More about El Salvador

So, the first day I already said something about Equipo Maíz. After that we wet back to the Casa Oasis and we sat down in the largeish living room in many couches (something you don't see in Nicaragua) and chairs, and the proprietor of the hotel came and talked to us. His name is Damien Alegria, pretty much the coolest name in the world (Alegre means cheer) and he told us about his time in El Salvador during the war. This was a heartwrenching testimony and an hour and a half ready, he was exhausted and we were in wonder. We then had the first of what would become some of the best meals we'd had yet with Damien's wife as head chef.

The next day (Friday) we went to Divine Providence, the church where Monseignor Romero worked. We recieved a talk from the protavoz of the order of nuns that worked there, and then she gave us a tour of the buildings. His house had been converted into a museum of sorts where his clothes and such are preserved. Interesting sidenote, Romero is considered a Saint in much of Central America. They have his miracles picked out, things like his organs not breaking down after death, disappearing from paintings and such. The Catholic Church hasn't quite moved fast enough for Central America in declaring Romero a prophet, martyr and saint, so they decided to just call him these things anyway. On his house there is a sign that reads, 'Monseñor Romero, Prophet and Martyr' and then slightly below that it says 'So say the poor without preventing the judgement of the church.' After that we went to CEMUJER a women and human rights organization. We learned several interesting facts there - abortion is illegal and penalized in El Slavador, and Opus Dei has quite a bit of power in the country are just two of the more interesting. 'Who doesn't have the power to maintain their dreams won't have the power to maintain their lives' was the quote hanging off the wall from the founder. Then we went back to the Casa Oasis and had a talk with Luis Perdomo, a leading organizer in CARECEN, and international NGO that deals with the problems of immigration. And there certainly are immigration problems in El Salvador. I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but almost half of El Salvador lives in the US. 7 million is the population of El Salvador, 3 million is the amount that have immigrated. The Salvadorian economy is propped up by the remittances the Salvadorians in the US send back. When I say 'propped up' I mean it in a not very propped way. It used to be that over 700 people were leaving the country every day due to economic distress. Now, 1000-1200 every day leave the country. When young people in college and such are polled and asked if they want to live in El Salvador they say no.
Here's a selection from my journal on 10/19/07 - "Divine providence this morning was powerful. I'm still attempting to come 'round from that. I'm sick of taking so long to process or understand these experiences and events. I feel like if I could just focus on the events and stop being distracted by depression or nonsense I'd be able to come to some sort of Conclusion - or at least profundizar (go deeper into) a bit my understanding of these matters.
I wasn't quite able to hear Lydia (the portavoz) this morning, but Katie (a fellow student) and I entered into a breif conversation about how she felt about it - and she did hear it. What, indeed, can we do? Romero was killed in 1980 by a government supported by 'our' country. This unquestioned support continued into the 90s. I was born in 1987 in October. This is the year Escipulas II (Central Amerian Peace accords) was finished. The 'peace' was finalized in 1992. I was 5. Do I, personally, have some form of responsibility towards El Salvador do to 'my' government's actions from before I was born? If so, then I have a responsibility to every country and people that 'my' country has ever interfered with. And when does that end? Do I only have a responsibility for the actions of 'my' country as far back as my ancestors were part of it? And then does my responsibility transfer to those countries they came from?
I say 'my' government entre comillas (in quotes) because I feel like there is - there must be - some kind of disconnect between my responsibilty for my government's actions or my 'ownership' of my government and how long I've been alive/aware/legally able to be involved or legally a citizen - with full rights of participation (as far as that goes)."

It continues for a while, but from that you can kinda see what kind of issues I'm trying to work my head around.

One of those nights we went out to La Luna (The Moon) a wonderful jazzy joint in San Salvador. There was live salsa, another group of gingos, lots of chatting, and I even danced (if that's what you want to call it). The only people that compliamented me the next day had been a bit too drunk for me to really take their word, by and large.

I am omitting here our trip to the UCA in San Salvador because I am still attempting to... I'm not sure, think about it I guess. Maybe I'll talk about it in a few days, maybe never, we'll see.

Then we went to Suchitoto, a small town on the top (more or less) of a mountain, overlooking a beautiful manufactured lake created by a hydroelectric dam which was built without the consent of the people who lived there, changing the finshing/farming culture into a culture dependent on fickle tourism. The river no longer floods seasonally where it once did, and so farmers on one side are screwed, while on the other side the dam releases water at odd increments and without much warning, so the people who live downstrem are also screwed and often flooded. But the lake is beautiful, and so it attracts tourists. Like us. We stayed with Peggy, a woman from the Bronx who came to El Salvador to help out and will never leave voluntarily. She runs the culture and art center there and is trying to buy the whole thing and turn it into a school/culture and art center/venue for a variety of things open to the public. She's most of the way there. She was a charasmatic and wonderful woman who was once a nun and is now not due to ideological differences with the current Catholic Chruch (she came for Romero and ended up with John Paul II). Some quotes from her, "I hope you're ruined by El Salvador. I hope you're broken open and fall in love with it." The classic, "I want to die on the last day of my life - no sooner." "Look like you've lived, earn your lines and scars." Then, describing us after saying that we are more or less self-selecting. "I mean, you could've gone to Spain or France or something, but you came here. Who really likes throwing the toilet paper in the basket (as opposed to flushing it) and staring at if for days?" A very interesting woman. Then we went out into Suchitoto for a while, even though it was raining. Saw some beautiful mountains, I bought a cool shirt that makes me look ridiculous but may make a good gift, and then we came back, hung out, and went to dinner somewhere Salvadorian. We slept at the Guest House/converted Convent that night where Peggy works, which was fine except that I woke up in the middle of the night with water dripping on my face from the ceiling. Needs a bit of touching up I'd say.

