Some "results" of my "research" in El Salvador

As I mentioned back in May when I was getting ready to leave, one of my main "jobs" while I was in El Salvador was to learn about what the Salvadoran Lutheran Church is doing to prevent and deal with the violence.  It is still my intention to do my final project for my graduate program on the violence in El Salvador, and the informal research that I did while on my trip will be very helpful.  I have mentioned in passing some of what I learned about what the Salvadoran Lutheran Church is doing in response to the violence, but here is a focused and more in depth post on what I learned.

A couple nights after I arrived in El Salvador, I talked with Pastors Matias and Martina about the sort of questions I have about the violence in El Salvador and I asked them some of the questions I had about the role of the Lutheran Church in dealing with that violence.  I told them that I was especially interested what the Church was doing to prevent and reduce the violence.

(I think it is significant to note that when I was talking with the pastors, I did not specifically ask about gang violence.  In my questions I only asked about "violence."  They immediately started talking about gang violence which could mean that they assumed I wanted to hear about gang violence.  Or it could be that for them, as for many other Salvadorans that I met, the word "violence" is synonymous with "gang violence.")  Here is what Pastors Matias and Martina had to say about violence and the role of the Lutheran Church in addressing that violence:  There aren't really any official programs in the Lutheran Church to deal with the gang violence.  It's basically up to the pastors who are working in their own communities to form relationships with those who are involved or are likely to become involved in gangs.  It is through these relationships and speaking the word of God to those that are involved in gangs that the pastors try to reduce gang violence.  

Pastors Matias and Martina said that forming relationships and walking along side those who are involved with or affected by the gangs is far more effective that any official or formal program could be.  The pastors have had experience working with gang members in their pastoral work and they admitted that it is VERY difficult to work with gang members.  In one community in particular where they work, there has been some gang violence.  The pastors organized a meeting with the community members, the mayor, the police, and a few of the gang members.  Of course it wasn't easy to get all these people to agree to go to a meeting with the others, but the pastors stressed that the main objective of this meeting was simply to get all these people together to sit down and just talk with each other in a civil and calm way.  Again this wasn't an official program organized by the hierarchy of the Lutheran Church.  Rather this was the work of Pastors Matias and Martina who saw a need in a community where they work and they discerned a way to try to meet that need for something to be done about the gang violence in that community.  

In all the academic reading that I had done on violence in El Salvador, gang violence was THE violence they talked about with few exceptions.  The Salvadoran news websites that I periodically look at always have some story about gang violence.  Salvadorans that I knew from my first trip to El Salvador had suffered because of gang violence.  And so, almost all my thinking about El Salvador and the violence there was focused on the issue of gangs.  However, after almost two weeks with Pastors Matias and Martina, I was beginning to seriously question the focus of my research.  I had visited all of the Lutheran communities where the pastors work and I didn't hear or see anything that indicated gangs were a problem.  Granted I was in the communities for a limited amount of time and I didn't get to see and hear everything.  With the exception of the one community that Pastors Matias and Martina had mentioned in our first discussion, the gangs are not a problem as far as I know in their other four communities.  But there were many other problems facing the communities that seemed far more important and relevant to the members of the community.  And so I was about ready to give up and totally abandon my research.  Violence just didn't seem to be THE problem for the communities where Pastor Matias and Martina worked, and it didn't seem like working against violence was one of the pastors' main tasks.

But then I realized that it was a different type of violence that was the main concern of the pastors and their congregations.  It wasn't gang violence that they were directly trying to get rid of. 

The issues that members of the community were most concerned about were:

• Problems with schools such as not enough teachers, teachers who weren't properly prepared to do their job, kids misbehaving, kids getting bad grades, kids not being able to go to school because they couldn't get there or because they had to work
• health problems: illnesses, not having money to pay for medicine or to go see a doctor, not knowing what to do for non-serious things like colds, minor cuts, or diarrhea
• Poorly constructed homes, damage from rains
• Not being able to access credit to buy things like a well-built house or to start up a small business
• Not being able to adequately feed children
• Not having ready access to clean water to drink and cook with
• Missing men: the men were off working, have left for the U.S., they aren't going to church, the men are unfaithful to their wives, they don't help take care of the kids 
• No jobs and jobs that don't pay enough

