Local history, politics, and the state in El Salvador / Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Leigh Binford -- Section one: linking the local with the national--prewar Salvadoran history reconsidered. Land, community, and revolt in late nineteenth-century Indian Izalco / Aldo Lauria-Santiago -- The formation of the urban middle sectors in El Salvador, 1910-1944 / Victor Hugo Acuña Ortega -- Patronage and politics under General Maximiliano Martínez, 1931-1939 / Erik Ching -- Colonels and industrial workers in El Salvador, 1944-1972 / Kati Griffith and Leslie Gates -- The formation of a rural community : Joya de Cerén, 1954-1995 / Carlos Benjamín Lara Martínez -- Section two: civil war and its aftermath : local politics and community. Peasants, catechists, revolutionaries : organic intellectuals in the Salvadoran revolution, 1980-1992 / Leigh Binford -- Civil war and reconstruction : the repopulation of Tenancingo / Elisabeth J. Wood -- Between clientelism and radical democracy : the case of Ciudad Segundo Montes / Vincent J. McElhinny -- Not revolutionary enough? : grassroots community rebuilding in postwar Chalatenango / Irina Carlota Silber -- The Salvadoran land struggle in the 1990s / Lisa Kowalchuck -- Section three: culture and ideology in contemporary El Salvador. "This is not culture!" : the effects of ethnodiscourse and ethnopolitics in El Salvador / Henrik Ronsbo -- "El Capitán Cinchazo" : blood and meaning in postwar San Salvador / Ellen Moodie -- In the stream of money : contradictions of migration, remittances, and development in El Salvador / David Pedersen.