All the love: transnational youth and disability in El Salvador’s civil war

Abstract

ABSTRACT During El Salvador’s civil war, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) developed infrastructure and expertise to improve medical attention for combatants and rural and poor Salvadorans alike. This expansive popular health system included Salvadoran nurses, foreign physicians and community health promotors. However, hundreds of wounded combatants required more intensive rehabilitation. This article discusses the FMLN’s approach to youth and disability through a trio of documentary films that examine the popular health system, the 26 July rehabilitation camp outside of Havana and the work of German physician Christa Baatz. These films fused youth, disability and transnational solidarity to appeal to a spirit of revolutionary love. They not only spoke of transnational solidarity but were also transnational texts that circulated in order to build support for the FMLN. Most importantly, they conveyed the voices of young disabled combatants whose understandings of loss, sacrifice and revolution are otherwise forgotten. The films suggest the formation of an identity as lisiados de guerra grounded in the mutualist principles of the popular health system. However, the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992 ensured that human rights would become the dominant framework for disability politics, sidelining the solidarity that guided popular health.