Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States 9780801445743, 9780801473968, 2007014445, 0801445744

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Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States

1

Susan Bibler Coutin

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from The Arcadia Fund

https://archive.org/details/nationsofemigranOOcout

Nations of Emigrants

Nat ions of Emigrants

Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States

Susan Bibler Coutin

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2007 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2007 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coutin, Susan Bibler. Nations of emigrants : shifting boundaries of citizenship in El Salvador and the United States / Susan Bibler Coutin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4574-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8014-7396-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Citizenship—El Salvador. 2. Citizenship—United States. 3. El Salvador—Emigration and immigration. 4. United States—Emigration and immigration. I. Title. JV7423.C68 2007 323.6'3—dc22 2007014445 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing Paperback printing

1098765432 1098765432

1 1

To Raphael and to Curt

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

List of Abbreviations

xv

Prologue. “Ni de aqui, ni de alia” by Ana E. Miranda Maldonado

1

Introduction

3

Chapter 1. Los Retornados (Returnees)

17

Chapter 2. La Ley NACARA (Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act)

46

Chapter 3. Atencion a la Comunidad en el Exterior (Attention to Salvadorans Living Abroad)

73

Chapter 4. En el Camino (En Route)

100

Chapter 5. Las Remesas (Remittances)

122

Chapter 6. Productos de la Guerra (Products of War)

149

Chapter 7. jSi, se puede! (Yes, it can be done!)

176

Conclusion

202

Epilogue. “Frutos de la Guerra” by Marvin Novoa Escobar (AKA Bullet)

212

References

217

Notes

243

Index

259

■

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to the individuals and organizations that provided me with interviews and other material for this book. I promised intervie¬ wees anonymity, so I will not list them by name. I would, however, like to thank the institutions and individuals that in some way facilitated the re¬ search process. I should note that by naming an institution, I do not mean to imply that that institution in any way officially endorsed this project or the analysis that I present here. My debts are great, so this list will be long, and those who, for reasons of confidentiality, remain unnamed should know that their efforts are remembered and deeply appreciated. For providing information or facilitating the research process, I am grateful to the American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh class counsel, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Asociacion Adentro Cojutepeque, the Association of Salvadorans of Los Angeles, the Asylum Division of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Banco Central de Reserva de El Salvador, CARECEN Internacional, Caritas de El Salvador, Casa de la Cultura de El Salvador, Catholic Relief Services—Programa de El Salvador, the Central American Resource Center (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.), the Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos in Tijuana, Centro Hispano Cuzcatlan, Centro Latino Cuzcatlan, the Centro Salvadoreno, Citizens and Immigrants for Equal Justice, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the Citizenship

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Assistance Campaign of Los Angeles County, COFESAL (Comite de Festejos Salvadorenos), the Comision Nacional de Desarrollo, Comite ProMejoramiento San Miguel Tepezontes, Comite Propaz y Reconstruction de Cacaopera, Comite Union Salvadorena, Comunidad Salvadorena en Los Angeles, COMUNIDADES (Comunidades Unificadas de Ayuda Directa a El Salvador), COMUNIDADES Federal Credit Union, Direction General de Atencion a la Comunidad en el Exterior of the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de El Salvador, El Salvador Dia a Dia, the Embassy of El Salvador in Washington, D.C., El Espinal, the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in San Salvador, the Fundacion Centroamericana para el Desar¬ rollo Humano Sostenible, the Guatemalan Unity Information Agency, Homies Unidos, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Instituto de Derechos Ffumanos de la Universidad Centroamericana, Instituto de Estudios Juridicos de El Salvador, the Los Angeles Asylum Office, Los Angeles City Council, the National Immigration Forum, the Northern California Coali¬ tion for Immigrant Rights, the Organization Internacional para las Migraciones office in El Salvador, La Prensa Grafica, Programa Nacional de Competitividad of the Ministerio de Economia de El Salvador, the Proyecto de Cooperation Tecnica sobre Derechos Humanos de El Salvador of the Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, El Rescate, the Salvadoran American National Association, the Salvadoran American National Network, the Salvadoran Consulate in Los Angeles, the Salvadoran-American Leadership and Educational Fund, the Service Employees International Union, Southwest Voter Registration, the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas, the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the offices of several U.S. sen¬ ators and congressional representatives. The following individuals also provided invaluable assistance in the course of my research: Jesus Aguilar, Susan Adva, Katherine AndradeEekhoff, Carlos Ardon, Sergio Barahona, Sylvia Beltran, Caroline Berver, Patty Blum, Sergio Bran, Meredith Brown, Sandra de Castillo, Oscar Chacon, Juan Carlos Cristales, Carlos Dada, Robert Foss, Randy Jurado, Edgardo Mira, Esther M. Olavarria, Jaime Penate, Luis Perdomo, Gilma Perez, Gaspar Rivera, Eduardo Rodriguez, Angela Sambrano, Greg Simons, and Rick Swartz. Silke Kapteine generously provided housing, advice, friendship, and a bit of German instruction when I was in El Salvador. I have fond memories of the days that we spent together. My research was supported by grants from the Law and Social Science Program at the National Science Foundation (awards #SES-0001890 and