I heard people talk about these sort of problems again and again when I went to the communities where Pastors Matias and Martina work.  And throughout the rest of my stay in El Salvador I heard about these problems again and again.  These issues aren't what we normally think about when we think about violence (we think about things like gang violence), but these issues are a form of violence: structural violence, the violence of poverty.  I was relieved when I realized that I didn't have to abandon my research of violence in El Salvador and the role of the Lutheran Church in addressing that violence.  I simply had to shift my focus from gang violence to structural violence.  Once I did this I started to recognize a whole slew of things the Church and its leaders are doing to address the various forms of violence in El Salvador. 

By no means do I want to downplay the problem of gang violence in El Salvador, because it is indeed a huge problem and it is even getting worse.  Gang members are doing horrific things and the lives of practically all Salvadorans are being affected by the gangs in some way.  However, there are many other forms of violence that must be addressed along with the gang violence if the people of El Salvador will ever have the chance to live in true peace.  Here are some of the things that the Lutheran Church is doing to address the violence of poverty in El Salvador:  

• The Church is helping to address the problems in the schools through: the scholarship programs which require that the students behave well and get good grades, finding teachers who are better qualified to teach, the Lutheran schools, providing a university education that is affordable for all who want to attend, building schools, and encouraging students to strive to get the best education they can
• The Church helps address the injustice of a lack of access to health care by: the pastors giving medicine (mostly donations from people in the U.S.), money for medicine or doctors' visits, or medical advice to the members of their communities.  The Lutheran Church facilitates clinics in the communities when volunteer medical personnel come from the U.S.  Some medical assistance is provided at the Lutheran run homeless shelter, the Hope House.
• Through donations of time and money from people in the U.S., some members of Lutheran churches have been able to construct homes that are sturdy and are worthy of being called houses.  The Church provides shelter for those who would ordinarily have no place else to go- refugees and other people who need a safe place to stay are welcomed at the Lutheran guest house (Casa Concordia) and some people have found shelter at the Hope House.
• The Church provides food to many of the people in communities where there are churches, dozens of people without homes are fed at the homeless shelter, and the Church helps provide food for those in emergency situations like after the flooding
• I saw and heard pastors encouraging men and especially boys and young men to be men of virtue, to go to church, and to provide for their families

The Lutheran Church is helping to provide for these direct needs which is very important, but the Church is also working to change the unjust systems that lead to these problems in the first place.  The Church is providing help to individuals when help is needed, but the Church also recognizes that fundamental change must take place or the injustices will continue.  It seems like the pastors working in their communities are doing the first sort of "helping" while the Bishop and others leaders working beyond the community level are working for this fundamental systemic change.  As my time in El Salvador went along I realized more and more that the Lutheran Church was working hard against the structural violence of injustice (in all its forms) and by doing so they are indirectly working against the gang violence.  I talked about the Church's campaign against violence in a previous post.  

These things give me hope, that life will get better for my friends in El Salvador.  While there may not yet be much specific evidence that things are improving yet, there are so many people who are committed to making things better and are actually doing something to make things better.    

Brokenness, "Something", and Grace

I'm back home in Illinois now. Except for the 12 hours I was home between El Salvador and Canada, I haven't been home for two and a half months. I'm glad to be home, but it's a little bit depressing to be back in the boring suburbs after all the wonderfulness of El Salvador and the Northwoods of Canada. Now I'm getting ready for my next set of adventures...my second year of graduate school and a social ministry internship at my church.


I made the wonderful decision to read (again) a book by Anne Lamott called Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anne Lamott is a brilliant writer. She is so brutally honest about her life and her faith, and it is this brutal honesty that really amazes me along with her incredible insights. As I read this book I found myself nodding in agreement, laughing out loud, and even crying once because she captured in exactly the perfect words what I hadn't been able to find the words for. She has lived through some pretty painful and difficult things and yet she isn't afraid to talk about them, how she was feeling during these experiences, and how these experiences affected her faith at the time as well as years down the road. She makes some brilliant analogies about God, Jesus, and being a Christian. Her writing has spoken to me in the past and rereading this book after my trip to El Salvador has led to some new reflections and perhaps a better understanding of what Anne was writing about as well as a better understanding of my experiences in El Salvador. I really hope that this will make sense, I'm not even sure that it makes sense in my own mind, but hopefully Anne Lamott's words will help make sense of the chaos of my brain.

