SHARE- Reflections

A great way to understand history in El Salvador today is to listen to the testimonies of the people; hear the voices of those who were martyred and then reflect on the justice work that remains to be done. In El Salvador history shows that the great majority of the population have been kept in the margins of this country's wealth, and that historically, a group of people as small as 14 families, or now more like 150 families control most of the wealth (economic power), the means of production, and political power. In these aspects, not much has changed in El Salvador in the past two centuries. Even after the Salvadoran people rose up to demand their rights - economic, social and political justice, or God's Kingdom - those in power have done remarkably little to build a more just country. And as citizens and residents of the United States, it is important to know that the Salvadoran government and elite have had and have to this day powerful allies in our own country's political and economic structures. In other words, building justice in El Salvador is a job for all of us - people in the U.S. and people in El Salvador.

In this document, we are going to take a look at history and we are also going to examine the political, social and economic situation in the country. As we break things down, we'll try to see how El Salvador is the same and how it is different since the 1992 Peace Accords that brought an end to war here. And we will also briefly look at how El Salvador has been affected by the events of September 11th, 2001 in the United States.

Before we continue, let's reflect on the significance of your journey to El Salvador! In a globalized world, in which money, factories and economic power can cross borders with ease, but people cannot, your journey of learning, sharing and solidarity is one of the signs of hope. It means that we can also globalize the world from below… not in the air-conditioned offices of governments and multilateral banks but in the sweltering hot communities of El Salvador. We can show the world that we will work together to make change and that dignity, rather than profits, will be our calling card. Welcome to El Salvador!

Leading up to War:

As I mentioned previously, the stories of the martyrs, and the voices of the poor are good places to find history, analysis and understanding of El Salvador. This is particularly helpful, because in a country where little has changed, the words of those who gave their lives can still enlighten us as to the work that we need to do. For example, Monseñor Romero challenged us to "learn about the mechanisms that engender poverty, struggle for a more just world, support the workers and peasants in their demands and in their right to organize and to be very close to the people." (August 6th, 1979) Almost everyone you will meet in El Salvador will be able to help with this task.

During the 1960s and 70s the Catholic Church made important changes in how they involved the poor in Bible study and reflection. Progressive priests began to follow the lead of the 1968 Latin American Bishops´ Council in Medellin, Colombia, in which the Bishops stated that their pastoral work and accompaniment would begin to take a “preferential option for the poor.” In El Salvador Christians began to form “Christian Base Communities” to study the Bible and reflect on their own reality. Through this process of reading, reflecting, acting and evaluating, thousands of poor farmers who had been oppressed for years began to find hope in Jesus´message. Their hope was that they could build God’s Kingdom on Earth.

During that time El Salvador still had a near feudal land system. Only 2% of the country's population controlled 60% of the arable land. The economy was based on exporting cotton, sugar cane and coffee, and these crops were grown on the very best land. The poor were relegated to grow corn on hillsides, or were given small plots of land on the haciendas where they worked the cash crops. At the end of each harvest they were required to give a portion of their crop to the landowner. As these people studied their reality in the Christian Base Communities, they began to see in Jesus a "compañero" and they began to organize.

The wealthy were not pleased with this new consciousness and accused the Church of becoming "politicized." Monseñor Romero responded, "many people who belong to the upper class and think that they are the owners of the Church feel that the church has abandoned them. They say that the Church has forgotten its spiritual mission and no longer preaches spirituality, but rather politics. That is not what is happening. What is happening is that the Church is pointing out sin, and society must listen to this reality and convert in order to become as God wants us to be." (July 8th, 1979) "A Church that does not unite with the poor to denounce, poverty, the injustices committed against them, is not the true Church of Jesus Christ." (February 17th, 1980)

As the poor organized, the wealthy sent their military and death squads to repress anyone who was suspected of being organized, working with the progressive Church, and demanding their rights. People were targets for torture, assassination, and disappearance. Entire villages were massacred. Before the war was over, over 80,000 civilians would die at the hand of the Salvadoran government and their ally, the United States government (who sent the bullets and guns). Some of the most well known martyrs include Father Rutilio Grande, SJ (March 12th, 1977) Monseñor (Archbishop) OscarArnulfo Romero (March 24th, 1980), over six hundred peasants in el Sumpul (May 14th, 1980), approximately four hundred peasants in Hacienda La Peña (June 4th, 1980) four US churchwomen -- Maura Clark, Ita Ford, Jean Donavan and Dorothy Kazel (December 2nd, 1980), nearly one thousand peasants in el Mozote (December 11th, 1981), and some five hundred people killed on June 19th in La Raya.

