Holes to Heaven: Random Update: El Salvador (3.3.15)

Another jam-packed day. Here's a brief recap of our physical movements. Started the morning with a trip to a building in the north being used for a small business training program. The center helps folks learn technical skills: how to make shoes, sew shirts, and print custom designs on coffee cups, pottery, and clothing. After that, we vanned over to another church where yet another priest was murdered by the same militia government. This priest, Father Rutilio Grande García, was Óscar Romero's close friend and was the reason he spoke out against the violent crimes being committed without investigation. Romero's speaking out would cost him his life, too, as we learned yesterday. Lunch time came next, we stopped at a place called Pollo Campero, literally "Country Chicken." This chain is the Salvadoran equivalent of KFC. It was unsurprisingly tasty (hard to mess up fried chicken) and there was AC inside, which was a welcome relief. We stopped by a microfinance company after lunch and talked with a group of women who receive loans from them (company is called Enlace, literally "Link"). Finally, we vanned back home and listened to another talk, this time from a BC alumn and native Salvadoran named Gerardo.

There is just so much on my mind, it's a bit annoying how tired I am and how tiny my iPhone's screen is. I guess I'll start from the beginning anyways. Memories are a dish best served fresh.

(I) Self-employment training program up north: ADEPROCCA

These folks get their funding from the good ol' gobierno, the government. They are contracted to produce a few thousand school uniforms and shoes which the government buys and distributes to public school children. The folks who work there spend around three to six months learning the trade, and then leave the organization having produced 100 pairs of their own type of shoe, designed by themselves. The idea is for these lower income folks to leave with the sense of pride of knowing how to do something as well as the basic business concepts to squeak by. Such a program undeniably helps, but it is such an uphill struggle to break the cycles of poverty. It is often hard to imagine that the economic benefits of such a program are terribly widespread and meaningful, but it is certain that the personal benefits of dignity and pride are priceless. Having walked with these people in the streets, it is hard to imagine a more meaningful goal than the gift of simple human dignity.

(II) Burial site of Father Rutilio Grande García

The words of Mr. Rick from last night are more fitting for El Salvador's depressing history and how they move on: "Time does not heal all wounds; things just get worked out in different ways."

(III) Microfinace Site: Enlace

We sat in a jumbled circle upstairs in a room not exactly designed for large meetings. The group of BC students and Father McGowan had an opportunity to talk to one of the collective lending groups within Enlace. It was a group of 10 women who all more or less worked in the cosmetics and jewelry industry. Industry is a strong term. They basically sell a few products from their homes, and used these small, short-term loans to cover stocking costs. Their stories were sad, but their willingness to participate and try to change and improve their lives was nothing but inspiring. Unfortunately, I was left with a similar feeling to what I had after the small business training program: this can never be enough.

(IV) Gerardo's Talk on UCA's Campus

This guy graduated from BC in 2011 and is a very amicable people-person. He grew up in a well-off family in a town outside San Salvador, went to the private British high school, studied at BC, worked at UBS for a few years, and then returned home to work in his family's pharmaceutical business. He talked a lot about El Salvador's problems. He was inspiringly and perhaps naively optimistic, despite all the problems his country has. I won't bore into details, but his ultimate vision for change is education coupled with jobs. Unfortunately, these wonderful goals are disillusioning in practice. Gerardo talked about the experience of a recent BC graduate who went on a Fulbright scholarship to San Salvador and how he underwent a visible transformation during his year there: " His face was not the same. His optimism was not the same. He had really felt something. He had seen something. The hard thing is keeping your hopes up, working hard, and doing something for change."

The problems here revolve around drug violence and inequality. Every second here is a grim reminder of the El Salvadoran citizens' inability to overcome these two superhuman forces. Violence and poverty strip away dignity and hope and priests and fathers and children and futures and safety and livelihoods from the people who have no opportunity to help themselves. Not only do they have no opportunity, but they have little concept of what opportunity even is. The propinquity of the civil war that ended in 1992 and left 80,000 dead is impossible to ignore. There is a stigma here that runs deep. I'll end with Gerardo's take on it: "Changing a policy or a politician is easy. Changing the hearts of a people is very, very hard."