ABSTRACT
This opening chapter explores the broad themes of nations and nation-building as based on ongoing social, cultural and political processes that construct collective identity and form “imagined communities.” Historically, and often through state violence, the process has also reinforced inclusions and exclusions. The motivations for remembering the violence of the past or for not remembering them (i.e. silences and forgetting) are explored. There is an exploration of how silences and forgetting are also involved with nation-building, in particular about the 1930s violence that was experienced by the three national societies featured in the book (El Salvador, Spain, and the Dominican Republic). Considering that the three nations have a “shared history,” I apply to the case studies Jean Franco’s concept of “cruel modernity,” an intense period of early twentieth-century authoritarianism and (failed) nation-building in Latin America. The chapter theorizes the role of the 1930s violence and subsequent authoritarianism to shape the experience of national belonging, detrimental to those at the nation’s margins. It also examines how historical memory can shape and influence shared understandings of the meaning of the nation and the ongoing processes of nation-building.
