Julio Gutiérrez
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Interview Text and Audio
Abstract
Julio Gutiérrez is an anthropology doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Julio was born and raised in San Salvador, El Salvador, and held both U.S. and Salvadoran citizenship (the former was passed down through his mother who obtained it when living in Los Angeles prior to his birth). He migrated to the U.S. with his parents in 2008 at the age of 16 to live with his brother who was attending college in Texas. He shares his experience of growing up in San Salvador right after the end of the civil war, talks about moving to the U.S., and discusses how his experiences, perspective, and self-identification have shifted over his 14 years in the States. Julio also provides an overview of his research topic, which is centered on land dispossession through urbanization in El Salvador and draws connections to rural Salvadorans’ threatened livelihoods and the supposed economic growth credited to recent real estate development. He also expresses concern for the current government and the poor policies that have been enacted. Julio concludes the interview by encouraging the questioning of dominant narratives, with the hope that alternative futures are possible for his home country.R1019_Audio.mp3
Transcript
Isabel Abarca: Okay, my name is Isabel Abarca and I am with Julio Gutiérrez. It is April 2nd, and we are at Lanza’s cafe in Carrboro, North Carolina. The topic of this oral history is focused on migration experiences, identity, and research expertise focused on El Salvador. Do you consent to this interview, Julio?
Julio Gutiérrez: I do consent.
IA: Okay, perfect. I'd first like to begin by providing space for you to introduce yourself in whatever ways you would like to.
JG: So my name is Julio Gutiérrez. I am a PhD student at the Department of Anthropology, at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And I’ll just leave it at that.
IA: Okay, where are you from? And where do you live now?
JG: So I am originally from El Salvador, and I live now in Carrboro, North Carolina.
IA: And where is your family from?
JG: My family's also from El Salvador.
IA: And where do they currently live?
JG: And they live, I mean, they're spread, my parents live in El Salvador, in San Salvador, and my brother lives in San Antonio, Texas.
IA: And can you talk about the, your parents’ migration to the United States and how old they were and what that was like?
JG: So my, the first one of my parents to migrate was my mother. She migrated, I believe, in the early 70’s. She was about 14 years old when she migrated. So, yeah, she was part of that process of migration before the Civil War and all of that, and migrated mainly for family reasons, family situations that kind of pushed for…the first one to migrate was my aunt, who is older than her. And then she followed my aunt, when she was 14 years old. And my father migrated in the 80’s, if I can recall, somewhere between ’81 and ’83. Both migrated to Los Angeles, California.
IA: Awesome, and then who did you grow up with in your household?
JG: I grew up with my parents and my brother.
IA: And can you talk a little bit about what that was like growing up in…where did you say you were born?
JG: In San Salvador.
IA: Can you talk about what that was like growing up in that area? And then when you came to the U.S. and how that changed.
JG: Yeah, so growing up in El Salvador for me was I had a very, kind of joyful time, as a kid in El Salvador. Let's say that the political situation where I…the moment I was born, was a little bit better than in the previous years. So I was born in 1991. So that's right towards the end of the Civil War. And let’s say that the climate there from what I've been told, it was not as violent as in the, of course, in the previous years…but after that, ’92 it was the [The Chapultepec] Peace Accords, and things were more calm. For instance, as opposed to my brother who was born in ’88, and so he had to live through, for instance, the ofensiva of 1989, so there was a lot of political violence and conflict going on. And yeah, and in my case, it was, my childhood was very much a standard middle-class family from San Salvador. I attended a private Catholic school, which is kind of a tradition that middle class people attend to. And I just remember, I mean, in my case, my father, he used to be, you know, what's the word, he was an economist. So he used to work as a consultant for small businesses, as an economist, and my mother would work from home, she would pretty much spend most of her time taking care of my brother and me. And, I just remember my childhood as a very, kind of joyful time, just playing with friends on the street, all the time. We used to live in a small, I don't know how to say, pasaje, it’s one of those streets without an exit…
IA: Mm, like a dead end?
JG: Yeah, like at the dead end. So a lot of the families that lived in my neighborhood were about the same age. So I used to, so I had lots of friends that were from my own generation. So I grew up playing soccer and just, in that nice environment. And lots of times just hanging out with family, relatives, and I don't know, those are the things that I have more present when it comes to remembering my time in El Salvador, then also going to school. Again, like…there's not much to say about that, or not that, that I would prioritize. But yeah, I mean, that's how I remember, a joyful time. I had basic needs met. And yeah, I think that’s it. And then you asked something about when I…
IA: Yeah, maybe say, at what age you moved…
JG: Oh, yeah.
IA: …to the U.S. and what that was like.
JG: So I moved, I believe I was 17, or…yes, 17 years old, or 16, 17, 16, about to turn 17, because it was in 2008. And the reason I came to the United States was mainly to study so the situation was very particular because…sorry [Julio received a phone call]. So my situation was very particular because of the fact that my parents migrated before me. They migrated in the 70’s. First my mother and then my father in the 80’s. They went through lots of problems and issues during that process, but in the end, they were able to settle in the places where they went, which was Los Angeles. And that allowed, in the case of my father, to obtain residency. And my mother, she was actually able to obtain citizenship. Of course, she was there for longer, she did high school and some studies there and everything. So she was able to get citizenship. So when they decided to move back to El Salvador in 87…and that, so in 88, my brother was born and then I was born in 91. And I remember, my parents are always telling me that they were going to take advantage of the, how do you say the, los papeles, their migrant status, or their, yeah, migration status with the U.S. in order to send us to study to the United States in the future. And that was the plan, especially in the case of my mother, she was able to pass on to me the citizenship. So that wasn't very difficult because she basically just had to go to, because she was a citizen, she had to go to the U.S. Embassy there, and then just do all the paperwork in order to transfer me the citizenship. So I grew up in El Salvador as a Salvadoran citizen but also as a U.S. citizen. And that really made my process of migration much easier. I remember, from a very young age, they were always mentioning and telling us, okay, eventually you will go to the U.S. to study for university. So that's what we did. With my brother, he was the first one to move to the United States. He had such a weird path, because he didn't move directly to the United States, he first started studying in an American college that's actually based in Nicaragua. That's called Ave Maria College [of the Americas, now called Keiser University–Latin American Campus (KU)]. And that was the easiest thing, because it was so close but it was an American college. So they thought it had the quality or whatever. So he moved there, but it wasn't a very good experience. So somehow, he ended up moving to a small town, in the east of Texas, in Christian College, a really small Christian College, in this random town of Texas that I don't even remember. But that's, that's where he was able to transfer in. So he moved there. So he did one semester in Nicaragua, and then one semester in that college, and then after that, he was able to transfer to UT Austin. And that's where he settled, in Austin, Texas. So once my brother settled there, we, as a family, had a place to go. ‘Everybody, let's go and move’. So my parents actually moved with me to Austin, Texas, because the idea was that they were also going to move. It wasn't only that I was going to study in the U.S., but also they were planning on moving to the U.S. with us. Partly to keep the family together and also for, I mean, economic opportunities and everything else. In that sense, I feel like my experience with migration was very…I had a lot of advantages that most people don't have in terms of those circumstances because also my family came with me. And I actually didn't go straight to college, but actually decided to finish high school in the United States, because it would, it was easier for me to enter college if I finished high school in the U.S., as opposed to finishing high school in El Salvador, and then doing all the bureaucratic process of transferring credits, and then validating the high school diploma and all that stuff. So it was easier for me just to finish high school there, and then go to college. So that's what I did. And that actually, I feel, helped me a lot because the time in high school allowed me to adjust to the culture. When I went to high school in Austin, Texas, I met with other Central Americans and I formed a really nice group of friends, with a friend from El Salvador, another from Nicaragua, another friend from Honduras. And I really built a tight knit social network that was, it really helped me adapt culturally to the new country. I mean, that for me, I wasn't excited about moving to the United States, especially since I was about to finish school in El Salvador. Because I had been in the same school with my friends, childhood friends, from kindergarten, and after so many years to just move and then not graduate from the school that I had gone to my entire childhood, it was hard. But at the same time, at some level, I kind of felt like I had to and I understood why I had to. And mainly because, I felt that for economic opportunities, I would have better economic opportunities if I graduated from a college here and also the type of studies that I wanted to do. Most of the careers or the majors, college majors that interested me at that time, there wasn't much infrastructure for that in El Salvador. I remember, back in the day, I wanted to be a geologist. And there's a lot of stuff to do around geology in El Salvador, but there's not a major in geology. So most people that do geology have to do studies elsewhere. So it sort of made sense to me, even though emotionally it was still hard. But I kind of felt like, okay, but I mean, I don't have, I mean, I should just take that option. And yeah, so it was like that.
