We Struggled for a Common Good: Urban-Rural Alliances on the Salvadoran Left, 1970–80

El Salvador in the 1970s was remarkable for the close ties between urban and rural activists. These bonds, in turn, were an important factor explaining the later strength of the armed insurgency. This presentation examines urban-rural relationships within the Bloque Popular Revolucionario (BPR), a major coalition formed in 1975, focusing on the mobilization and political work of the BPR’s two peasant worker federations. I identify four key factors facilitating urban-rural coalitions. First, and arguably most important, the currents of liberation theology that preceded the BPR provided a shared political culture fostering solidarity among different groups, upon which the BPR could build. Second, certain Marxist forces, in particular the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (FPL), also placed strong ideological emphasis on the notion of the worker-peasant alliance, and the “workerism” that viewed the urban proletariat as the vanguard was less pronounced than among many other Latin American Marxists. Third, patterns of internal migration, largely related to the yearly harvest, brought many future Salvadoran activists into contact with people outside their locales. Fourth, massive state repression against all popular challengers helped to unite peasants, workers, and students. That repression was not simply a continuation of the brutal history of El Salvador’s landowning class and armed forces, however: it was also a calculated response to widespread mobilization, including the specter of urban-rural collaboration. Thus, while repression tended to radicalize popular forces, it was also a response to prior radicalism.