The day before I left El Salvador, our little group reflected on our experiences in El Salvador and we shared our testimonies with each other. The first time I shared my testimony (with the group from Minnesota), it was a lot easier to reflect on my experiences in El Salvador in part because I had had fewer experiences at that point to reflect on. However, I really struggled to prepare my testimony the second time. It was difficult to sum up 6.5 weeks of experiences and I was (and still am) struggling to make sense of what I experienced.
I'm also struggling to adequately describe and explain my trip. Since I have been back lots of people have asked me questions like "How was your trip?" and "What did you do?" I have tried my best to answer these questions, but I know my answers are insufficient. The answers I have given are insufficient in part because the full answers would take hours and because I just don't know the right words to use. Here is what I shared for my testimony that sort of answers these questions:
"I came to El Salvador this summer searching for answers. I came searching for peace. On the one hand I wanted answers about why there is so much violence in El Salvador and what is being done and what needs to be done to bring peace to the people of El Salvador. I wanted these answers so that I might try to make life better for my Salvadoran friends. I also came in search of answers to more personal questions like "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" and more specific questions like "Am I called to work in El Salvador?" and if so "How might I make a difference in El Salvador?"
I'm not really sure that my questions have been answered or at least not in the way I expected them to be answered. In many ways I will leave with more questions than answers, but I'm getting used to continually having more questions than answers. And perhaps questions are more important than answers because it is in the search for answers that the most meaning and purpose is found.
I did indeed learn a lot about the violence in El Salvador- both the violence of gangs and the violence of structural violence that is the root cause of gang violence. I heard story after story of how violence has manifested itself in El Salvador. I learned how the violence of unjust systems keeps people stuck in a vicious cycle of pain and suffering. My heart was broken by many of the stories I heard.
But I keep thinking about the day my heart was torn in two. When Julie and I visited Pastor Alejandros' communities I saw poverty and suffering like I have never seen before. As we walked from house to house through the mud I was overwhelmed by the needs these people had. As I sat in someone's house learning about all the suffering they experienced and continued to experience it literally left like my heart was being torn apart.
I'm not sure that my heart will ever really be repaired, but it has mended some. I can't say now where this broken heart will lead to, but my consolation is in knowing that God was and is so very present in this community, in me, and in our coming together. Jesus liked to answer questions by telling stories and it seems that he continues to do that.
Probably more than any other experience in my life, I felt God's presence that day as God began this story. And I know that it has just begun so I can't say where it will go. It is a story of great need, but I hope and pray that it will be a story of great blessing. Even though I have no idea how the needs of this community will be met, I know God is on their side and on my side. God guided me to that community and God will continue to put his hands on me and guide me and probably even push me along when needed.
I am confident that it was part of God's plan for this to be part of my story, part of the answer to the questions I have about violence in El Salvador and how I can use my gifts and passions to meet the need for finding even a partial solution to the pain and suffering in this community and others like it in El Salvador.
And yet, I cannot yet say that I am confident that this story has a happy ending. I am trying so hard to be optimistic and to put my trust in God that he will meet all the needs of his people. But I'm just not there yet. The needs are so great and I just don't know how humanity could ever provide for the needs of this community let alone all the other communities with similar and even grater needs.
And yet there is still hope that I feel. I saw hope in the children. I saw hope in Pastor Alejandro. And I saw hope through Bishop Gomez who reassured me that if helping this community is something I want to do, it will happen. It will happen not because of anything I have done or will do, but rather because it is God writing this story. It is God that brought me to that community, it is God that will bring me back, and it is God that will provide all the hope needed in this story."
That was the testimony I shared the day before I left El Salvador. It is a good starting point, but I still feel I have so far to go to make sense of where to go from here.
I feel as if everything has changed for me, but I can't quite put my finger on what exactly has changed. I feel a greater sense of purpose, a greater sense of direction in my life. Even though I still can't say what I'll be doing in a year when I am finished with graduate school, I feel more confident that I know what sort of work I am called to do. I wanted to spend a significant amount of time in El Salvador to discern if I could see myself living and working there long-term. I have to admit that two months ago I was afraid that the answer to this questions would be "yes, I do feel moved to work and live in El Salvador". While I still don't really know where I'll be in a year or two years or ten years I do know that there were many times during my trip in El Salvador that I did imagine myself living and working there. On the one hand I asked myself if I would feel comfortable living in El Salvador, but regardless of the answer to this question, the real question that needs to be answered is if it is part of God's plan for me to live and work in El Salvador.
A year ago when I was getting ready to start graduate school I felt like I would be learning for my own personal enrichment, but now I have a greater sense that my classes will be preparing me to do something with what I am learning. I now have even more experiences that will hopefully guide my learning and will allow me to put what I am learning into a specific context. This makes me feel like I actually have a greater purpose and a reason for learning that is more meaningful than my own personal enrichment.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
El Mozote
A little over a week ago I went to the little town of El Mozote. This town is located in the far northeast part of El Salvador in the department of Morazan. During the civil war this area was an area of heavy fighting between the military and the guerrillas. El Mozote is in a very mountainous and remote area- it took us more than 4 hours to get there from the capital.
On December 11, 1981, about 1,000 innocent civilians were massacred by the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army. (It is important to know that this battalion was trained by the U.S. The Atlacatl Battalion was responsible for many other acts of horrific violence including other massacres and the assassination of the 6 Jesuit priests and the two women at the University of Central America. Your tax dollars helped train these soldiers. And this sort of training continues today at the same school where the Atlacatl Battalion was trained, the School of the Americas.)
As was common during the war, the people in the area around El Mozote traveled around trying to escape the army. The army had been present in the area for a few days before they came to El Mozote and the army had killed some civilians in the area in the previous days. The people in the area got word that if they all went to El Mozote they would be safe there. They heard that the lives of anyone in El Mozote would be respected, and so people went there thinking they would be safe. El Mozote was a small town but with all the people who had come from the surrounding areas there were about 1,000 men, women, and children. On the morning of December 11, 1981, the soldiers entered the town, and ordered everyone into the town square. The men were taken into the church, the children were taken to the parish house next to the church, and the women were taken to a nearby house. The women and even girls as young as 12 were raped before they were killed. The men were killed inside the church. Then the children were killed in the parish house. Supposedly some of the soldier questioned if they really should kill the children because after all they were just children. But this was only just a passing doubt. Children as young as 3 days old were shot and there are even reports that some little children were thrown in the air and then shot. When the soldiers finished killing all the people, they burned the houses, the church, the fields, and they killed all the animals. They destroyed everything.
So the big question is why did the Salvadoran military kill all these innocent people? I can't really give you a good answer to this question, but I can tell you the logic or reasoning that the military might have used. The military wanted to kill guerrillas and they also wanted to create a sense of fear and terror that would prevent more people from joining the guerrillas. For a long time the Salvadoran government and the military claimed that the people that were killed in El Mozote were guerrillas. When the evidence showed that this wasn't the case, they claimed that the people of El Mozote were supporting the guerrillas. And when this explanation no longer worked they just claimed that they killed the people so that they wouldn't become guerrillas. If there aren't any people then there can't be any guerrillas. The truth is that the people that were killed in the town of El Mozote were not guerrillas, nor were they on the side of the guerrillas. They probably sold food and other supplies to the guerrillas that were in the area, but they also sold food and supplies to the armed forces. These were neutral people just trying to survive the war.
Even this "explanation" doesn't really make sense. War doesn't make sense, violence doesn't make sense, and death doesn't make sense. There are war strategies and justifications for war, but these are usually just stories that don't tell the real truth and the real truth usually doesn't make sense.
For years and years the Salvadoran government and military and even the U.S. government denied that the massacre at El Mozote even happened. One of the main reasons why we know what we know if because one woman, Rufina Amaya, managed to escape and survive the massacre. Until the day she died she told the story of the massacre. She heard her 4 children, aged 8 months to 9 years, being killed as she hid under a tree. In 1992, some of the victims of the massacre were exhumed by forensic archaeologists to scientifically determine what had happened at El Mozote. The exhumations of the victims from the parish house proved that there had indeed been a massacre at this site. They recovered the remains of 146 victims with an average age of 6 years. They said that the number of victims was probably far higher because many of the remains had been destroyed by the fire. They also determined that 24 shooters killed the children using M-16 rifles and bullets manufactured by the U.S.
