ABSTRACT
In Coffee and Power (1997) Jeffrey Paige uses narratives to elucidate the underlying structure of social relations in El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and the ideological mystification that obscures these relations. He explores the transformation of ideas as well as the political-economic transformation that led these three Central American countries to parliamentary democracy and neo-liberalism despite their varied political pasts. Paige’s analysis of narratives collected from members of coffee dynasties in the three countries employs three related concepts to understand the ideological transformation among elite. He utilizes Marx’s concept of ideology, the concept of narrative developed in literary criticism and now used by social scientists, and the concept of the political unconscious developed by Frederic Jameson. I, too, seek to understand the link between narrative and ideology and like Paige use the concepts of ideology, narrative and political unconscious. For the purposes of this study I add the concepts of political generations, hegemony and counter-narratives.
