Paula Cuellar Cuellar is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and the “Fellow, Jacqueline and Michael Wald Professorship in Human Rights, Genocide, and Holocaust Studies” at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. Previously, she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx studies at Bowdoin College in Maine.
In 2022, she received a PhD in History from the University of Minnesota. She also holds a Bachelor’s in Law from the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas,” a Master of Law in International Human Rights Law from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master of Arts in Human Rights and Peace Studies from the Universidad Nacional de El Salvador.
She focuses on modern and contemporary history of Latin America, specifically on human rights violations and mass violence perpetrated in the region during the 20th and 21st centuries. Particularly, she studies post conflict societies in Latin America and its transitions to democracy, focusing primarily on the right to truth and truth commissions. Furthermore, she investigates disappearances of people in Mexico and Central America. Finally, she analyses genocide in Central America, especially scorched earth operations as genocidal practices per se.
Her film “Añil” (Indigo) and her book manuscript “Salvadoran Women Speak: Female Accounts of Their Struggle Within a Revolution, 1980-1992” are on sexual abuse committed by both the security forces and the guerrilla forces against women during the Salvadoran armed conflict. The book manuscript also addresses the invisibility of this heinous crime in the Salvadoran Truth Commission report.
1 topic · no fee, no honorarium, no mileage
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My research explores the transformative role of oral history in documenting sexual violence during El Salvador’s armed conflict (1981–1992) and in shaping processes of memory, healing, and transitional justice. Drawing from over sixty testimonies of women who endured rape by both state security forces and guerrilla combatants, the research underscores how oral narratives disrupt dominant, elite-driven accounts that have historically silenced victims’ experiences.
Many women who participated in this study had never publicly shared their stories before. For most of them, the interviews became a space of recognition, agency, and release from long-carried burdens of trauma. By voicing their lived realities, survivors not only reclaim ownership of their narratives but also challenge the partial truths or half secrets preserved in official records, including the Salvadoran Truth Commission, which frequently marginalized, neglected or intentionally excluded women’s testimonies.
The presentation highlights oral history as a methodology that fosters empathy, inclusivity, and social accountability. It also emphasizes the ethical imperative of preventing re-victimization and epistemic extractivism by ensuring that knowledge production returns to and benefits the communities involved. This commitment is illustrated through the process of filming and disseminating the award-winning documentary Añil (Indigo), which extended research findings back to victims and broader audiences. Ultimately, the project demonstrates how oral histories of sexual violence enrich collective memory, deepen our understanding of democratic transitions, and contribute to more authentic and gender-sensitive accounts of El Salvador’s recent past.
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