on feminist activism in El Salvador

...Crossing the border between Honduras and El Salvador was dangerous: discovery of her true identity would probably mean immediate death...

...In El Salvador, Deysi Cheyne reports: "There is so much violence and such a pronounced hierarchy in the family...

...FORREST D. COLBURN'S most recent book is The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries...

...Now she is the director of the Institute for Research, Training, and Development of Women, a nongovernmental organization in El Salvador...

...I believe Cheyne will always vote...

...Others in Latin America, who like Cheyne aspire to see a better world, have also elected to sidestep what used to be their all-consuming passion—state power—and to focus, instead, on issues like environmental degradation, local governance, health care, education, and gender...

...A scholarship enabled her to study biology at the V.I...

...DISSENT / Winter 1999 • 43 Cheyne grew up in the provincial city of La Libertad...

...It was a most dangerous period...

...A recent survey suggested that 57 percent of women have been physically abused in their homes by their spouses...

...Party politics, electoral politics, and the slow labor of democratic governance and democratic opposition are too frequently dismissed—as if there is no middle ground between creating a Leninist state and retreating to the barrio...

...Lenin State University in what was then Moldavia, in the former Soviet Union...

...Funding for the general activities of the IMU comes overwhelmingly from foreign assistance, especially from the Netherlands and Sweden...

...Still, she is determined to avoid state-centered politics...

...The final offensive in San Salvador was ghastly, with many of her colleagues killed, mostly at close quarters...

...AT THE close of the war, Cheyne was a member of the PSC Central Committee, with an additional title, Responsable to the Secretariat for the Welfare of Women...

...In Congress only 10 percent of the representatives are women...

...A poster produced by the IMU is more specific...

...in the intervening period Cheyne lived in constant danger...

...In pursuing her work, Cheyne is calm and soft-spoken, not betraying the drive that led her to ascend the ranks of the Communist Party of El Salvador, the fear she lived with throughout El Salvador's civil war, or the misery and death she has seen...

...Other directors are six ministers of state: justice, education, labor, health and social welfare, agriculture, and public safety...

...After four years in Moldavia, from 1976 to 1980, Cheyne returned to El Salvador, where she participated in clandestine activities of the PSC, one of the oldest Communist parties in Latin America...

...The father comes home drunk and beats his wife...

...But Cheyne has become disenchanted with party politics, and she remains suspicious of democracy itself...

...At times, Cheyne's work takes her into the precincts of the state, and I sense that here she is less comfortable, or perhaps just suspicious...

...Why ignore the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and even the police...

...44 DISSENT / Winter 1999 Decent housing, with ownership, for women...

...The division of labor within the family follows a similar pattern...

...She and her organization,known by its Spanish acronym, IMU, strive to improve the welfare of the women of El Salvador, a heroic undertaking but one that Cheyne finds more satisfying and productive than any other...

...The triumph of the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua gave the left in El Salvador hope for a similar revolution...

...Research sponsored by the IMU on women living in rural areas reveals that they commonly work outside the home yet shoulder nearly all household and child-rearing chores...

...There is vigorous competition in El Salvador's elections...

...Social policies that meet the needs of women...

...The PSC jockeyed with other parties and groups to define a new identity for the FMLN, which moved from being a clandestine guerrilla organization to a political party, competing in elections alongside its former "enemies...

...She slaps her eldest son...

...Couldn't more be accomplished if, through democratic politics, these institutions are made more efficient, more responsive...

...The IMU sponsors a variety of projects: the construction of a nutrition center in an isolated village, efforts to assist women and their families by halting environmental degradation in vulnerable communities, campaigns against degrading portrayals of women in advertising campaigns, and so on...

...Still, there is no democracy without democrats...

...Free and voluntary maternity...

...But when I asked her if the past all seems like a dream, she says, "no...

...Responsible paternity...

...Men are also poorly educated, but their average number of years in school is four...

...But voter absenteeism has been increasing...

...Cheyne no longer believes revolution is a solution to El Salvador's problems, but she also is not convinced that voting for this party or that one will accomplish much...

...Even in the neoliberal era of "lean government," the state still has vast resources— including authority...

...But many citizens who are economically comfortable also decline to participate in even the routine activities of the region's incipient democracies...

...One of IMU's publications has a drawing of a woman doubled over from carrying a boulder labeled "patriarchy...

...But repression by the armed forces and the police was savage...

...And the little boy kicks the dog...

...Despite active political participation throughout the history of El Salvador, women have been kept out of positions of authority...

...The board of directors includes four representatives of nongovernmental organizations, including the IMU, dedicated to proDISSENT / Winter 1999 45 moting the welfare of women...

...46 DISSENT / Winter 1999...

...One can work more directly, strengthening abilities for self-governance, reshaping cultural practices...

...Comprehensive sexual education and sexuality without prejudices...

...Presidents and cabinet members are almost always men...

...Cheyne decided to give her—and the new state institute—the benefit of the doubt and to see if together they could push ahead the collective interests of Salvadoran women...

...I don't see that democracy with its attendant economic system is improving the lives of poor people...

...Indeed, in all five Central American countries voter absenteeism is up...

...I sense that for Cheyne the attendant loss of party responsibilities was a relief, allowing her to spend more time with the IMU and its "grass-roots" work...

...Cheyne is doing good work, but her attitude toward politics illustrates how many "on the left" in Latin America have gone from an allconsuming passion for seizing the state to a virtual abandonment of interest in government...

...The offensive was not successful, though it may well have convinced the army that it was far from winning the war and so contributed to a negotiated peace...

...Another study concluded that 51 percent of working women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace...

...There is only one public maternity hospital in the country...

...The president chooses the board's leader...

...Most of those who do not vote or participate in party politics are—predictablypoor and ill-educated...