IA: And so when you first moved, when you're 16/17, your parents came with you. How long were you all together as the four of y'all?
JG: Basically, all together, one semester. And what happened was that the idea was that my parents were going to stay in the U.S. with us. But what happened was that my father had a small business in El Salvador. And that was the main income for the family. And the issue was that, because he had to leave, he had to manage the business from afar. And that was very challenging, because, I mean, he left other people in charge, but they didn't have the same experiences as his so it became…the business kind of started to have lots of issues and administrative problems. So he ended up deciding, ‘hey, it's better for me, if I go back to El Salvador, and I go handle that. And then you three,’ that's my brother, my mother and me, ‘stay in Austin’. So that's what we did. So my father was the first one to go, to move back to Salvador after one semester of being here. And then my mother stayed with my brother and me while I finished high school. So I did one year and a half of high school because I came in January of 2008. And I graduated in May of 2009. So my mother stayed through all that. So, and after I finished high school, I actually was accepted at, not at UT Austin, but University of Texas San Antonio. So I went to live for one year in San Antonio. And my brother was already in university, in UT Austin. So my mother was like, ‘Okay, I guess I don't have much to do here’, so she went back with my father. And then that's when, the summer of 2009, that's when she went back to El Salvador and that's how it's been since then. It's been only my brother and me here in the U.S. and they are in El Salvador.
IA: Have they come back to visit at all, or?
JG: Yeah, they come every now and then, every two or so years. They mainly go to Texas, because it's much easier and cheaper to fly to Texas. So they have never been here in North Carolina, but I've been able to meet them in Texas. My brother now lives in San Antonio. So they do come every now and then.
IA: Cool, and then, kind of going back to this, you know, introducing yourself and who you are…How do you choose to identify and how might, how is your time in the U.S. shaped your identity and if and how that has changed over time.
JG: So, I mean, in terms of nationality, I identify as Salvadoran like I don't, I know I, I'm technically, I’m Salvadoran American, but I don't like that tag because I don't, I didn't grow up here. So I just feel like it just doesn’t feel right, I feel Salvadoran and what was the other question?
IA: Yeah. How your time in the U.S. has shaped your identity. And if and how that's changed over time.
JG: Yeah. So it's, it's strange, because I don't know, the first few years of being here, it was just this feeling, which to an extent, I still have, which is that feeling that, no, I don't have, this feeling I don’t have. But the first few years here, I was in that mental state in which like, ‘Okay, I'm just here temporarily. I'm just here to study, to get my degree and then I'm going back to El Salvador, no matter, no matter how, no matter what’. And so it was okay, I'm a foreigner, I'm just like, I don't belong here. And that feeling about, yeah, not, feeling that I don't belong here and mainly just, I mean, I enjoy my time with my friends. But other than that, there was, I always felt some sort of cultural barrier with other groups, especially dominant white culture and, and that I never was able to assimilate into that, or just, I don't know, become part of social groups that were predominantly white. It's not that I blatantly rejected it, no, it just didn't come natural to me. So there's that. But at the same time, it was kind of odd too, because there were also Latino groups that were more second generation, people who were born here, but their parents migrated and all that. And at the same time, I didn't feel like I belonged there, either. So it was just, it was always like, I think about trying to find people in a similar situation to me, that they had migrated, that they grew up in Latin America, and they migrated here. And that's where I found community and all that. And so, in that sense, and then there's also this feeling that, oh, that feeling about like, oh, I'm going to come back, I’m going to go back to El Salvador. And then, at some point, I stopped thinking about that, in the sense like, when I realized that the chances of going back to El Salvador were very limited in terms of economic opportunities, jobs and all that, and also my student debt, that was a big realization, like when I came here, I had no idea about college and how college was financed, and all that, and they get you into this thing about, ‘Oh, you must go to college’ and you have the advisor that tells you ‘Oh, you need to apply to not only to the college, but you need to apply to financial aid’ and all that and everybody tells you that, but then when you're getting older, you start realizing that, there's more to that, and that you're gonna have to get in huge debt to go to college. And then once you realize that, you realize that your opportunities are much more limited because it's not like you cannot go back and have a regular salary. Because you won't be able, there's no way you will be able to pay your debt with that. So that realization already made me feel okay, I guess I'm here to stay. By that time, let's say that I feel a little bit more comfortable. I still felt like a big barrier, culturally, at the same time, it was the same thing where I was always looking for spaces where, I mean, Latino community and all of that. I wasn’t, sorry [Julio tended to his dog, Millie]. So I wasn’t, I don't know, I still felt that barrier. And even though I had given up with the idea of going back, it was just, I guess I'm just gonna stay, but still, I'm gonna feel like a foreigner all the time. And I just came to terms with that. And I feel like, okay, this is what I am, this is what I’ll be all time. And till this day, I still feel that, yeah. And in terms of my identity, something that has…oh, no, this is what I wanted to say also, that there was also that feeling for a big…long time that I was still living in El Salvador. And this sounds kind of weird, but my mind, it's always thinking about El Salvador. And I'm always reading the news about El Salvador, I'm just keeping up with what's like, to a point that it's way, way more than what I, then what's happening around me. It's sad but this is just how it feels. It's kind of like, okay, and anyway, but when it comes to identity, I feel like lately, but very, very, very recently, I've been feeling more that I want to kind of expand my network and communication and relationships. And expand, not so much to, I mean, I have always been connected to some Latino communities, mainly people who grew up in Latin America, but come here. But lately, I've been very interested in just establishing relationships with Salvadorans who grew up, who were either born in the U.S. or grew up here. And the reason for that, well, I don't know, I've had friends from that, I had Salvadoran friends who were in that situation, and we've gotten in good friendships and all that. And I felt like there was some sort of division between one group and the other. And after so many years of living here, I'm starting to feel like, okay, I want to hang out with everyone.
IA: Yeah.
JG: And yeah, so, I don't know, there's that concept of the 1.5 generation and I’m starting to feel more…I recently found out, I didn't know about that category, but I really feel like it really captures what I, how I feel now. Because it's the idea of like, okay, I've been so long outside of El Salvador that I'm already a different person. But at the same time, I didn't have the experience of growing up here. So it's not the same. So it's being in between those two groups. And yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I don't know exactly what that means for my life or anything. But I don't know. It's just something that I think, I don't have any clear thoughts on that, that I can articulate. I'm still processing the fact that I've been more than 14 years in this country.
IA: Wow, so it's almost equal time there…
JG: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no definitely and that's something that gets me thinking, but I don't know exactly how should I approach it. I don’t know.
IA: And you do, you know, you talk about how you, even being here, you're very much invested in what is going on in El Salvador and politics, cultural, social things. And so can you share what your research interests are and what your dissertation is about. We'll start there for now.
JG: Yeah. So my research is pretty much looking at the processes of dispossession going on in El Salvador, especially around processes of urbanization and real estate development, real estate speculation and this dynamic that is emerging, or growing in El Salvador. And what interests me in that, is precisely how human environment relationships are changing, especially in the countryside. So El Salvador has been for most of its history, an agrarian [birds in a nearby bush chirped loudly]. I hope they, I think it’s going to be fine. They’re just distracting. Anyway, no. So I mean, El Salvador has been for most of its, I mean, still is an agrarian society. But lately, there's been a lot of transformation in terms of landscape and things like that, especially through urbanization, and the process of gentrification and all that. And, but what interests me precisely is that transition or what that transition entails, especially for those communities that have made a life, or their livelihoods depend on land and the water, and all that. So how are they affected by these processes of real estate market expansion? And why is that happening the way it's happening in El Salvador? That, I don’t know, today, for instance, you see lots of evictions, especially in areas near the coast, or in peri-urban areas, peri-urban San Salvador, you see a lot of cases of evictions, not only evictions, but eviction threats, so people who spend years and years and not knowing what's going to happen to them because they inhabit a land that, in which they are being expelled or they are being threatened to be expelled. There's also all sorts of issues in terms of water and water appropriation. Or there's a lot of environmental changes, like water wells are drying out and that process is also related to processes like urbanization. There's also a lot of sorts of environmental disasters going on–landslides, floodings, and all this has to do with this landscape transformation that has been going on, it has been going on for a while. But let's say that in the 1990s, it grew and became much, much worse. And especially because most of…for a lot of the Salvadoran farmland was recast as a site for construction, real estate development and this sort of like, buildings, and things like that. So I look at the political ecology of all that and who are the actors that are driving that, and how are they driving that?
