El Chilamatal: history of social mobilizations for land resource in the valley of Zapotitán 1913-1936

Abstract

This article takes as its main premise the "metabolic" concept of the epistemology of environmental history (Leef, 2004, 17-31), which allows us to understand how the relationship between society and nature in the Salvadoran national context of the coffee republic and it’s to military authoritarianism, the populations of Chilamatal appropriate the land resource, creating movements and social actors, producing transitions of senses of struggle and appropriation of this natural resource, creating meaning, organization, and social mobilizations between 1913-1936. In addition to the above, the multidimensional approach of social movements (Garza, 2011, 107-138) allows us to understand the cycles of circumstantial protests of the inhabitants of Chilamatal, as well as the structural and conjunctural dimensions, chronologically ordering the protest structures in around the aforementioned resource.