Peasant warriors in an electronic social-formation

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research among former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front combatants, militia, and supporters, this article addresses the complex ways in which the incorporation of cell phones among rural populations in northern Morazán contributes to the reconfiguration of class in postwar El Salvador. Countering the dominant paradigm of the so-called digital divide as the new incarnation of the promise of development for the Third World, I propose that these societies are experiencing a process of subordinated digitization. Drawing on the Marxist analysis of the commodity form, I suggest that cell phone incorporation in the Latin American Third World is subordinated to the capitalistic logic of profit seeking.