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XI

#SES-0296050) and a research and writing grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Office of Research and Spon¬ sored Programs at California State University, Los Angeles, and the Social Ecology Research Office at the University of California, Irvine, provided as¬ sistance in managing my research funds. Susan Hyatt and Susan Garcia, in particular, were very helpful. The Executive Vice Chancellors Office at the University of California, Irvine, provided funding for research assistants. The Grant Seed Money fund of University Auxiliary Services at California State University, Los Angeles, provided the financial support that first en¬ abled me to seek funding for this project. I was a visiting scholar at the In¬ ternational Institute for the Study of Law in Onati, Spain, as I was preparing to embark on research. Some of the resulting manuscript was written while I was a Resident Fellow at the University of California Humanities Research Institute. I was fortunate during this research project to have an abundance of very capable research assistants who helped gather secondary documents, transcribe audiotapes, and organize my research data. Thank you to Gisela Castro, James Daza, Lee Franklin, Ester Hernandez, Jose Herrerias, Ana Larios, Andres Salcedo, Janet Salinas, Rosaura Tafoya-E., Sylvia Valenzuela, Gabriela Vega, and Lucero Zamudio. You were all wonderful, and I have thought of you many times as I worked with the data. In addition to help¬ ing gather and organize data at UC Irvine, Ester Hernandez accompanied me on one of my research trips to El Salvador and assisted with numerous interviews there. My conversations with her inform this account. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of Spanish sources (whether written or oral) are mine, so I bear responsibility for any translation errors. Many, many colleagues have shared ideas, read drafts, and provided ad¬ vice. My analysis is indebted to collaborations with Bill Maurer and Bar¬ bara Yngvesson, both of whom have gone far beyond the normal bounds of colleagueship in providing advice, guidance, and moral support. My analysis of deportation is indebted to my collaboration with Barbara Yngvesson on our coauthored article, “Backed by Papers: Undoing Persons, Histories, and Return” (American Ethnologist 33, no. 2:177-190). Beth Baker-Cristales, Ester Hernandez, and Ana Patricia Rodriguez have been invaluable colleagues, sharing interview experiences and exchanging ideas. In particular, my analysis of remittances draws on ideas developed in my exchanges with Ester Hernandez as we wrote our coauthored article, “Remit¬ ting Subjects: Migrants, Money, and States” (Economy and Society 35, no. 2:185-208). Tom Boellstorff pointed out that this book is an ethnography of departures—I am indebted to him for suggesting this line of thinking.

