Paper short abstract:

Rural Salvadorans use networks of confianza to produce their core value of solidarity in order to navigate uncertain futures. With the introduction of mobile technology, many are concerned that young people will not continue to enact the value and their futures will become even more uncertain.

Paper long abstract:

Rural El Salvador is a complex land of uncertainty. Evoked constantly is the notion that one doesn't know what tomorrow will hold. Thus, Evangelical women spend time in their local churches in prayer, some women form savings and loans groups with their friends, and others take buses to the capital to march against the privatization of water. These seemingly unrelated activities are all done because the only guarantee of life in uncertainty is that the future will be somehow fundamentally different than the present. In order to navigate these uncertain futures, Salvadorans, propelled by their core values of solidarity and unity, form networks of relationships of a sort of deep trust, confianza. Only through confinaza can anyone take any sort of action to begin to align oneself with another person to enact solidarity, which is said to be the best way to approach the uncertain future. With the introduction of smartphones over the last four years, some Salvadorans are concerned that their youth are not learning how to recreate these bonds of solidarity through networks of confinaza. In this paper, I explore how in a society where uncertainty reigns, mobile technology introduces yet another element of uncertainty and threatens the perceived continuity of collective values that have been enacted to navigate uncertainty.