Youth Organizing in Tenancingo: An Uphill Struggle
By: Danny Burridge, SHARE Delegations and Tours Coordinator
The municipality of Tenancingo , to the northeast of San Salvador , is Share’s newest sistering region. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Partners Across Borders of St. Cloud MN, led by Share board member Dennis Beach, 16 communities in the Tenancingo area have been able to take part in a two year regional youth organizing project administered through the ADMNT (Asociacion de Desarrollo Municipal de Nuevo Tenancingo), a fledgling sister organization of Share’s traditional Salvadoran counterpart, CRIDPES.
So as part of my orientation to Share and to El Salvador , I have been traveling all over the country trying to get to know all of Share’s diverse and dispersed projects. My most recent excursion took me to Tenancingo, where I was accompanied by the willing and capable youth promoters in the region, Juan, Mirian, and Conchi, not to mention my good friend Lauren, who had come to El Salvador to visit me.
Our first meeting took us to Copalchán, a small community just a little bit outside of Tenancingo. We were supposed to witness a leadership training workshop administered by two of the community’s most outstanding youth, but unfortunately, only one of them showed up, and by the time everyone had gotten in a circle and presented themselves, it had started to rain. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for the dismal conditions of our meeting space. It was the communal area of Copalchán’s primary school- a large open space down the hill from the actual school, with large open spaces in the roof as well. So it wasn’t just raining outside, it was raining in our meeting space. When the rain got heavy, we all scrambled to move our chairs and belongings so as to not get soaked. Eventually everyone managed to find a dry spot to stand or sit, but the torrential downpour on the aluminum roof made any type of communication besides yelling in your neighbor’s ear next to impossible. So the leadership training was suspended, and I received my first lesson in youth organizing: It is hard enough to get young people to take time out of their schedules to meet outside of school hours. It is even harder to get them to directly express their thoughts and feelings about sensitive issues in front of their peers. And even if you overcome these two obstacles, the best laid plans and the most well-prepared youth can be completely undermined by a brutal storm unleashed on a shoddily maintained school building.
Fortunately, the storm calmed down after about 45 minutes, and we had a pretty good chat among the kids who stayed. We talked mainly about their dreams; which although it was difficult and embarrassing for them to express them, were lofty and varied. If the youth of Copalchán manage to continue studying and stay organized, the community will one day be full of teachers, electricians, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and public officials all interested in making their community a better place to live.
The next day, Juan took us on a tour of Tenancingo. Not being too expansive of a town, we had traversed the breadth of it in a half hour, at which point we arrived at the Tenancingo primary school. We chatted with the principal who was surprisingly pleased with the assistance that the school had been receiving from the national government. They had received school supplies, relatively sufficient salaries for the teachers, and books for all grade levels, although the ones for the first and second graders hadn’t been delivered until a month before school was set to let out. They had a school band, and thanks to donations from St. Cloud , plenty of instruments for all interested students. The principal was also proud to show us the mural that had been painted by students a few years back, and the school’s socially conscious waste disposal system. They separate biodegradable waste from recyclable waste, and those types from what has to be left for the garbage men. However, they were still hoping for a viable recycling system, like the one pioneered by the neighboring municipality of Suchitoto .
Juan then took us to the ecological zone of Tenancingo, or what will one day be its ecological zone. Right now it is a series of cement cisterns that people use for bathing and gathering drinking water, which have been diverted from subterranean natural springs amidst a lush forest in a valley off to the side of the city. Through collaboration between CORDES and ADMNT, they plan to create a viable ecological area which will not only serve as a sustainable and clean place for water utilization, but also a recreational area for hiking and community gatherings, and a model to surrounding communities as to how natural beauty can be protected and used for the benefit of the community.
We then headed to the nearby community of Pepeto. On our way there we met two young women from the community who also accompanied us. At one point they stopped to buy coconuts, and at another point they asked Lauren, Juan, and I if we liked “cuajada” a type of cheese, and when we said yes, they picked up some of that too.
The meeting with the “youth group” of Pepeto was not just youth, but rather all the available people in the community who considered themselves young at heart. There was about 20 total people from the community, and yet only Lauren and I received glasses of coconut juice, and cuajada with a tortilla.
Pepeto had had a youth group before Share and PAB had entered the Tenancingo region and because of that, this group was quite a bit more developed and organized then their counterparts in other Tenancingo communities. They were enthusiastic about the work their youth group had done, and was currently doing, such as trash clean-up initiatives, musical and theatre groups, and participation in the Tenancingo ecological project. They were a bit disappointed that they had not had more prior notice of our visit, or else they would have “properly received us” with perhaps a musical or theatre presentation, or at least with more of the community’s youth. A salient point of the meeting was how much they stressed to us that they could do so much more with more funds. The organizational structure was in place- it was only lack of funds that kept them from realizing all of the community’s objectives.
That afternoon, Juan had scheduled us a meeting in the community of Juluco for 2 o’clock . We ended up arriving two hours late, once again due to strong rains that turn poorly maintained roads into muddy rivers. But it wasn’t just the roads that took us so long to traverse, but the trails to. Juluco sits literally on the top of a mountain. From where the bus had let us off at the community of El Tablón, it was about a 45 minute walk to where the trail to Juluco broke off from the road. On that trail, it was another 45 minutes straight up the mountain side. Although many of the youth had left by the time we got there because they thought that we were not going to show up, the activity in Juluco was worth the travel time.
The organizers of the meeting had festooned the chosen house with beautiful flowers and multi-colored balloons. There was about 15 adolescents including three girls from El Tablón who had come with us. Also present was a large group of adults and a wealth of little children. The community had also just recently begun their organizing process, so not only were they still in the process of receiving all of the leadership training workshops, but about half of the youths were too timid to even say their names in front of everyone. So as far as speaking and sharing, the meeting lacked a bit although there were a few talkative and expressive youths, who told us about their small economic initiative of producing and selling hair gel. Soon thereafter, we moved on and played some “dinámicas” – participatory games, which really livened up the crowd. Looking back I wish we had done the games first so that people would have been more comfortable talking amongst themselves, but nevertheless it was a productive time, and we finished everything up with a little time for dancing. The youths thanked us profusely for making the journey up to visit them as not too many people have the time, nor the endurance. We thanked them as well for receiving us so warmly and allowing us into their lives, even if only for a short period of time. I believe that through the encounter, both parties provided the other with vital inspiration and hope.
As we left the community and headed back down the mountain, the sun was setting over the mountains, and a feeling of supreme consolation flooded my being. Such warmth, such kindness, and such beauty we had found there, and throughout Tenancingo. But at the same time, I realized we had better hurry to get back to El Tablón where we would spend the night. No where in El Salvador is it good to be walking along a deserted road at night.
Tenancingo was once a thriving commercial center in the department of Cuzcatlan. It was one of El Salvador ’s economic leaders in cattle and chickens, and Salvadorans from all over the country came to purchase the municipality’s claim to fame, sombreros. But because of the civil conflict in the 80’s the area was deserted. It became “una comunidad fantasma”, a ghost community. You can still find bones of massacre victims stashed in semi-discrete locations in the cemetery and the surrounding area.
Only now, is life starting to be breathed back into Tenancingo and the surrounding communities. The people are coming back, organizing, and once again working together to make their lives better. It will be an uphill struggle (literally if you’re going to Juluco), and though there are many people even in San Salvador’s eastern bus terminal who have never heard of the place, Share, CRIPDES, CORDES, PAB, and hopefully more sisters in the future, will be there with the people of Tenancingo, working for a new El Salvador today.
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