El Salvador

Hey folks. We´ve begun the crazy month of travel that my March promises to be. It all started off in February, actually. I left Guatemala on the 26th and took a four hour bus ride to San Salvador, El Salvador where my dear old friend Jennifer picked me up. Jennifer and another friend, Sally, have been living and working in El Papaturro and Suchitoto, El Salvador since October. They flew through Guatemala and I got to see them at the beginning of their time in Latin America. They are finishing up their time, and I wanted to see what they´d been up to living up there in the campo (countryside).

It turns out they´ve been having a really richly meaningful and growing time, and I got to experience a bit of that over the best five days I´ve had down thisaway. Jennifer and Sally work for a U.S.-based organization named Sister Cities in conjunction with a Salvadoran organization named CRIPDES. Both organizations were formed as a response to the Civil War fought between 1980 and 1992.

The war was basically waged by the urban-based elite and wealthy against the leftist ideas (and guerilla army) taking root among campesinos (country people, almost exclusively wretchedly poor) as communism took hold in Cuba. Of course, the campesinos had a reason to latch onto leftist ideas. My first night in the country I sat with an older man named Don Pablo who had lived through the whole war. He said that before the war, campesinos lived in tiny pueblos (villages) without water, electricity, or schools. They worked on plantations owned by the wealthy, paid just enough to survive and given rancid food and water during their short lunch breaks in the middle of 12-16 hour workdays.

Don Pablo said that as word of communism spread, they asked the soldiers who had begun coming to the communities what it was. It was, of course, characterized as an evil system that would really serve no one´s interests. Fidel Castro was described to them (literally, like not as a joke) as a devil with horns and a tail who ate children. After a while, one of the villagers talked to someone from the budding leftist party and learned the truth. That the party would be concerned with redistribution of wealth and just wages and conditions for the poor won this particular villager over. Don Pablo recounted how horribly mutilated this man´s body was found after voting for the leftist candidate in a regional election. This signaled the downward slide into gross human rights abuses (rape, mutilation, property destruction, mass murder, etc.) by the government and military, much of which, by the way, was financed by our very own U.S. government. We were so afraid of the spread of communism that we financed (i.e. $1 million a day) the terrorization and slaughter of peasants young and old (over 70,000 dead in El Salvador. About 200,000 dead in Guatemala in a similar situation).

Many of the campesinos fled to Honduras as refugees while the guerrilla army fought it out with government forces. When the war finally ended and the revolutionary army was recognized as a legitimate party, the refugees came back to their villages and reorganized them in just ways according to a land redistribution set up by the new government. The day we visited Don Pablo in Cinquera, El Salvador was that community’s Repopulation Day, and they were celebrating with joy and remembering what happened lest it happen again.

And it very well could. The day I was in Cinquera, the mayor´s record was being examined per charges (proved that evening) that he had stolen $30,000 from the community’s treasury. This particular mayor was from the right-wing Arena party, elected in the leftist stronghold of Cinquera through some devilish maneuvering similar to gerrymandering. What if he had gotten away with it? Further oppression of the poor. Obviously, the struggle is far from over, which is why it´s so important that organizations like CRIPDES and Sister Cities remain funded and active. It is equally important that we pay attention to the role that our own government is playing throughout the world. I didn´t know this story until I walked into it. What else don´t I know about the past? Or the present? I was so blessed to learn this story directly from Don Pablo and many others who lived it. Here are some pictures from my visit.


Martyrs from the Civil War.
"I don´t believe in Arena." I saw this sticker in more than a few places.

Names of victims from Cinquera.

LtoR: Jennifer, Sara (staff from Sister Cities), Sally, sitting at Don Pablo´s house. It´s filled with revolution posters and artifacts from the war.

People dancing like they mean it at the repopulation party.

Jennifer on a Suchitoto morning.

"Communities in Resistance against Neoliberal Politics"

One day we hiked up to this farm to meet one of Jennifer and Sally´s friend´s boyfriend. He was super nice and the view rocked way more than this picture.

The town of La Bermuda also had their repopulation party while I was there. To celebrate, they had a big horse race/competition. See the video below.

After the horse race, we went to this woman´s house for lunch. She works for CRIPDES and served as a nurse for the guerrilla army during the war. She told us her whole story.

We also celebrated Angelita´s (left) birthday by making empanadas over her woodburning girl in her backyard. They were soooooo delicious.

Jennifer frying.

Angelita´s backyard.

I tried to get involved, but I´m a boy, which means they mostly wouldn´t let me. Angelita´s daughter "helping" me fry.

Folding them up.