Building a New El Salvador Today (UWM History Brown Bag Series)

All are invited to join the UWM History Department for the first talk of their 2026-27 Brown Bag Lunch Series. This month, UWM’s own Brian Scott Mueller will present his ongoing research on El Salvador. The event will take place in Holton Hall, room 341.

Building a New El Salvador Today: U.S. Solidarity Activists, Salvadoran Refugees, and Grassroots Reconstruction in the Late Cold War

In a July 1986 appeal to U.S. citizens, the National Coordination for Repopulation in El Salvador proclaimed, “We do not want to be refugees any longer.” Within weeks, activists in the United States joined displaced Salvadorans as they left a Honduran refugee camp and returned home to Aguacayo. After walking beside these Salvadorans, U.S. activists returned to their own communities, where they talked about their harrowing experiences and called for an end to U.S. military assistance to the Salvadoran government. Besides shielding refugees from military attacks amid the ongoing civil war, some of these Americans remained in El Salvador to help the refugees rebuild their villages. In short, U.S. activists risked their own safety to accompany Salvadorans as they repopulated and rebuilt their war-torn homes. In doing so, they engaged in a form of prefigurative politics by reconstructing their communities in a more democratic fashion in the hope that such changes might lead to a similar transformation at the national level in the postwar era.

These Brown Bag Lunch events are free and open to the public. We encourage you to bring your lunch and have a safe space to reflect on current events, learn what others are doing, and stay engaged with History Department happenings. If you are interested in presenting, please contact Professor Rachel Buff at rbuff@uwm.edu.