Catholic Action, The Second Vatican Council, and The Emergence of The New Left in El Salvador (1950–1975)

Abstract

In 1958, Roque Dalton, a young poet affiliated with the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), won the first prize in a poetry contest at the University of El Salvador. A few days later, members of Salvadoran Catholic University Action, a student organization known as ACUS or simply Catholic Action, published a demolishing but carelessly written critique of Dalton. The anonymous writer of an article titled Under the Empire of Vulgarity turned his disgust with the poem written by Dalton into a diatribe against Dalton's political persona. Dalton's raw allusions to double standards in the sexual morality of priests and his remarks about the Catholic practice of fasting seem to have especially upset the leaders of ACUS. A month later, ACUS published a rejoinder written by Dalton, along with excerpts of the controversial poem. In his retort, Dalton stated that ACUS dodged debates on substantial political and aesthetic issues by engaging in insults, quick and facile judgments, and rude pigeon-holing that closes all means of intellectual comprehension.

Salvadoran religious transnationalism

“…The importance of defending the poor and marginalized led many young Catholic university students to extend their support to those organizing against atrocities carried out by the government. This dynamic, Chávez argues, has been largely overlooked in scholarship on the country's Civil War (Chávez, 2014, p. 460). The connection between Salvadoran Catholics and the socially conscious, sometimes radical, Catholicism associated with Salvadoran left‐wing political groups remains today in the form of a collective attention to marginalized members of society both in the U.S. and El Salvador.…”

Revolution and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America:A Special Teaching and Research Collection of The Americas

“…Through a close reading of the publication Contorno , Sebastián Carassai (2010) deconstructs how the Peronist experience, generational differences with their predecessors, and disagreement with their contemporaries pushed young Argentine intellectuals to adopt the view that “making culture was making politics” and to develop a vision of social revolution wherein Peronism was the precursor to change. Joaquín Chávez's (2014) piece employs a similar focus on youth culture, blending insights from transnational, Cold War and Global Sixties scholarship. Chávez illustrates the influence of the originally conservative Catholic Unity Action (ACUS) on the Salvadoran New Left, and this movement's use of multiple intellectual, cultural, and political traditions in the 1960s to construct alliances with rural peasant communities.…”