El Salvador Shamsie Analysis

In her paper, Shamsie lays out a radicalized version of Robert Bates' and Horowitz's theories of elite predation and ethnic violence in an attempt to better explain what caused the bloody El Salvadoran civil war that engulfed the country in the last two decades of the 20th century. First and foremost, Shamsie attempts to push the boundaries of Horowitz's definition of ethnicity by arguing that the shared experiences between campesinos in El Salvador were so strong that they created a kind of unique kinship and ethnicity that differentiated them from the landed political and economic elites in a fundamental way. She then incorporates Bates' theory in a way that also radicalizes his theory of elite predation. Shamsie posits that, while elite predation and political repression predicated the conflict, economic self-interest was not the driving factor behind the mobilization of the campesino militias. Instead, psychological, moral and emotional considerations and self-interest drove the campesinos, because, as Shamsie says, it “made them feel good.” Shamsie offers a very unique explanation of the conflict in El Salvador, and I am inclined to agree with some of it and disagree with other parts. I see …show more content…
I see the basis of the conflict as being the result of the economic and political repression by the El Salvadoran elites causing the campesinos to engage in self-help to protect their own self-interest. Shamsie's restructuring of Bates' argument to include psychological, moral and emotional self-interests as driving forces is valid, though I still believe economic self-interest was the basis of the conflict. Additionally, it would have been interesting for her to speak a little bit about ideological motivators and how they affected these other factors, which she briefly alludes to when she speaks about the obvious split economically, politically and socially between the campesinos and the landed El Salvadoran