IA: And so how did you come about to those specific questions or thinking about urbanization in that way?
JG: So there's, I mean, I can think of it in two ways. One has to do more with intellectual curiosity, and that has to do with, I don't know, just reading some about geography, critical geography and how there's these moments in the history of capitalism, where there's been these trends of urban expansion and why that happens. Why is it that capital, that used to be, let's say, being invested in mining or in agricultural economies, why does it move to urbanization? Why is it that some capital or investors that were in other activities suddenly shift their capital into urbanization? And how that transforms spaces, and this is across, these processes have been going on everywhere in the world and have been going on for a while. So, for me, I was curious about, why is it that those processes happen? So, that's one. And then the other reason, I feel it just has to do with my concern for the political situation in El Salvador, and how that ties in to the whole history of land, and land relations. You cannot understand anything, and I literally say anything from El Salvador, if you don't go into the history of land, and how land has been organized, shaped, appropriated, exploited in all sorts of ways. So, coming from that, I mean, having that interest in knowing why El Salvador’s situation is the way it is, why do we have such a persistent pattern of inequality? Why do we have such a persistent pattern of violence and all that? So from that initial question, I became interested with questions that had to do with land. So in that sense, it makes my concern, or for just El Salvador’s social situation, and also this more, other type of intellectual curiosity that I had that is more theoretical and more like, okay, understanding how capitalism works, and all that. And then also, just observing how things are happening in El Salvador, just traveling to El Salvador, I remember, I mean, especially after I moved to the United States, and whenever I went back to El Salvador, I would pay more attention to the changes. I mean, stuff that you don't realize when you are living there is, things change gradually so you might not pay attention, or I mean, you might not, they might not seem as shocking. But in my case, for instance, whenever I would go back to El Salvador, I would, I don't know, I would go to the beach. Like, for instance, from San Salvador, there's the highway all the way that goes to the coast of La Libertad. And every time I would go and travel that, I would realize that there would be more houses and more houses for the rich and more gated communities that popped up in places that used to be coffee plantations, or coffee fincas, or just agricultural land in general. So I started seeing that pattern of urban growth. And I don't know, that kind of fed into my own, the other curiosity that I have, it’s just that mix of things.
IA: Yeah. And then from your research and what you've been learning, and thinking about, how has that changed or informed your understanding of El Salvador today?
JG: How has that changed my understanding of El Salvador today?
IA: Or maybe it hasn't, but I, I assume it has, maybe.
JG: Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, well, I mean, it depends on what we're talking about today. What's the timeframe? Is it today-today, like, the last five years or is it more the contemporary moment? Yeah. Because I mean, when it comes to the last five years or something like that, yeah, definitely. I mean, that that definitely is closely related to what I've been studying. I mean, that I've gotten to know today’s El Salvador because of what I'm studying. Before that I actually, actually yeah, I mean, when I was doing my masters, I did my masters in, in UT Austin in Latin American Studies, and I was studying something very, very different, which was, I was studying the whole thing around neoliberal discourses around entrepreneurship. And how that was being promoted among youths, especially urban San Salvadoran youth. So I focused on middle class youth and how some people would, how some people, how do you say it, have the idea of starting a small business as an alternative to precarious work. And even though small businesses tend to be very precarious too, and in very difficult conditions, and they, most of them die out, and very quickly, and all that, but they were still willing to take the risk into that. But what I found, then, is that they were, a lot of these young people were just escaping the levels of exploitation and precarity from traditional employment in El Salvador. And they, like, ‘I don't really want to, I don't want to deal with that, so I'm going to make my own business, because I don't want to be an employee, that it's just paid nothing and live this miserable life’. And they did this other thing and it was as hard or if not more hard. It was very difficult, but I don't know. So I was looking into that. And the reason I was looking into that is because I always, by the way, I never became a geologist. So I became an economist. So I was interested in these sorts of things around employment and self-employment and things. But the things that, all that, I was interested in this thing about people's income, and precarity, and all that, but that work also kind of forced me into reading more of El Salvador's history. And by reading about El Salvador's history, that's where I get to the whole history or political history of land in El Salvador. And that's how it has shaped my vision of contemporary El Salvador in a way that it's more, much more place based. And, or I guess, in Spanish would be, [motorcycle noise] like un enfoque más territorial, place based approach. So it's not only about the macroeconomic numbers, or the statistics and all that, that gives you some sense of things that are happening, but that doesn't give you the full picture. What I wanted to see is that full picture of what is actually going to people, like happening to people's lives in a particular place, and how those places are shaped by different forces, by economic forces, by political forces, by social relationships, and all that. So the more I got into the history of El Salvador, the more I was interested in land, the more I was interested in land and the more I was interested in place, and place based type of analysis. And I came to the realization that if I really want to understand what happens in El Salvador, I have to go to the field and witness what's going on and understand the different environments that are, the different territories that compose that which we call El Salvador. So I started paying most, or more attention to that. And that really helped me to understand because, for instance, now that you have a very kind of difficult situation where you have this fascist government on the rise and whatever and doing all sorts of things. I don't see everything in terms of macro, or the numbers, but I also care about, okay, what's the situation of these people, of the people that are being affected? What was the situation previous to the current moment? How are these environments composed? What type of violence was shaping this, these places? And yeah, that's how I see things, for instance, because it helps me avoid sometimes falling into very simplistic narratives about development and stuff like that, which is always very tricky. I mean, that's, for instance, whenever people say, ‘Oh, look, there's buildings being built’. So that means there's economic growth, or you see that investment growth, which is not growing, by the way, investment is declining, but let's say, let's hypothesize that there is, and people get happy and say, like, ‘Oh, there's more investments. So that means that El Salvador is doing good, and things are going great’. And it's like, not really, because what does that investment mean? And that's what I wanted to know, when it comes to economic numbers, okay, what does that mean on the ground, and if it means that some people are being displaced, in order for a shopping mall to be built, that's not something that for me is helpful or good. So, and there's a lot of that happening. And so this approach to reality, that it's more placed based allows me to understand the actual material effects on people. And that happened, and this has happened, it’s not only a thing that is happening now, but it has happened through history, for instance…I don't know, I don’t want to get into…
IA: No, that’s alright.
JG: No, but there's, for instance, there's this moment that often gets romanticized in El Salvador, which is this period of the it's called the, the moment of industrial modernization, which took place in the 1950’s, 60’s. And which is a moment in which there was this urban growth, and a lot of the urban growth had to do with some of the surpluses generated from agriculture were being channeled into the building of industry and things like that. And so a lot of the industrial infrastructures that you see in San Salvador today, especially in areas like Soyapango and Ilopango, which, by the way, are some of the areas that have been most affected by problems like violence, urban violence, gangs, and all that, and it has to do with this past history. But anyway, this moment is usually kind of romanticized, of like, okay, this is the time where El Salvador was doing great. Because there was development, there was economic growth, there was employment growing, there was industry growing, we were producing and exporting lots of goods to Central America. And we were actually in advantage, with respect to other Central American countries, and then there's these narratives being created about that. But then, they don't pay attention to the fact that, the flip side of that, of that development was that in order for this industry to produce as much as it was doing, it had to consume, much of the raw materials that it consumed came from the countryside. So a lot of the industries that we’re talking about were textile industries, which had to do with cotton, leather industry, which had to do with cattle, sugar industry that had to do with sugar plantations. And so in order to supply [textile, leather, sugar] industries with raw material, there has had to be an expansion of the agricultural frontier. And this is one of the worst moments for the Salvadoran countryside because it's the moment where there's a lot of like, there's a big cycle of land grabbing. There's a big cycle of evictions and people being expelled from their land. And in a lot of, I don't know, a lot of the poverty that we still see, formed during those times. But most people who study the history, they know that this happened, but they don't make the connection between the two. Like in order for this industrial development to happen, there was this other thing happening simultaneously. But they don't make that connection. And that's what I like about place-based analysis is that allows you to make those sorts of connections. Anyway, I’m not going to go more into that but…
IA: And I'm sure too, thinking about the, you know, needing those raw materials, but then also needing to exploit labor in order to produce at this high level.
