ABSTRACT
Women in Central America, with the exception of Costa Rica, seem to have progressed at a slower pace than women in other parts of Latin America, in terms of social development. Yet, after generations of repression and violence, they have, in fact, moved toward a future very different from their social reality of the past through political, social, and even revolutionary action. The decades of the 1970s and 1980s, a period of pervasive war and civil strife, particularly in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, posed numerous challenges to women in their day-to-day lives, as well as in their efforts to enter a new age. They faced difficult choices: marginalization or defiance, disfranchisement or organization, subjugation or action, and death or life.