After the war, people began to move back to El Mozote. They have rebuilt their town. They have a beautiful new church and some very nice memorials to the victims of the massacre. They have a monument with all the names of the people that were killed and there is also a garden next to the church in memory of the children that were killed in the space where the garden now is.
On the side of the church there is a beautiful mural of children playing. Along the bottom of the wall all the names of the children victims are listen along with their age- 3 days to 18 years.
After they exhumed the remains of the children, they buried the remains, and then replaced some of the bricks from the floor of the parish house where you can still see blood stains.
One sign there said "What happened in El Mozote, for good or for evil, is part of our history. To forget it would be fatal because only in preserving and remembering history can we avoid repeating similar horrific acts." So very true.
There was a well in the main square of El Mozote that was built through funds from the US Agency for International Development. It's great that we helped provide drinking water for the people of El Mozote, but this hardly seems to even partly make up for the destruction that came from the training, weapons, and bullets provided by the U.S. just 14 years before this well was constructed.
After we left El Mozote we went to the Revolutionary museum. The had pictures and information about some of the important people in the revolutionary movement in El Salvador. There were posters from various organizations in different countries around the world that joined in solidarity with Salvadorans to demand that the killing and the repression stop. The museum also had some weapons and equipment that were used by the guerrillas during the war. There were also some things about the peace accords that were signed in 1992 by the guerrillas and the Salvadoran government. Outside they had some weapons and crashed aircraft that the U.S. gave to the Salvadoran military and then the guerrillas got them and used the weapons and aircraft. We also got to see a radio station like the guerrillas used during the war to communicate and share information among the guerrillas and the people.
There was also a 500 pound bomb that was manufactured in the U.S.
And then perhaps the most exciting part of our day was going to see a guerrilla camp. It was very cool to actually see the sort of thing that I had read about and seen pictures of. It was also a little overwhelming to be able to experience a little bit what it might have been like to actually live in a guerrilla camp. Here is a shelter where 5-6 people would have stayed:
We got to see some of the weapons the guerrillas used as well as some of the radio equipment they used to stay in contact with each other and to send information to civilians.
We saw a "kitchen" where they would grind corn to make tortillas and they probably also had beans but not much else to eat.
There was a little field "hospital"
Then we got to see a couple of the holes in the ground where people would hide during air attacks. We got to go into the hole and spending less than a minute in the hole was enough for me. Sometimes people would have to spend hours and even days in the holes while planes and helicopters flew overhead dropping bombs. Being in the camp made it a little easier to imagine what life might have been like during the war. I am still far from being able to completely understand, but my day in El Mozote and at the museum and the guerrilla camp helped me gain a little bit better understanding.
On December 11, 1981, about 1,000 innocent civilians were massacred by the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran army. (It is important to know that this battalion was trained by the U.S. The Atlacatl Battalion was responsible for many other acts of horrific violence including other massacres and the assassination of the 6 Jesuit priests and the two women at the University of Central America. Your tax dollars helped train these soldiers. And this sort of training continues today at the same school where the Atlacatl Battalion was trained, the School of the Americas.)
As was common during the war, the people in the area around El Mozote traveled around trying to escape the army. The army had been present in the area for a few days before they came to El Mozote and the army had killed some civilians in the area in the previous days. The people in the area got word that if they all went to El Mozote they would be safe there. They heard that the lives of anyone in El Mozote would be respected, and so people went there thinking they would be safe. El Mozote was a small town but with all the people who had come from the surrounding areas there were about 1,000 men, women, and children. On the morning of December 11, 1981, the soldiers entered the town, and ordered everyone into the town square. The men were taken into the church, the children were taken to the parish house next to the church, and the women were taken to a nearby house. The women and even girls as young as 12 were raped before they were killed. The men were killed inside the church. Then the children were killed in the parish house. Supposedly some of the soldier questioned if they really should kill the children because after all they were just children. But this was only just a passing doubt. Children as young as 3 days old were shot and there are even reports that some little children were thrown in the air and then shot. When the soldiers finished killing all the people, they burned the houses, the church, the fields, and they killed all the animals. They destroyed everything.
So the big question is why did the Salvadoran military kill all these innocent people? I can't really give you a good answer to this question, but I can tell you the logic or reasoning that the military might have used. The military wanted to kill guerrillas and they also wanted to create a sense of fear and terror that would prevent more people from joining the guerrillas. For a long time the Salvadoran government and the military claimed that the people that were killed in El Mozote were guerrillas. When the evidence showed that this wasn't the case, they claimed that the people of El Mozote were supporting the guerrillas. And when this explanation no longer worked they just claimed that they killed the people so that they wouldn't become guerrillas. If there aren't any people then there can't be any guerrillas. The truth is that the people that were killed in the town of El Mozote were not guerrillas, nor were they on the side of the guerrillas. They probably sold food and other supplies to the guerrillas that were in the area, but they also sold food and supplies to the armed forces. These were neutral people just trying to survive the war.
Even this "explanation" doesn't really make sense. War doesn't make sense, violence doesn't make sense, and death doesn't make sense. There are war strategies and justifications for war, but these are usually just stories that don't tell the real truth and the real truth usually doesn't make sense.
For years and years the Salvadoran government and military and even the U.S. government denied that the massacre at El Mozote even happened. One of the main reasons why we know what we know if because one woman, Rufina Amaya, managed to escape and survive the massacre. Until the day she died she told the story of the massacre. She heard her 4 children, aged 8 months to 9 years, being killed as she hid under a tree. In 1992, some of the victims of the massacre were exhumed by forensic archaeologists to scientifically determine what had happened at El Mozote. The exhumations of the victims from the parish house proved that there had indeed been a massacre at this site. They recovered the remains of 146 victims with an average age of 6 years. They said that the number of victims was probably far higher because many of the remains had been destroyed by the fire. They also determined that 24 shooters killed the children using M-16 rifles and bullets manufactured by the U.S.
After the war, people began to move back to El Mozote. They have rebuilt their town. They have a beautiful new church and some very nice memorials to the victims of the massacre. They have a monument with all the names of the people that were killed and there is also a garden next to the church in memory of the children that were killed in the space where the garden now is.
There was a well in the main square of El Mozote that was built through funds from the US Agency for International Development. It's great that we helped provide drinking water for the people of El Mozote, but this hardly seems to even partly make up for the destruction that came from the training, weapons, and bullets provided by the U.S. just 14 years before this well was constructed.
After we left El Mozote we went to the Revolutionary museum. The had pictures and information about some of the important people in the revolutionary movement in El Salvador. There were posters from various organizations in different countries around the world that joined in solidarity with Salvadorans to demand that the killing and the repression stop. The museum also had some weapons and equipment that were used by the guerrillas during the war. There were also some things about the peace accords that were signed in 1992 by the guerrillas and the Salvadoran government. Outside they had some weapons and crashed aircraft that the U.S. gave to the Salvadoran military and then the guerrillas got them and used the weapons and aircraft. We also got to see a radio station like the guerrillas used during the war to communicate and share information among the guerrillas and the people.
And then perhaps the most exciting part of our day was going to see a guerrilla camp. It was very cool to actually see the sort of thing that I had read about and seen pictures of. It was also a little overwhelming to be able to experience a little bit what it might have been like to actually live in a guerrilla camp. Here is a shelter where 5-6 people would have stayed:
We got to see some of the weapons the guerrillas used as well as some of the radio equipment they used to stay in contact with each other and to send information to civilians.
We saw a "kitchen" where they would grind corn to make tortillas and they probably also had beans but not much else to eat.
There was a little field "hospital"
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Marching for Peace
One of the main purposes of going to El Salvador was for me to join in solidarity with the Salvadorans- to walk with them in their joys, struggles, and suffering. On my last day in El Salvador I got to literally walk along side Salvadorans. Our little group joined in a peace march organized by the Lutheran Church. This march was the first in a series of events in the Lutheran Church's campaign against violence. There will be more marches as well as other things like a forum to try to raise awareness about the violence in El Salvador as well as to demand that protecting life be the highest priority in the whole society. The slogan printed on the banners and posters for their campaign is "No more violence: the people of God demand security, peacefulness, and justice." Leviticus 25:18 is also on their banners and posters: "Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land." This is a campaign against all forms of violence that are present in El Salvador- the gang violence but also the violence of the many unjust systems and structures.
