EL SALVADOR - COUNTRY OF LOSSES AND POSSIBILITIES
This article is written after a week in El Salvador under the auspices of the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad - the Center for Exchange and Solidarity. They arranged for us to visit two government ministries and four rural communities, as well as participation in two national marches and masses to commemorate the life of Archbishop Romero.
"El Salvador" in Spanish means The Savior, and a man like Jesus walked here among the poor as Jesus did in Palestine. Both Palestine and El Salvador hold onto the spirit of their respective martyrs to give them hope as they face today’s harsh realities. El Salvador’s hero is Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated by order of the Armed Forces as he was saying mass on March 24, 1980.
The size of Vermont but hosting six and a half million people, El Salvador is densely populated by mostly poor peasant farmers who don’t own the land they work on. The beauty of its landscape of mountains, volcanoes, the Lempa River that crosses the entire country and its long Pacific Ocean coastline hides deep economic injustice. The unemployment rate is so high that young adults see only three options: enduring poverty, delinquency, or emigration. Over l.5 million have risked death and paid up to $10,000 on credit to get to the United States. Another half a million live in other countries. This means that over 30% of the population lives abroad in order to send money home in remittances. The country depends on this income mainly because the landowning and corporate elite siphons off the agricultural and mineral wealth of the land.
Into this scenario came the current president, elected in March of 2009. Mauricio Funes, candidate of the FMLN party that represented the interests of the poor in a bloody civil war from 1980 to 1992, made speeches and promises reminiscent of President Obama’s. And it seems that Obama is his guide and mentor on how to govern. Unfortunately for the poor, this means not disturbing the economic structures now in place. A professor of economics told us that Funes does not have power over corporate interests nor over the military, and the only hope for real change to occur lies in the power of an organized populace.
The town of Cinquera (Sinkera) IS organized. We met with two of its leaders, Mari (Ana Marina Alvarengo) and Rene (Pedro Ramon Fuentes) who told us its story. During the civil war it was completely destroyed by bombs dropped from the air. All 7,000 people, had to evacuate. They fled into the forests and mountains, or they crossed into Honduras but they were seen as guerilla sympathizers and denied work and shelter everywhere. So, after 11 years seven families returned, before the war was over, but after the guerillas had driven the National Guard from the town. They started to rebuild in spite of official military opposition and continued bombing. I try to imagine rebuilding my destroyed home and destroyed village while bombs are dropping to stop me. I imagine the desperation, the courage, and the level of organization needed to start over.
Now Cinquera has grown to 1500 people, some in search of cheap land, and there are some divisions among them. However, Mari told us, the original villagers are standing up to a concerted attempt to bulldoze their beloved church. To explain why, she told us how the people learned about Liberation Theology. Back in the 1970's a priest came to serve their church and taught a new way to read the Bible - one that spoke of a loving God who did not wish them to suffer. For example, instead of it being "God’s will" that babies died after 6 days, they found out about Tetanus and could save their babies. They learned that diarrhea could be treated, instead of having to accept it as "the evil eye." Neither did they have to accept dying in childbirth as punishment for sins. They learned to talk to each other about their problems and to help each other. It was a revolution in thinking and it brought them together for the first time. They had been kept in ignorance in order to be submissive to the ruling elite.
Then, as happens in the Catholic Church, their priest was reassigned and a new priest came. The new priest was entirely different. He tried to divide and confuse the people, saying they should be worried about communists who would destroy the Church. He denounced anyone who was organizing farmers, students or parishioners. He called in the Bishop and they ripped down all the posters in the church – posters which had biblical passages that supported liberation theology and images of M. Romero. The priest excommunicated all the parishioners when they protested his actions. Then, as the people were no longer "Christians", it became all right to massacre them, and there were many killings. Leaders were arrested from their homes in the middle of the night, so they began to sleep outside their homes. If the National Guard came for the men and didn’t find them, they killed their wives. One 16 year old girl, Aida, was raped, tortured and killed in order to instill terror.
Mari’s father had to flee, leaving his wife and eight children without support. She remembers doing farm labor as a child to help feed the family. Later, her mother fled while the children slept. It was the only way she could save her life, but what a price to pay! The National Guard took over the town and made it into a base. By 1983 it was a ghost town. When the war was finally over and rebuilding underway, the church hierarchy of this area stayed the same, part of the elite. The local priest and bishop wanted to tear down the little church, symbol of popular resistance.
To the parishioners it was inconceivable that they could lose this structure. For them too it had become a symbol. During the wartime bombardments, its facade and tower were the only things in the village left standing, which the people took as a sign. They rebuilt the church around the parts that had survived and painted the facade with a portrait of Oscar Romero and one of his sayings: "In the diverse political articulations what is of interest is the poor."
The Bishop, on the other hand, called Romero a "garbage leader", and on Good Friday of 2009 he interrupted the traditional solemn procession and abruptly kicked the people out of the church, bringing the police to enforce this unusual move. When the police withdrew, the people re-entered the church to pray. However, on Easter Sunday, the priest returned and declared that the church was private property, and not theirs to use as they wished.
Tensions grew between the church hierarchy and the parishioners. On October 13, 2009 three trucks and 4 cars parked in front of the church. One hundred and fifty men got out, intending to finish the job of destroying the church building. The first to see them were five women, who formed a line in front of the church, prepared to give their lives to save it. They sounded the town alarm gong, a spent bombshell, and soon hundreds stood with the women. The priest, in charge of the assault brigade, ordered the destruction to proceed, but the men didn’t obey. They began to leave, and soon only the priest, town mayor and riot police were left facing the defiant townspeople.
For the next seven days 90 parishioners occupied the structure around the clock. Finally the Minister of Culture came and said the church should be saved as an historical site. However, the story doesn’t end there. Right after that, the area bishop closed the church until December 23 when he came to "purify" it. This included ripping down the photos of disappeared and assassinated family members, as well as drawings, verses from the Bible and quotes from Romero. The people saved what they could. After Christmas, the bishop closed and locked the church, and so it remains...
Mari concluded her story by saying that the bishop and mayor are good at sowing seeds of discontent. As a result there is no functioning government, and a federal office is investigating charges of corruption. Looking at Mari, I could only admire the strength of the organized poor.
(More stories on El Salvador to follow.)
Sherrill Hogen
Conway, MA
413-625-9959