XII

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Conversations with Justin Richland helped me to better articulate the book’s argument. Daniel Goldstein provided detailed comments on chap¬ ter 6. Cecelia Lynch and Victoria Bernal were extremely supportive throughout the writing process, and Victoria Bernal helped to devise the book’s subtitle. Conversations with Elana Zilberg provided insight into transnational youth cultures. Cheryl Maxson and Diego Vigil provided in¬ formation about gangs in El Salvador. The following people read and com¬ mented on chapters in earlier incarnations: Rick Abel, Beth Baker-Cristales, Victoria Bernal, Michelle Bigenho, Tom Boellstorff, Teresa Caldeira, Lisa Catanzarite, Antje Ellerman, Daniel Goldstein, Inderpal Grewal, Setha Lowe, Cecelia Lynch, Bill Maurer, Sally Merry, Nancy Reichman, Justin Richland, Annelise Riles, Austin Sarat, Stu Scheingold, Susan Sterrett, Su¬ san Terrio, Finn Yngvesson, Barbara Yngvesson, and Mei Zhan. I would also like to thank my colleagues at UC Irvine and in particular Kitty Calavita, whose work has been an inspiration. Early drafts of chapters were presented at the University of British Columbia, the University of Denver, UCLA, UC Irvine, and the Universidad Centroamericana “Jose Simeon Canas,” as well as at meetings of the American Anthropological Associa¬ tion, American Ethnological Society, Latin American Studies Association, Law and Society Association, and Pacific Sociological Association. I am grateful to session and conference organizers, panelists, and audience members for their critical feedback on these drafts. A version of chapter 4 appeared in American Anthropologist 107, no. 2: 195-206. Portions of this work are reproduced here with permission of the American Anthropologi¬ cal Association and the University of California Press. Portions of the mate¬ rial in chapter 2 appear in the chapter “Cause Lawyering and Political Advocacy: Moving Law on Behalf of Central American Refugees,” in Cause Lawyers and Social Movements, ed. Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, 101-19 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). This material is reproduced here with the permission of Stanford University Press, copyright © 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. I am grateful to Dr. Ana E. Miranda Maldonado for permission to reprint her poem “Ni de aqui, ni de alia.” Ana Miranda Maldonado was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and is currently an internal medicine resident at UC San Francisco Medical Center. I am also grateful to Homies Unidos, El Salvador, for permission to reprint the song “Fruits of War” by Marvin Alexander Novoa, aka Bullet. Bullet was a talented artist and performer who was a founding member of Homies Unidos. He was working with deportees and to prevent violence in El Salvador, when, tragically, he was killed. Through reprinting his song,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xiii

I hope to honor his memory and the spirit of his work. I am grateful to Luis Romero Gavidia of the San Salvador office of Homies Unidos for sending me his transcription of the Spanish lyrics to “Frutos de la Guerra.” I am also indebted to Elana Zilberg for checking the Spanish version of “Frutos de la Guerra” against her audio recording of Bullet performing the song and for sending me a corrected copy of the lyrics. She also generously pro¬ vided an English translation that she and Bullet created prior to his death. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the photographer Alfonso Caraveo Cas¬ tro and to the Archivo Colef for permission to reproduce the photograph that appears as figure 1. I am grateful to Becky Rice and George Tsamaras of AILA and to Maria Elena Durazo of Immigrant Freedom Workers Ride/UNITE Here for their assistance in obtaining permission to reproduce images as illustrations. I thank Peter Wissoker for being a perceptive editor. His comments and suggestions helped to improve the manuscript in the final stages. I am also grateful to Susan Specter, Karen Hwa, John Raymond, and other staff at Cornell University Press for their assistance. Finally, I am grateful to Curt, Jesse, Jordy, and Raphael, all of whom had to put up with my absences during interviews scheduled on weekends and evenings, travel to research sites or to conferences, and late-night writing sessions. Each child’s birth has coincided with a book project, and this one is Raphael’s. My son Casey, who was born as I was completing the manu¬ script, reminded me of the importance of play. Thank you, Curt, for your loving support and for keeping life interesting.

i

1

I

Abbreviations

ABC

American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh

AEDPA

Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act

AILA

American Immigration Lawyers Association

ARENA

Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Re¬ publican Alliance)

ASOSAL

Association of Salvadorans of Los Angeles

BCIE

Banco Centroamericano de Integracion Economica (Central American Bank for Economic Integration)