The peace march took place in Jayaque, a little town in the mountains a little over an hour away from the capital. They chose this site for the march because there is a Lutheran church in this community and this was also the place where two Lutheran pastors were murdered a few years ago. The details about why they were murdered aren't completely clear, but these pastors had witnessed a crime committed by gang members and the pastors testified in court. They believe it is for this reason that the pastors were murdered. They died fighting for justice and for life. In the church in Jayaque they have a photo on the front wall of their two pastors who were assassinated. Even years later, this act of violence still seemed fresh in the memory of the congregation and they aren't about to forget these martyrs anytime soon.
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| (to the left of the red cloth you can see the picture of the murdered pastors) |
The peace march began with some fireworks. (Salvadorans love fireworks and set them off for just about any reason worth celebrating- Christmas and New Years and other holidays too.) People from the church in Jayaque came as well as some pastors and church members from other cities. There was a small band from the community and a bunch of school kids with drums that accompanied us on the march.
We marched up the main street in town and people came out of their houses to watch us come by. Some people carried posters and banners and some of the kids carried colored flags. It started to rain a little and then a lot, but we soon made it to the community center where we had a ceremony/church service.
The mayor as well as a local representative were present at this event. Bishop Gomez and other pastors spoke about the violence that dominates Salvadoran society, but they also talked about the possibility of a peaceful world- the sort of world that God intended his creation to be.
After this event we marched to the church where we had chicha (an indigenous alcoholic drink made from fermented corn and pineapple), tamales, sweet bread, and coffee.
I do believe that the Lutheran Church's campaign against violence is a beautiful thing, but I do wonder just how effective it can be. It certainly isn't a bad idea, but I guess I'm just a little bit sceptical about how much they can do against such huge problems. The Lutheran Church is and has always been very outspoken about violence and injustices in El Salvador. Bishop Gomez holds a weekly press conference where he talks about the state of the country and addresses any specific instances of violence or injustice that have occurred. This carries on the tradition that Archbishop Oscar Romero began back in 1977 when he began speaking about the violence leading up to the civil war. Bishop Gomez as well as some pastors work with government officials by offering their opinions and suggestions on ways to address the violence in the country. This campaign against violence is essentially a formal manifestation of what they have been trying to do for years. I hope and pray that this campaign against violence will make even a small difference in reducing the violence, but it will be a very long road. Even if the Lutheran Church makes all these efforts, peace will not come without large sectors of the Salvadoran society working together against violence. El Salvador also needs international support in its fight against violence. I was very glad that I got to walk in this peace march, and it was a very significant act of solidarity, but there is so much more that I an as American can do to try to reduce the violence in El Salvador.
U.S. foreign policy has a great impact on El Salvador in ways that were very evident in many situations during my trip. Our immigration policy as well as our trade agreements have directly impacted Salvadorans in ways that have led to violence (for example think back to my post about the violence because Pacific Rim is trying to mine- this situation has become so violent in large part because of our free trade agreement CAFTA). All the details of the impacts of our immigration policy and trade agreements are beyond the scope of this post, but I firmly believe that if we reform our international trade agreements and our immigration policies we would have a great potential to reduce the violence in El Salvador. Nevertheless, in the meantime I do think that small efforts such as the anti-violence campaign of the Lutheran Church is what will make a difference for the people of El Salvador. The government is making some efforts to reduce the violence, but ultimately it will be up to the "regular" people of El Salvador to organize and to continue to demand that the violence stop. The violence has great control over the people living in El Salvador, but fortunately there is also great power in the number of people who are willing to sacrifice and work for peace. This peace march gave me hope despite the enormous work yet to be done before peace comes to El Salvador.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Home?
I made it safely back home!
Amanda and I were treated to quite a nice arrival in Chicago. Our plane came in south of the city, headed out over Lake Michigan, then turned to head back to the airport going north of the city. The views of the all the buildings and the lake was magnificent.
My wonderful grandma picked me up from the airport and I came home to a hot and empty house. Since I got home at about 5:00 this evening I pulled weeds in my Mom's many gardens, did 3 loads of laundry, picked cabbage, tomatoes, broccoli, and cucumbers from the garden, went through my mail, unpacked, and ate vegetables from the garden for dinner. And now I'm trying to repack to leave tomorrow morning to go to see all my family at our cabin in Canada. I'm exhausted, but glad to be home and even happier to be able to see all my family tomorrow.
I still have a pretty substantial list of things I want to write about that happened on my trip. I'm very much looking forward to a few weeks of lounging by the lake, but I promise you, my faithful readers, that there is much more to come on this blog.
Amanda and I were treated to quite a nice arrival in Chicago. Our plane came in south of the city, headed out over Lake Michigan, then turned to head back to the airport going north of the city. The views of the all the buildings and the lake was magnificent.
My wonderful grandma picked me up from the airport and I came home to a hot and empty house. Since I got home at about 5:00 this evening I pulled weeds in my Mom's many gardens, did 3 loads of laundry, picked cabbage, tomatoes, broccoli, and cucumbers from the garden, went through my mail, unpacked, and ate vegetables from the garden for dinner. And now I'm trying to repack to leave tomorrow morning to go to see all my family at our cabin in Canada. I'm exhausted, but glad to be home and even happier to be able to see all my family tomorrow.
I still have a pretty substantial list of things I want to write about that happened on my trip. I'm very much looking forward to a few weeks of lounging by the lake, but I promise you, my faithful readers, that there is much more to come on this blog.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Going home...
We have been busy busy busy this past week. I will eventually write about it all, but right now my brain is too tired. I´m going home on Sunday and I´m trying to be at peace about that, but I´m just not ready to leave. Time has gone by so quickly and there is so much more that I would like to do and experience. However, I miss my family so much and I´m so looking forward to seeing them. If I didn´t miss my family so much I´m pretty sure that I would stay. (I also especially miss cheddar cheese, salad, my dog, clean tap water, and a washer and dryer.)
I have already had to say good-bye to a few people. I really don´t like good-byes, especially since I don´t know when I´ll be back. But I know I will be back and probably sooner than I thought I would when I first got here.
Even though I don´t want to say good-bye and I´m not ready to leave, it´s probably a good thing that I´m going home. I have a lot to process and try to make sense of. I have been able to process some of what I have seen and experienced but El Salvador just keeps coming at me and I never seem to be able to process one experience completely before I need to start processing the next. So I´m looking forward to some time to reflect and figure out how to start putting into practice what I have learned. Right now I´m feeling overwhelmed with information and experiences, but hopefully time will help.
I have already had to say good-bye to a few people. I really don´t like good-byes, especially since I don´t know when I´ll be back. But I know I will be back and probably sooner than I thought I would when I first got here.
Even though I don´t want to say good-bye and I´m not ready to leave, it´s probably a good thing that I´m going home. I have a lot to process and try to make sense of. I have been able to process some of what I have seen and experienced but El Salvador just keeps coming at me and I never seem to be able to process one experience completely before I need to start processing the next. So I´m looking forward to some time to reflect and figure out how to start putting into practice what I have learned. Right now I´m feeling overwhelmed with information and experiences, but hopefully time will help.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Romero and the UCA Chapel
With this small group of young ladies we are doing some of the same things that we did while the group from Minnesota was here. I appreciated being able to visit some of the same places again, because I always learn something new, see something in a new way, or think of something different. Now I can also write about stuff that we are doing again that I didn´t have a chance to write about before.
Saturday morning we went to the University of Central American (UCA) again, but unfortunately we didn´t get to see Jon Sobrino again. There are usually students who give tours through the museum and explain the massacre of the Jesuit priests that happened at the UCA in addition to talking about other acts of violence that occurred during the war. However, since it was Saturday there weren´t any student guides there, so Julie and I gave the tour and told our little group what we knew about the things in the museum and about the massacre of the Jesuit priests.
Saturday after we went to the UCA we went to the place where Romero lived and where he was assassinated. Oscar Romero is someone that I look to as a spiritual guide. He was an incredible man and died fighting for justice. Romero was the Catholic archbishop of El Salvador from 1977-1980. He was appointed to be arch-bishop at a time when there was a lot of tension in the country. The Church hierarchy appointed Romero because he was a quiet man who they thought wouldn`t make any waves. However, Romero didn´t live up to these expectations. The priest Rutilio Grande was a friend of Romero and when Rutilio Grande was murdered, Romero began publicly speaking out against the violence in El Salvador. Each week in his homilies, Romero would talk about the violence of deaths, disappearances, repression, massacres, etc., that had occurred in the country. Practically everyone in El Salvador listened to his homilies either at the cathedral or on the radio. This was an important source of information for Salvadorans and most people highly respected him for what he was doing, but those who were carrying out the violence did not appreciate what Romero was doing.
