no? Because here, in
these communities, there is a big problem. They are going to tell you that there isn't
traumatization in the different communities. There is in all of them. I can say this
because I know all the communities [in the zone] almost. I have had experience going
with different teams to play soccer in the communities and people always talk of killing
and things like that. Because if you go, imagine, win or lose, the people are always
pissed off and want to hit you. That is what people are like. They always have that
mentality of not controlling themselves.
I think that all this is part of the traumatization of the war. Because I can tell you that
here, the people when they have a problem with a person, they can't fight without
talking about killing.
346 ? ETHOS
The problems of irresponsibility, substance abuse, and violence men-

tioned above are male reactions to the trauma of being a child soldier.
Salvadoran gender roles generally prohibit women from drinking or smok-
ing and from expressing anger or aggression against men. Although many
women have continued political activism since the war, many women's
sphere of influence is limited to their homes where they are often exclu-
sively responsible for the care and rearing of their children, depending
when they can on men for financial assistance. A man may abandon his
family and cease to make financial contributions with very little stigma,
and although married and unmarried women may now get court orders to
demand child support, few women choose to exercise this option, perhaps
due to perceived difficulties in collecting support or enforcing the law. The
identity of revolutionary is in sharp contradiction to their current role as
campesina mother, and this causes alternating feelings of rage, disappoint-
ment, and helplessness.
RE-INTEGRATION IN "PEACE"
The Graca Machel/UN report on the impact of armed conflict on chil-

dren recommends reintegrating children into everyday community and
family activities as the best way to promote peace and the mental health
of children who have suffered from armed violence. Although a return to
a situation close to peacetime normality is surely the best way to promote
recovery and healing from war trauma, the situation in many countries
even after the signing of formal peace agreements can hardly be consid-
ered stable. This is the case in El Salvador, where violent crime has con-
tinued to increase since the end of the war and the economic situation of
the poor has also deteriorated.
The increase in violent crime has often been attributed to El Salva-
dor's transition from the repressive security forces to the professionalized
National Civilian Police. The old security forces were largely dismantled
and replaced with new recruits including members of the FMLN and civil-
ians. This transition led to an enforcement gap that along with the demo-
bilization of tens of thousands former soldiers, policemen, and guerrilla
combatants into a context of inadequate employment opportunities and
support services and easy availability of military weapons led to an explosion
of organized crime. The social structural climate and economic difficulties
of El Salvador in the postwar, however, are only part of the story, as
ONUSAL (the UN observer mission of the PNC in El Salvador) noted a
callous lack of regard for life in the new criminals who killed for "relatively
trivial causes or reasons." Even given a more favorable economic situation,
it is likely that some problems with reintegration would have remained. As
Jose (quoted above) explained, many young men who were given land and
Growing Up in Guerrilta Camps * 347
money to begin cultivating ended up instead using the money on drugs or

alcohol and leading a criminal life. Both the psychological as well as the
social effects of the war must be considered in rebuilding efforts. Poverty
and inadequate security forces contribute to the rise in crime as does the
changed worldview and personalities of thousands of young men who
learned the "way of the gun."
Jose is a good example of the complexity of reintegration for boy sol-
diers. Just 20 years old at the time of fieldwork, he in many ways epitomized
successful reintegration. He taught himself to read after demobilization
and then began classes offered by the local NGO to adolescents and adults
who had lost their opportunity to study during the war. He completed
ninth grade, which made him highly educated in this rural area where the
majority of adults have not completed third grade. He was a health pro-
moter and worked vaccinating children in several communities in the
area, for which he received a small stipend. He also organized the commu-
nity and directed a latrine project, was a member of the board of directors
of the community school, and studied organic farming. He lived with his
elderly grandparents and farmed the land his grandfather received at de-
mobilization.
In spite of his activism, Jose often suffered severe bouts of depression
and alcohol abuse. His family suffered from severe economic hardships,
and he could not earn enough vaccinating and farming to feed himself, his
grandparents, and his little sister. Then within a couple of months of each
other, two different women had children fathered by him. He contem-
plated suicide during this time, saying he felt like a worm. When the direc-
tor of the local World Vision project that was paying for his studies heard
about his depression and economic problems, they began paying him to con-
duct agricultural trainings. He almost lost this job because he would often
arrive late or miss work, recovering from drinking binges the night before.
The despair he felt because of his economic difficulties was more in-
tense because of his participation in the war and the profound disillusion
he felt that the social justice promised by the FMLN had not been
achieved. He also identified strongly with his compafneros who were in
prison or in gangs in the capital and often considered himself a morally
bad person. The pessimism learned as a young soldier when he felt that he
would not live to see adulthood has been replaced by a feeling of helpless-
ness to improve his present circumstances. His opportunities for a better
life were in fact limited, and his best hope for escaping poverty and pro-
viding for his grandparents and children was emigration to the United
States. Yet he continuously struggled against his depression, his alcohol-
ism, and his poverty and remained a community leader. He is a remark-
able young man.
348 ? ETHOS
Elva, 25 at the time of fieldwork, was another example of difficulties