BCR

Banco Central de Reserva (El Salvador)

BID

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (Interamerican Development Bank)

CASA

Central American Security Act

CIEJ

Citizens and Immigrants for Equal Justice

COMUNIDADES

Comunidades de Ayuda Directa a El Salvador (Communities of Direct Assistance to El Salvador)

COPRECA

Comite Propaz y Reconstruccion de Cacaopera (Com¬ mittee for Peace and Reconstruction of Cacaopera)

DED

deferred enforced departure

DGACE

Direccion General de Atencion a la Comunidad en el Exterior (General Directorate of Attention to the Community Living Abroad)

xvi

ABBREVIATIONS

DOJ

Department of Justice

DUI

Documento Unico de Identidad (Unique Identity Document)

EAD

employment authorization document

EVD

extended voluntary departure

FAIR

Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform

FISDL

Fondo de Inversion Social para el Desarrollo Local (Social Investment for Local Development Fund)

FMLN

Frente Farabundo Marti de la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front)

IIRIRA

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Respon¬ sibility Act

IMF

International Monetary Fund

INA

Immigration and Nationality Act

INS

Immigration and Naturalization Service

I RCA

Immigration Reform and Control Act

IWFR

Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride

LIFA

Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act

LIFE

Legal Immigration Family Equity Act

NACARA

Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Re¬ lief Act

NCLR

National Council of La Raza

NGO

nongovernmental organization

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and De¬ velopment

OIM

Organization Internacional para las Migraciones (International Organization for Migration)

PDH

Procuraduria

de

Derechos

Humanos

(Human

Rights Ombudsry) PNC

Policia Nacional Civil (National Civil Police)

SOLVE

Safe, Orderly Legal Visas and Enforcement Act

TPS

temporary protected status

UNHCR

United Nations High Commission for Refugees (Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas por los Refugiados)

USAID

United States Agency for International Development

USCIS

United States Citizenship and Immigration Service

Prologue “Ni de aqui] ni de alia"by Ana E. Miranda Maldonado

Ni de aqui, ni de alia

“Guatamalan tribal children” don’t speak Spanish county nurses insist they do “SENORA, OIGA SENORA .. ” cinnamon moon faces, ash glass eyes stare Accused: Malnutrition, neglect, child abuse “no, not Mexican, INDIGENAS, hablan quiche Ni de aqui ni de alia “Not Mexican, then what?” SALVADORENA “What’s that?” CENTRO AMERICA “Mexican, Spanish, Chicana same thing, we’re all AMERICANS now”

2

NATIONS OF EMIGRANTS

NEITHER. Ni de aqui ni de alia M-16s protecting DEMOCRACY neighborhood tanks, decorative bullets, mundane corpses, methodical desapariciones “war made las salvadorenas psychos” Beware the Salvi Chick: daily revolutionary nightly disco bunny. Ni de aqui ni de alia Vos sos “Se dice tu eres” un cipote, cerote, bichito pasmado. “That’s not real Spanish” Vaya pue, I’m down. Ni de aqui ni de alia Vamos por la Olympic comamos pupusas, frijoles molidos, platanos fritos, Kolashanpan. Perhaps cute cafe on Melrose eat California wraps: you know, teriyaki grilled chicken, olives, buttermilk Ranch, in like, a burrito! Soy de aqui y de alia