JG: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it was the same, like industrial labor. I mean, my grandmother was a textile worker in El Salvador for many years. And the types of things that she saw in the factory were horrible. I mean, people in very unsafe conditions, losing parts of their bodies, and things like that. And that was daily life. She herself had long term impacts from working in those factories. So yeah, I mean, there's, it's a whole chain of things that are connected into that, and that, I don’t know, people who just see the numbers, and they don't, they don't pay attention to these things.
IA: Is there anything that you would want to share with the broader public, either here or back home in El Salvador, about El Salvador and its current state? And how might that perspective or what you'd want to share challenge or support the dominant narrative that's told about the country?
JG: Is there anything? There’s a lot of things. I don't know where to begin? I mean, the first thing is kind of like…one is, there's no world in which incarcerating innocent people like crazy and subjecting them to all sorts of inhumane treatment. And when I say inhumane, I mean, torture, I mean, hunger, I mean, all these sort of things. There's no way that's justifiable, that’s the first thing that I would say. I mean, the other thing is that, I'm talking specifically about the security policy, because it's this type of stuff that has gotten more attention about El Salvador lately. And then the other thing is that that's not, that's not a policy or a plan. I mean, if we understand policy as something that has to be carefully planned and crafted, that's not a policy. What Bukele is doing is pretty much giving a free pass to the military and to the police to do whatever the hell they want, in order to reduce the numbers of the gang activity and homicide rates and stuff like that. And it doesn't take a genius to do that, anybody else could have done that, anyone could have just become president and say, you know, you have a free pass to do whatever they want, whatever you want. There's no constitutional rights. So you can incarcerate people like crazy. If you want to do mass raids, do it. If you want to torture people do it, whatever it is, you can do it. And this is what's happening. I mean, it's really crazy. The fact that a lot of the people that have been incarcerated have been incarcerated because of quotas imposed by top members of the police. Like let's say, they tell to cops on the streets, you have to bring me 10 people today, and then they grab anyone, they might grab a gang member but they also grabbed the guy who's selling the bread or the construction worker or whoever it is that just happens to be around and they need to comply with that quota. What sort of, what type of policy is that? That's not policy, that's not something that is planned, anyway…So, for me, I'm not impressed at anything that is being done right now. And the other thing is, when it comes to I mean, that's I mean, in terms of the whole security. And the other thing is, when it comes to the way this government works, it is important for people to realize that the main logic guiding the way this government does things, is a logic of spectacle, and appearances. How do you control the narrative? How do you control the appearance of things? You can start to explain that just by stating the fact that Bukele comes from the marketing and publicity world. He wasn't, he didn't even get his degree. He went to, what, one year of, he did one year of leyes, how do you say it?
IA: Law school
JG: Yeah, there's not law school in El Salvador, it's like the university, you just major, it's like a traditional major. So yeah, so he did one year of that, and then he quit. So, and then he became the president of his family's PR [Public Relations] company. And that's what he has experience with. And from 2001, or 2002, to 2012, he was the president of that PR company, and he would run the political campaigns for the FMLN, and then, when the FMLN became government, he would run the PR campaigns for some government institutions. So all, his main specialty is knowing how to control narratives, control the image of things, and the appearance of things. So that explains why there's so much spectacle around everything that this government does. But more importantly, it's the way he manages to gain such popularity has to do with that way of doing things. And I also know this because I mean, my research has focused on the municipality where he started his political career, which is the municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán in, near San Salvador. And he applied a very similar strategy there in order to gain popularity. So what was, what happened in Nuevo Cuscatlán? In Nuevo Cuscatlán, the main, one of the main issues was the water scarcity, the water supply system was very deficient and people would always complain about that. And when he became mayor of that town, he said, like, ‘Okay, if I want to win people's hearts, I'm going to have to solve this issue no matter what’. So what is it that he did? So in order to solve the issues, he established several deals with real estate developers by telling them ‘hey, you can help me finance this water supply system and in exchange, we're gonna give you this quantity of water’ or ‘we're gonna secure this quantity of water for you for your high end real estate project, your shopping mall, or your gated community and all that’. So he did that and it might have seemed like a good idea, but the problem was that once you compromise water and allocate it towards those new developments then you have less water for the people in, the residents from the municipalities. Also if you allow for these developments to be built, you're gonna destroy the watershed. So you're pretty much killing the sources of water and things like that. But all that didn't matter, because his objective was short term, like, ‘I only need to improve the water system right now. I don't care what happens in the long run. But I'm just going to do that now in order to create a short-term effect that really impresses people, and that really tells, like, makes people say, this guy, he's a genius, he solved the problem that nobody else has been able to solve’. That logic was the same that he is applying now when it comes to security, he’s taking whatever measures he can in order to reduce gang levels of, gang homicides and all that. And then whatever else is behind that, it doesn't, it's out of the question as long as it creates an effect, an immediate effect, ‘I'm gonna win people's hearts’. And he did that at the beginning, from the beginning, the strategy was making a truce with gangs and saying, ‘I'm gonna give gangs some benefits, I'm gonna free some of the gang leaders, I'm gonna switch them from prisons’ and things like that. And, that worked for a while, not as effectively as now. But it worked for a while, because it decreased the homicide rate, but then eventually, that blew up. And then he switched strategy into a more draconian strategy, which he is, by the way, doesn't mean that was the end of negotiations, because there's several analysts who are starting to suspect, or even claim that the gang, dealing with gangs is still happening, just in a different way, in a way that they build the prison, mega prison, and they move lots of gang members there. And they have much better conditions than the innocent people who are in those old prisons that don't have the conditions. They [gang members] get the best food, and with even those within those old prisons, within the cells, the ones that lead or dominate the actual place are the gangs. And then everyone else was, you know, who was innocent subjected to, you know, rules, things like that. So, all of that, I mean, of course, this is happening behind closed doors. And because this is happening behind closed doors, he doesn't care because people, he can control the narrative. And he's paying lots of influencers to go and do videos about him. And as long as this is happening, this popularity is gonna maintain. But yeah, so those are the things that I don't know, people should really rethink. Also, the fact that most of the official state, top state officials that are involved in security have lots of issues with the law. And they have been involved in cases of money laundering, cases of extortion, cases of defending gangs, or having relationships with narcos and things like that. So I mean, it’s up to the people if they want to trust a government who has literally gang defendants as their top officials in charge of the public security. Like I mean, it's, it's not, yeah, you don't have to make much analysis of that. But these are the elements that people have to consider and that they are often not mentioned on the media, yeah.
IA: What is your vision or hope for El Salvador? And how does that connect or differ from your own personal goals/visions for either for yourself or for your community or for…that's very open ended.
JG: Well, it depends on, I mean, in the immediate sense, my goal is for people to start questioning a little bit more the things that are told to us or the narratives that are being kind of promoted from the government and start challenging them. And also to just be more empathetic with what's happening, like with what’s happening to their neighbors, to their relatives to whoever because, there's just so many people already suffering, like the abuse from the state and, and a lot of people are willing to turn a blind eye, just because they feel safe. Or they feel like, ‘okay, now at least I can walk through certain areas that I couldn't walk before. And so I can turn a blind eye to whatever is happening to my neighbor's son, or my neighbors’, yeah, just to really develop some empathy for other people that are not… yeah. And then, just, I don't know, realize that there's other ways of doing things. Not only and I'm…here, I'm not talking just exclusively about security, and things like that. But I'm also talking about the economic future of the country, and things like that, that it's not all about just making more businesses and making more profit and things like that, that there are other ways of constructing and reconstructing people's livelihoods that are more sustainable, and that involves a much more solidarity ethic, as opposed to the ethics of exploitation and capitalism and all that. There's other types of relationships and economies that can be built. Yeah, but I mean, this, that can open up many other things, and it has to do with ( ). And that we need a redistribution of land, that’s the last thing.