I continue to think about my heart that was broken in El Salvador. Why was my heart broken? Can it be "fixed"? Has it healed at all? Anne Lamott quotes Eugene O'Neill (an American playwright and Nobel Laureate in literature) who said "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue." I do believe it is true that we are born broken, knowing nothing, and understanding even less. So if we are born broken, why do I feel like I became even more broken at times while I was in El Salvador? Perhaps we have to be more broken before we can start to be mended, before we can start to become more whole, to understand and to know more about ourselves, our broken world, and our God. Or maybe it just feels like we are becoming more broken when in fact we are in the mending process.

Perhaps is it like when someone gets a really bad broken bone and the doctors have to force it back into place and then use some screws (rather than glue) to put the bone back together. I can't say from personal experience, but I'm sure it hurts something awful. Or maybe it's like when a bone heals the wrong way and the doctors have to rebreak the bone so that it will heal correctly. Maybe rationally and logically it makes sense to re-break a bone so that it will heal correctly, but at the time the bone is being rebroken it may not seem that way for the patient as the bone is being rebroken (even with pain medication).

But if we are to mend, to become whole, maybe we do have to experience that brokenness, to realize through the pain of raw suffering (our own or that of other people) that we are broken, that we do need to mend and that the grace of God can mend us. It is very much God doing the mending, but in my experience my mending has relied heavily on my fellow humans. It is through my interactions with others and it seemed especially through my interactions with Salvadorans that I have mended some, but the mending didn't come without feeling more broken. Maybe we can call it growing pains.

God created each living creature. We humans are born broken (most of us very broken), but God also created community where we can mend and learn and grow. By no means is community easy- sometimes I can't stand being within 100 yards of another human being- and we certainly have difficulty getting along a lot of the time. But we are deeply interconnected- for good or for bad- and we desperately need each other to mend from our brokenness.

Cleaning a wound can be painful, but it is a very important part of making sure something heals. Whether we are cleaning our own wounds or the wounds of others we can more clearly see how deep the wound is and in some cases cleaning the wound may help one see what caused the wound. When I was in El Salvador learning about the wounds (physical and otherwise) caused by violence I was able to learn about the role I and my country had in causing some of the wounds. And I also learned some ways in which I might help clean those wounds and start the healing process.

A 5 year old boy that I nannied for got a splinter in his finger one day while we were out playing on his deck. He didn't cry until I told him that we should try to take the little piece of wood out and clean it. He didn't want me to even touch his finger and even though I told him it would feel better once we took the splinter out, he got hysterical at the thought of the pain that would come as I was taking it out. I told him again and again that it would just hurt for a few seconds and then it would start to feel better real fast. All he wanted to do was put a band-aid over it and he was convinced that this would make everything better. I think maybe we are all like this little boy in that we are very reluctant to do anything that might cause us more pain. It is very easy to remain ignorant of all the pain and suffering going on in the world all around us. I have been guilty of ignoring injustices that are right outside my front door. Why would you want to submit yourself to learning about violence and suffering and injustice when we can just go watch the latest episode of American Idol or The Bachelor? In El Salvador, however, it was impossible for me to not see the wounds of injustice everywhere. And it was clear that these were wounds could not be healed with a "band-aid". They are far too serious to cover up and just try to forget they are there.

I couldn't do much more to heal the wounds of my Salvadoran friends except to listen to their stories and then to tell the stories to my friends and family back home (and even if I don't feel I did much, I do know that listening and being compassionate are so very important and significant). But I think the Salvadorans did far more to help heal my wounds. My wounds and my brokenness do not come from the atrocities of civil war or from the constant fear of gangs or from the violence of a lack of access to health care and food and water. I struggle to name my wounds, but I feel (as many of you may also) that something is missing. In some way I am not whole. Maybe this "something" is something that cannot be put into words but it is something that I spent quite a bit of time talking about with my fellow travel companions the last week of our time in El Salvador. I think it was only through allowing myself to join in solidarity with the Salvadorans and their wounds that I was able to experience this "something" that in turn helped mend my own wounds.