Romero was a simple and humble man. Even though he could have lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, he decided to live in a cancer hospital run by nuns. At first he lived in a little room behind the chapel, but the nuns eventually had a little house built for him. Even this house was still very simple. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, and two little rooms for when visitors came. They have left much of his house as it was. The have added some displays of his things, pictures of his death and his funeral, and a display of the clothes he was wearing when he was killed.
On March 23, 1980, during Romero´s homily he directly addressed the men in the army. He told them that no one has to obey orders that go against the will of God. He was essentially telling the soldiers to disobey the orders of the military officials and to stop killing their fellow Salvadorans. He told them to stop the repression. This, of course, did not sit well with the military hierarchy. The next day when Romero was giving a mass at the cancer hospital, a car drove up outside the chapel and a man shot Romero. The bullet hit his aorta and exploded inside his body. We visited the chapel where he was killed.
Romero fully knew that he would probably be assassinated for speaking out against the violence and repression and yet he continued to do it. He once said that if he was killed he would rise again in the Salvadoran people. And this definitely happened. Even today 30 years later you see Romero everywhere in murals, on t-shirts, purses, key chains, etc. Today we went to the Catholic cathedral where Romero is buried. When he first died, his tomb was in the main part of the cathedral. After some years he was moved to the basement of the cathedral. Some say they moved him because there was more space down there and others argue that they moved him because the Church hierarchy wanted to move on from that period of speaking out and making waves. As Romero would have wanted it, his tomb in the basement was very simple. For the 25th anniversary of Romero´s death, a beautiful bronze sculpture was made where Romero is now entombed.
In my previous post about the UCA I didn´t tell you about the university´s chapel. The chapel is located very near to where the Jesuit priest lived and where they were murdered. This chapel is a very beautiful and moving space. The murdered priests are buried here in this space that speaks to death and suffering that occurred at the UCA as well as the violence that occurred and continues to occur across El Salvador. However, the chapel is also a space devoted to life. There are pieces of art that expose the violence and death, but at the same time provide a source of hope for life.
Above the altar there are three pieces painted in a traditional Salvadoran style in memory of Oscar Romero. There is much symbolism in these pieces that tells about the life, work, and theology of Romero.
On the back wall of the chapel are 14 drawings that represent the stations of the cross. Normally the stations of the cross depict Jesus journey to the cross and his death. In this case the drawings depict Salvadorans who had been tortured and murdered during the war. These drawings are graphic- naked, tortured, mutilated, suffering. Many have questioned why these graphic drawings are in the chapel, but they are they to expose the truth and to depict how Jesus was and continues to be present in the suffering of the Salvadoran people. Jesus suffered on the cross when he was crucified 2,000 years ago and he was crucified again with each of the 75,000 Salvadorans that were killed during the war. Jesus suffered with his people during the war and he continues to suffer with his people even now through the violence of all the injustices in El Salvador. We in the US tend to identify with the resurrected Jesus, but Salvadorans identify with the crucified Jesus because they can relate to the pain and suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross. I don´t really like thinking about Jesus´ pain and death on the cross because it makes me sad and uncomfortable. However, here in El Salvador death, pain, and suffering are so prevalent and I tend to think more about Jesus´ suffering as I see Jesus in the people here who are suffering.
Saturday morning we went to the University of Central American (UCA) again, but unfortunately we didn´t get to see Jon Sobrino again. There are usually students who give tours through the museum and explain the massacre of the Jesuit priests that happened at the UCA in addition to talking about other acts of violence that occurred during the war. However, since it was Saturday there weren´t any student guides there, so Julie and I gave the tour and told our little group what we knew about the things in the museum and about the massacre of the Jesuit priests.
Saturday after we went to the UCA we went to the place where Romero lived and where he was assassinated. Oscar Romero is someone that I look to as a spiritual guide. He was an incredible man and died fighting for justice. Romero was the Catholic archbishop of El Salvador from 1977-1980. He was appointed to be arch-bishop at a time when there was a lot of tension in the country. The Church hierarchy appointed Romero because he was a quiet man who they thought wouldn`t make any waves. However, Romero didn´t live up to these expectations. The priest Rutilio Grande was a friend of Romero and when Rutilio Grande was murdered, Romero began publicly speaking out against the violence in El Salvador. Each week in his homilies, Romero would talk about the violence of deaths, disappearances, repression, massacres, etc., that had occurred in the country. Practically everyone in El Salvador listened to his homilies either at the cathedral or on the radio. This was an important source of information for Salvadorans and most people highly respected him for what he was doing, but those who were carrying out the violence did not appreciate what Romero was doing.
Romero was a simple and humble man. Even though he could have lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, he decided to live in a cancer hospital run by nuns. At first he lived in a little room behind the chapel, but the nuns eventually had a little house built for him. Even this house was still very simple. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, and two little rooms for when visitors came. They have left much of his house as it was. The have added some displays of his things, pictures of his death and his funeral, and a display of the clothes he was wearing when he was killed.
On March 23, 1980, during Romero´s homily he directly addressed the men in the army. He told them that no one has to obey orders that go against the will of God. He was essentially telling the soldiers to disobey the orders of the military officials and to stop killing their fellow Salvadorans. He told them to stop the repression. This, of course, did not sit well with the military hierarchy. The next day when Romero was giving a mass at the cancer hospital, a car drove up outside the chapel and a man shot Romero. The bullet hit his aorta and exploded inside his body. We visited the chapel where he was killed.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Those who die defending their people aren´t dead
My awesome friend Amanda arrived last night, but unfortunately her luggage did not arrive. Alexis, a friend of Julie´s from her church got here yesterday afternoon (with her luggage). Another young lady, Hannah, will arrive tonight after being stuck in Miami for a whole day after her flight yesterday was canceled. The five us us young ladies will spend the next 8 days together doing all sorts of cool stuff. And then I have to go home, but I´m not dealing with that thought yet...
Today we went with Bishop Gomez to a remembrance celebration for an anti-mining environmental activist that was assassinated one year ago. In El Salvador the first year anniversary of a death is a big deal that is usually remembered with a church service. And for this activist, Marcelo Rivera, the anniversary of his death is an even bigger deal in the context of the continuing battle being fought against mining. We went to the town of San Isidro in the department of Cabañas which was about an hour and a half drive from the capital.
The issue gold mining in Cabañas is complex and there is already a lot of good information out there (Democracy Now, UpsideDown World, Tim´s Blog), but here are the basic details... The Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is a Canadian mining company based in Vancouver. They have been in El Salvador for several years now trying to mine gold. The Salvadoran government granted permits for Pacific Rim to explore the area to see how much gold is there, but thus far the government has said that it will not give them permits to actually begin extracting gold. The government is refusing to give extraction permits in response to the efforts of people in community organizations and environmental groups that have clearly expressed that they do not want Pacific Rim to be mining in the area where they live.
There are a number of problems that come with mining for precious metals like gold. The main problem is that mining destroys the environment. The water supply gets used up and the water and soil are contaminated with chemicals that come from extracting gold from the earth. For the Salvadorans who depend heavily on the land to survive, these environmental problems become problems of life and death. Pacific Rim conducted an environmental study and claims that they can mine without the environment problems, but no other mining company has been able to do what Pacific Rim claims they will be able to do. Pacific Rim also claims that they will be bringing development and progress to El Salvador by providing jobs, and while it is true they will provide jobs these will be dangerous and low paying jobs. The real benefits of the gold mining will go to Pacific Rim not the people of El Salvador. When the Salvadoran government said they would not give permits for mining, Pacific Rim was understandably upset because of the investment they had already made. So Pacific Rim sued the Salvadoran government through the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This is where Pacific Rim got real sneaky. Canada is not a part of CAFTA, so what they did was they acquired a subsidiary in Nevada and through this subsidiary they were able to use CAFTA to their advantage. Proceedings for the CAFTA suit began in the beginning of June and we´ll see what happens...
In all this mess, three leaders in the anti-mining campaign have been assassinated. Last June, Marcelo Rivera disappeared, and 11 days later his body was found at the bottom of a well with signs that he had been tortured. Then in December, Ramiro Rivera Gomez and Dora Alicia Sorto were assassinated a few days apart. Both were also leaders in the anti-mining campaign. Dora Alicia Recinos was 8 months pregnant and this baby was killed as well.
