2. The Fallacy of the Telos of Transition

This chapter shows that violence has been a feature of El Salvador’s postwar as well as wartime eras. It introduces the Salvadoran municipality from where most of this book’s research was drawn and describes the forms of violence and violent actors specific to this municipality’s wartime and postwar eras. It also addresses how, in a context where homicidal violence makes news on a daily basis, ordinary people struggle as much with the fear of potential violence as with the actual occurrence of violence. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the persistence of different forms of violence in postwar El Salvador provides a platform on which to problematize the alleged success of the country’s transition to democracy.