Popular education is a process, born of necessity, that turns us into full humans. It is the creativity of people. We [at Equipo Maíz] believe in people. In that way, we create a chain of resistance.
— Alfredo Ramírez
El Salvador’s civil war and state-sponsored death squads terrorized the nation during the early 1980s. Among the atrocities were the mid-Mass assassination of Óscar Romero—the Catholic archbishop of San Salvador who loudly condemned poverty, torture, and other rampant injustices—and the subsequent murders of 42 civilians at his funeral. Spurred by those events, a group of educators founded Asociación Equipo Maíz in April 1983.
Although many civilians were involved in armed conflict, the Equipo Maíz team believed that education, information, and analysis were needed to understand and challenge the social, political, and economic forces that led to the country’s unrest. The group, using minimal resources and meeting in community settings, started teaching poor Salvadorans about the issues affecting their daily lives, thereby providing a route for people to transform their social realities.
When the group was initially formed, its founders struggled to agree on a name. After a few years operating as Equipo de Materiales Educativos Populares (Popular Educational Materials Team), the liberation-focused members craved a name that encompassed the mission’s breadth. In practice, the group was not solely issuing instructional documents; it was teaching and mobilizing the Salvadoran people. Names like Cebadera (a common shoulder bag carried by peasants that is filled with animal feed) were considered before someone suggested honoring maíz (corn), the life-giving crop for the Mesoamerican peoples that is the building block for traditional tamales, tortillas, and economies.
Because Equipo Maíz arose during the civil war, its outreach and educational efforts were concentrated within El Salvador. But over time, word of the group’s popular-education methods spread and gained traction throughout Central America. This led Equipo Maíz to collaborate with numerous organizations, sharing its printed materials, workshop outlines, and training guides with organizations in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Mexico.
Equipo Maíz’s founders aimed to promote inclusion, foster creativity, and provide a path to liberation through knowledge. “Popular education is about using the wisdom of the people for community transformation,” said María Elsie Orellana, a Salvadoran women’s activist who has participated in Equipo Maíz workshops. It is not about one-off training sessions; rather, it is a process, brought about by necessity, that encourages the wholeness of participants while also building communities and their capacities. “Organized communities find the solutions to their own problems,” added Zulma Tobar, a coordinator for Sister Cities International. These communities, in turn, create a larger network of solidarity and creative resistance against oppression and human rights violations.
Equipo Maíz ensures all of its teachings are accessible and relevant. During the war years, some of the earliest workshops focused on themes from the Bible as a way to analyze social realities. This enabled members of the general public, most of whom were familiar with the Bible, to draw upon their existing knowledge as a path to complex discussions about topics of common interest. Popular education takes many different tangible forms, inspiring theater-style programs and other hands-on activities to engage learners of all levels.
Today, Equipo Maíz continues to hold educational workshops for communities about locally important topics. Additionally, it acts as a folk-academic publisher, authoring and releasing educational books on more than 60 topics, including climate change, ecology, gender equality, neoliberalism, peaceful protest, national history, and more. By providing its services to community groups that advance public power and social justice, Equipo Maíz counters the resurgence of far-right authoritarianism in El Salvador and across the region. While many citizen groups access its educational services free of charge, some entities—such as local municipalities or their international sister cities— are asked to pay.
Equipo Maíz’s outstanding achievement is its ability to produce publications in a language accessible to the people it serves. It creates educational and communication materials that democratize knowledge for different communities, such as historical and cultural documents and informative posters on sexuality. The publications seek to better understand the fundamental goals and effects of the economic and political decisions made by governments in the region, which has allowed human rights defenders to expand their political participation.
Equipo Maíz is governed by a representative democracy, in which the board of directors is elected every two years by an assembly comprised equally of workers and supporters. Those leaders are tasked with shepherding the organization, setting priorities, strategizing, and overseeing the four employee teams: education, sales and marketing, design, and printing.
Today, Equipo Maíz strives to incorporate younger generations, especially students, into its efforts of educating and empowering communities. Through accessible study of pressing challenges, Central Americans have the tools to sow greater equity and justice.