Pacific Rim claims that these murders are simply gang violence or violence between feuding families. However, these murders are clearly a systemic attempt to intimidate and eliminate the leaders of the anti-mining movement in Cabañas. No one can deny that there was violence in Cabañas before Pacific Rim began exploration of the mine, but the fact is that the violence has increased significantly as a result of the presence of Pacific Rim. Other people who have been active in the fight against Pacific Rim have received death threats.
There is hope for the people of Cabañas though. Government leaders have called for a full investigation into the murders to find the authors of these horrific crimes. The Salvadoran president, Mauricio Funes, has said that he will not give a permit to any company to mine in El Salvador. A group has even called on Salvadoran law makers to create legislation that would prohibit any mining of any precious metals. Local groups opposed to the mining have been very successful in preventing Pacific Rim from opening their mines. The recent violence has served as a spark that has generated even more support and awareness of the environmental groups opposing the mining.
However, it seems as if Pacific Rim will allow the violence to continue and escalate as long as there is a possibility that they will be able to make some money off their investment. Whether or not Pacific Rim has had a direct role in the violence, it is clear that their continued presence has brought on and intensified the violence. Pacific Rim must recognize the role they have played in the violence and must do whatever they can to stop the violence even if that means they have to leave the country.
The responsibility for this violence does not fall solely on Pacific Rim though. Our very own free trade agreements have a significant roll in this violence. We usually hear nothing but good things about free trade, but the truth is that there are many bad things about free trade that we don´t hear about. Free trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA give so much power to large corporations. The corporations even have more power than governments like the government of El Salvador who in this case is trying to protect its citizens. Clearly we need to take a second look at our free trade agreements and determine what the costs and benefits are. There are some very huge costs.
As we drove into town today we met the procession that had already started. Bishop Gomez, a few other pastors, and the rest of our random group joined in the procession. We marched to the beat of the drummers to the town square. There a tent was set up for the church service. This was an ecumenical celebration- Lutheran, Anglican, and Catholic leaders joined together in this remembrance of Marcelo. There were probably at least 300 people there, probably more.
The pastors and priests spoke of Marcelo Rivera and the others who had been assassinated as martyrs. The martyrs were compared to Jesus. Just like Jesus, Marcelo was killed for speaking out against the status quo of injustice. He was killed for speaking the truth. He died fighting for peace and life for all. He was assassinated for trying to protect God´s creation and especially for trying to protect the humans that God created in God´s own image.
Just as Jesus´ death wasn´t the end of the story, Marcelo´s death was the the end of this story. Rather his death urged others to continue on with the work that Marcelo was killed for doing. Today we were encouraged to continue to fight for life and for dignity for all people despite the power that death seems to have.
I was reminded once again today that the violence continues in El Salvador. The war was over 18 years ago yet this violence is far too similar to the disappearances, assassinations, and torture that occurred during the war.
The good news in all his is that Christians of all denominations continue to speak out against violence in all its forms in El Salvador. I was amazed by how beautiful it was for these leaders of different denominations to join together to show their solidarity and common hope that one day there might be peace, truth, and justice. We prayed for peace, for justice, and for life. I sure hope God answers this prayer soon.
Today we went with Bishop Gomez to a remembrance celebration for an anti-mining environmental activist that was assassinated one year ago. In El Salvador the first year anniversary of a death is a big deal that is usually remembered with a church service. And for this activist, Marcelo Rivera, the anniversary of his death is an even bigger deal in the context of the continuing battle being fought against mining. We went to the town of San Isidro in the department of Cabañas which was about an hour and a half drive from the capital.
The issue gold mining in Cabañas is complex and there is already a lot of good information out there (Democracy Now, UpsideDown World, Tim´s Blog), but here are the basic details... The Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is a Canadian mining company based in Vancouver. They have been in El Salvador for several years now trying to mine gold. The Salvadoran government granted permits for Pacific Rim to explore the area to see how much gold is there, but thus far the government has said that it will not give them permits to actually begin extracting gold. The government is refusing to give extraction permits in response to the efforts of people in community organizations and environmental groups that have clearly expressed that they do not want Pacific Rim to be mining in the area where they live.
There are a number of problems that come with mining for precious metals like gold. The main problem is that mining destroys the environment. The water supply gets used up and the water and soil are contaminated with chemicals that come from extracting gold from the earth. For the Salvadorans who depend heavily on the land to survive, these environmental problems become problems of life and death. Pacific Rim conducted an environmental study and claims that they can mine without the environment problems, but no other mining company has been able to do what Pacific Rim claims they will be able to do. Pacific Rim also claims that they will be bringing development and progress to El Salvador by providing jobs, and while it is true they will provide jobs these will be dangerous and low paying jobs. The real benefits of the gold mining will go to Pacific Rim not the people of El Salvador. When the Salvadoran government said they would not give permits for mining, Pacific Rim was understandably upset because of the investment they had already made. So Pacific Rim sued the Salvadoran government through the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This is where Pacific Rim got real sneaky. Canada is not a part of CAFTA, so what they did was they acquired a subsidiary in Nevada and through this subsidiary they were able to use CAFTA to their advantage. Proceedings for the CAFTA suit began in the beginning of June and we´ll see what happens...
In all this mess, three leaders in the anti-mining campaign have been assassinated. Last June, Marcelo Rivera disappeared, and 11 days later his body was found at the bottom of a well with signs that he had been tortured. Then in December, Ramiro Rivera Gomez and Dora Alicia Sorto were assassinated a few days apart. Both were also leaders in the anti-mining campaign. Dora Alicia Recinos was 8 months pregnant and this baby was killed as well.
Pacific Rim claims that these murders are simply gang violence or violence between feuding families. However, these murders are clearly a systemic attempt to intimidate and eliminate the leaders of the anti-mining movement in Cabañas. No one can deny that there was violence in Cabañas before Pacific Rim began exploration of the mine, but the fact is that the violence has increased significantly as a result of the presence of Pacific Rim. Other people who have been active in the fight against Pacific Rim have received death threats.
There is hope for the people of Cabañas though. Government leaders have called for a full investigation into the murders to find the authors of these horrific crimes. The Salvadoran president, Mauricio Funes, has said that he will not give a permit to any company to mine in El Salvador. A group has even called on Salvadoran law makers to create legislation that would prohibit any mining of any precious metals. Local groups opposed to the mining have been very successful in preventing Pacific Rim from opening their mines. The recent violence has served as a spark that has generated even more support and awareness of the environmental groups opposing the mining.
However, it seems as if Pacific Rim will allow the violence to continue and escalate as long as there is a possibility that they will be able to make some money off their investment. Whether or not Pacific Rim has had a direct role in the violence, it is clear that their continued presence has brought on and intensified the violence. Pacific Rim must recognize the role they have played in the violence and must do whatever they can to stop the violence even if that means they have to leave the country.
The responsibility for this violence does not fall solely on Pacific Rim though. Our very own free trade agreements have a significant roll in this violence. We usually hear nothing but good things about free trade, but the truth is that there are many bad things about free trade that we don´t hear about. Free trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA give so much power to large corporations. The corporations even have more power than governments like the government of El Salvador who in this case is trying to protect its citizens. Clearly we need to take a second look at our free trade agreements and determine what the costs and benefits are. There are some very huge costs.
As we drove into town today we met the procession that had already started. Bishop Gomez, a few other pastors, and the rest of our random group joined in the procession. We marched to the beat of the drummers to the town square. There a tent was set up for the church service. This was an ecumenical celebration- Lutheran, Anglican, and Catholic leaders joined together in this remembrance of Marcelo. There were probably at least 300 people there, probably more.
The pastors and priests spoke of Marcelo Rivera and the others who had been assassinated as martyrs. The martyrs were compared to Jesus. Just like Jesus, Marcelo was killed for speaking out against the status quo of injustice. He was killed for speaking the truth. He died fighting for peace and life for all. He was assassinated for trying to protect God´s creation and especially for trying to protect the humans that God created in God´s own image.
Just as Jesus´ death wasn´t the end of the story, Marcelo´s death was the the end of this story. Rather his death urged others to continue on with the work that Marcelo was killed for doing. Today we were encouraged to continue to fight for life and for dignity for all people despite the power that death seems to have.
I was reminded once again today that the violence continues in El Salvador. The war was over 18 years ago yet this violence is far too similar to the disappearances, assassinations, and torture that occurred during the war.