IA: It comes back to the land. Well, we're reaching the end of the guided questions, but is there anything that you'd like to share or touch on that we haven't yet?
JG: Not really. I mean, there's always stuff but no, I think that's all.
IA: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. Yeah.
JG: Well, thank you. Thank you for the interview.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Julio Gutiérrez: I do consent.
IA: Okay, perfect. I'd first like to begin by providing space for you to introduce yourself in whatever ways you would like to.
JG: So my name is Julio Gutiérrez. I am a PhD student at the Department of Anthropology, at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And I’ll just leave it at that.
IA: Okay, where are you from? And where do you live now?
JG: So I am originally from El Salvador, and I live now in Carrboro, North Carolina.
IA: And where is your family from?
JG: My family's also from El Salvador.
IA: And where do they currently live?
JG: And they live, I mean, they're spread, my parents live in El Salvador, in San Salvador, and my brother lives in San Antonio, Texas.
IA: And can you talk about the, your parents’ migration to the United States and how old they were and what that was like?
JG: So my, the first one of my parents to migrate was my mother. She migrated, I believe, in the early 70’s. She was about 14 years old when she migrated. So, yeah, she was part of that process of migration before the Civil War and all of that, and migrated mainly for family reasons, family situations that kind of pushed for…the first one to migrate was my aunt, who is older than her. And then she followed my aunt, when she was 14 years old. And my father migrated in the 80’s, if I can recall, somewhere between ’81 and ’83. Both migrated to Los Angeles, California.
IA: Awesome, and then who did you grow up with in your household?
JG: I grew up with my parents and my brother.
IA: And can you talk a little bit about what that was like growing up in…where did you say you were born?
JG: In San Salvador.
IA: Can you talk about what that was like growing up in that area? And then when you came to the U.S. and how that changed.
JG: Yeah, so growing up in El Salvador for me was I had a very, kind of joyful time, as a kid in El Salvador. Let's say that the political situation where I…the moment I was born, was a little bit better than in the previous years. So I was born in 1991. So that's right towards the end of the Civil War. And let’s say that the climate there from what I've been told, it was not as violent as in the, of course, in the previous years…but after that, ’92 it was the [The Chapultepec] Peace Accords, and things were more calm. For instance, as opposed to my brother who was born in ’88, and so he had to live through, for instance, the ofensiva of 1989, so there was a lot of political violence and conflict going on. And yeah, and in my case, it was, my childhood was very much a standard middle-class family from San Salvador. I attended a private Catholic school, which is kind of a tradition that middle class people attend to. And I just remember, I mean, in my case, my father, he used to be, you know, what's the word, he was an economist. So he used to work as a consultant for small businesses, as an economist, and my mother would work from home, she would pretty much spend most of her time taking care of my brother and me. And, I just remember my childhood as a very, kind of joyful time, just playing with friends on the street, all the time. We used to live in a small, I don't know how to say, pasaje, it’s one of those streets without an exit…
IA: Mm, like a dead end?
JG: Yeah, like at the dead end. So a lot of the families that lived in my neighborhood were about the same age. So I used to, so I had lots of friends that were from my own generation. So I grew up playing soccer and just, in that nice environment. And lots of times just hanging out with family, relatives, and I don't know, those are the things that I have more present when it comes to remembering my time in El Salvador, then also going to school. Again, like…there's not much to say about that, or not that, that I would prioritize. But yeah, I mean, that's how I remember, a joyful time. I had basic needs met. And yeah, I think that’s it. And then you asked something about when I…
IA: Yeah, maybe say, at what age you moved…
JG: Oh, yeah.
IA: …to the U.S. and what that was like.
JG: So I moved, I believe I was 17, or…yes, 17 years old, or 16, 17, 16, about to turn 17, because it was in 2008. And the reason I came to the United States was mainly to study so the situation was very particular because…sorry [Julio received a phone call]. So my situation was very particular because of the fact that my parents migrated before me. They migrated in the 70’s. First my mother and then my father in the 80’s. They went through lots of problems and issues during that process, but in the end, they were able to settle in the places where they went, which was Los Angeles. And that allowed, in the case of my father, to obtain residency. And my mother, she was actually able to obtain citizenship. Of course, she was there for longer, she did high school and some studies there and everything. So she was able to get citizenship. So when they decided to move back to El Salvador in 87…and that, so in 88, my brother was born and then I was born in 91. And I remember, my parents are always telling me that they were going to take advantage of the, how do you say the, los papeles, their migrant status, or their, yeah, migration status with the U.S. in order to send us to study to the United States in the future. And that was the plan, especially in the case of my mother, she was able to pass on to me the citizenship. So that wasn't very difficult because she basically just had to go to, because she was a citizen, she had to go to the U.S. Embassy there, and then just do all the paperwork in order to transfer me the citizenship. So I grew up in El Salvador as a Salvadoran citizen but also as a U.S. citizen. And that really made my process of migration much easier. I remember, from a very young age, they were always mentioning and telling us, okay, eventually you will go to the U.S. to study for university. So that's what we did. With my brother, he was the first one to move to the United States. He had such a weird path, because he didn't move directly to the United States, he first started studying in an American college that's actually based in Nicaragua. That's called Ave Maria College [of the Americas, now called Keiser University–Latin American Campus (KU)]. And that was the easiest thing, because it was so close but it was an American college. So they thought it had the quality or whatever. So he moved there, but it wasn't a very good experience. So somehow, he ended up moving to a small town, in the east of Texas, in Christian College, a really small Christian College, in this random town of Texas that I don't even remember. But that's, that's where he was able to transfer in. So he moved there. So he did one semester in Nicaragua, and then one semester in that college, and then after that, he was able to transfer to UT Austin. And that's where he settled, in Austin, Texas. So once my brother settled there, we, as a family, had a place to go. ‘Everybody, let's go and move’. So my parents actually moved with me to Austin, Texas, because the idea was that they were also going to move. It wasn't only that I was going to study in the U.S., but also they were planning on moving to the U.S. with us. Partly to keep the family together and also for, I mean, economic opportunities and everything else. In that sense, I feel like my experience with migration was very…I had a lot of advantages that most people don't have in terms of those circumstances because also my family came with me. And I actually didn't go straight to college, but actually decided to finish high school in the United States, because it would, it was easier for me to enter college if I finished high school in the U.S., as opposed to finishing high school in El Salvador, and then doing all the bureaucratic process of transferring credits, and then validating the high school diploma and all that stuff. So it was easier for me just to finish high school there, and then go to college. So that's what I did. And that actually, I feel, helped me a lot because the time in high school allowed me to adjust to the culture. When I went to high school in Austin, Texas, I met with other Central Americans and I formed a really nice group of friends, with a friend from El Salvador, another from Nicaragua, another friend from Honduras. And I really built a tight knit social network that was, it really helped me adapt culturally to the new country. I mean, that for me, I wasn't excited about moving to the United States, especially since I was about to finish school in El Salvador. Because I had been in the same school with my friends, childhood friends, from kindergarten, and after so many years to just move and then not graduate from the school that I had gone to my entire childhood, it was hard. But at the same time, at some level, I kind of felt like I had to and I understood why I had to. And mainly because, I felt that for economic opportunities, I would have better economic opportunities if I graduated from a college here and also the type of studies that I wanted to do. Most of the careers or the majors, college majors that interested me at that time, there wasn't much infrastructure for that in El Salvador. I remember, back in the day, I wanted to be a geologist. And there's a lot of stuff to do around geology in El Salvador, but there's not a major in geology. So most people that do geology have to do studies elsewhere. So it sort of made sense to me, even though emotionally it was still hard. But I kind of felt like, okay, but I mean, I don't have, I mean, I should just take that option. And yeah, so it was like that.
IA: And so when you first moved, when you're 16/17, your parents came with you. How long were you all together as the four of y'all?