...Respect for the environment and a better quality of life for women...

...In 1983, Cheyne was sent to Nicaragua, where she did intelligence work for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which the Communist Party had joined in 1980, though it maintained an independent party structure...

...Only 12 percent of the titles awarded in the recent agrarian reform were given to women...

...Without active participation in democratic politics, the Salvaldoran state will never respond to the needs of the poor majority, and especially not to women...

...She believes it is necessary to work directly with the disenfranchised, to "help them help themselves...

...But it is violence against women that is most alarming...

...Those whose commitment to social welfare previously led them to seek revolution now need, like everyone else, to participate en masse in democratic politics...

...It has made no difference to most people...

...Cheyne is a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of El Salvador (PSC...

...Land, credit, and technical assistance for women...

...It has considerable responsibility and considerable (if inadequate) resources...

...Prodding El Salvador to meet these demands is a Herculean challenge...

...Ten days before the "final offensive" of 1989, Cheyne returned to El Salvador, traveling on a false passport...

...Job training, employment, and equal salaries...

...And she is still "anticapitalist...

...But Elizabeth de Calderon Sol has shown a commitment to the welfare of women...

...She is intelligent and, in the end, she is a woman too, and undeniably aware of what women of all classes in El Salvador endure...

...For her, "We have elections, we have democracy, but when I go out into the streets I see poverty...

...Non-discriminatory laws...

...In 1995, the different political parties that made up the FMLN dissolved their respective party structures to become "currents" or "tendencies" within a revamped FMLN...

...As a college student at the University of El Salvador she was, as she says, "recruited" by the PSC...

...Still, her dislike of party and electoral politics is symptomatic of many of those once committed to radical change...

...It states: Platform of the Women of El Salvador Fifty-Two Percent of the Population Demand: A halt to incest, rape, and sexual molestation...

...She is unmistakably from the bourgeoisie, and thus represents the social class that Cheyne had risked her life to overthrow...

...Cheyne describes her work in Nicaragua, where she stayed for six years, as mundane, preparing intelligence reports for the "general staff" of the FMLN...

...President Armando Calderon Sol appointed his wife, Elizabeth de CalderOn Sol...

...The economy is reported to be growing at a healthy rate of such-and-such, but when I go out into the streets I see more poverty...

...The judicial system, too, lacks women in ranking positions...

...The consequences of this violence are enormous, contributing to low self-esteem, depression, emotional insecurity, and constant fear...

...Surveys of women residing in San Salvador, now home to one-fourth the population of El Salvador, reveal that in 95 percent of families women prepare all the meals, in 90 percent of families they wash all the clothes, in 84 percent of families women take sole responsibility for the medical care of children...

...This commitment stems in part from her identification with the plight of women, but also from her disillusionment with party politics and the workings of El Salvador's incipient democracy...

...Ministries are elephantine and lumbering, but it is unlikely that their responsibilities are going to be met by small, nongovernmental organizations dependent on foreign assistance...

...He hits his younger brother...

...The mission statement of IMU is: "Raise awareness in El Salvador of the discrimination and subordination of women, promote measures which enhance the status of women, strengthen the organization of women, and encourage the political and social participation of women at both the community and national level...

...Economically, too, women suffer from discrimination, receiving, on average, salaries roughly 30 percent less than men for the same work...

...But how reasonable is it to skip the state...

...The demise of Marxism in Latin America has left an ideological hole into which many have just disappeared, but it has also allowed for a more encompassing political agenda and permitted a more eclectic array of strategies...

...For example, in 1996 El Salvador's Congress passed a law creating a new institute, supported by the government: the Salvadoran Institute for the Progress of Women (ISDEMU...

...Her studies were complemented by training in "intelligence gathering and analysis...

...It is estimated that only 5 percent of rapes in the country are reported, a sign of the acceptance of violence against women...

...He is working on a book on Latin America at the end of history...

...In the 1989 elections, 39 percent of those eligible to vote didn't...

...Only 2.7 percent of men study in a university, but for women the figure is a mere 0.7 percent...

...Equality of opportunity for girls in schools...

...The woman who contributed the most to the founding, Norma Guirola, was captured and killed during the final offensive...

...Fifty percent of the positions of power for women...

...The institute was given the task of "formulating, implementing, and ensuring the fulfillment of national policies toward women...

...Research conducted by the IMU staff shows that the average number of years in school for women in El Salvador is only three...

...In 1992, she assumed the responsibility for leadership of the IMU, founded in 1986 by colleagues in the FMLN to raise the political awareness of women, to help in their daily struggles, and to marshal their support for the insurrection...

...Most common, though, are diverse but persistent attempts to raise the awareness of women about their rights and to teach them to organize so that they can make claims on state and society for the fulfillment of these rights...

...In 1994, the number rose to 54 percent...

...Comprehensive health care for women in more and better hospitals...

...On top of the boulder sits a man sipping a cup of coffee...

...Control of the state is not the only means to social change...

...WHAT CHEYNE and her staff of thirty are doing seems eminently useful...

...The aim was to strengthen the FMLN and to enhance its electoral possibilities...

...Cheyne is surprised though—and perhaps sometimes even overwhelmed—by how much the parameters of politics have changed in El Salvador, and she feels that "It is so much harder now that there is no model [the Soviet Union] to serve as a guide and a vision...

...However, the IMU, surely suspect to the authorities, survived and continued its work...

...The state remains, though...

...A halt to increases in the cost of basic foodstuffs...

...That settlement did not come until 1992...

...rural women routinely labor fourteen to eighteen hours a day...

...Despite high rates of breast and uterine cancer, there is no effort by public health authorities to detect cases early so that treatment is possible...

...And today in El Salvador the state is a democracy, fragile and incomplete, but a democracy nonetheless...