El Salvador

So, before I begin with the pictures - few and far between unfortunately - I'd liek to give a quick (relatively) summary of what we did in El Salvador. We caught a shockingly early (for me) flight to El Slavador, and just as I was falling alseep we began our descent. About a 30 minute ride. My first impressions of San Salvador after we met Christy, our contact, and Enrique, our driver were jumbled and confused. It looked like a split between Nicaragua, Troy and New York. So many signs, buildings, commercialism and such interpersed with barbed wire, corrogated tin roofs and old buses.
That first day we grabbed lunch at the Casa Oasis, a beautiful guest house in a nice part of town where we'd spend the majority of our time in San Salvador, and then went to Equipo Maíz - literally, Corn Team. There we recieved a history lesson from someone who appeared to be a very skilled educator. We were there for a few hours and I spent my first 20 or so bucks - they use dollars there, so it is decieving. You say, 6 bucks for a shirt! and by the end of your week you've spent almost a hundred dollars. Not healthy. So I bought a few shirts and few books, and we returned to the Casa Oasis. I roomed with Maria-Teresa, one of the women who works in the office, a program coordinator I believe is her title, and Melissa, one of the other students. They made jokes, I just smiled, nodded, and realized that I attend one of the only universities in the US where it is not at all weird to room with people of the opposite sex.

Anyhow, the week (9 days) passed in a blur. We visited so many organizations and people that I can hardly keep track of them all. I filled one and a half small notebooks with notes and reflections. I will certainly tell more later, if I can remember to.

The last day, yesterday, we went to the Legislative Palace to meet with legislators from both parties. When we got there, we found the palace was closed to the public. Apparently, the day before, while the parties were debating the privitization of the public health system, a demonstation go so rowdy the building had to be closed and the debate postponed until the next day. We got our way in by having the legislator we were to see first help us out. He was from the FMLN or Frente Farabundo Martí for National Liberation party. This was the primary guerrilla group from the 70s to 92 who fought the government. They gained legitimate political status in 92 and haven't won a presidential election yet. So we talked to this guy, Hugo Martinéz, about everything we could within the 30 mins we had with him. In the middle we heard shouts and chants and we went to the windows to see demonstrators entering the building. They climbed the stairs and filled the FMLN offices. We finished our interview and made our way to the ARENA party headquarters. I forget what ARENA stands for, but it was founded by Roberto D'Aubisson, the man who was behind the assasination of Monseignor Romero and the death squads, constructed solely to inspire fear in the populace. They've won every presidential election held legitimately since the peace. We got there early, and so we waited. On the way there I was able to ask a protestor how they'd gotten in. 'Nuestros diputados nos ayudaron'. Our legislators helped us. We waited for maybe 20 minutes, maybe 45, I have no idea. I was writing. Then a secretary of some sort came out to tell us that the ARENA legislator we were going to see couldn't see us today, that it was too dangerous with all the protestors and that the riot police had been called to disperse the 50 or so protestors we'd talked with. So, as we left we tried to get into the actual parliamentary session (being denied a fiver, we asked for a thousand). Also denied, we left, passed the riot police (chilling on the corner outside the building) on our way out, and went to the mural.

I'll write more soon.