JG: Basically, all together, one semester. And what happened was that the idea was that my parents were going to stay in the U.S. with us. But what happened was that my father had a small business in El Salvador. And that was the main income for the family. And the issue was that, because he had to leave, he had to manage the business from afar. And that was very challenging, because, I mean, he left other people in charge, but they didn't have the same experiences as his so it became…the business kind of started to have lots of issues and administrative problems. So he ended up deciding, ‘hey, it's better for me, if I go back to El Salvador, and I go handle that. And then you three,’ that's my brother, my mother and me, ‘stay in Austin’. So that's what we did. So my father was the first one to go, to move back to Salvador after one semester of being here. And then my mother stayed with my brother and me while I finished high school. So I did one year and a half of high school because I came in January of 2008. And I graduated in May of 2009. So my mother stayed through all that. So, and after I finished high school, I actually was accepted at, not at UT Austin, but University of Texas San Antonio. So I went to live for one year in San Antonio. And my brother was already in university, in UT Austin. So my mother was like, ‘Okay, I guess I don't have much to do here’, so she went back with my father. And then that's when, the summer of 2009, that's when she went back to El Salvador and that's how it's been since then. It's been only my brother and me here in the U.S. and they are in El Salvador.
IA: Have they come back to visit at all, or?
JG: Yeah, they come every now and then, every two or so years. They mainly go to Texas, because it's much easier and cheaper to fly to Texas. So they have never been here in North Carolina, but I've been able to meet them in Texas. My brother now lives in San Antonio. So they do come every now and then.
IA: Cool, and then, kind of going back to this, you know, introducing yourself and who you are…How do you choose to identify and how might, how is your time in the U.S. shaped your identity and if and how that has changed over time.
JG: So, I mean, in terms of nationality, I identify as Salvadoran like I don't, I know I, I'm technically, I’m Salvadoran American, but I don't like that tag because I don't, I didn't grow up here. So I just feel like it just doesn’t feel right, I feel Salvadoran and what was the other question?
IA: Yeah. How your time in the U.S. has shaped your identity. And if and how that's changed over time.
JG: Yeah. So it's, it's strange, because I don't know, the first few years of being here, it was just this feeling, which to an extent, I still have, which is that feeling that, no, I don't have, this feeling I don’t have. But the first few years here, I was in that mental state in which like, ‘Okay, I'm just here temporarily. I'm just here to study, to get my degree and then I'm going back to El Salvador, no matter, no matter how, no matter what’. And so it was okay, I'm a foreigner, I'm just like, I don't belong here. And that feeling about, yeah, not, feeling that I don't belong here and mainly just, I mean, I enjoy my time with my friends. But other than that, there was, I always felt some sort of cultural barrier with other groups, especially dominant white culture and, and that I never was able to assimilate into that, or just, I don't know, become part of social groups that were predominantly white. It's not that I blatantly rejected it, no, it just didn't come natural to me. So there's that. But at the same time, it was kind of odd too, because there were also Latino groups that were more second generation, people who were born here, but their parents migrated and all that. And at the same time, I didn't feel like I belonged there, either. So it was just, it was always like, I think about trying to find people in a similar situation to me, that they had migrated, that they grew up in Latin America, and they migrated here. And that's where I found community and all that. And so, in that sense, and then there's also this feeling that, oh, that feeling about like, oh, I'm going to come back, I’m going to go back to El Salvador. And then, at some point, I stopped thinking about that, in the sense like, when I realized that the chances of going back to El Salvador were very limited in terms of economic opportunities, jobs and all that, and also my student debt, that was a big realization, like when I came here, I had no idea about college and how college was financed, and all that, and they get you into this thing about, ‘Oh, you must go to college’ and you have the advisor that tells you ‘Oh, you need to apply to not only to the college, but you need to apply to financial aid’ and all that and everybody tells you that, but then when you're getting older, you start realizing that, there's more to that, and that you're gonna have to get in huge debt to go to college. And then once you realize that, you realize that your opportunities are much more limited because it's not like you cannot go back and have a regular salary. Because you won't be able, there's no way you will be able to pay your debt with that. So that realization already made me feel okay, I guess I'm here to stay. By that time, let's say that I feel a little bit more comfortable. I still felt like a big barrier, culturally, at the same time, it was the same thing where I was always looking for spaces where, I mean, Latino community and all of that. I wasn’t, sorry [Julio tended to his dog, Millie]. So I wasn’t, I don't know, I still felt that barrier. And even though I had given up with the idea of going back, it was just, I guess I'm just gonna stay, but still, I'm gonna feel like a foreigner all the time. And I just came to terms with that. And I feel like, okay, this is what I am, this is what I’ll be all time. And till this day, I still feel that, yeah. And in terms of my identity, something that has…oh, no, this is what I wanted to say also, that there was also that feeling for a big…long time that I was still living in El Salvador. And this sounds kind of weird, but my mind, it's always thinking about El Salvador. And I'm always reading the news about El Salvador, I'm just keeping up with what's like, to a point that it's way, way more than what I, then what's happening around me. It's sad but this is just how it feels. It's kind of like, okay, and anyway, but when it comes to identity, I feel like lately, but very, very, very recently, I've been feeling more that I want to kind of expand my network and communication and relationships. And expand, not so much to, I mean, I have always been connected to some Latino communities, mainly people who grew up in Latin America, but come here. But lately, I've been very interested in just establishing relationships with Salvadorans who grew up, who were either born in the U.S. or grew up here. And the reason for that, well, I don't know, I've had friends from that, I had Salvadoran friends who were in that situation, and we've gotten in good friendships and all that. And I felt like there was some sort of division between one group and the other. And after so many years of living here, I'm starting to feel like, okay, I want to hang out with everyone.
IA: Yeah.
JG: And yeah, so, I don't know, there's that concept of the 1.5 generation and I’m starting to feel more…I recently found out, I didn't know about that category, but I really feel like it really captures what I, how I feel now. Because it's the idea of like, okay, I've been so long outside of El Salvador that I'm already a different person. But at the same time, I didn't have the experience of growing up here. So it's not the same. So it's being in between those two groups. And yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I don't know exactly what that means for my life or anything. But I don't know. It's just something that I think, I don't have any clear thoughts on that, that I can articulate. I'm still processing the fact that I've been more than 14 years in this country.
IA: Wow, so it's almost equal time there…
JG: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no definitely and that's something that gets me thinking, but I don't know exactly how should I approach it. I don’t know.
IA: And you do, you know, you talk about how you, even being here, you're very much invested in what is going on in El Salvador and politics, cultural, social things. And so can you share what your research interests are and what your dissertation is about. We'll start there for now.
JG: Yeah. So my research is pretty much looking at the processes of dispossession going on in El Salvador, especially around processes of urbanization and real estate development, real estate speculation and this dynamic that is emerging, or growing in El Salvador. And what interests me in that, is precisely how human environment relationships are changing, especially in the countryside. So El Salvador has been for most of its history, an agrarian [birds in a nearby bush chirped loudly]. I hope they, I think it’s going to be fine. They’re just distracting. Anyway, no. So I mean, El Salvador has been for most of its, I mean, still is an agrarian society. But lately, there's been a lot of transformation in terms of landscape and things like that, especially through urbanization, and the process of gentrification and all that. And, but what interests me precisely is that transition or what that transition entails, especially for those communities that have made a life, or their livelihoods depend on land and the water, and all that. So how are they affected by these processes of real estate market expansion? And why is that happening the way it's happening in El Salvador? That, I don’t know, today, for instance, you see lots of evictions, especially in areas near the coast, or in peri-urban areas, peri-urban San Salvador, you see a lot of cases of evictions, not only evictions, but eviction threats, so people who spend years and years and not knowing what's going to happen to them because they inhabit a land that, in which they are being expelled or they are being threatened to be expelled. There's also all sorts of issues in terms of water and water appropriation. Or there's a lot of environmental changes, like water wells are drying out and that process is also related to processes like urbanization. There's also a lot of sorts of environmental disasters going on–landslides, floodings, and all this has to do with this landscape transformation that has been going on, it has been going on for a while. But let's say that in the 1990s, it grew and became much, much worse. And especially because most of…for a lot of the Salvadoran farmland was recast as a site for construction, real estate development and this sort of like, buildings, and things like that. So I look at the political ecology of all that and who are the actors that are driving that, and how are they driving that?
