The "El Salvador Option"

Though this blog is created to display personal stories accompanied by photos, I wish to expand the paradigm to allow space for some outside events and thoughts. Since I have the fortunate liberty to do so, here goes:
“The dead lay in strange shapes. Several had open mouths filled with dirt. Faces were puffy. A man’s arm was extended straight out from his body, his fingers spread. Two tiny children, a girl and boy, lay feet to head in the back of an ambulance, their skin like wax.”
This quote was written by New York Times’ Sabrina Tavernise on July 30, 2006. It gives a brief, but vivid description of the consequences of Israel’s attack on the small city of Qana, Lebanon. The Red Cross counted 27 mortalities, 17 being that of children. But local media is claming as many as 57 mortalities. Israel blames Hezbollah for using the town as a center for firing rockets. It also wishes to repel the responsibility for such actions by reminding the world it ordered the people to evacuate the suburban city. Unfortunately, poverty prevented some civilians from escaping the city and joining the country’s 700,000 refugees. These victims unable to flee the city hid in the basement of the building, seeking refuge and security.
Bullet holes in the side of a home in Suchitoto, El Salvador



Events such as this were not uncommon to El Salvador during the civil war that mainly took the lives of women, children and the elderly. In Noam Chompsky’s article

The "Crucifixion of El Salvador,"

he writes of the atrocities committed by the dictators installed and supported by the US government. I highly suggest taking the time to read this article, as it is important to understanding the fundamentals of the civil war along with the development of the country over the last thirty years.
Below I have pasted a letter from the former archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero to Jimmy Carter. I’ll let the letter describe itself, but as a friend told me, it’s an important piece to the puzzle of peace and conflict. This letter still resonates today as the “Salvador Option” and should be referenced to when looking at the wars in Iraq and Lebanon/Israel.

San Salvador
February 17, 1980

His Excellency
The President of the United States
Mr. Jimmy Carter

Dear Mr. President:

In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press that
worries me greatly. According to the reports, your government is studying
the possibility of economic and military support and assistance to the
present government junta.

Because you are a Christian and because you have shown that you want to
defend human rights, I venture to set forth for you my pastoral point
of view in regard to this news and to make a specific request of you.

I am very concerned by the news that the government of the United
States is planning to further El Salvador's arms race by sending military
equipment and advisors to train three Salvadoran battallions in
logistics, communications, and intelligence. If this information from
the papers is correct, instead of favoring greater justice and peace in
El Salvador, your government's contribution will undoubtedly sharpen
the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people,
whose struggle has often been for respect for their most basic human
rights.

The present government junta and, especially, the armed forces and
security forces have unfortunately not demonstrated their capacity to
resolve in practice the nation's serious political and structural
problems. For the most part, they have resorted to repressive violence,
producing a total of deaths and injuries much greater than under the previous
military regime, whose systematic violation of huamn rights was
reported by the Inter-American Commission on Huamn Rights.

The brutal form in which the security forces recently evicted and
murdered the occupiers of the headquarters of the Christian Democratic
Party, even though the junta and the party apparently did not authorize the
operation, is an indication that the junta and the Christian Democrats
do not govern the country, but that political power is in the hands of
unscrupulous military officers who know only how to repress the people
and favor the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy.

If it is true that last November a group of six Americans was in El
Salvador¦providing $200,000 in gas masks and flak jackets and
teaching how to use them against demonstrators, you ought to be informed
that it is evident that since the security forces, with increased
personal protection and efficiency, have even more violently repressed the
people, using deadly weapons.

For this reason, given that as a Salvadoran and archbishop of the
archdiocese of San Salvador, I have an obligation to see that faith and
justice reign in my country, I ask you, if you truly want to defend human
rights:

* to forbid that military aid be given to the Salvadoran
government;
* to guarantee that your government will not intervene directly or
indirectly, with military, economic, diplomatic, or other pressures, in
determining the destiny of the Salvadoran people;

In these moments, we are living through a grave economic and political
crisis in our country, but it is certain that increasingly the people
are awakening and organizing and have begun to prepare themselves to
manage and be responsible for the future of El Salvador, as the only ones
capable of overcoming the crisis.

It would be unjust and deplorable for foreign powers to intervene and
frustrate the Salvadoran people, to repress them and keep them from
deciding autonomously the economic and political course that our nation
should follow. It would be to violate a right that the Latin American
bishops, meeting at Puebla, recognized publicly when we spoke of the
legitimate self-determination of our peoples, which allows them to
organize according to their own spirit and the course of their history and to
cooperate in a new international order (Puebla, 505).

I hope that your religious sentiments and your feelings for the defense
of human rights will move you to accept my petition, thus avoiding
greater bloodshed in this suffering country.