in reintegration in spite of participation in education and community ac-
tivism. She too took classes after demobilization in health and to receive
her bachillerato, high school diploma. She was involved in organizing and
directing the health promoters and midwives in the area, for which she
received a small stipend from the NGO. She was also elected president of
the community's board of directors. She had five children and lived with
the father of three of them.
It was her leadership qualities, however, that made her a target for
criticism, discrimination, and, ultimately, abandonment. Community
members and other workers in the NGO accused her of stealing and having
affairs, and said that she was a gossip and that she dominated her husband.
Her husband also accused her of having affairs when she had to travel to
the capital or other rural communities for health trainings. The frustration
and resentment at being controlled in this way was compounded by the
fact that her husband had no wage labor and what he produced in the fields
was not sufficient to meet their needs. She, like many of the poor women
in the community, was ultimately responsible for her children's well-being,
as men in the community were un- or underemployed and could abandon
them at any time. However, being responsible and working to earn money
in this case made her even more vulnerable to abandonment. Her hus-
band, finally convinced she was having an affair, abandoned her to live
with her younger sister. At around the same time she lost her stipend
because NGO leaders had decided that health was not a priority. Ninety
percent of the health promoters who subsequently were to work as volun-
teers were women. Many of the NGO board of directors told me that they
also thought she was too loud and opinionated and caused problems in
the NGO.
Elva felt utterly betrayed both by her husband's abandonment and the
loss of recognition and support of her work by the NGO. She suffered from
a number of somatic complaints including ulcers and headaches, as well
as from depression and nervios ("nerves"). These physical and emotional
problems made her short-tempered with her children, whom she often
accused of adding to her problems. She felt overwhelmed by her economic
difficulties and often contemplated suicide. Yet she never abandoned her
children and continued to do her best to provide for them as well as con-
tinue her political activities.
Both Elva and Jose were exceptional in the degree to which they took
advantage of the educational opportunities available at the end of the war
as well as the extent to which they, in spite of pessimism and disillusion,
continued to believe in organization as a method to improve the situation
in El Salvador. This education and participation, however, did not lead to
better psychological health. This may be due in part to the similarity of
their present identity of activist to their former identity as revolutionary

