Wow, what a month! We did so much and learned so much, that there's a lot of detail that I'm leaving out, so I'll apologize in advance for those of you who don't know much about El Salvador's history...
We arrived in El Salvador on Sunday, February 26, for a four-week stay in which we took a course in liberation theology with Sister Peggy O'Niel, a Sister of Charity from New Jersey who's been living and working in El Salvador for 20 years. All 20 of us lived together in a pretty little guest house for the whole time we were there, except for our rural visits. And we had a pet duck named Pato (which means "duck"--very original, no?).
Most of us had a pretty difficult time adjusting to life in San Salvador because it is a very dangerous city with a very high crime rate and we were warned against going anywhere alone or leaving the house at night. Plus, there wasn't anything to do in the area right around our house except to go to the MetroCentro -- the biggest mall in Central America (? - I'm not so sure about that fact, but it is huge) -- six blocks from our house. We also didn't feel very connected to the local culture, and I certainly didn't feel very grounded in the city. San Salvador is such a globalized city that there were times I felt like I could have been in almost any US city, with so many malls, plazas, and chain restaurants and stores.
El Salvador, as they say, is a country of extremes. One of those extremes is the disparity between the rich and poor, another is in politics. We were in El Salvador during the campaign season -- elections for mayors and congresspeople took place on March 12, and so political graffiti was at its peak. Each political party has a particular color combination, and many electricity poles and road barriers are painted those colors or slathered with posters and slogans. The two main political parties are the FMLN and ARENA. The FMLN is the political party of the former guerrilla movement, and ARENA is the hard-right party that the current president belongs to. The elections reminded me of the US in 2000 and 2004: it took them almost a week to verify the election results for San Salvador's mayor because the difference was so small -- there was even a non-violent protest by the FMLN outside the hotel where the counting was going on, which the police retaliated against. The FMLN candidate, Violeta, ended up winning by 59 votes, out of about 3 million.
Week One:
One of the first things we did after arriving in San Salvador was to take a drive through the city and visit the Centro Historico (historic center), where the National Cathedral is. Archbishop Oscar Romero (more on him in Part 2) is buried in the downstairs of the catheral with a very beautiful but fairly simple monument. It was an amazing feeling to be in a place -- the church and the central plaza -- where so many major events -- protests, massacres, Romero's funeral -- occurred. One block off of the main park is the Plaza de Libertad and La Iglesia del Rosario. It is a really interesting building, with a curved roof and full of rainbow stained class and iron sculpture work. It was also the site of some historical protests and massacres.
For those of you who have studied religion and theology, you might be interested to know that we had a meeting with Jon Sobrino, that eminent liberation theologian who was lucky enough to be out of the country when his fellow Jesuits were killed. He is a theology professor at the University of Central America (UCA), where our classes were held, and his appearance and pleasant manner reminded me a little of Mr. Rogers.
The building at the UCA where we took our classes was called the Centro Monseñor Romero. On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests who lived there, as well as the wife and daughter of the gardener, were killed by the Army during the night. There is a now a rose garden in the place where the massacre occurred, and the museum inside contains not only information about those killed that night (including the clothing they were wearing), but about many of the other people that were assassinated during the war. They also have a set of Romero's robes, which I just wanted to reach out and hug, but they were behind glass. It was very special and sacred for me to be in that space, which to me is a historical symbol of the voices of prophets, of truth, of a struggle for justice.
At the end of our first week in El Salvador, our group split up to visit different church communities, some in the city, others in the countryside. We were to visit with these communities and observe how liberation theology is at work today. Five of us went together to the town of San Jose Las Flores, which is in the north-central part of El Salvador, in the department of Chalatenango. We met with the directive board and visited a number of cooperatives, including a large fruit tree and livestock co-op. It was boiling hot! We lived on "campo time," which means the schedule was extremely relaxed -- things didn't have set times, and if they did, they usually started late.
Everything about Las Flores was peaceful and relaxing--except for it's history, which is pretty horrific. The town was mostly deserted during the war (which lasted from 1980-1992) after a military operation in 1982 that included the bombing of the town. Most people escaped to Honduras, but a group of people returned to El Salvador to fight for their right to return to their hometown, which they finally did in 1986. The host mother that Hannah and I stayed with lost her husband and one of her brothers during the war as guerrillas, and her parents as well died when they were in their late 20s. (I had to write a reflection paper on the experience, relating it to our study of liberation theology, and I can email that to those of you who are interested.)
Saturday morning, the five of us decided to climb up the hill behind my host family's house, which was a moderate size and had a cross and an FMLN flag at the top. "It was HOT and steep.
We had to climb over a barbed wire fence at one point, and then it was an adventure, although there WAS a skinny path. The region is very hilly, and very dry this time of year -- dusty and hot, the hottest month -- but humid too. After lunch, we met in the town square, where someone from the directive board was supposed to meet us to take us down to the Sumpul River. Well, we sat there for almost two hours before anything happened. The water was amazingly warm for a river, and we had a lovely time swimming, although even the river played a terrible part in the war. People would escape across it into Honduras, and one of the biggest massacres of the war occurred not too far upstream from where we were, when refugees were attacked from both sides by the Salvadoran and Honduran Armies. 800 died.
