Given the proliferation of sanctuary activities internationally and the emergence of the new sanctuary movement in the US (see Millner, Chapter 4, Just, Chapter 9, Yukich, Chapter 7 and Cunningham, Chapter 11 in this volume), it is worthwhile re-examining what may be the best-known instance of sanctuary practices: the US-Central American sanctuary movement of the 1980s. Our re-examination of this movement is motivated by two factors. The first is our sense that, with the passage of time, it is possible to discern movement that could not be fully articulated (even by its protagonists) while it was ongoing, and also that, with hindsight, the legacies of the sanctuary movement may now be more apparent. In particular, we seek to draw attention to the transnational nature of the US-Central American sanctuary movement. It is perhaps obvious that a movement that was dedicated to securing political asylum for Central American asylum-seekers and that (in at least some quarters) opposed US military intervention in Central American was transnational. What may be less obvious, however, is the degree to which sanctuary activities emerged as part of Central Americans’ broader effort to mobilize North Americans in support of organized civil society actors working for social justice in El Salvador. Furthermore, although it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss those particular connections, Mexican and Canadian organizers and colleagues were part of the underground and above ground ‘railroad’ along which Central Americans travelled, and Mexican movement participants were among those prosecuted in the 1985-86 Tucson sanctuary trial (Lippert 2005). This transnational, political, and organizational focus presents a clear difference between the 1980s US-Central American sanctuary movement, which was one part of a broader Central America peace and solidarity movement, and current sanctuary practices in Canada, the US, and elsewhere, in which local communities seek immigration remedies for individuals who are at immediate risk of deportation (ibid.). Second, we believe that revisiting the US-Central American sanctuary movement can give us powerful insight into future understandings of sanctuary as a concept and practice. The legacies of the US-Central American sanctuary movement extend beyond movement participants’ stated goals of securing refuge, condemning human rights abuses, and preventing US military intervention abroad. Unintended consequences of sanctuary practices include complex legal changes in the US, increased remittance flows to Central America, and the development of new networks of civil society organizations in both countries. Though not the sole cause, sanctuary activities were a necessary precondition for these developments. Thus, re-examining the movement’s origins and legacies suggests that apparent resemblances in the form of sanctuary incidents may hide underlying differences. It also allows us to note that shifts in the bases for legitimacy lead some transnational connections and movement objectives to be celebrated while others are obscured, and suggests that current sanctuary practices may eventually have unanticipated consequences as well. In re-examining the US-Central American sanctuary movement, we bring together two different sorts of expertise. Hector Perla is a political scientist, specializing in US-Latin American relations, social and revolutionary movements, and Central American political engagement in the US. Perla’s work highlights the formal and contentious strategies that Central American activists, in their home countries and in the diaspora, use to challenge US foreign policy toward the region. The bulk of his interviews have been with Salvadoran solidarity activists and revolutionary militants in San Francisco and Los Angeles (Perla 2005, 2008, 2009). Susan Bibler Coutin, an anthropologist, did fieldwork within the San Francisco East Bay and Tucson, Arizona segments of the US-Central American sanctuary movement during the 1980s. As part of this fieldwork, she participated in sanctuary activities, interviewed 100 movement participants, and collected documents produced by, and about, the movement (Coutin 1993). During the 1990s and the 2000s, she followed Central Americans’ efforts to secure permanent legal status for their undocumented or only temporarily documented compatriots (Coutin 2000, 2007). It is important to note that because our fieldwork focused on sanctuary communities in California and Arizona, there may be differences between the accounts derived from this research and the origins and advocacy work in other key movement sites, such as Chicago. Bringing our expertise together allows us to focus on the agency of Central American collective actors in the context of a strategic interaction, without sacrificing a deep understanding of the on-the-ground dynamics of the sanctuary movement. Moreover, we contextualize our analysis in a transnational framework that does not force a dichotomous definition of sanctuary as either a purely foreign or completely domestic movement. Specifically, we are now able to show how certain relationships between North and Central American activists were celebrated, while others were hidden, due either to fear for Salvadoran immigrant activists’ safety or to concern about inadvertently undermining the movement’s legitimacy. Part of what made the US-Central American sanctuary movement so powerful was that it emerged as part of a broader effort by Central American revolutionaries to mobilize opposition to US support for the Salvadoran government. But to do so, Salvadoran immigrants had to be willing to strategically stay quiet, become invisible, or abstain from taking on certain leadership roles, while, for the sake of achieving their and the movement’s objectives, embracing identities, such as ‘refugees’ or ‘victims’ that, to some, implied weakness or passivity. In this way, Salvadoran immigrant activists used their strategic invisibility as a form of power, along the lines of what political scientists Keck and Sikkink (1998: 16) have called leverage and accountability politics. Analyzing the movement’s framing of Central Americans as refugees makes it possible to identify legacies that may not have been intended or anticipated by the movement’s organizers. In particular, the success of the ‘refugee’ framing created legal benefits that, in the post-war context, allowed the many years that Central Americans had lived in the US to be recognized as grounds for granting legal permanent residency, a recognition that had implications for Central American economies and non-governmental organizations. First, we describe the origins of the sanctuary movement in the US. Second, we document the transnational nature of the movement. Third, we explore the unintended positive and negative consequences that the sanctuary movement engendered. Finally, we discuss how the movement has come full circle, in that unjust economic and political conditions in El Salvador, conditions to which US foreign policy contributed and that originally gave rise to the sanctuary movement, are still present in the country today. Consequently, we document ways that organizations and activists that are in El Salvador and that have roots in, or links to, sanctuary are now fighting for Salvadoran citizens’ right not to become migrants
