La Lucha de El Salvador

Where can I begin this post? First, "Lucha" = Struggle. I am slowly falling deeper into this country and all it's history that no one seem to ever hear.

I'll start with the bad...and try to end with the good. There's so much more than what I have time to pound out on this keyboard. In due time I'll share!

First. El Mozote and Perquin's War Museum. We arrived in "Rebel territory" around 3 p.m. Monday after a night of driving in the dark, a lunch with a well known Pastor here in San Salvador talking to us about the war and drug trafficking and the powers-that-be over chimichangas and tacos, a morning of our car stalling and dying, ending in me directing traffic and helping to push the car down the street.

So, when the war started, civilians headed for the mountains simply because that's where their opportunity rested. Where they could become strong, initiate peace talks, and collaborate hope for social justice. Where they could teach their community reading and writing and how to stand up for what you believe in - rights, justice, and truth. Yet also where they armed and protected themselves and showed they would not be taken without a fight. Although I am not a believer in violence, I am a believer in standing up and fighting for what you believe at your core is right. And for that I respect them.

So the war museum in Perquin showed them. Their photos, their colours, their faces. The ones who were murdered and the massacred and were "disappeared" by the Salvadoran Government and Military. Our guide there was of a local indigenous tribe and explained that because none of them had the opportunity to become educated, the potential lies within the youth's hands to learn, educate and fight for the transformation of this country's social justice.

El Mozote was different. It is a massacre site where the troops killed over 700 people in an intent to instil terror and fear in the people. In December of 1989, they gathered the people of this unassuming town in the town square and separated the boys from the girls. They killed the boys and fathers. They separated out the girls under 9 years old, raped them and killed them so their mothers would hear the screams. And then they came for the mothers. In this small town, there is a memorial wall that shows the names of all (they could find) who had died. There is a memorial church where the bodies of all the children are buried. The youngest in the community was 3 days old and the oldest, 90 years old.

Learning about what it was really like during the war
and the now (and ever) present economic &
political issues from Carlos & his wife.

No more repression.

Our trip to El Mozote not starting off well..

They are not with the dead,
they are with us
with you
and with all of humanity.

The genocide memorial.

The memorial where all of the children's bodies are buried.

In the garden of reflection near the site.
There is still beauty present amidst all the sorrow.

President of the Human Rights Commission
of El Salvador. Assassinated for defending
the rights of her people, March 14, 1983

The faces of the war.

50% of Salvadorans live in misery.

At the bottom it reads: Join the
National Campaign to stop the
U.S. sponsored bombing
of El Salvador.
See me?

"Salvador" (his rebel name) after speaking to us about
the cooperatives and his part in the war.

At our small hotel, we had a humble dinner of rice and plaintains and a man came to sit with us. He told us of how he was in the rebel troops. The army was taking people from every village or killing them so him and his brother fled. He was 11 at the time. He had been shot three times and showed us his scars. Yet his outlook on the war was a positive one, which was ...different...nice different...to hear. He learned to read, write, cook, work with propaganda and the press and do special projects. He felt that the war showed the people that they had a voice and allowed them the opportunity to realize their potential.

Yesterday, we went first to Oscar Romero's Chapel and then to the University of Central America. Romero was a pastor of the people. He was elected Archbishop and had decided to keep politics completely out of religion. He didn't want a part of what was going on in the country outside of religion. However, his best friend was assassinated a year later and that began to change the way he saw what was going on in his country. In his last sermon, he called on the army to put down their arms and to stop killing their own people. The next day, March 24, 1989, he was assassinated when giving mass. Shot through the heart by a drive-by sharpshooter (who is now a car dealer in San Francisco and lives safely in the States). He had been quoted months earlier saying that if he was killed, his spirit would rise in his people.


