Random Reflections on my Second Trip to El Salvador:

           

I wrote about our mission trip to El Salvador last year (2017) with the Maryknoll Fathers and how the country is still, in many ways, recovering from the civil war that rocked this Central American country more than 30 years ago and lasted more than a decade. That war was but the latest in tragedies that have plagued this Central American country. From Colonial times, the people of El Salvador have been exploited for the riches of their country. Even when she won her independence, the wealthy land owners continued their stranglehold on the people, using cheap, sometimes free, labor to build their empires. The wealthy owned the land and owned the government as well. Some things never change (anywhere in the world).

            I have returned to this verdant green country once again, this time to assist our daughter in law in securing her paperwork that she needs to apply for lawful entry into the United States and be reunited with our son and their children.

            Not much has changed since last year (not much changes in a year anyway). Much of the infrastructure improvements that were in process last year are still in, well, process. Once completed, they will facilitate the movement of auto traffic better than the current situation. People say if you can drive in a number of places in the world, you can drive anywhere in the world. They say Mexico City Mexico, Manila Philippines, and not to exclude the States, Atlanta Georgia. I would add San Salvador to that list, I’m sure others could add to the list.

            Where we are staying in San Salvador is in one of the “middle class” neighborhoods of the city. The hotel is a converted home, some would call it a hostel. (I always thought of a hostel as a YMCA in foreign country, 4 sets of bunk beds in the room, common showers, and the Village People singing on the one radio). This middle class neighborhood is still segregated in that there are a number of areas that have banded together in order to form a co-op of homes that are in a “gated” community, sometimes it is an actual gate and in others it is a big chain that blocks entry into the community. Both are kept under constant armed vigilance. In my first reflection from last year, I mentioned the obvious disparity between the uber rich and the uber poor, million dollar mansions with their high razor wire topped walls and armed guards, right next to corrugated shacks where an entire family would live with no running water, toilets, nor privacy. This middle class neighborhood has no suck stark distinction. Yet, it does. On the way out to the medical clinic this morning, I observed a man sleeping on a cardboard sheet, right on the sidewalk. Poverty and homelessness is not particular to this country, nor is drug abuse and mental illness, which I observed in the young man walking down the street with the waist of his pants literally down around his thighs, displaying his underwear for all the neighborhood to see (thank God he was wearing underwear). But these kinds of scenes are played out on a daily basis all over the world. We, in the United States, like to think of ourselves as a first world nation, and in many ways, we are: First in percentage of population that is incarcerated, first in drug abuse by our people, first in homelessness (take a look on Olympic Blvd in Los Angeles any day of the week), first in homicide rates in the Western World. Even with all of our technological advancements, we still have a long way to go in how we treat our fellow citizens and those who are “strangers” among us.

            El Salvador, in a way, is a microcosm of the US, in that they pretty much have what we have here at home; democratically elected government, paved (mostly in the cities) roads, seems everyone has a cell phone, public and private transportation systems, small and medium and large businesses (US companies abound here, from KFC to Pizza Hut), and indoor plumbing. The only thing that is missing is a Starbucks on every corner, but they have Mister Donut (a very nice place to get, er, donuts, not to mention they have a cafeteria also where you can buy breakfast lunch and dinner: try that at Starbucks!); not on every corner, but you would never know that by the amount of billboard space they occupy. They also have all the vices we have; obsessive materialism, class envy, obvious economic disparity to accompany that class envy, and let’s not forget gang violence, which is a reality here from what I have been told by various priests that I talked to last year. I read in a newspaper (yes, they still have a printed newspaper) that in one area of the capital there were 105 murders in a span of five years between 2012 to 2017. I though about that. That number is like summer statistics in Chicago on any given year, yet here, it is a cause for great concern, as it should be. Our homicide numbers should be of great concern for us also. But, I fear that as long as we have this attitude of “well, it didn’t happen to me”, we will never learn to be our brother’s keeper.

            El Salvador does not have its own currency. They officially adopted the US Dollar on January 1, 2001, in part to try and curb runaway inflation in their country. Many other Central American countries have the Dollar for their currency as a stabilizing factor for their economy. El Salvador also uses the US system of measurement, at least at gas stations, and I though I was getting a decent price for diesel at 3.20 a gallon (in California, it is closer to 4), but if one looks at El Salvador’s minimum wage at around 250.00 a month, 3.20 is a lot to pay, so there is good reason that their roads are overrun with busses in this capital city.

            I had the opportunity yesterday, to take Stephanie to the Cathedral in San Salvador. She told me that she had never seen the inside of the Cathedral and she was duly impressed when we walked in. We then went downstairs to the crypt where Monseñor Oscar Romero is buried. I knelt in prayer at his grave, asking for his intercession for the peace of his people. There is a strong sense of tranquility that pervades the whole of the area where he is buried, perhaps because of the violence that pervaded his beloved country during his lifetime and in fact took his very life by an assassin’s bullet, that peace and tranquility which he sought with all his being has finally taken hold in this most sacred spot where the future saint (October of 2018) is lying in repose.

            Just a block over, in the next plaza, is the Church of the Rosary, a brick and mortar edifice that is not constructed in the traditional form of a parish church. From the outside, it looks more like a gymnasium than a church, but there are line of stained glass windows that stack up inline up to to near top of the building on both sides and when one is inside and the sun is shining through those windows, there is a glow about the whole church. There is also a famous collection of the stations of the cross made by a local sculptor. Unique and beautiful, they are an artistic interpretation of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus without being too “artsy”. To stay and contemplate each station is a reflection of what Jesus did for all the world for all time. There is another memorial inside the church, well, actually there is a mass grave inside the church with a plaque that both marks and memorializes the grave and the 21 people who were massacred in the plaza in 1979 in a government suppression of a protest of the people for better conditions.

            When we were here last year, we had the privilege of having a deacon from San Francisco join us in our mission. He is Salvadoran, he is a few years younger than me, which would have made him a young teen in 1979. His father was a religious man, working with the Church in El Salvador to help the people with their struggle for normalcy. He was at the plaza that day of the government massacre, he described for us the horror of that day and many other days of their sad history of the 70’s through the 90’s. He told us of his actions of pulling people into the church as they sought refuge from the hail of bullets from the governments rifles. He had left El Salvador not too much later after this, he developed a medical condition that could only be treated in the US. By the way, as a youth, he hated the US for what we were doing to his country by sending military aid in the form of armament and ammo, military advisors and trainers to train their military how to effectively kill fellow Salvadorans, so it was ironic that they only place he could go to get treatment for his condition was the US. By the time he was well enough to travel back to his homeland, civil war had become full blown and he was not allowed to return. He stayed in San Francisco, married and started a family, continued in assisting in church and was ordained a deacon in 2012. 2017 was his first time back in his home. When we went to the Church of the Rosary, while we were looking and appreciating the beauty of this church, he stayed behind near the grave of those 21. When I came back to the front of the church to leave, he was there kneeling at the grave, crying; not just crying, but weeping uncontrollably. I could do nothing except kneel with him, put my arm around him and weep with him. All those years of hate, buried deep inside of his soul, had been forgiven in his confessions earlier, I am sure, but now came the renewed grieving for his people whom he loved. 

              When I was recalling this story to Stephanie, I received a moment of grace from God and my eyes once again welled up with tears and I started to weep again. How can I care so deeply for these whom I never knew, were not “my” people, and which this disaster didn’t “happen to me”? Because, in reality, these are my people, we are linked by our humanity, we are linked in our faith, when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.