Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880–1940 by Erik Ching (review)
transition occurring during the middle period: the decline of notions of inherited honor and the ascent of notions linking honor to work and industriousness, civic sacrifice, republican merit, and the exercise of full political rights. This discussion would have been enriched by closer attention to the anthology Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America (2005) edited by Caulfield, Chambers, and Putnam, in particular the introduction in which the editors insightfully problematize the links between honor and liberalism, relating honor to the perpetuation of social hierarchies in the nineteenth century. Despite his acknowledgment that there were cultural and discursive changes in the status of women after independence—in courts of law they demanded reciprocity and respect for their individual rights—the author consistently highlights the upholding and reinforcement of patriarchy during republican times. He also discusses the tensions between the perpetuation of patriarchal relations, symbolized by the centrality of padres de familia, to control labor and maintain social order in the new republic, and liberalism’s egalitarian narrative.