Next, at the UCA, six Jesuits were hauled out of their rooms and murdered by the Salvadoran military..along with the housekeeper and her daughter whom were raped & murdered. Brutally. I saw pictures of their dead, ravaged bodies. I felt sick to my stomach with the evilness of humans...which created a philosophical discussion last night at dinner about what this evil balance is in life? Where did it come from? Is it man? Is it the "devil"? Is it money and greed? Or all of the above? Honestly, it raises so many questions that we can't begin to answer at this time.

Yet, there is the good. The University is now about hope. It is taking all middle class students and part of their program - every program - is working with the poor and among the poor. It's turned something awful into something resilient and strong. It's turned into an opportunity for the youth and humanity of El Salvador.

Just prior to posting this, I've posted a blog titled "Let the Poor Break Your Heart". It is written by Dean Brackley and is from a short book titled The University and Its Martyrs: Hope from Central America. I found it profound and I hope you take the time to read it.

The point from where Romero was shot, just outside the
doors in a drive-by shooting.

"If I die, I will return & rise in the Salvadoran people."
Spoken a few months prior to his assassination.

Last night Otoniel talked to us about the hope for a Food Security Project (the one I am here to potentially intern with next year). More to come on that. Today we're meeting with a former Rebel Commander of the guerrilla army and his wife, the Director of the Women's Rights Organization whom Jim and Brenda know well. And Thursday...if you can believe this...she has us lined up for a meeting with the (correction) Director of a Salvadoran Human Rights Organization for FESPED (Fundacion de Estudios para la Aplicacion del Derecho)!! Excuse the punctuation marks, but I am mucho, muchisimo excited.

The rebel army hills.
So much beauty, hope & resiliance in this broken land
of El Salvador.

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We Won the Life Lottery

I don't have to say much here as we all know this fact. We truly won some sort of life lottery to be born in Canada. Were we spiders in our last life and someone's making up for that? Or why, how, are we chosen for the lives we are born into?

A few examples of what I've heard recently from my host family about life in Central America:

1) My host family "dad" has a brother who was in Parque Central, walking across the street. He was hit by a truck in traffic and the taxistas around the park knew he would likely drive away, as so many do here. So, they ran and shouted and set up benches and boxed him in. Rather than getting out and admitting to the crime, he backed up and ran over the same man again, killing him for sure. What happened to the offender? He paid his way out of jail immediately. No justice for the family whatsoever.

2) The family's son had two children and wanted to get into the military for steady work and pay...but, he was hurt badly in a hazing incident and was given absolutely nothing – no pension, no payment, no settlement. He started work at the brewery here, the only job he could get, and hurt his back even further carrying large packages. Now, he has no job, and can't work as he needs surgery. He doesn't know when he will have surgery, so if he was to get a job he would have to miss a day and therefore be fired. If he was fired, he wouldn't work in Quetzaltenango again. He now has three children to support. No home, no job.

3) During the days of the war here in Guatemala, in the late 90's, two college students were out of town and innocently picked some radishes from a local garden to eat. The owners of the garden started shouting that the students were stealing from them, and the town surrounded them. They were burned alive by the town residents.

4) A Guatemalan political official published the Truth & Reconciliation report here and was murdered by a cinder block to the head a day after.

5) Monday at school I was chatting with one of the teachers. She told me about her family, two children and a husband who works in Chicago. He had to move to Chicago to make money as he couldn't find a job here and they hadn't seen each other in over a year. They skype as often as possible, etc etc. Anyway...today I found her again and she instantly opened up to me about how her husband had just asked her for a divorce the day earlier...because he had cheated on her several times.

She told me when she cries, she only cries at night so her children won't hear her. The skies were raining down on us and I told her that maybe it was the sky crying tears for her. I gave her a huge hug and couldn't stop my own tears from flowing. To think of how she had just told me earlier with such pride about her husband making the "hard choice" to go and live away from his family to make money for them. To think about the many women that this happens too here...ugh.