We noticed there is something that Salvadorans have that we don't. Despite our efforts to determine exactly what this "something" is and why Salvadorans have it and why we don't and how we can take it home with us, we didn't get too far in trying to figure it all out. That "something" made me feel truly alive, full of hope, and genuinely happy. Despite the suffering Salvadorans experience and despite the lack of material goods, they have that "something" that gives them faith, hope, love, and happiness.

Even if I don't understand what this "something" is, it was a true gift that I got to experience it along side my Salvadoran friends. However, Anne Lamott talks about gifts that require assembly and I think that this "something" is one of those gifts that requires some assembly. Or maybe it's like one of those dreaded Christmas gifts that says on the box "some assembly required" but what it really should say is "this will take all day to assemble, you need 20 different tools, and not all the parts are really included." This "something" will require me to do some unpacking and then I'll have to try to figure out what it is, how it works, and what to do with it.

Perhaps this "something" is a deep appreciation of life or maybe it is God's love or God's presence or perhaps it is grace, that grace that helps glue us together, to mend our brokenness (or maybe some combination of all of these things or maybe none of the above). If this "something" is indeed grace, Anne Lamott captures my thoughts exactly on this grace: "I don't understand the mystery of grace- only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes." As I have struggled to understand and assemble the gift of grace or whatever this "something" is, I do recognize that I am not where I started. I'm not really sure where it's taking me, but I'm trying to receive it gladly and in both big gulps and tiny tastes.

Anne Lamott also wrote "Everything is usually so masked or perfumed or disguised in the world, and it's so touching when you get to see something real and human." and "I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed- which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace." In El Salvador things just seemed more real, more raw, more human. Here in my nice suburban home I am surrounded by comfort and nice things and distractions. While my life in my nice suburban home with my nice suburban family and friends certainly isn't bad, but there are things that I just don't see and experience as clearly here as I did in El Salvador. I think it is through seeing things that are real and human that I was able to be mended. It was God's grace that came through God's presence in each person I met in El Salvador. I know that God's grace is everywhere with everyone and I hope that some day I'll be able to feel that grace wherever I am just as strongly as I felt it in El Salvador.

Buses and Families

A while ago I promised a post about the public buses in El Salvador as well as a post about families in El Salvador. I don't want to break my promises and let my readers down, so here you go...

There are tons of public buses in El Salvador, especially in San Salvador. You can pretty much go anywhere in the country by bus (although it may take you a very long time). The majority of people in El Salvador do not have cars, so they can walk, ride a bike (not many Salvadorans can afford bikes and some of the rural roads aren't very biker friendly), hitch a ride in a pick-up truck, or ride the bus. It's rare that a bus isn't crowded. It costs 20 cents for a ride on the bus, 25 cents to ride on a microbus (I don't really know why it's different to ride a microbus, it's still a public bus), and for some buses that go farther out into the rural areas it costs $3. There are buses everywhere and they all look a little different- I'm pretty sure that no two look the same.

Microbuses

old school bus

Some are old school buses from the U.S., some are old Greyhound type buses, some are microbuses. Almost all the buses are decorated in some fashion. Some have awesome paint jobs and most have some sort of decals or stickers on them- anything from Garfield to Jesus to Winnie the Pooh to the Virgin of Guadalupe to flags from various countries.

 I'm pretty sure that there aren't any emission standards in El Salvador and even if there are they definitely aren't enforced. The buses (and a lots of the cars and trucks on the road) let out huge plumes of black and grey and white smoke. It's pretty gross. In addition to the driver, many of the buses have a fare collector. The fare collector, usually a young man, collects the money from the riders, helps people get on and off the bus, tries to recruit riders, and lets the driver know when it's ok to go after people get on or off. Some of the buses are equipped with nice (i.e. very loud) sound systems from which their regaton plays loudly.


