As I mentioned in my previous post , I have a lot of questions about the violence in El Salvador. My pursuit of "answers" has led me to read too many books and articles about violence and specifically violence in El Salvador. The reading has often left me depressed, confused, feeling like my brain is going to explode, and ready to give up, but then I think about the people I met in El Salvador who continue to have hope even after years of living through violence. So, I keep on learning and trying to understand.
However, no matter how hard I think and analyze, there is still so much that just does not make sense to me. I hope that I will be able to understand some things better by talking with Salvadorans whose daily lives are affected by the violence and by "walking in their shoes". I also hope that continuing to read recent academic work on the violence in El Salvador will help. However, I do think that there will always be some things about the violence in El Salvador that I just cannot understand because I am not a Salvadoran and because I am not omnipotent. Despite the complexities and limitations, I'm still passionate about trying to understand the violence and I strongly desire to want to help in some way.
So, my intention is to do my final project for my graduate program (Master of Arts in Social Justice at Loyola) on some aspect of the current violence in El Salvador. For our final project we need to describe a social injustice, explain what social sciences and/or theology has to say about this issue, and then formulate some sort of specific action plan to address the injustice. While I'm in El Salvador I'm going to do some research that will hopefully give me a better framework from which to start this project.
Again and again I find myself jumping to the step of trying to formulate a solution to the violence in El Salvador. Perhaps it is my human nature (or perhaps just my American nature?) that makes me want to help everyone and fix their problems. I have done my best to refrain from trying to create a "solution" when I know that I do not have enough knowledge or understanding to even begin to form a "solution". I am a firm believer in first understanding the context of a situation- "solutions" cannot be created in one context and then just tweaked a little and applied to another context. For example, even what works in one community in El Salvador may not work in the next community, and a "solution" formed in my mind sitting here at my computer in the suburbs is definitely not going to be effective. My aim is to try my best to observe and ask questions on this trip and then give myself some time to analyze what I have observed and learned BEFORE I jump to forming solutions. We'll see how that goes.
I'm very much interested in learning how religious communities are talking about the violence and what they are doing to address the violence. For many, many years, the religious community in El Salvador has been very active in speaking out against the violence and social injustices and taking action to bring attention to the issues and to stop the repression. As a person of faith, I find that the efforts of other people of faith most resonates with what I believe to be effective and meaningful actions to address social injustices such as the violence.
I think that much of my frustration with the reading I have done on violence in El Salvador comes in part because I am struggling to understand how and if the theories and information can best be applied to specific communities of Salvadorans who are suffering because of the violence they experience. By no means do I want to dismiss the importance of academic work and discussions, but there comes a point when the academic becomes meaningless without a practical application. I would like to know to what extent the theories and academic analyses are present and relevant in a specific community of people who are affected by violence.
Therefore, what I'm planning to do this summer is look at how the Lutheran Church in El Salvador is addressing violence. I will be spending a good deal of time shadowing two Lutheran pastors and they have graciously agreed to lend their assistance. I will also seek out information from other leadership in the Church as well as members of the congregations I visit. I will observe and participate in church activities and engage in formal and informal conversations with people. I hope to gain a better understanding of what is being done by the Lutheran Church already and in what ways it is succeeding or failing. I also hope to learn how and why they have implemented the actions they have and how their approach is unique from other efforts to address the violence. Even focusing on the actions of the Lutheran Church to address violence is far too broad for the scope of my research project, so I will need to narrow it down more, but that will come with time (hopefully!).
