El Salvador 2007 - A Nation Fleeing Itself

     In the Americas, the flight from war and the violence of economies that starve nations is from south to north, from the impoverished nations of Central and South America to the powerful economies of the United States and Canada. This migration is viewed by many here, in the United States, as an invasion. In the popular media, it is portrayed as an influx of criminals, of terrorists and opportunists who are taking jobs from United States workers. Such commentators as Lou Dobbs of CNN portray immigration from the South is a crisis that necessitates walls, barbed wire, prisons, and military deployment to our borders. 

     In March, I joined four other Pennsylvania activists, Naed Smith and Linda Brindle of Harrisburg, Sarah Snider and Tim Chadwick on a delegation to El Salvador to examine the roots of this migration as seen from the South. We participated in the CIS (Center for Exchange and Solidarity, http://www.cis-elsalvador.org) Rutilio Grande delegation. The impetus for the delegation was to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Rutilio Grande, the first priest to be murdered by death squads in El Salvador (see www.lvindependent.org for more info on Rutilio and the delegation). 

     There are many threads to this story. We met with Salvadoran economists, sociologists, experts on emigration, priests involved in the social struggle, health care workers, union leaders, community leaders and citizens who have experienced in their lives the reality of the war and post’war period of the last decades. The impact of each of the various issues of crime, CAFTA, remittances, dollarization, worker exploitation, the agricultural economy, the need for land reform, corruption, the drug trade, the lack of reconciliation after the war, impunity, the media, and the continuing role of the oligarchy as arbiters of the society are integral to an analysis of migration and El Salvador. However, I believe that US policies since the 1980’s have been the primary influence in the creation of a nation that is literally fleeing itself. 

     About 2 million Salvadorans, of a total population of 8 million, are living and working in the United States. In 2006, these emigrees sent over $3 billion back to their families in El Salvador, the largest single cash influx into the Salvadoran economy. It is more than the coffee and maquila sectors combined. In El Salvador, jobs are hard to find, and wages are very low. In the manufacturing sector, workers are paid $160 a month for fulltime work. A family requires much more than that each month for survival. Further, the influx of dollars from the North has created an inflation of rents and commodities that means that a family needs access to these dollars to function in the economy. 

     So, every day, about 700 Salvadorans leave for the United States, an exodus fleeing a ravaged economy and society. It is a perilous and expensive journey. The going rate for a “coyote”, or guide through Guatemala and Mexico is $7000. This means that those who contract with these traders in humanity must sell their land, their belongings, and go into debt in their attempt to reach the riches of the North. As the borders have tightened and the trip becomes ever more difficult, more and more fail to reach the US. Everyday, busloads of captured refugees are forcibly returned from Mexico to San Salvador, delivered now into complete poverty, landless and in debt. Others, less fortunate, die en route. This predatory human traficking spends lives and sucks millions of dollars a day from families, individuals and struggling communities. 

     It was appropriate that our delegation focused on commemorating and investigating the deaths of the martyrs Fr. Rutilio Grande and his friend Archbishop Oscar Romero. Rutilio’s assassination triggered a sense of social commitment in the work of Romero. Romero’s calls for social justice and for a non-violent solution to the conflict in El Salvador brought him to prominence as a national leader who might have been able to bring the nation together, or at least resolve the social conflicts without war. His cries for justice, however, led to his assassination in 1980 by ultra-right ideologues. He was killed by a death squad that was formed by Roberto D’Aubuisson and others who were building the ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista) political party that has ruled El Salvador. 

     ARENA is a party constructed out of a need to both provide cover for and take advantage politically of death squad tactics. Between 1979 and 1983, 40,000 Salvadorans were murdered, tortured, and disappeared by death squads formed in coordination with the ARENA party and with the consent and support of the United States government. No perpetrator has been brought to justice. 

     This is, in my opinion, the source of the migration of the last 20 years. It started as a flight from the violence of war and terror, and continues and accelerates in the ruins of the economy and society of the post-war years. The policies of terror the United States uses and supports in the Americas are the roots of the flight north. It is chilling to re-examine the behavior of the United States in El Salvador in the eighties. In the name of an anti-communist “dirty war in the name of liberty”, the lives of tens of thousands of students, labor leaders, and civilians were sacrificed, while the US supported the perpetrators with an average of a million dollars a day. 

     The Reagan State Department routinely certified the human rights behavior of murderers and torturers. Reagan appointees and surrogates, including staffers John Carbaugh and Christopher Manion in the office of Jesse Helms, and Margo Carlisle of the office of Senator James McClure maintained close contact with death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson. The very name of ARENA – Alianza Republicana - was based partly on the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. 

     ARENA still controls the Presidency and the economy of El Salvador. It has overseen the dollarization of the economy, the privatization of telecommunications, the ratification of CAFTA, and has contributed an advisor to Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank – Juan José Daboub. Within ARENA still exist the structures and personnel of the death squads, which function today with selective assassination and terror. The homicide figures in El Salvador are at epidemic levels, and reflect a society in an effective state of war, within which organized criminal elements can function with ease and impunity. 

     The flow of money from emigrees sending their remittances north to south suits this system well. It is a cash flow conducive to money laundering and skimming. In El Salvador, the proliferation of malls, fast food outlets, traffic jams, and drug trafficking are all evidence of the distortion of a poor economy by the fast money of US dollars. Those left behind are simply acceptable casualties of the free market. 

When our local communities rule that immigrants without papers are criminals, we are attacking people who have fled policies that the United States creates and supports. As Hazleton and Northampton County repress, other communities around the nation are offering sanctuary. This is the appropriate response to our fellow human beings who fight for their survival. I encourage your support for an end to financial support for the Northampton County District Attorney, John Morganelli, a nationally known persecuter of immigrants, and a positive effort to provide sanctuary for those who suffer under the continuing repression of US policies. -Joe DeRaymond, NOTE - this article was also published in the July issue of the LEPOCO Newsletter.