Forché wrote “The Colonel” during her time in the Republic of El Salvador in the 1970s, even coining the term “documentary poem” to describe the hybrid nature of the text. The reported events really happened; Forché did visit a military official’s home where he did pour a bag of human ears onto the table. In order to understand whose ears these were and why such atrocities were being committed, it is important to briefly survey the shape of El Salvadoran political history.

The Republic of El Salvador had existed as an independent, sovereign nation for less than a century when Forché toured the country in the 1970s. Its brief existence had thus far been largely characterized by both severe economic inequality and corrupt politics. The country’s political and socioeconomic power was monopolized by a tiny portion of the population, landowners who controlled El Salvador’s primary industry of coffee farming. El Salvador’s 20th-century history is a history of attempted uprisings by the oppressed peasantry and indigenous citizenry, followed by violent retaliation from the aristocracy who dominated the official government.

At the time of “The Colonel,” El Salvador was on the brink of a violent civil war. Only a few years before Forché arrived as a journalistic poet, the country’s presidential elections were rigged multiple times in an organized electoral fraud ensuring military officials won the office.