Week 14-15: El Salvador

By Jerin Jones

Globalization in San Salvador

This week our group made the trip from Cuernavaca, Mexico to San Salvador, El Salvador where we begin our 10 day journey in a very special country. I want to create a visual understanding of the beautiful scenery that my eyes were given the privilege to see. San Salvador is much like any developed capital city: trees that lined blocks of franchised-dressed streets. To look up at the mountains rising from the horizon one could not escape the presence of the Burger King, McDonalds, and KFC signs that seemed to overtake the geographical wonders behind them. Moving from the low-lying capital city to the mountains of Morazon you entered a different world. The glimpse of pink and yellow hitting the peaks of the mountains as we arrived late afternoon to Morazon was only half-telling of the memories they carried with them. These very mountains upon which my eyes settled held the stories of the Civil War that consumed El Salvador for 12 years from 1979-1992. At night from our cabins you could see the stars in the sky casted like a netting of gnats, so tight together yet their individual presence shined as well. Many of the city girls (myself included) were overwhelmed by their first time of not being able to count the stars in our sky.

During this first week of travelling and lectures, we met with community activists, priests, former guerilla members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and members of ARENA, the ruling political party for the last 20 years. There were two themes to me that kept coming up in conversation: political and social consciousness and dignity.

I was born in November 1986 in the middle years of the war. There are Salvadorans my age that do not remember a childhood without violence. Almost every family can say they lost one or more loved ones in the armed conflict in those 12 years. Priests and nuns were killed without hesitation because of their mission to support the pueblo or people of El Salvador. Civilian women, children, and men were killed mercilessly by their government with the financial backing of the USA. The pain and loss experienced through this civil war leads to the high level of political and social consciousness that was evident everywhere we went and through everyone we met. I would almost describe this consciousness as an intuition. The people I spoke with made clear that the memory of the armed conflict is what keeps this consciousness fresh and pressing. People are on the move in El Salvador. To them, everyday the struggle for the dignity of Salvadorans continues.

2 Crossing Borders '08 students looking at the Salvadoran Civil War Memorial for all of the people that disappeared or died during the war

Over this trip, dignity became one of those words that if asked to define you’d really have to think about and that might be easier to explain by just shooting off examples in place of the definition itself. I asked many community leaders their definition of the word of dignity and some of the responses were: a good quality of life, access to jobs, water, healthy food for families, basic education, health, a secure country (El Salvador has a high rate of violence), peace within their society, and open dialogue between the government and the people. The responses varied but these were some of the repeated themes. With this I will pose some questions to you: How would you define dignity? Is the request of a life with dignity too much to ask for? How far should one go to obtain it and keep it?

Students crossing a river in former FMLN territory in the Morazon in northern El Salvador