soldier, an identity that caused them many conflicts and dilemmas during
the war. The other young adults presented in this article, Lucas and Sa-
muel, were not as active in organization and primarily farmed and took
wage labor where they could. They had children and wives with whom
they lived. However, they also found it nearly impossible to provide for
their families and accordingly felt great despair and anxiety that, in the
case of Samuel, led to alcohol abuse. The price of the war was high for all
four, and the rewards were few.
CONCLUSIONS
Very little is known about the fate of child soldiers after they leave
armed groups. The media has focused on the more sensational aspects of
their experiences: atrocities committed by child soldiers, use of drugs and
alcohol to encourage fearlessness and ferocity, the sexual abuse many are
subjected to. There has been concern about the long-term psychological
results of such early experiences on children, including a fear of a break-
down in basic morality (Boothby and Knudson 2000). In contrast, many
published reports have focused on the factors that influence the recruitment
of child soldiers as well as mediate their social reintegration (Barnett 1999;
Machel 1996; McCallin 1998; Stubbs and Soroya 1996; Summerfield 1993,
1995).
Programmes of psychological recovery and rehabilitation may assist some of these chil-
dren in the short term, but their needs can neither be fully understood nor adequately
addressed within a purely medical model. A focus on the mental health aspects of their
situation may in fact divert attention away from other concerns which, from the per-
spective of the children and their families, are equally if not more important, and which
can have a significant influence on their reintegration into civil society. It is therefore
important to understand the circumstances of the families and communities to which
the children are returning, so that they can be involved in finding appropriate solutions
for the social reintegration of their children. [McCallin 1998:61]
The authors cited above argue that educational programs, job skills
training, and the rebuilding of basic infrastructure and health care systems
will do more in the long run to help these children and their families than
psychological treatment. They also argue against treating the problems of
child soldiers as unique from the rest of their communities. They fear that
separation of child soldiers for rehabilitation increases the stigma of children
who may already be regarded with some ambivalence by community
members due to atrocities committed in war. They also fear that programs
that benefit child soldiers to the exclusion of other members of the com-
munity may lead to resentment within the community.
These recommendations come in spite of a dearth of information on
the psychosocial effects of war on children in general, and particularly on
350 ? ETHOS
child soldiers. Simpson (1993) has argued that research on the effects of
war on children is inadequate. Most of the existing research has been con-
ducted within the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology. Anthropology,
with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Quesada 1998; Ramphele 2000;
Reynolds 2000; Suarez-Orozco 1990), has been even more neglectful in
studying the effects of war on children. This neglect is surprising in light
of the explosion of interest among anthropologists in the effects of violence
and war on the individuals and societies in which it occurs, as well as the
long interest in the socialization of children. War clearly constitutes a situ-
ation that disrupts normal childrearing practices, and this alone may have
profound effects on children's development into competent members of a
culture.
Simpson (1993) further argues that the research that has been con-
ducted fails to appreciate fully the difference between prolonged exposure
to trauma and exposure to a single traumatic event. Most research on the
effects of war on children has been conducted in relatively developed
countries, for example, the recent Gulf Wars where warfare is highly tech-
nical and civilian casualties are few. In contrast, the majority of wars since
the Second World War have taken place in developing countries with ex-
tremely high levels of civilian casualties (Liddel 1993). The difference be-
tween exposure to relatively short, sharp traumatic events (like brief
exposure to shelling in the Gulf War) and exposure to prolonged warfare
cannot be overstated. As Garbarino (1991:377) notes, acute incidents of
danger simply require situational adjustment by normal children leading
normal lives-assimilation of the traumatic event into the child's under-
standing of his or her situation. The child recuperates with the cessation
of danger and reassurances by caretakers or other adults that things have
returned to normal. Chronic danger, on the other hand, requires develop-
mental adjustment, assimilations that are likely to include persistent post-
traumatic stress disorder, alterations of personality, and major changes in
patterns of behavior or ideological interpretations of the world. The rea-
sons for the profound changes in personality in prolonged periods of war
reported in the literature become clear when we examine the childhood
experiences of the young adults presented in this article. Their entire
childhood was endured under a state of emergency. Normal socialization
practices were interrupted as they lived in impermanent camps, constantly
fleeing the army. Caretakers were so overwhelmed and traumatized that
they could barely attend to the contingencies of survival, let alone the
socialization of their children into competent adulthood. These children
were constantly surrounded by extreme levels of violence that therefore
became normalized, and boys were pressured to commit these same vio-
lent acts.
The developmental adjustments made by children to adjust to threat