Sincerely,

Oscar A. Romero
Archbishop


Five weeks later Romero was assassinated. Two days following Romero’s
funeral, the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign
Operations approved Carter's request for non-lethal military aid to El
Salvador.
A mural of Oscar Romero in Suchitoto, El Salvador

Prolegomenon: Initiation to San Salvador Via 9 (March 3, 2006)

We sprint across a busy intersection in search of purified water. A vendor solicits small candies to us as we jump up the curb and turn to walk down the gradual decline of Avenida Gustavo Guerrero. A bus speeds past us, depositing clouds of black smoke into the streets and filling our lungs.



“Alright, we’re gonna go check out your new house now,” Noah says, shoving his hands into his pockets in search of a quarter to pay for our two bags of water.
“Do you think we have enough time? I mean, can we see the house and get back to Amy’s before dark?” I ask him.
“Yeah, we should be fine.”
Sweat and sunscreen slowly crawling down my forehead, trickling into my bloodshot eyes. Dehydrated and hungry, I am ready to head back to the apartment to rest and mull over the images we viewed at the museum earlier this afternoon. Black and white photographs of the civil war. Photographs of innocent victims with bullet wounds. Guerilla soldiers curled up in a bunker with a few guns and an ancient radio. A government room filled with war refugees and a poster on the wall saying “Costa Rica: make it your next vacation.” My mind is numb with the thought of at least two more bus rides.
“Here, take this baggie, we’re way too dehydrated.” Noah says handing me a cold, sealed bag filled with purified water. “The trick in this heat is to drink a ton of water.”
“So why haven’t we been doing that, since we’ve been on the marathon tour of this city for the last two days?”
“I forgot.”
I watch his teeth sink into the corner of the bag, separating the plastic with a jerk of his head. He spits a piece of plastic into the street and squeezes the water into his mouth. I imitate him, taking in big slugs of water. With each gulp my throat sounds as if my Adam’s apple is being played like a guiro. The water tastes like chlorine filled pool water.

Noah, a friend from Montana, has been living in El Salvador for over half a year. He lived in Amatepec for three months, occupying a small apartment behind a kindergarten classroom, owned by the Episcopal Diocese. Not long ago, he moved to an extremely rural and impoverished community known as Las Salinas. It lies in the below the Rio Lempa, separating eastern El Salvador from the west. Though his project objective in Las Salinas was initially unclear, he utilizes his time by cutting mangrove, teaching the community human rights courses and is implementing a literacy project.

“Here comes the nine. This is our chariot to Amatepec,” Noah says sticking out his hand to flag the bus down.
We each pay the cobrador 20 cents, pass through the turnstile, and look for an open seat. Before we reach the seat, the bus accelerates around a corner, tossing me into the shoulder of an older woman.
“Permiso. Lo siento.”
I regain my balance and sit next to Noah. With my knees pressed firmly against seat in front of us, I look around to not only confirm that we are the only gringos on the bus, but that I am the only one who is struggling with the tight space between the seats.
“I bet you wish you weren’t so damn lanky,” Noah says.
“Shut up.”
The bus cuts through traffic, running red lights, blaring its horn and slams on the brakes, coming to a complete stop in the gridlock of the downtown market place in San Salvador.
“So this is El Centro. It’d probably be faster if we just got out of the bus and walked,” Noah says, showing no signs of moving. Instead he turns back to the window to stare at the market. I crack my knuckles and look through the windows on both sides of the bus, attempting to get a feel for the surroundings. A man steps to the front of the bus with a few jars of pills and holds up laminated sheet of paper. On the sheet of paper is a drawing that vaguely represents the human respiratory system. It reminds me of a Halls cough drop commercial. He begins his pitch by listing the types of illnesses and diseases the bottle of medicine is able to cure. Noting its organic makeup and comparing it to other less successful medicines, he claims the pills not only heals your body but enhances your energy level as well. While neighboring pharmacies sell them for four dollars, he is willing to sell a bottle to the passengers of this bus for the amazing price of one dollar. He wraps up his speech to the group of uninterested passengers and begins walking down the aisle when a man dressed in rags and smelling of Guaro (a cheap rum favored by impoverished alcoholics) pushes him aside and begins telling his story of how he is starving and physically unable to work. I strain to hear his story but am distracted by a woman outside the bus screaming:
“Quesadilla! Quesadilla, si quiere! Quesadilla!”
Her voice is deafening, piercing through the bustle of the crowd that surrounds her. Interrupting the beggar’s story of loss and dependency. It blares over the Reggaetone and muffles the horns of the busses. I look down to see that the quesadillas she is selling don’t look anything like the Mexican-style quesadillas I am familiar with. Instead they look more like thick cornbread squares.