These are just some of the horrors that Guatemalans face and have faced. And there's so much more, it's an injustice for me to post this without mentioning the documentary about the Guatemalan civil war, "When the Mountains Tremble".  And I've heard even worse stories to come from El Salvador, that I will come to learn more about in the next two weeks.

Being around all of this tragedy, the sorrows, and the lack of opportunity makes it easier to get through any darkness or hard times of my own. Everyone has them, for various reasons. When I feel like I have a weight on me, a sadness or a true sorrow, I close my eyes and remember the park here. The people sleeping on the street. The street dogs. The humble family that I live with. Katputli Nagar in India. The women in those slums trying to make a life for their family. The girls I knew that were already married at just a few years old. The street kids with no shoes, no pants and only a huge smile. The friend I made in Zimbabwe, whose father was killed by witch doctors. The children huddled around a stick fire, trying to seek out the last of the day's heat before returning to their homes made from the earth.

I am such a spec.

My heartaches are not the first, nor the last that will ever be. Nor will they make headlines. It doesn't mean they are non-existent and I honour them as such. However, it's humbling to remember how small they are in the sum of the world's problems. And that brings me to the final point - that if I can see the opportunity in them, the joy that can rise out of them - and move forward from them with lessons learned - if I can try to apply those lessons to something productive...and something positive - then maybe I can bring something worthwhile to the world. And that is, in the end, what matters here.

Cheers to my buddy Zach for emailing me this saying as it is so clear and concise. I may never win the 6/49, but I already won the life lottery.

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So...I guess I leave tomorrow.

This trip has snuck up on me. 

A lot has snuck up. It's been a productive six months since India.
A bit of a whirlwind with some stagnant times and some creative times in there.

And now...I guess I leave to Guatemala tomorrow. 

Purpose of the trip?
Sent to me by the minister that I am travelling with to key principles in the project: Objetivo del viaje es que Tamara llegue a conocer la realidad Salvadoreña, y los proyectos de OTRA FE.

Translation: The objective of this trip is so that Tamara can come to know the Salvadoran reality and the projects of OTRA FE. A faith organization that started based on sentiments such as this:

This faith community knows well that the 65% of the people of El Salvador who are poor have not chosen this life. This percentage of the population of the country has been adversely affected by 500 years of oppression. They are the victims of the “conquests” from the discovery of the Americas right up to the present  (first Spain and now the first world..mostly the USA).  In these present times the government does not slaughter and rape the people as it did during the civil war, but instead has chosen more subtle forms to lay waste to the population. The vast majority of the poor live in conditions of depression, and accustomed poverty, conditions which leave them uneducated and unable to manage in any form the small incomes they may acquire.

Itinerary?

I fly into Guatemala City and stay the night. Then I head to Quetzaltenango for two weeks of language school.

The weekend of June 23 I'm heading to San Salvador (capital of El Salvador) to stay at the Casa Clementina (doesn't that just sound whimsical?) Between there, Metapan and Ahuachapan, I will meet all of the people that I've been getting emails from over the past few months: Otoniel (Agronomist), Felix, Ramon, Angel (soul brothers of Jim's, pastors, and fellow project managers), Deysi (Director of IMU - Women's Rights & Development NGO) and her husband Dagoberto (Former Rebel Comander, Former Deputy, Environmentalist, Lawyer, Philosopher and Theologian).

I will spend a day in Perquin, at the War Museum, and head to El Mozote, a massacre site where Salvadoran armed forces killed between 200 - 1000 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War. Unfortunately, as news of the massacre emerged, the Reagan administration in the U.S. attempted to dismiss it because of its reflection of the human rights abuses of the Salvadoran government, which the U.S. was supporting with large amounts of military aid. In December 2011, the El Salvador government apologized for the massacre. You can read about El Mozote here >>

GAH!

Apparently, there is an area where Canadian's (Harper) have mining interests called Chalatenango...this is not a good thing to be supporting (or so I hear). I want to see this with my own eyes.

