Strengthening Historical Memory through Post-conflict Economic Reconstruction in the Department of Chalatenango, El Salvador

Many factors concur to determine the success of projects of economic reconstruction. Our research examines a selection of the most important factors previously identified when designing and initiating reconstruction projects based on material and immaterial heritage in the four districts of the department of Chalatenango, El Salvador. Such economic success factors include entrepreneurship, access to resources and capital, and marketable skills along with non-economic elements such as creativity, cultural and historical identity, resilience, and traditional/indigenous knowledge. We also include the effect of environmental elements such as natural resources and geographic location. The objective of the research is to contribute to local economic development and to academic knowledge that demonstrates how local reconstruction using tangible and intangible heritage in post-conflict areas is more likely to succeed when we consider that non-economic factors have the same weight as economic ones.

The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador is a collaborative research initiative coordinated by the University of Western Ontario, with the goals of documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992), recovering wartime narratives, working, constructing history from the bottom-up and supporting intergenerational education. All initiatives of the project are developed in collaboration with local partners, through the use of participatory methodologies https://www.elsalvadormemory.org/what-we-do