IA: And so how did you come about to those specific questions or thinking about urbanization in that way?
JG: So there's, I mean, I can think of it in two ways. One has to do more with intellectual curiosity, and that has to do with, I don't know, just reading some about geography, critical geography and how there's these moments in the history of capitalism, where there's been these trends of urban expansion and why that happens. Why is it that capital, that used to be, let's say, being invested in mining or in agricultural economies, why does it move to urbanization? Why is it that some capital or investors that were in other activities suddenly shift their capital into urbanization? And how that transforms spaces, and this is across, these processes have been going on everywhere in the world and have been going on for a while. So, for me, I was curious about, why is it that those processes happen? So, that's one. And then the other reason, I feel it just has to do with my concern for the political situation in El Salvador, and how that ties in to the whole history of land, and land relations. You cannot understand anything, and I literally say anything from El Salvador, if you don't go into the history of land, and how land has been organized, shaped, appropriated, exploited in all sorts of ways. So, coming from that, I mean, having that interest in knowing why El Salvador’s situation is the way it is, why do we have such a persistent pattern of inequality? Why do we have such a persistent pattern of violence and all that? So from that initial question, I became interested with questions that had to do with land. So in that sense, it makes my concern, or for just El Salvador’s social situation, and also this more, other type of intellectual curiosity that I had that is more theoretical and more like, okay, understanding how capitalism works, and all that. And then also, just observing how things are happening in El Salvador, just traveling to El Salvador, I remember, I mean, especially after I moved to the United States, and whenever I went back to El Salvador, I would pay more attention to the changes. I mean, stuff that you don't realize when you are living there is, things change gradually so you might not pay attention, or I mean, you might not, they might not seem as shocking. But in my case, for instance, whenever I would go back to El Salvador, I would, I don't know, I would go to the beach. Like, for instance, from San Salvador, there's the highway all the way that goes to the coast of La Libertad. And every time I would go and travel that, I would realize that there would be more houses and more houses for the rich and more gated communities that popped up in places that used to be coffee plantations, or coffee fincas, or just agricultural land in general. So I started seeing that pattern of urban growth. And I don't know, that kind of fed into my own, the other curiosity that I have, it’s just that mix of things.
IA: Yeah. And then from your research and what you've been learning, and thinking about, how has that changed or informed your understanding of El Salvador today?
JG: How has that changed my understanding of El Salvador today?
IA: Or maybe it hasn't, but I, I assume it has, maybe.
JG: Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, well, I mean, it depends on what we're talking about today. What's the timeframe? Is it today-today, like, the last five years or is it more the contemporary moment? Yeah. Because I mean, when it comes to the last five years or something like that, yeah, definitely. I mean, that that definitely is closely related to what I've been studying. I mean, that I've gotten to know today’s El Salvador because of what I'm studying. Before that I actually, actually yeah, I mean, when I was doing my masters, I did my masters in, in UT Austin in Latin American Studies, and I was studying something very, very different, which was, I was studying the whole thing around neoliberal discourses around entrepreneurship. And how that was being promoted among youths, especially urban San Salvadoran youth. So I focused on middle class youth and how some people would, how some people, how do you say it, have the idea of starting a small business as an alternative to precarious work. And even though small businesses tend to be very precarious too, and in very difficult conditions, and they, most of them die out, and very quickly, and all that, but they were still willing to take the risk into that. But what I found, then, is that they were, a lot of these young people were just escaping the levels of exploitation and precarity from traditional employment in El Salvador. And they, like, ‘I don't really want to, I don't want to deal with that, so I'm going to make my own business, because I don't want to be an employee, that it's just paid nothing and live this miserable life’. And they did this other thing and it was as hard or if not more hard. It was very difficult, but I don't know. So I was looking into that. And the reason I was looking into that is because I always, by the way, I never became a geologist. So I became an economist. So I was interested in these sorts of things around employment and self-employment and things. But the things that, all that, I was interested in this thing about people's income, and precarity, and all that, but that work also kind of forced me into reading more of El Salvador's history. And by reading about El Salvador's history, that's where I get to the whole history or political history of land in El Salvador. And that's how it has shaped my vision of contemporary El Salvador in a way that it's more, much more place based. And, or I guess, in Spanish would be, [motorcycle noise] like un enfoque más territorial, place based approach. So it's not only about the macroeconomic numbers, or the statistics and all that, that gives you some sense of things that are happening, but that doesn't give you the full picture. What I wanted to see is that full picture of what is actually going to people, like happening to people's lives in a particular place, and how those places are shaped by different forces, by economic forces, by political forces, by social relationships, and all that. So the more I got into the history of El Salvador, the more I was interested in land, the more I was interested in land and the more I was interested in place, and place based type of analysis. And I came to the realization that if I really want to understand what happens in El Salvador, I have to go to the field and witness what's going on and understand the different environments that are, the different territories that compose that which we call El Salvador. So I started paying most, or more attention to that. And that really helped me to understand because, for instance, now that you have a very kind of difficult situation where you have this fascist government on the rise and whatever and doing all sorts of things. I don't see everything in terms of macro, or the numbers, but I also care about, okay, what's the situation of these people, of the people that are being affected? What was the situation previous to the current moment? How are these environments composed? What type of violence was shaping this, these places? And yeah, that's how I see things, for instance, because it helps me avoid sometimes falling into very simplistic narratives about development and stuff like that, which is always very tricky. I mean, that's, for instance, whenever people say, ‘Oh, look, there's buildings being built’. So that means there's economic growth, or you see that investment growth, which is not growing, by the way, investment is declining, but let's say, let's hypothesize that there is, and people get happy and say, like, ‘Oh, there's more investments. So that means that El Salvador is doing good, and things are going great’. And it's like, not really, because what does that investment mean? And that's what I wanted to know, when it comes to economic numbers, okay, what does that mean on the ground, and if it means that some people are being displaced, in order for a shopping mall to be built, that's not something that for me is helpful or good. So, and there's a lot of that happening. And so this approach to reality, that it's more placed based allows me to understand the actual material effects on people. And that happened, and this has happened, it’s not only a thing that is happening now, but it has happened through history, for instance…I don't know, I don’t want to get into…
IA: No, that’s alright.
JG: No, but there's, for instance, there's this moment that often gets romanticized in El Salvador, which is this period of the it's called the, the moment of industrial modernization, which took place in the 1950’s, 60’s. And which is a moment in which there was this urban growth, and a lot of the urban growth had to do with some of the surpluses generated from agriculture were being channeled into the building of industry and things like that. And so a lot of the industrial infrastructures that you see in San Salvador today, especially in areas like Soyapango and Ilopango, which, by the way, are some of the areas that have been most affected by problems like violence, urban violence, gangs, and all that, and it has to do with this past history. But anyway, this moment is usually kind of romanticized, of like, okay, this is the time where El Salvador was doing great. Because there was development, there was economic growth, there was employment growing, there was industry growing, we were producing and exporting lots of goods to Central America. And we were actually in advantage, with respect to other Central American countries, and then there's these narratives being created about that. But then, they don't pay attention to the fact that, the flip side of that, of that development was that in order for this industry to produce as much as it was doing, it had to consume, much of the raw materials that it consumed came from the countryside. So a lot of the industries that we’re talking about were textile industries, which had to do with cotton, leather industry, which had to do with cattle, sugar industry that had to do with sugar plantations. And so in order to supply [textile, leather, sugar] industries with raw material, there has had to be an expansion of the agricultural frontier. And this is one of the worst moments for the Salvadoran countryside because it's the moment where there's a lot of like, there's a big cycle of land grabbing. There's a big cycle of evictions and people being expelled from their land. And in a lot of, I don't know, a lot of the poverty that we still see, formed during those times. But most people who study the history, they know that this happened, but they don't make the connection between the two. Like in order for this industrial development to happen, there was this other thing happening simultaneously. But they don't make that connection. And that's what I like about place-based analysis is that allows you to make those sorts of connections. Anyway, I’m not going to go more into that but…
IA: And I'm sure too, thinking about the, you know, needing those raw materials, but then also needing to exploit labor in order to produce at this high level.