depend on the normal developmental tasks facing them at that moment
(Pynoos and Nader 1993). The present article suggests that traumatic ex-
periences such as the decapitation of one's father, witnessing massacres,
or fleeing for one's life, are even more devastating when they occur in early
childhood as they destroy the ability to establish basic trust in competent
and nurturing caretakers. Later, war may interfere with the development
of an autonomous identity in adolescence.
The developmental effects of prolonged experiences of war are medi-
ated by gender due to differences in socialization as well as differences
between boys' and girls' experiences during the war and the roles they are
expected to assume (Barrios and O'Dell 1989; Maccoby and Jacklin 1974).
There was a great deal of pressure from both the guerrilla and armed forces
for boys in El Salvador to fight as soldiers as well as to occupy the role of
"man of the house" responsible for maintaining their families. Girls who
may have wished to participate, on the other hand, violated traditional
gender roles, causing even greater crises in identity. Some research has
suggested that girls show greater psychological resilience in times of war
because they are given greater freedom to express fear and sadness (Bar-
rios and O'Dell 1989; Maccoby and Jacklin 1974). While this may hold true
in some contexts of war, expression of fear and sadness was necessarily
repressed for both boys and girls in El Salvador because to express such
emotions would label one as a subversive and therefore target one for re-
pression. Profound, indigestible grief is a problem for both the young men
and woman presented in this article, and they are plagued in adulthood
with feelings of rage, depression, and helplessness.
While some studies have attempted to measure the effects of exposure
to particular war events (e.g., Bryce et al. 1989; Farhood et al. 1993; Kuterovac
et al. 1994; McCloskey et al. 1995), almost none have examined the unique
psychological consequences of participating as a child soldier (Mendel-
sohn and Straker 1998). Mendelsohn and Straker suggest a number of rea-
sons for this lack of studies on child soldiers. First, it may be difficult to
gain access to child soldiers during conflicts as they are often in heavily
conflicted zones, and armed groups deny the existence of child soldiers.
There may also be reluctance on the part of researchers who prefer to see
children as victims to acknowledge the active role played by children in
violence. Finally, the theoretical complexity of the topic may discourage
research. It is difficult to differentiate between children who are victims of
war and child soldiers because many soldiers and other children suffer the
same sorts of experiences, for example, witnessing the assassination of
family members or bombings. Many child soldiers are also victims before,
during, or after their participation as soldiers. However, the experiences
of child soldiers are unique not only in terms of the frequency of exposure
352 ? ETHOS
to extreme violence and danger but also as argued in this article because
they require unique adaptations and behaviors. Becoming an adolescent
guerrillero creates conflicts in addition to those typically suffered in war
by children who do not become soldiers, as adolescent soldiers must be-
have in ways that they feel are morally incorrect, becoming an inhuman
killer like the enemy. Situations of continuing economic deprivation and
insecurity add to the difficulty these child soldiers have in creating mean-
ingful lives as adults.
The experiences of child soldiers, however, are extremely varied, and
the effects of being a child soldier probably depend on a number of factors,
as suggested by Dawes (1994): the political, structural, and economic con-
texts within which the political violence occurs; the duration and form of
the conflict; whether members of a conflict share a history of a democratic
or repressive culture; the type of political violence that involves young
people; the available social identities and forms of moral socialization; and
the individual histories and psychological attributes of the young people.
The data presented in this article are from interviews with a small group
of people who lived in one small community and had very similar experi-
ences of the war. Thus, generalizability to other children fighting in other
conflicts around the world is limited. The differences experienced by child
soldiers in different conflicts may create different dilemmas and problems
in development. Drug use, for example, was not present or allowed in the
guerrilla camps but has been reported to be common in other parts of the
world to make children more ready and willing to fight. Such excessive
substance use could be imagined to have a great impact on children's cog-
nitive development. Additionally, all the adults who fought with the guer-
rillas reported that they had made a conscious decision to join, although
they all felt that they were too young to make wise decisions. At the time
they joined they felt some ideological sympathy to the cause. The disillu-
sionment that they feel now with politics and leaders in general may stem
from this situation of conscious choice without any real options as they
feel resentment over failed promises as well as being used by the guerrilla.
In other parts of the world, children are forcibly recruited and forced to
commit atrocities so that they are unable to return to their communities
of origin and are dependent on the armed group. Differences in gender
roles in different cultures may also influence both children's experiences
and roles in the conflict, as well as the long-term effects of involvement.
In El Salvador girls were subject to sexual abuse to a greater extent than
boys. The promises of economic, social, and political equality were also
betrayed, and the contributions of women and girls to the cause were ig-
nored or minimized.
A detailed explanation of the conflicts and dilemmas faced by children
in different war situations may help improve programs for the assistance
Growing Up in GuerriLLa Camps * 353
of children affected by war. In rural El Salvador, many communities, like