When people think about buses in developing countries, a lot of people think about riding on a bus with chickens. I haven't had the pleasure of riding on a bus with chickens in El Salvador, but I can almost guarantee that it happens. If people are going somewhere to sell something, or if they have bought something they are bringing home, they bring it on the bus. Riding the buses in El Salvador was rarely boring. There was always someone or something interesting to look at inside or outside the bus. People would get on and sell little things like candy. Sometimes there was even live entertainment on the bus. A couple of times men with guitars got on the bus and sang a song or two and then walked down the aisle to collect any coins that people offered for his performance. The most amazing thing about these men that sang on the bus was that they were able to stand, play the guitar, and sing all while the bus driver did his best to go as fast as he could over the bumps, over the hills, and around the corners.

The buses in El Salvador have gotten some international press time in the past year or so because the gangs have been killing people on the buses and burning the buses. On many of the bus routes the gangs make the bus drivers pay "rent". The gang members collect money from the bus drivers and in return the gangs say that they will protect the bus drivers or at least leave them alone. However, paying the rent doesn't always ensure that the bus driver will be safe and some bus drivers have been refusing to pay the rent. Sometimes when the drivers on a specific bus route decide that they don't want to give into the demands of the gang and pay the rent they may stop driving the route to protect themselves and to send a message to the gangs. Whether or not the bus drivers pay rent to the gangs, they go to work everyday not knowing if they will return home at the end of the day. It made me a little nervous to ride the buses, and even many of the Salvadorans don't like to ride the buses because you never know what bus will be the next one to be burned by the gangs.



Now onto the families of El Salvador...

I have to admit that my knowledge of Salvadoran families is only based on my experiences with a few families, but I'm pretty sure that my observations do apply to many Salvadoran families.

The best words to describe Salvadoran families are complicated and loving.

Salvadorans tend to have a lot of kids which translates into lots of grandkids. Because the families are so big, I'm still not sure if I understand all the relations of the families I stayed with, and it seemed like every few days a new family member would show up. There were always at least a few kids running around. I think "alone time" and privacy are concepts that Salvadorans know very little about. At times it was a bit chaotic with all the people and all the kids, but it was also nice to always have someone around. Everyone helps take care of each other's kids. Aunts and uncles regularly take care of their nieces and nephews. The older kids help take care of their younger brothers, sisters, and cousins. It is especially true that the whole family helps take care of each other, but it is also true that Salvadoran families will care for friends and even complete strangers as if they were family. Everyone pitches in to help with the cooking, cleaning, farming, building, and any other tasks that need to get done. Even the kids are expected to work hard. There were a couple of times when I saw kids not wanting to work, but the norm is for them to just do whatever needs to be done and most of the time without their parents even telling them to do it. Kids help around the house because they need to and because they know they are expected to (and not because they know they are getting something in return like an allowance). How many kids in the U.S. do that?

Salvadorans have a great sense of humor and this is especially evident in their families. They are always joking around and (lovingly) making fun of each other. They love to give each other nicknames (which made it even more difficult for me to learn who everyone is because i had to learn their real name and their nickname!). I love how they are so blunt and honest with how they joke with each other and just in normal conversations. Everybody is always in everybody else's business and it's hard to keep secrets.

While families in El Salvador are very supportive and loving of each other, there are also signs of weakness in their families. I can think of very few nuclear families where the wife and husband are on their first marriage and all of the kids living with them are biologically theirs. There are step-children and half-brothers and sisters and "adopted" kids. Many Salvadorans do not get married because they cannot afford to pay for even the legal paperwork, and a wedding ceremony is even further out of the question. Perhaps in part because marriage is less common and for many other reasons, many couples don't tend to stay together for life.

One issue is that the men are often absent from their families for a number of reasons. One reason is that many fathers, sons, uncles, grandsons were killed during the war. They left behind wives and children who have had to learn to live without them.

Another reason why the men are absent from home is that they have left to find work. Some men leave the rural areas and go to the larger cities in El Salvador to work. Some men travel to neighboring countries to find work. And many Salvadoran men have migrated to the U.S. to find work. Whether the father has gone to the city or to the U.S., he will send money back home. There are so many Salvadoran families who depend on money that is sent from family members living in the U.S. Without this money many would not survive. Some will work for a few years in the U.S. where they can earn much more money than they ever could in El Salvador, and then they will return when they have enough money saved up. However, the men don't always return, especially those who have migrated to the U.S. Some find new wives and new families and stop sending money back. I think that most have the intention of returning to El Salvador, but once they realize how much better life is in the U.S. they just stay. This tares up families and leaves kids without dads.

