Overview

As bloody wars raged in Central America during the last third of the twentieth century, hundreds of North American groups “adopted” villages in war-torn Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Unlike government-based cold war–era Sister City programs, these pairings were formed by ordinary people, often inspired by individuals displaced by US-supported counterinsurgency operations. Drawing on two decades of work with former refugees from El Salvador as well as unprecedented access to private archives and oral histories, Molly Todd’s compelling history provides the first in-depth look at “grassroots sistering.” This model of citizen diplomacy emerged in the mid-1980s out of relationships between a few repopulated villages in Chalatenango, El Salvador, and US cities. Todd shows how the leadership of Salvadorans and left-leaning activists in the US concerned with the expansion of empire as well as the evolution of human rights–related discourses and practices created a complex dynamic of cross-border activism that continues today.

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9780299330606

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Reviews

By connecting us to the secret archives and intimate stories of activists, advocates, and church-goers who became part of this transnational movement, the story Todd tells offers invaluable insights for present struggles against injustice--showing us that a new world is possible, and that we have the capacity to build it. --Miranda Cady Hallett, University of Dayton This well-written and exhaustively researched work is the only book-length study of the Sister City movement. Todd documents the complexity of relations between US activists and the Salvadoran resistance, whether composed of members of El Salvador's popular movement or Salvadoran refugees residing in the United States. --Leigh Binford, City University of New York

Author Information

Molly Todd is an associate professor of history in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University. She is the author of Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War.

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