And there is the possibility of us paying a visit to the Mothers of the Disappeared: a group of women whose children "disappeared" by the Government. Apparently Bono wrote a song about this after visiting El Salvador and Nicaragua because he was so saddened by it and wanted to reach out to las madres.

Over the following couple of days, I will be visiting Metapan and Ahuachapan to meet and talk with members of the Food Security project and to meet families that will be benefiting from it.

Metapan
Right now in Metapan, 175 children from impoverished neighbourhoods are assisted as best as (the organization I'm going with) can to attend school. This is a very small percentage of the some 1700 who live in these areas.  Slowly, some are making it to graduation so that they may attend high school. One of the biggest obstacles with the children is the circle of poverty in which they live. Parents and grandparents do not believe that education will help their children out of the conditions in which they have lived for generations. These are families of great trauma from the war, people who do not know how to be families. They are torn apart by prostitution and abuses of many kinds.

Ahuachapan
In Ahuachapan, the work started by a faith-based group meeting in 2000 and feeling that they wanted to make a difference in the impoverished lives around them. In 2001, there were two earthquakes in this region and many found themselves homeless. Thus, development and aid projects were started, first for emergency supplies and medical treatment, than homes were built. By 2002, 33 homes were built. Later that year, work began on a medical clinic in the community. There was a massive eyeglass campaign nearby. A women's group started where they received training in feminist theology. In 2004; however, elections began and it became apparent that the political arena had the power to build or destroy any community project. And by the end of the year, that clinic was shut down. However, Felix and his people there did not let this crush their spirit. A few things have happened since 2006 up until now. The church continues to hold literacy workshops taught by some of the young women who are in high school and some of the women have started to grow corn and beans as part of a nutrition project. The work of this poor congregation now includes a Saturday lunch program for the elderly and very young who live in and around the Ahuachapan town market. Beans and rice and corn are collected from friends and family who share from what they have and the older women of the church prepare tortillas and the rice and beans. The younger women and some men help in the distribution of the lunch in the park next to the market. Jim & Brenda (who I am travelling with) visited for a short time about a year after their 5 year move there and watched one Saturday from the side lines as 53 elderly and 21 children received a nutritious lunch thanks to the generosity poured out by this church. It's truly the poor feeding the even more poor. And that's powerful. (Please note when I write 'poor' here, I truly only mean in monetary terms).

In 2006, a children's program started where each Saturday the children learn crafts, hygienics, nutrition, reading and writing. This program still runs today.

But here, sustainable agriculture has become a pressing need. The world food crisis has reached El Salvador. Local wisdom is that traditional seeds and growing methods should be re-introduced to decrease dependence on multi-nationals. The question of land acquisition is also on the table. The planned present Food Security project that I am becoming involved with will supply funds to secure land, seed, and teach traditional methods for participating families. Part of what is reaped will be for community consumption, another part will be for re-sale and a third aspect will be to re-invest in further production.

This is simply a learning trip. There is much to take in, including the fact that I will be working within an arena (based on religion) that I know nothing about. But I do know that whether you're religious, or spiritual, or atheist, or agnostic - we are all linked and humanity is about reaching out to those in need.

I stay one night in Georgia on my way home and will land July 8th to enjoy my last Manitoban summer (for now). It's going to be a whirlwind four weeks. I'm not sure yet what it will hold for me post-trip. If I was to move there next year to intern, it could cost upwards of $12,000 for six months and with me moving west, that will be difficult to foresee; yet not impossible! Nothing's impossible. Or I may go back for a shorter amount of time and help from here. Or I may want to focus what I learn and my skills on another project. I have no idea yet.

All I know right now is that I don't know anything. And I can't wait to learn so much while there.

These photos of El Salvador are courtesy of TripAdvisor
 

La Playa

Mayan Ruins

Bam! Adios Canada. BIG Love!

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