Men are also absent from families because of the violence of the gangs. They often abandon their families when they join the gangs (or their families disown them) and they leave behind young wives and little kids when the gang members are killed in gang activities. The gangs also murder those young men who won't join or those who won't give in to the demands of the gangs. The absence of men is creating a very vicious cycle. Young boys have very few positive role models in their own families. It's rare for boys to see what a faithful relationship with a woman looks like and it is rare for them to have a father, or brother, or uncle, or grandpa who they can look up to and strive to be like.

The men shouldn't get all the blame though. Salvadoran women will leave their men. A woman may leave because her boyfriend or husband was unfaithful or because he couldn't provide for her and her kids. Sometimes survival has to come before anything else and if a woman can find someone who can feed her kids I don't think it is our place to judge her for leaving a man who cannot feed her kids.

While Salvadoran families certainly have more than their fair share of problems and difficulties, these problems and difficulties do not diminish their strength and love.

Showing Pictures

Earlier this week we crammed about 14 of my family members into our little living room and I showed all my pictures from my trip. I was pretty proud of my technological skills- I made a DVD with all my pictures and even added music. As my pictures (all 767 of them) were displayed I explained them and told a few stories. It took about 45 minutes to show all my pictures, but I didn't even come close to telling about everything I did on my trip, all the people I spent time with, and all that I learned. It was very nice to have a very good audience who was genuinely interested in learning about my experiences. They made some good observations and asked some good questions. It helped to have some "outside" perspective from people who knew very little about El Salvador and hadn't experienced what I have. They noticed things and made comments on things that I completely overlooked. Hopefully as I keep talking to other people about my trip and I keep telling my stories I will continue to learn from those that I am telling the stories to.


My uncle said something like "Gee, it seems all you did was go to things about death." I didn't realize just how many places and events related to death I had gone to. I visited the University of Central America where the 6 Jesuit priests and the two women were murdered, the chapel where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated, Romero's tomb, I went to the march to remember the one year anniversary of the death of the mining activist, the march against violence in the town where the two Lutheran pastors were killed, we visited Jorge's tomb a few times, we went to El Mozote where about 1,000 people were massacred, we visited another little massacre site, I went to the funeral of the sister of one of the Lutheran pastors, and we visited the memorial for Father Rutilio Grande and the old man and the little boy that were killed with him.

I didn't realize how much of my trip was related to death in part because I hadn't looked at all my pictures all together like that before and in part because I did not feel "weighed down" by all of this death. Looking back now I can see that there was a lot related to death on my trip, but I never felt overwhelmed or depressed for long. Even when I went to these places and learned about the death that occurred, it wasn't very long before I was reassured and comforted by the hope and life of the Salvadorans. Again and again I was amazed by how Salvadorans could go on in spite of (or perhaps because of) all the death and suffering they had experienced. I'm pretty sure if I had gone through even part of what some of my Salvadoran friends have gone through, I would have given up long ago.

I mentioned that one thing that I learned about was having hope and a question that followed this was "Do you really see hope in El Salvador?" For me (and from what I gathered for my family who had just seen all my pictures and heard some stories) it is very difficult to have hope with all the extreme poverty and all the immense injustices in El Salvador. At the beginning of my trip I was very pessimistic that things could ever change or get better. I would think about all the problems and try to think of ways to fix the problem, but fixing one problem would only leave the other thousands of problems to be fixed. However, despite learning about more about all the problems in El Salvador, I left with a genuine sense of hope- I definitely left with more hope. I'm not really sure what it is, but Salvadorans have an incredible ability to have hope and faith that things will eventually get better. Unfortunately they have had to wait a long time (and probably will have to continue to have to wait) for a better life. But they keep hoping and believing. And they don't stop at just hoping and praying, Salvadorans take action. Even the Salvadorans who have next to nothing take whatever small steps they can to try to make their life better.

Sharing Testimonies...round two

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.

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.

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.

(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.