Introduction

The title of this book is a play on the familiar claim that the United States is a nation of immigrants. This claim is appealing because it combines two seemingly incompatible ideas. A nation is supposed to be a primordial en¬ tity comprised of people who share a common history, heritage, culture, territory, language, and perhaps even blood (Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992). In certain regards, “nation” and “race” can even be used interchangeably (Williams 1996). “Immigrants,” in contrast, are by definition uprooted, disconnected from their places of origin, culturally alien, perhaps unable to communicate with one another or their host society, precariously positioned within their countries of resi¬ dence, vulnerable to being sent away, present only by the good graces of their hosts, rather than by right (see Kanstroom 2000), and, in a U.S. con¬ text, presumed to be nonwhite (Haney Lopez 1996; Ngai 2004; Perea 1997; Sanchez 1997). Combining these two constructs in the phrase “nation of immigrants” stakes a powerful and expansionist claim. To be a nation of immigrants is to be capable of consuming and transforming alien others, producing generic citizens (Coutin 2003; Greenhouse 1996). The nation becomes the pot capable of melting and remolding those who pass through it. To become citizens, aliens undergo a death of sorts, in that the legal be¬ ing that was born through their originary citizenship is destroyed only to be reborn as a U.S. citizen.1 In the process, individual histories of migration

NATIONS OF EMIGRANTS

4

are reconstituted as recapitulations of the history of the nation, fresh “blood” enters national veins, “law” (which reconstitutes this “blood”) proves supe¬ rior to “natural ties,” and alien origins become “backgrounds” or “heritages” and thus something that everyone has (Coutin 2003). In this fashion, the na¬ tion of immigrants becomes capable of absorbing others, expanding in population and territory, subsuming difference within the “American way of life,” and continually being reinvented. Internationally, it can claim to be an example of tolerance, a (modern) community that has moved beyond the divisiveness of ethnic strife, a beacon for the disaffected of other (pre¬ sumably inferior) nations. In contrast, the phrase “nations of emigrants” highlights both the inter¬ connectedness of nations and the fact that immigrants come from some¬ where else. As a nation of emigrants, the United States, like other so-called receiving countries, is made up of people who once had and may still have ties to other countries. Immigration does not simply entail absorbing im¬ migrants; in addition, it connects countries in regional and transnational labor, social, familial, and political networks. So-called sending countries are also nations of emigrants with dispersed populations whose loyalty and obedience these states may, to some degree, claim. Given such con¬ nections, ethnic and national differences may not be as generic or com¬ mensurable as the nation of immigrants construct suggests. If both “sending” and “receiving” countries are regarded as nations of emigrants, then it is no longer clear which migrant movements consist of going and which of coming, and legal definitions of belonging need not be privileged over other ties. The term “nations of emigrants” also highlights the ways

/ that, through migration, nations themselves become multiple. For exam¬ ple, the Salvadoran population in the United States has been conceptual¬

ized as the fifteenth department of El Salvador (Baker-Cristales 2004), and El Salvador can be conceptualized as existing in U.S. as well as in Salvado¬ ran territory. Instead of legitimizing expansionism, the phrase “nations of emigrants” therefore points to reverse colonization, the ways that the ter¬ ritories of receiving nations are being colonized by those who need access to these nations’ resources (Coutin, Maurer, and Yngvesson 2002, 830; see also Sassen 1989). By focusing on ways that the.United States and El Salvador are nations ^ksof emigrants, in this booK I interrogate the constructs and apparatus through which immigration is conceptualized. Terms such as nation, citi¬ zen, and immigrant presume a certain coherence—that nations are dis¬ tinct, boundaries are clear, membership is complete, citizenship is singular, and movement is unidirectional. This coherence is belied by the social

INTRODUCTION

5

realities—nations can be interspersed, boundaries can be relocated, mem¬ bership can be partial, “citizenship” can be multiple, and movement can be multidirectional or even, at times, stationary—that migration entails. In drawing attention to gaps between immigration as a conceptual system and as a social reality, I do not mean to suggest that if we revise our immigra¬ tion categories or make some policy adjustments, then these gaps would be closed. Rather, I argue that the immigration system creates the very dis- ‘ junctures that seem to undermine it and that, moreover, these disjunctures can be key to the immigration systems coherence. For example, territorial integrity demands excluding unauthorized migrants; otherwise nations would not be bounded. The exclusion (through denials of work authoriza¬ tion, housing, social services, and so forth) of the unauthorized creates “holes” within national territories, through the space taken up by those who are in some ways located “elsewhere.” Territorial integrity is thus made possible by territorial disruptions (Coutin 2005a). My point is not that the