JG: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it was the same, like industrial labor. I mean, my grandmother was a textile worker in El Salvador for many years. And the types of things that she saw in the factory were horrible. I mean, people in very unsafe conditions, losing parts of their bodies, and things like that. And that was daily life. She herself had long term impacts from working in those factories. So yeah, I mean, there's, it's a whole chain of things that are connected into that, and that, I don’t know, people who just see the numbers, and they don't, they don't pay attention to these things.
IA: Is there anything that you would want to share with the broader public, either here or back home in El Salvador, about El Salvador and its current state? And how might that perspective or what you'd want to share challenge or support the dominant narrative that's told about the country?
JG: Is there anything? There’s a lot of things. I don't know where to begin? I mean, the first thing is kind of like…one is, there's no world in which incarcerating innocent people like crazy and subjecting them to all sorts of inhumane treatment. And when I say inhumane, I mean, torture, I mean, hunger, I mean, all these sort of things. There's no way that's justifiable, that’s the first thing that I would say. I mean, the other thing is that, I'm talking specifically about the security policy, because it's this type of stuff that has gotten more attention about El Salvador lately. And then the other thing is that that's not, that's not a policy or a plan. I mean, if we understand policy as something that has to be carefully planned and crafted, that's not a policy. What Bukele is doing is pretty much giving a free pass to the military and to the police to do whatever the hell they want, in order to reduce the numbers of the gang activity and homicide rates and stuff like that. And it doesn't take a genius to do that, anybody else could have done that, anyone could have just become president and say, you know, you have a free pass to do whatever they want, whatever you want. There's no constitutional rights. So you can incarcerate people like crazy. If you want to do mass raids, do it. If you want to torture people do it, whatever it is, you can do it. And this is what's happening. I mean, it's really crazy. The fact that a lot of the people that have been incarcerated have been incarcerated because of quotas imposed by top members of the police. Like let's say, they tell to cops on the streets, you have to bring me 10 people today, and then they grab anyone, they might grab a gang member but they also grabbed the guy who's selling the bread or the construction worker or whoever it is that just happens to be around and they need to comply with that quota. What sort of, what type of policy is that? That's not policy, that's not something that is planned, anyway…So, for me, I'm not impressed at anything that is being done right now. And the other thing is, when it comes to I mean, that's I mean, in terms of the whole security. And the other thing is, when it comes to the way this government works, it is important for people to realize that the main logic guiding the way this government does things, is a logic of spectacle, and appearances. How do you control the narrative? How do you control the appearance of things? You can start to explain that just by stating the fact that Bukele comes from the marketing and publicity world. He wasn't, he didn't even get his degree. He went to, what, one year of, he did one year of leyes, how do you say it?
IA: Law school
JG: Yeah, there's not law school in El Salvador, it's like the university, you just major, it's like a traditional major. So yeah, so he did one year of that, and then he quit. So, and then he became the president of his family's PR [Public Relations] company. And that's what he has experience with. And from 2001, or 2002, to 2012, he was the president of that PR company, and he would run the political campaigns for the FMLN, and then, when the FMLN became government, he would run the PR campaigns for some government institutions. So all, his main specialty is knowing how to control narratives, control the image of things, and the appearance of things. So that explains why there's so much spectacle around everything that this government does. But more importantly, it's the way he manages to gain such popularity has to do with that way of doing things. And I also know this because I mean, my research has focused on the municipality where he started his political career, which is the municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán in, near San Salvador. And he applied a very similar strategy there in order to gain popularity. So what was, what happened in Nuevo Cuscatlán? In Nuevo Cuscatlán, the main, one of the main issues was the water scarcity, the water supply system was very deficient and people would always complain about that. And when he became mayor of that town, he said, like, ‘Okay, if I want to win people's hearts, I'm going to have to solve this issue no matter what’. So what is it that he did? So in order to solve the issues, he established several deals with real estate developers by telling them ‘hey, you can help me finance this water supply system and in exchange, we're gonna give you this quantity of water’ or ‘we're gonna secure this quantity of water for you for your high end real estate project, your shopping mall, or your gated community and all that’. So he did that and it might have seemed like a good idea, but the problem was that once you compromise water and allocate it towards those new developments then you have less water for the people in, the residents from the municipalities. Also if you allow for these developments to be built, you're gonna destroy the watershed. So you're pretty much killing the sources of water and things like that. But all that didn't matter, because his objective was short term, like, ‘I only need to improve the water system right now. I don't care what happens in the long run. But I'm just going to do that now in order to create a short-term effect that really impresses people, and that really tells, like, makes people say, this guy, he's a genius, he solved the problem that nobody else has been able to solve’. That logic was the same that he is applying now when it comes to security, he’s taking whatever measures he can in order to reduce gang levels of, gang homicides and all that. And then whatever else is behind that, it doesn't, it's out of the question as long as it creates an effect, an immediate effect, ‘I'm gonna win people's hearts’. And he did that at the beginning, from the beginning, the strategy was making a truce with gangs and saying, ‘I'm gonna give gangs some benefits, I'm gonna free some of the gang leaders, I'm gonna switch them from prisons’ and things like that. And, that worked for a while, not as effectively as now. But it worked for a while, because it decreased the homicide rate, but then eventually, that blew up. And then he switched strategy into a more draconian strategy, which he is, by the way, doesn't mean that was the end of negotiations, because there's several analysts who are starting to suspect, or even claim that the gang, dealing with gangs is still happening, just in a different way, in a way that they build the prison, mega prison, and they move lots of gang members there. And they have much better conditions than the innocent people who are in those old prisons that don't have the conditions. They [gang members] get the best food, and with even those within those old prisons, within the cells, the ones that lead or dominate the actual place are the gangs. And then everyone else was, you know, who was innocent subjected to, you know, rules, things like that. So, all of that, I mean, of course, this is happening behind closed doors. And because this is happening behind closed doors, he doesn't care because people, he can control the narrative. And he's paying lots of influencers to go and do videos about him. And as long as this is happening, this popularity is gonna maintain. But yeah, so those are the things that I don't know, people should really rethink. Also, the fact that most of the official state, top state officials that are involved in security have lots of issues with the law. And they have been involved in cases of money laundering, cases of extortion, cases of defending gangs, or having relationships with narcos and things like that. So I mean, it’s up to the people if they want to trust a government who has literally gang defendants as their top officials in charge of the public security. Like I mean, it's, it's not, yeah, you don't have to make much analysis of that. But these are the elements that people have to consider and that they are often not mentioned on the media, yeah.
IA: What is your vision or hope for El Salvador? And how does that connect or differ from your own personal goals/visions for either for yourself or for your community or for…that's very open ended.
JG: Well, it depends on, I mean, in the immediate sense, my goal is for people to start questioning a little bit more the things that are told to us or the narratives that are being kind of promoted from the government and start challenging them. And also to just be more empathetic with what's happening, like with what’s happening to their neighbors, to their relatives to whoever because, there's just so many people already suffering, like the abuse from the state and, and a lot of people are willing to turn a blind eye, just because they feel safe. Or they feel like, ‘okay, now at least I can walk through certain areas that I couldn't walk before. And so I can turn a blind eye to whatever is happening to my neighbor's son, or my neighbors’, yeah, just to really develop some empathy for other people that are not… yeah. And then, just, I don't know, realize that there's other ways of doing things. Not only and I'm…here, I'm not talking just exclusively about security, and things like that. But I'm also talking about the economic future of the country, and things like that, that it's not all about just making more businesses and making more profit and things like that, that there are other ways of constructing and reconstructing people's livelihoods that are more sustainable, and that involves a much more solidarity ethic, as opposed to the ethics of exploitation and capitalism and all that. There's other types of relationships and economies that can be built. Yeah, but I mean, this, that can open up many other things, and it has to do with ( ). And that we need a redistribution of land, that’s the last thing.
IA: It comes back to the land. Well, we're reaching the end of the guided questions, but is there anything that you'd like to share or touch on that we haven't yet?
JG: Not really. I mean, there's always stuff but no, I think that's all.
IA: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. Yeah.
JG: Well, thank you. Thank you for the interview.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
