El Salvador 2008 - Reconstruction and Development in the Shadow of the US 

     I have been visiting El Salvador with the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS) since 1997. On my first trip here, I went to El Mozote, and stood on the site of the massacre that occurred there in 1980, and talked to people that had been in the region then, who had lost family members in the great killing of the Atlacatl Battalion. I visited the site of the 1980 massacres of the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter, maintained at the University of Central America (UCA) as a memorial and a museum of the Salvadoran experience. The actual spot where the brains of these people were sprayed out on the earth is today a rose garden that sits above the busy traffic. Again, the Atlacatl Battalion, with its US trained soldiers, many trained at the SOA, was responsible for the murders. Today, the Atlacatl Battalion no longer exists in name, but a Salvadoran friend here has told me that its military descendent is now fighting in Iraq. El Salvador is part of the “coalition of the willing” and sends several hundred troops to support the US war. Four have died.

      In so many ways, El Salvador is a little brother of the giant of the north. El Salvador has adopted the US dollar, at great cost to the poor population as the transition occurred in 2001, in the wake of a pair of devastating earthquakes. El Salvador has ratified CAFTA, against the will of a majority of civil society. El Salvador sends about a quarter of its population, over 2 million people, to work in the United States. In 2007, they sent $3.695 billion back in remesas (remittances). This is the single largest item in the GDP of El Salvador, larger than the maquila and coffee sector combined. The United Nations Development Program’s latest statistics on emigration from El Salvador claim that 1070 Salvadorans migrate daily. The vast majority are trying to reach the US. So, the greatest Salvadoran export to the United States under CAFTA is their vibrant and energetic population. Of course, the US is now hellbent on criminalizing their presence on the construction sites, in the factories and restaurants and nursing homes and farms. We are building a wall to keep them out, as the world celebrates an end to walls, as a wall falls in Gaza, as they continue to contribute to our economy. This wall will surely fall as well, in all its medieval absurdity. 

     All these US dollars cycling through the economy of this small country distorts the landscape toward the dominant culture. There are all the fast food chains, and some Latin American versions as well, such as Pollo Campero for fast food chicken, and Biggest, for fast food burgers. The supermarkets are full of imported goods, and do not carry the local produce, which one can buy in the street markets and smaller groceries. Cell phones are omnipresent, and there is fierce competition among the various companies, Tigo, Claró, and Digicell, for the talking minutes. 

     Those in the rural communities, out of the flow of the US dollars from the north, are poor. I visited a community near Comasagua on Thursday, La Loma. I was with a Canadian delegation called Rainbow Hope for Children, which is working with the Center for Exchange and Solidarity (CIS), where I am volunteering, to get them materials for latrines, a school, water. It is a gorgeous place high on a ridge, with views of the Pacific and of the surrounding steep hills.  

     It was my second visit to the community. I had visited in March, 2007, with the CIS Rutilio Grande delegation. For a report on that delegation.  CIS has now sponsored 4 delegations to La Loma. There was a second delegation in July of 2007 of St. Anne’s Parish, Books for Peace and Somos Hermanos, and a third in November 2007 by Caravan of Hope and Somos Hermanos. The trip along the ridge on the narrow road by truck, then either horse or mule for the last kilometer, remains the same—an hour and a half of gorgeous scenery of the steep hills and Pacific views of Comasagua. 

A Pacific view from the La Loma ridge

     The organized community of La Loma consists of 20 families.  This group has formed a community council and has reached out, with the help of community organizers from CIS, and now, with the help of the mayor's office of the municipality of Comasagua.  They are hard at work right now building 22  composting latrines, with the financial help of Rainbow Hope for Children.  They have begun a solar energy project, with one house currently equipped with a solar panel as a pilot project.  In coming months, the mayor will see that each family gets a solar panel that will give them enough power for some appliances and light.  

    A project supported by each of the delegations that has made the trek to La Loma is the rebuiliding of the school, which has not functioned since June 13, 1980, when it was destroyed in an Army assault.  Rainbow Hope for Children has committed to provide the remaining funds needed to buy the materials for the school, when the ministry of education commits to providing a teacher for the completed school.  This commitment is in the works, with the support of the Mayor of Comasagua.   

     La Loma was depopulated during the civil war of 1980-1992, and lost a generation in the conflict. There is no one in the community of over 20 families older than 60, and only a couple of people in their 50’s. I spoke with a man of 36 who was orphaned in a massacre that occurred on June 13, 1980. He said that for those years anyone found in the area by the Army would be killed. He only remembers the deep booms of the bombs from that night when his parents were murdered. This year, for the first time, La Loma will commemorate the victims of the massacre. 

     Today, La Loma is just beginning to recover from those war years. They are hauling materials along a precipitous trail to their homes to build once again their community. Their lives are so much like the lives of the campesinos in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia, where I spent 6 months as a FOR volunteer. There too, they hauled block with horses and mules, carried people off the hill to the hospital in makeshift stretchers. 

     The war still wages hot in Colombia, less hot in El Salvador where it tends to simmer and spill over in opportunistic violence, yet the societal violence is very high in both societies, tearing the social fabric and leaving the population in a continual process of rebuilding, relocating, emigrating, fleeing. I will report more on the dynamics of the situation here in future columns.  –Joe DeRaymond