An old woman selling dried Yucca and Plantains in a bag enters the bus through the rear. She sells a bag of plantains to the man behind us, pouring salt and chile in the bag. She shakes the clear plastic bag, and hands it to the man. I gaze over Noah’s shoulder, hoping to get a glimpse of the market place. Endless stations selling pirated movies. Overweight women, dressed in lacy aprons pushing wheelbarrows filled with tomatoes, mangoes, and apples. Big department store signs towering over tarps used as ceilings for the booths. Umbrellas everywhere. Dozens of colors, patterns, sizes protecting produce from the hungry rays of the sun. Telephone and electrical cables sprawl between the buildings high above the streets like a network of convoluted spider webs. The movement along the streets dances with the distant thumping of Reggaetone beats: “boom. Dadada da. Dadada da. Boomboom Dadada da. Dadada da.”
The bus stops in front of a large cathedral to pick up two more passengers. Noah takes a break from staring nonchalantly out the window and points to the massive building to our left.
“You see this building here? This is the Cathedral. Oscar Romero’s funeral was here after he was assassinated in the middle of conducting mass. He was shot in the chest with a silencer by sniper from outside the Chapel at La Divina Provincia.”
A man walks down the isles with a bag of honey-roasted peanuts handing out one to each passenger with a pair of tongs. He dips his tongs into the bag, removing a single peanut and drops it into the palm of my sweaty hand.
“So during his funeral,” Noah continues, “army snipers opened fire on a weeping crowd of 10,000 people, right here in front of the Cathedral. They killed at least 40 people. This all happened before the war started.”
As the bus drives past Libertad Park I look to my left to see a row of homeless men sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes under an overhang. One man sitting near a set of stairs catches my eye. His dwarfed legs, awkward and fat, extend in front of his body exposing his deformed feet. Toenails untrimmed, yellow and curling around his infected toes. The bus picks up a few more passengers and speeds off.



Driving past the southern bus terminal, we are given a clear view of what looks like cheap government housing, decaying apartment buildings, and a dirty reservoir all backed by a large, brown hill.
“You see that place?” Noah asks. “That’s your new home.”
The bus drops us off in the entrance of the town. We walk over the railroad tracks and past a liquor store, where a pair of drunken men ask us for a “cora.” The street is smoothly paved with asphalt and covered with a layer of oil and dirt. Houses and mechanic shops are lined up along the street. Empty, tattered hammocks sway as a breeze blows the sent of trash and urine through the street. A group of young boys play soccer with a small, deflated, plastic ball.



“This is the main street that runs through Amatepec,” Noah says as we pass a group of men and young boys removing a set of bus tires from the wheels. Their shirts and arms are stained black with grease. We arrive in front of a church with red metal letters pinned to the tan brick wall reading “Iglesia Episcopal San Andreas Apostle.” We walk up the alleyway just to the right of the church. After a series of three locked doors and a kindergarten classroom, we enter the apartment.
“Welcome to my old home, and your new pad.”
I walk around the tiny space imagining my new life here. Waking up to the screams and bangs from the kindergarten students. Cleaning the trash built up in the rear patio. Playing the guitar in the solitude of the patio in early evenings.
We brew some of Noah’s left over coffee and head to the porch in front of the classroom to talk and watch the sun fade out of sight, leaving the city to thrive on streetlights in the shadow of the looming volcano.

The Blog: This blog is dedicated to the people of El Salvador. It will be used to represent El Salvador through the eyes of a foreigner. Being that I am a citizen of the United States of America who has only lived in this country for four months, I am unable to do more than scratch the surface of this incredibly complex country. But with the help of photos and people's stories, I hope to display the people's lives to the best of my ability.



About the Author: My name is Jefferson and I am originally from Santa Cruz, California. I attended the University of Montana where I graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing and History. I came to the beautiful, savaged, tragic country of El Salvador to act as a volunteer. Currently, I am teaching English, Physical Education and conducting the percussion band for a small school known as "San Andreas Apostle." It is an Episcopal school located in Amatepec, part of the Soyapongo district just outside of San Salvador. Though I consider myself religiously agnostic, I find that my ideology is very similar to Liberation Theology being practiced by the Episcopal and Catholic churches in Latin America.

The Community at a Glance: Amatepec is a refugee community that evolved during El Salvador's bloody civil war. The community was originally farm land, but during the civil war, refugees took flight there. In the last thirty years, Amatepec gradually developed into a friendly, tight-knit community. Today, the community is plagued by issues common to the poor in El Salvador and many other countries around the world. Problems such as malnutrition, child labor, poor education, insufficient income for sustainable living, and gang violence are widespread throughout Amatepec. With the help of volunteers and donations, a small percentage of the community is being exposed to educational and domestic improvement.



Note: Unless otherwise stated, the photographs displayed are taken by Jefferson. The photographs are all film, taken on either a Minolta X570 or the classic Holga. Contact information and important links will be posted asap.

In the words of Phillip Berryman: "Poverty is opposed to pride, to an attitude of self-sufficiency; it is synonymous with faith, with abandonment and trust in the Lord."