The good news in all his is that Christians of all denominations continue to speak out against violence in all its forms in El Salvador. I was amazed by how beautiful it was for these leaders of different denominations to join together to show their solidarity and common hope that one day there might be peace, truth, and justice. We prayed for peace, for justice, and for life. I sure hope God answers this prayer soon.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Men with Big Scary Guns
I have been formulating this post in my head for a while, but I am just now getting around to writing it up.
In El Salvador, as in most other Latin American countries and I´m guessing other counties too, there are men with big scary guns guarding banks, stores, restaurants, houses, museums, etc. I won´t pretend like I know what kinds of guns they are, but I do know that they are big and they are scary looking. The men usually stand outside whatever they are guarding holding their big scary guns across their bodies. These men work for private security companies that are hired by the banks, stores, restaurants, etc. to guard these places. When we went to the pool, the closest thing to lifeguards were the men walking around with big, scary guns (they also carried whistles that they blew when the kids were misbehaving). The police also carry around big scary guns on their patrols. The military has been helping to patrol the streets as well and I have seen soldiers riding around in the back of pick-up trucks with their big scary guns.
No matter how many times I see these men, it makes me uncomfortable and intimidated. I am always acutely aware of when I see one of these men with a big scary gun in part because this is not something that I´m used to. Sometimes I feel somewhat comforted by the fact that these men are guarding where ever it is that I am, but it still makes me feel a bit worried that things could go wrong really quickly. I went to the bank with Pastor Matias once and there were two guards outside. It made me feel safe that the guards were outside and wouldn´t let in anyone dangerous. But then while we were waiting in the very long line, one of the guards came in and it made me uncomfortable for him to stand so near me with his big scary gun.
One time when I was at the grocery store with Pastor Martina, we were near the back of the store and a man carrying a bag with what I presumed was cash came out of the back room. Following behind him were two men with big scary guns. One of the men with a gun followed the man with the bag of cash and the other man with the gun went down another aisle toward the front of the store. The shoppers continued with their shopping barely making any effort to move out of the way of the men with big scary guns who were moving quite quickly. None of the other shoppers seemed to even notice this scene that I watched very closely. I guess they are just used to seeing big scary guns and it just doen´t bother them or they don´t show their fear and concern.
I can´t say this for a fact, but I imagine that this strategy of having armed guards is pretty effective for preventing robberies. It certainly makes me think twice about doing anything that even looks remotely suspicious or wrong. However, I really wonder how necessary it is. Is there something different between the people of El Salvador and people in the US that makes it necessary for armed guards to protect everything. I don´t really understand, just wanted to share my observations on this.
In El Salvador, as in most other Latin American countries and I´m guessing other counties too, there are men with big scary guns guarding banks, stores, restaurants, houses, museums, etc. I won´t pretend like I know what kinds of guns they are, but I do know that they are big and they are scary looking. The men usually stand outside whatever they are guarding holding their big scary guns across their bodies. These men work for private security companies that are hired by the banks, stores, restaurants, etc. to guard these places. When we went to the pool, the closest thing to lifeguards were the men walking around with big, scary guns (they also carried whistles that they blew when the kids were misbehaving). The police also carry around big scary guns on their patrols. The military has been helping to patrol the streets as well and I have seen soldiers riding around in the back of pick-up trucks with their big scary guns.
No matter how many times I see these men, it makes me uncomfortable and intimidated. I am always acutely aware of when I see one of these men with a big scary gun in part because this is not something that I´m used to. Sometimes I feel somewhat comforted by the fact that these men are guarding where ever it is that I am, but it still makes me feel a bit worried that things could go wrong really quickly. I went to the bank with Pastor Matias once and there were two guards outside. It made me feel safe that the guards were outside and wouldn´t let in anyone dangerous. But then while we were waiting in the very long line, one of the guards came in and it made me uncomfortable for him to stand so near me with his big scary gun.
One time when I was at the grocery store with Pastor Martina, we were near the back of the store and a man carrying a bag with what I presumed was cash came out of the back room. Following behind him were two men with big scary guns. One of the men with a gun followed the man with the bag of cash and the other man with the gun went down another aisle toward the front of the store. The shoppers continued with their shopping barely making any effort to move out of the way of the men with big scary guns who were moving quite quickly. None of the other shoppers seemed to even notice this scene that I watched very closely. I guess they are just used to seeing big scary guns and it just doen´t bother them or they don´t show their fear and concern.
I can´t say this for a fact, but I imagine that this strategy of having armed guards is pretty effective for preventing robberies. It certainly makes me think twice about doing anything that even looks remotely suspicious or wrong. However, I really wonder how necessary it is. Is there something different between the people of El Salvador and people in the US that makes it necessary for armed guards to protect everything. I don´t really understand, just wanted to share my observations on this.
Monday, July 5, 2010
When you´ve been in El Salvador for a month...
After being in El Salvador for exactly a month, I was starting to get comfortable and almost bored with El Salvador, but then Saturday happened. There simply are no adequate words to describe what I saw and experienced. But I´m going to try as hard as I can to convey what I saw, heard, and felt.
On Friday, Julie, Mari, and I took a bus about 2 hours away to the south and east part of El Salvador. We went to a town called Concepcion Batres. We stayed with David and Nancy who are missionaries here for 2.5 years from Wisconsin. They have a nice house (except for the bugs, mold, and leaking roof). They have been in El Salvador since November and have been in their house for a month now. They are teaching a bunch of English classes in communities near where they are living and they are working on trying to figure out some bigger projects that they can work on with members of the communities. Concepcion Batres is a really cute town and it is in a very safe area. After dinner we were able to walk to the town center to get some ice cream, and even though it was dark we didn´t have to worry about our safety. It was almost like being in a completely different country- everything was just calm, nice, and safe. It was refreshing to see that it is actually possible for this to happen in El Salvador. I can only hope that this can happen in other cities as well.
Friday afternoon, a pastor that works in the area where David and Nancy work stopped by for a visit. Pastor Ana Rosa told us that the next day she was going with another pastor, Pastor Alejandro, to visit the communities in the department of La Union where he works and to see some of the destruction from tropical storms Agatha and Alex that came through about a month ago and a week ago respectively. Since we didn´t have any plans yet for Saturday, Julie and I asked if we could go with and Pastor Ana Rosa graciously agreed.
Pastor Ana Rosa picked us up at 6:30 on Saturday morning and we headed father east and south down the highway. We drove for about 2 hours on the nice highway. On the way the views of the landscape were beautiful- mountains, volcanoes, farmland. We even got to see the ocean and Honduras.
Eventually we stopped to pick up Pastor Alejandro who is the pastor of the communities we were going to visit. We drove a little bit farther and then turned off on to a ¨road¨. We didn´t have to go very far on the ¨road¨ but we did have to go through a pretty big river. During the rains in the tropical storms the the river flooded practically the whole community that is located here along the river. The houses are at least 10 feet above the level of where the river is right now, and the river came up 15-20 feet during the flooding.
We parked the truck where the road ended and went to see the first house. The woman who lived in the house welcomed us in and eagerly showed us how high the water had gotten (about 4-5 feet up the walls of her house), she showed us where the walls had cracked from the force of the water, and she showed us how they had tied the beds to the ceiling so they would be off the floor.
We went and saw the neighbor´s house which had fared somewhat better. While Pastor Alejandro went with Julie and I on this little tour, Pastor Ana Rosa had set up a table and chair and a line of people was beginning to form. The main reason why the pastors had come was to get a list of everyone´s name and their identification number so that the Lutheran Church knows how many people are there and in need of food and assistance. Pastor Alejandro seemed to think that there wouldn´t be enough aid for all the people, but he promised to do what he could to get them food and medicine.
While Pastor Ana Rosa continued with the paper work, Julie, Pastor Alejandro and I went to see some other houses in the community. Julie and I had no idea what we consented to when we agreed to go see some more houses. We went down to the river level and then went back up the bank of the river. Everything was still very wet and MUDDY. I´m still not sure what would have been appropriate clothing for this adventure, but a skirt and sandals just wasn´t working out for me. The mud was the kind of mud that that is squishy and you have to pull up to get your shoes out of it. Julie and I struggled along. At first I was trying not to get dirty, but I soon gave up on that and just tried not to fall into the mud or water. Julie and I were pretty helpless when it came to walking in the mud. Pastor Alejandro and a woman from the community helped each of us by pulling us along through the mud. Julie and I laughed at ourselves and Pastor Alejandro and the woman laughed with us. It´s a good thing we were able to laugh about the mud and our helplessness because there was very little else to laugh about in this community.