The next day, still raining, we broke our fast and drove to Guasapa. Guasapa is a volcano in between Suchitoto and San Salvador. This was a rather important volcano during the war do to its proximity to San Salvador, and so the FMLN controlled it by the end of the war. There we were treated to an eco/historical-tourism hike up the mountain. We were out in the rain from 10ish to a bit after 2 climbing this mountain. Sounds miserable, but I had a great time. We saw how corn and beans are grown together, an old farmers trick which came from the indigenous people who once populated these areas. Saw the tatus (hidey holes) where civilians and FMLN people would hide when the army began to bomb the hell out of the mountain. Saw many cool plants, heard many cool things, and pretty much destroyed my shoes. I also resolved to by a rain coat or actually carry around a poncho so that next time I don't have to do that in a tee shirt. We lunched at the eco-tourism place, freezing and exhausted, on soup (hot soup, thank god) and chicken. They showed us a terribly scratched up video of what the trail is like when the sun decides to exist (a large portion of the time in Central America) and we asked them and they asked us a few questions. The last question, which sucked, was "so what do you guys feel like you learned today?" The 18 of us, shivering, uncomfortable, tired and wanting badly to bathe just looked at the boy, standing there with his fly undone expecting some profound answer. Finally Maddie gave one answer, David gave another, and I felt like we were free. We gave our many thanks and said our goodbyes. The hour or so ride back to San Salvador sucked, but we made light of it. When we arrived at the Casa Oasis, I showered immediately. I tried to get as much of the mud off my clothes as possible, but at that point they were as much mud as they were clothes. I'm not quite sure what we did after that. I think we watched the testimony of the woman who survived the El Mozote massacre. That was depressing. An entire town, wiped off the map. Women, children, murdered. Lined up and shot, burned inside their houses. Insanity. How could one have not struggled against this? I'm not saying pick up an AK-47 and join the FMLN, but do something. Christy worked like hell to change things in El Salvador, Aynn in Nicaragua. They got what in return? PTSD and a job showing kids around these countries and trying as hard as they can to share with us just what was going on. The nuns before Peggy, dominicans I believe, tried to teach the kids of Suchitoto about economic justice and human rights. They recieved death threats and dead bodies were piled at the threshold of the convent. They had to flee for their lives. Six jesuit priests were pulled out of their beds at the UCA at night and shot in the head because they were teaching and preaching justice. These were scholars in their feilds, shot for being associated with the FMLN. A mother and her 15 year old daughter , sobbing and terrified, shot together in the room where they were staying for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And why were they there? They were afraid to stay at their house because there was fighting there.

The next day we went to Flor de Piedra (flower of stone), an NGO which works with sex workers. They try to educate and empower the women (they primarily work with female sex workers) about health, rights, and AIDS. They were very interesting, and when we left we took a drive through the area where the sex workers work to see the conditions. There were many very (very) small rooms with the women in the doorways wearing things that are reminescent of what some people wear to the october first party at Bennington (or any high school dance for that matter) and calling to passerby. It was interesting, it was terrifying, and it made me think quite a bit about what kind of society encourages this while outlawing abortion, while privitizing health care and education so that only the rich have access to it, while losing 1000 people daily to immigration. Very strange. In the US this is so much more hidden.

We then left for Santa Marta, a beautiful small town (campo) on the Honduran border. We hung out a bit at Radio Victoria, a youth led radio station started by Christy in the 90s. It is small, independent station which we worked at the next two days. In Santa Marta we were serenated by a local public school teacher, a young man who started teaching as a young boy in Honduras in the refugee camp and never really stopped. Speaking of Honduras, a bit of history of Santa Marta. Santa Marta was an FMLN sympathetic town. The government had a scorted earth policy to eradicate the FMLN. This meant they would go to towns like this, murder many of the imhabitants and burn the houses and such so as to cut off the resources of the guerrillas. Santa Marta got word that this was going to happen there, and so they decided not to be there when the army came. This is after years of harassment, murders, and bombings by the army. So they picked up their lives, and tried to race the army to to River Lempa (the border with Honduras) to claim refugee status. They arrived at the river and the army did two things. First, they flooded the river with the water from a nearby dam (hydroelectric plant). Second, they started shooting at the people (men, women, children, elderly) as they crossed. The Honduran army had been alerted to this problem as well, and they came to the other bank. They too opened fire on the Santa Martians as they tried to cross. Thousands survived, many died. So for the next six years they lived in Honduras, occasionally harassed by the Honduran or Salvadorian armies. In 1987 (they'd fled in 1981), they started being repatriated back to El Salvador. They continued to be harassed by the army until 1992 when the peace accords were signed. The meetings about the meetings for the peace accords actually took place in Santa Marta. Senator Joe Moakley stayed in the same house, with the same family I did when he came down in the early ninties to give legitimacy to and to begin the peace process in El Salvador.

I'll write more later. This is getting ridiculously long.