ABSTRACT
By examining the intersection of masculinities and survivorhood in El Salvador, this chapter contributes to expanding the notion of gender in transitional justice research and praxis. Using ethnographic methods, it interrogates how survivors of political imprisonment and torture during the country’s Cold War–era armed conflict (1980–1992) make sense of their experience and seek justice in a Latin American country notorious for its institutionally sanctioned impunity. Responding to critical TJ scholars’ push for further “thick description,” this chapter analyzes what masculinities “do” in three key moments of survivors’ lives: involvement in a national-scale revolutionary struggle, torture and imprisonment, and reclaiming the self in the post-war period. The chapter argues for the need to veer away from identifying survivors as either “agents” or “victims.” Instead, masculinities here reveal an inevitable double character: vulnerability and agency appear as two sides of the same coin, suggesting these “states of being” closely coexist and mutually condition one another. Results suggest that pursuing a thick description of gender representations not only fuels theoretical precision but also reflects an ethical-political option to render the experience of human rights survivors more fully, allowing us to unpack how gender scripts can limit individuals’ access to adequate reparations and justice.