Early on in our adventure I got too close to one of the barbed-wire fences and I scraped my arm and it was bleeding. The woman who was helping me just wiped off the blood for me and we continued on. The community has no roads, just paths between the houses. We went up and down hills, through streams, and even through a field where cows were grazing. At one point we had to go through one of the fences.
Some houses were damaged so much that the families could no longer live in them so they had to stay with another family. There was a variety of qualities of houses in this community. There were a couple of houses that had been built through the Catholic aid organization Caritas. These houses made of cinder blocks with a cement floor held up well in the flooding, but their belongings that they weren´t able to move got wet. There were some houses that were made with bricks and mortar and they were still standing but we saw some that had been cracked from the force of the water. Then there were some places where people lived that you really couldn´t call houses. Some were just sticks with plastic. It was unclear to me what made a house uninhabitable- to me they all appeared to be unfit for a family to live in. I think some people were able to clean out the mud, little stones, and garbage that had come into the house with the flooding water. Those that weren´t able to live in their houses stayed with others in the community.
7 people lived in this house:
The woman from the community that was with us told us she wanted us to see her mother who was sick. When we finally made it to her house we went in and we were offered a seat on a bed. The house was about 10 feet by 20 feet. There were two beds and three hammocks hanging. They had some shelves, dishes, things to cooks with, and a few other things. In one of the hammocks was the woman´s mother.
She was probably in her 60s, maybe older. She had a hernia and was in constant pain from some other ailment. She had also broken her wrist or arm some time ago and she wasn´t able to go to get it fixed. It had healed in such a way that it looked like her hand was dislocated from her arm bones and the hand was almost perpendicular to her arm. They told us for $300 she could have surgery to fix it, but this is far more than they could ever dream of having. As we were sitting there another woman came in and showed us her hand that had been severely burned quite a while ago. She had it covered with a towel and I highly doubt that she had received any medical assistance. As we sat there it the house and witnessed the lack of access to health care, Pastor Alejandro and the woman in the house told us about other ways in which this community suffered. Pastor Alejandro described how young children cry from hunger: their cries are weak because they do not the energy to cry loudly. They don´t have clean water to drink. They have to wash their dishes and clothes in the river and I´m guessing that most of them also bathe in the river. The river is muddy and Pastor Alejandro said that the river is often contaminated leading to skin rashes. There are no jobs. They have no transportation to get anywhere. These people had next to nothing, they recognized their own poverty and suffering, and they were desperate. They were desperate for help of the most basic sort- food, medicine, water, and shelter.
The reality of the immense suffering in this place hit me hard while I was sitting in that house. I cried. The full reality of the suffering of this community hit hard. My heart has been broken before, but as I was sitting there my heart was ripped apart, and I´m not sure that it will completely heal. I guess when you´ve been in El Salvador for a month, your heart gets broken beyond repair (not quite as nice as getting to go to the pool when you´ve been in El Salvador for a week, but I wouldn´t have traded this day for anything).
The people in the community were very eager to show us their houses and what had happened because of the flooding. Again and again Pastor Alejandro told us to take pictures of the damage and of the people living in the community. Pastor Alejandro and the members of the community knew the power of Julie and I taking those pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words and they knew those pictures would convey the words of truth about the damage of the flooding and the immense struggles the people live through even when they aren´t dealing with the damage of flooding. They told us again and again to take pictures so that people would believe what happened. I´m not sure if there was some history of people not believing what happened to them, but they were very adamant about us taking pictures and then showing them to whoever could help them. They told us to show the pictures to our churches, to show the pictures to our pastors, and then they told us to bring our church members and our pastors to this community. More than anything the people in this community wanted people to know that they are there and they are suffering, and they need help. They knew that Julie and I and all the people we know back home have the power and the ability to help them.
Julie and I wanted so bad to give them something, to give them everything they needed. We didn´t have anything with us to give them, but my mind immediately began thinking of ways that I could help this community. Their needs are so immense, immediate, and numerous. Julie said that the ideal situation would be to help them start up something that would be self-sustaining and empowering to the people in this community. However, it seems that they are so far from this. First they need food, water, medicine, and shelter before they can even think about doing something long term.
As Pastor Ana Rosa finished up the paperwork, Pastor Alejandro spoke to the members of his congregation who were gathered. He told them to pray for the things they needed and he told them to remember that God has not nor will God ever forget or abandon them. It was clear that these people felt completely abandoned and forgotten by the whole world, and I´m sure in their situation it would have been very easy to question again and again where God was in their suffering. More times than I would like to admit, I have found myself questioning if God was really with me. I can only imagine how much stronger that questioning must be for the people in this community who have essentially been abandoned by everyone.
Pastor Alejandor gathered all the kids together and they sang a couple of songs for us. There were some pretty darn cute kids.
We left this little community and then we drove a little bit to where more of Pastor Alejandor´s congregants were gathered. We saw some more houses that had been flooded. They recorded names and identification numbers again. When we were finished there we tried to go to another little community, but we couldn´t get to it because we couldn´t make it across a river.
Some houses were completely destroyed by the flooding. Here is all that´s left of one house:
I thought I had seen the worst of poverty at the Hope House and in Pastor Matias´ communities and I had seen poverty. But I hadn´t seen Poverty. The people living in this community told us they had nothing and it was true. They had nothing before the tropical storms, they had less after the flooding, and the will have even less after the next time their community floods. These people are vulnerable. The flooding may be a natural disaster in the sense that it was nature that brought the rains, but it is a man-made disaster when we consider the social injustices that will keep the members of the community there to suffer flood after flood. They have practically no chance of ever being able to break out of the cycle of poverty and suffering that they were born into. Again and again the community will flood, they will rebuild their houses as best they can, and they will continue to just barely survive. Children will continue to cry of hunger, people will continue to go without basic health care, they won´t have adequate houses.
The cycle of suffering will continue unless something changes for this community. The needs of the community are far beyond what they could possibly provide for themselves at this point. I´m sure there are just as many ways to help as there are problems. I don´t yet know even where to start, but I´m determined to find out. As I sat listening to the children sing and as Pastor Alejandro prayed, I knew that God brought me there for a reason. Looking back now, I can very clearly see how God worked to get me to this community
On Friday, Julie, Mari, and I took a bus about 2 hours away to the south and east part of El Salvador. We went to a town called Concepcion Batres. We stayed with David and Nancy who are missionaries here for 2.5 years from Wisconsin. They have a nice house (except for the bugs, mold, and leaking roof). They have been in El Salvador since November and have been in their house for a month now. They are teaching a bunch of English classes in communities near where they are living and they are working on trying to figure out some bigger projects that they can work on with members of the communities. Concepcion Batres is a really cute town and it is in a very safe area. After dinner we were able to walk to the town center to get some ice cream, and even though it was dark we didn´t have to worry about our safety. It was almost like being in a completely different country- everything was just calm, nice, and safe. It was refreshing to see that it is actually possible for this to happen in El Salvador. I can only hope that this can happen in other cities as well.
Friday afternoon, a pastor that works in the area where David and Nancy work stopped by for a visit. Pastor Ana Rosa told us that the next day she was going with another pastor, Pastor Alejandro, to visit the communities in the department of La Union where he works and to see some of the destruction from tropical storms Agatha and Alex that came through about a month ago and a week ago respectively. Since we didn´t have any plans yet for Saturday, Julie and I asked if we could go with and Pastor Ana Rosa graciously agreed.
Pastor Ana Rosa picked us up at 6:30 on Saturday morning and we headed father east and south down the highway. We drove for about 2 hours on the nice highway. On the way the views of the landscape were beautiful- mountains, volcanoes, farmland. We even got to see the ocean and Honduras.
Eventually we stopped to pick up Pastor Alejandro who is the pastor of the communities we were going to visit. We drove a little bit farther and then turned off on to a ¨road¨. We didn´t have to go very far on the ¨road¨ but we did have to go through a pretty big river. During the rains in the tropical storms the the river flooded practically the whole community that is located here along the river. The houses are at least 10 feet above the level of where the river is right now, and the river came up 15-20 feet during the flooding.