the community studied here, have not yet recovered economically from
the war. Incentives, education, and land received at the end of the war to
help former combatants rebuild their lives have not been sufficient for the
majority of youth to support themselves and their families. These young
adults recognized that the failure to build meaningful lives was not only
due to the poor economic situation in the country but also to the "trauma-
tization" of the population. Working to find solutions to the community's
current problems requires continued identification with revolutionary
goals reproducing the conflicts and dilemmas created by participation as
a soldier during the war: violence, violation of female gender roles, and the
stigmatized identity as a subversive. On the other hand, those who chose
not to organize with the NGO were left with bitter disillusionment over
failed promises by the FMLN leadership and feelings of helplessness re-
garding their present situation. A program that allows participants to iden-
tify and confront the dilemmas and conflicts faced as children growing up
in the war may help these young adults construct new ways of working to
resolve current social problems without recreating the negative identities
of the war.
JULIA DICKSON-GOMEZ is Research Associate at the Institute for Community Research, Hartford, Connecticut.
NOTES
Acknowledgments. Fieldwork and research for this study were funded by the National
Science Foundation Grants for Improving Doctoral Dissertation Research, #SBR-9601393.
Additional funding for fieldwork came from the Latin American Center, UCLA and Sociobe-
havioral Group, UCLA. The writing and analysis was funded by the Department of Anthro-
pology, Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA.
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Growing Up in Guerrilla Camps The Long-Term Impact of Being A Child Soldier in El Salvador's Civil War - DIKSON-GOMEZ

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Growing Up in Guerrilla Camps The Long-Term Impact of Being A Child Soldier in El Salvador's Civil War - DIKSON-GOMEZ

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Growing up in Guerrilla Camps: The Long-Term Impact of Being a Child Soldier in El

Salvador's Civil War

ABSTRACT Many recent wars are characterized by high levels

i n estimated 300,000 children are actively participating in 36

Ethos 30(4):327-356. Copyright ? 2003, American Anthropological Association.

contributed to the recruitment of child soldiers. The new generation of inex-

of different ages allow a perspective on the effects of similar war events

CHILDREN AND WAR IN EL SALVADOR

Children were often witnesses to mutilations and murders of their

sympathetic to the FMLN while others organized in ORDEN (National

that these gangs are made up of ex-guerrilleros or ex-soldiers. Hundreds

massacres of civilians that he somehow managed to survive. In one of

Samuel's father was also assassinated by paramilitary troops when

Lucas witnessed his father's decapitation at the age of seven. He was

EARLY WAR EXPERIENCES: THE DISRUPTION OF BASIC TRUST

Assuming Adult Responsibilities

Interviewer: And how did they feel about your involvement?

The selflessness of children in war has been described by Assal and

Lucas attributed his mother's desire to return to her community of

The long-term effects of such early responsibilities are perhaps best

describes mothers of the Alto Cruzeiro, Brazil, as so much in need of nur-

ADOLESCENT SOLDIERS: IDENTITY DIFFUSION

Unresolved Grief and Desire for Revenge

The basic mistrust caused by the brutal murder of family members as

The psychoanalyst Kohut (1972) locates the violent aggression of re-

which is mobilized to eliminate an obstacle to a goal" (Moore and Fine

The defense against experiencing grief that was necessary to "keep

Becoming "One Who Kills"

Unresolved grief and fantasies of revenge were experienced by all the

It may have been easier for Elva to rationalize her participation as

Play has been considered a way of mastering past experiences that

Autonomy and Control

Jose recognizes that rehabilitation for the adolescent soldiers is not

Interviewer: Yeah. They were from Ilopango, right?

The problems of irresponsibility, substance abuse, and violence men-

The Graca Machel/UN report on the impact of armed conflict on chil-

money to begin cultivating ended up instead using the money on drugs or

Elva, 25 at the time of fieldwork, was another example of difficulties

their present identity of activist to their former identity as revolutionary

The developmental adjustments made by children to adjust to threat

of children affected by war. In rural El Salvador, many communities, like

Aguayo, S., and P. Weiss

Garbarino, J., K. Kostelny, and N. Dubrow

Kuterovac, G., A. Dyregrov, and R. Stuvland

Mendelsohn, M., and G. Straker

Stubbs, P., and B. Soroya

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