We went and saw the neighbor´s house which had fared somewhat better. While Pastor Alejandro went with Julie and I on this little tour, Pastor Ana Rosa had set up a table and chair and a line of people was beginning to form. The main reason why the pastors had come was to get a list of everyone´s name and their identification number so that the Lutheran Church knows how many people are there and in need of food and assistance. Pastor Alejandro seemed to think that there wouldn´t be enough aid for all the people, but he promised to do what he could to get them food and medicine.
While Pastor Ana Rosa continued with the paper work, Julie, Pastor Alejandro and I went to see some other houses in the community. Julie and I had no idea what we consented to when we agreed to go see some more houses. We went down to the river level and then went back up the bank of the river. Everything was still very wet and MUDDY. I´m still not sure what would have been appropriate clothing for this adventure, but a skirt and sandals just wasn´t working out for me. The mud was the kind of mud that that is squishy and you have to pull up to get your shoes out of it. Julie and I struggled along. At first I was trying not to get dirty, but I soon gave up on that and just tried not to fall into the mud or water. Julie and I were pretty helpless when it came to walking in the mud. Pastor Alejandro and a woman from the community helped each of us by pulling us along through the mud. Julie and I laughed at ourselves and Pastor Alejandro and the woman laughed with us. It´s a good thing we were able to laugh about the mud and our helplessness because there was very little else to laugh about in this community.
7 people lived in this house:
The reality of the immense suffering in this place hit me hard while I was sitting in that house. I cried. The full reality of the suffering of this community hit hard. My heart has been broken before, but as I was sitting there my heart was ripped apart, and I´m not sure that it will completely heal. I guess when you´ve been in El Salvador for a month, your heart gets broken beyond repair (not quite as nice as getting to go to the pool when you´ve been in El Salvador for a week, but I wouldn´t have traded this day for anything).
The people in the community were very eager to show us their houses and what had happened because of the flooding. Again and again Pastor Alejandro told us to take pictures of the damage and of the people living in the community. Pastor Alejandro and the members of the community knew the power of Julie and I taking those pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words and they knew those pictures would convey the words of truth about the damage of the flooding and the immense struggles the people live through even when they aren´t dealing with the damage of flooding. They told us again and again to take pictures so that people would believe what happened. I´m not sure if there was some history of people not believing what happened to them, but they were very adamant about us taking pictures and then showing them to whoever could help them. They told us to show the pictures to our churches, to show the pictures to our pastors, and then they told us to bring our church members and our pastors to this community. More than anything the people in this community wanted people to know that they are there and they are suffering, and they need help. They knew that Julie and I and all the people we know back home have the power and the ability to help them.
Julie and I wanted so bad to give them something, to give them everything they needed. We didn´t have anything with us to give them, but my mind immediately began thinking of ways that I could help this community. Their needs are so immense, immediate, and numerous. Julie said that the ideal situation would be to help them start up something that would be self-sustaining and empowering to the people in this community. However, it seems that they are so far from this. First they need food, water, medicine, and shelter before they can even think about doing something long term.
As Pastor Ana Rosa finished up the paperwork, Pastor Alejandro spoke to the members of his congregation who were gathered. He told them to pray for the things they needed and he told them to remember that God has not nor will God ever forget or abandon them. It was clear that these people felt completely abandoned and forgotten by the whole world, and I´m sure in their situation it would have been very easy to question again and again where God was in their suffering. More times than I would like to admit, I have found myself questioning if God was really with me. I can only imagine how much stronger that questioning must be for the people in this community who have essentially been abandoned by everyone.
Pastor Alejandor gathered all the kids together and they sang a couple of songs for us. There were some pretty darn cute kids.
Some houses were completely destroyed by the flooding. Here is all that´s left of one house:
The cycle of suffering will continue unless something changes for this community. The needs of the community are far beyond what they could possibly provide for themselves at this point. I´m sure there are just as many ways to help as there are problems. I don´t yet know even where to start, but I´m determined to find out. As I sat listening to the children sing and as Pastor Alejandro prayed, I knew that God brought me there for a reason. Looking back now, I can very clearly see how God worked to get me to this community
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Houses, Road Work, and Stories
Julie and I just spent a couple of days with Pastors Matias and Martina. I just love staying with them! They take such good care of us and are such wonderful people! The highlights of our stay with them was going to visit the two month old baby in the community of Colon and going to the pool. We also got to go visit a couple of houses in Guaycume that are being rebuilt after the heavy rains of last November damaged them. One house was pretty much completely destroyed when mud from the hill above slid down and covered the house. They now have a sturdy house, but they don´t have electricity, running water, or windows, and they just have a dirt floor. The other house fell down the hill it is located on. They are still working on reconstructing the house. I´m not convinced that even the new construction will help. The house is well constructed, but it seems like it is just a matter of time before the land below it is washed away down the hill by rain. The family is in a tough situation though because this is the land they own and so that is where they need to construct their house. The money for the new construction for both houses came from donations from churches in the States. The new house cost $3,000 to construct- strong foundation, two rooms, strong metal roof. With $1,500 more they could have electricity, a nice cement floor, doors, and windows. Just think...only $4,500 to construct a nice house. Wouldn´t it be wonderful if everyone could have a simple nice house like that? Here are pictures of the house that was destroyed by the land slide and their newly constructed house.
Also in Guaycume, Pastor Matias and some of the church members spent time clearing some brush from the side of the ¨road¨ and digging some ditches on the side of the road for the rain water to run through so that the rain hopefully won´t make it´s own ditches through the middle of the road. The road was in great need of work. Pastor Matias worked so hard! He was using a machete to whack away the brush. I think you would be hard pressed to find a pastor in the U.S. who would lead his congregation in such road work (and with one lung!). Again it was obvious just how hard working Salvadorans are.
The other day, Julie and I went with Trini to a little museum. We took the bus to get there and as we were riding the bus I was observing the people on the bus. I first looked at Trini who was sitting a few seats ahead of me and I thought about her testimony that she shared with us some time ago. I thought about all she had been through during the war and since then- fleeing the army, losing one of her sons and her husband during the war, being imprisoned and tortured, struggling to find work to survive, and most recently losing another of her sons to gang violence. Then it struck me that most of the other people riding that bus also had some story about the war and how it affected them. I know at least part of Trini´s story, but I cannot even begin to fathom how many other stories there are. Practically every Salvadoran who is older than 18 has a story to tell about how the war affected them. It´s difficult for me to comprehend how all the Salvadorans I see everyday -riding the bus, walking on the streets, shopping in the grocery store- all these people have their own stories of war, of violence, of pain. These stories have obviously shaped people- who they are and what they believe- and yet just looking at people one would have no idea what stories they have within them.
I cannot imagine what it is like for people to carry around such stories of violence and pain. Do such stories unite Salvadorans? Or do the stories divide people? There is such a rich history and so many stories that I don´t know. And yet I´m in awe of the humanity here and the incredible lives that continue despite or perhaps because of their stories of war.
Also in Guaycume, Pastor Matias and some of the church members spent time clearing some brush from the side of the ¨road¨ and digging some ditches on the side of the road for the rain water to run through so that the rain hopefully won´t make it´s own ditches through the middle of the road. The road was in great need of work. Pastor Matias worked so hard! He was using a machete to whack away the brush. I think you would be hard pressed to find a pastor in the U.S. who would lead his congregation in such road work (and with one lung!). Again it was obvious just how hard working Salvadorans are.
The other day, Julie and I went with Trini to a little museum. We took the bus to get there and as we were riding the bus I was observing the people on the bus. I first looked at Trini who was sitting a few seats ahead of me and I thought about her testimony that she shared with us some time ago. I thought about all she had been through during the war and since then- fleeing the army, losing one of her sons and her husband during the war, being imprisoned and tortured, struggling to find work to survive, and most recently losing another of her sons to gang violence. Then it struck me that most of the other people riding that bus also had some story about the war and how it affected them. I know at least part of Trini´s story, but I cannot even begin to fathom how many other stories there are. Practically every Salvadoran who is older than 18 has a story to tell about how the war affected them. It´s difficult for me to comprehend how all the Salvadorans I see everyday -riding the bus, walking on the streets, shopping in the grocery store- all these people have their own stories of war, of violence, of pain. These stories have obviously shaped people- who they are and what they believe- and yet just looking at people one would have no idea what stories they have within them.
I cannot imagine what it is like for people to carry around such stories of violence and pain. Do such stories unite Salvadorans? Or do the stories divide people? There is such a rich history and so many stories that I don´t know. And yet I´m in awe of the humanity here and the incredible lives that continue despite or perhaps because of their stories of war.
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