As the repression increased, people sought different ways of fighting back and formed the guerrilla forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Forces (FMLN) while others chose to continue to use peaceful means of seeking change. Government repression continued and a civil war ensued. Romero and many others would reflect that the government and military had closed the doors to any peaceful means of resolving the conflict by repressing those who demanded justice rather than working with them to redistribute wealth and power in El Salvador. In other words, the war was a symptom of structural problems of poverty, not the cause.

Poverty in Peacetime:

After ten years of civil war, the FMLN launched a final military offensive all over El Salvador, in which they hoped to win the war. The government's response was to repress the civilian population. They bombed poor neighborhoods of San Salvador and culminated their disregard for human rights by killing six Jesuit Priests and two women at the Jesuit University on November 15th, 1989. After the government had accused the Jesuit priests of being communists for simply having spoken strongly on behalf of the poor and demanding a stop to the repression, ordinary citizens were terrorized. The Salvadoran people stayed in their homes, rather than rising up to join the FMLN´s insurrection as they had hoped. At the end of the military engagement, it became evident that neither the FMLN nor the Salvadoran military would be able to win the war. In 1990, negotiations began to bring an end to the conflict. And on January 16th, 1992 Peace Accords were signed ending the civil war.

Following the war, important changes were made in El Salvador’s political system. For example, the FMLN was registered as a political party and now, about ten different parties compete in the elections system in El Salvador. People are now able to organize without facing the same type of repression faced in the 1970s and 1980s - they are no longer killed for expressing a different opinion. The most repressive branches of the police and military were disbanded and a new civilian police force was founded.

Unfortunately, ten years later, there are problems with these changes. Once again corruption is rampant in the police forces. Furthermore the government has harsh words for anyone who organizes, protests or otherwise demands their rights. Crime is also on the rise. Ten years after the war, El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, with a per capita death rate that is as high as the war years.

Most frightening has been a return to the rhetoric and action of repression in El Salvador in the days and weeks following the attack on the World Trade Center in the United States (September 11th, 2001). Heeding the demand of President Bush to be "with us or with our enemies" the Salvadoran government decided to fire workers at the airport and port of El Salvador and replace them with military police. They have also publicly and violently chastised different unions who have gone to the streets to protest economic policies, firings etc., echoing George W. Bush by saying that those who protest in El Salvador are not helping to rebuild the country and will be excluded. President Flores and his ministers have gone as far as to say that anyone who protests is a terrorist. Most recently (December, 2001), President Flores publicly stated that he would no longer dialogue with the FMLN political party, the largest opposition party in the country. He said that he sees no purpose in working together with the opposition to rebuild El Salvador.

The Peace Accords were less successful in addressing the economic root causes to the war. While 35,000 landless peasants did receive small parcels of land, the country has simultaneously implemented a series of anti-family farm policies that have categorically reduced the possibility for surviving, much less thriving, for family and cooperative farmers. Today, El Salvador is still marked by the gross inequities that inspired Christians of good faith to struggle to build the justice land only a decade ago. And like the days of yesteryear, the powerful elite of El Salvador shows a great indifference to their plight. They implement economic policies that have deepened poverty over the past decade, and offer only low paying maquiladora (sweatshop) jobs as an alternative. Consequently, thousands of poor Salvadorans leave the country for the U.S. every year, in search of a better life, while others, here in El Salvador, continue to struggle for change. What are we called upon to do today, then?

If Monseñor were with us today, he would remind us "in the diverse political moments, it is the poor who are important." (February 17th, 1980)

There are three main problems that confront rural dwellers today: First, production in El Salvador is nearly at a standstill. You can buy Iowa corn here cheaper than locally grown corn. When there is no production, there is no real economic growth. While macro-economic figures make El Salvador’s economy a star among international policy makers, a closer examination indicates that remittances sent from family members abroad continues to be the back bone of the Salvadoran economy, not internal production. Progress in El Salvador cannot happen without rural development, and yet it is precisely the rural pours productive capacity that is ignored by the government’s policies. According to the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) most recent report on human development,

61.2% of rural dwellers lived in poverty before the earthquakes of January and February 2001. Now 66.4% are poor, of which 35.8% are extremely poor.
The urban area only fairs slightly better. Before the earthquakes, 37.6% of people in urban El Salvador were poor. That number is now 40.2%, with 14.5% living in extreme poverty.

Poverty can be measured in many ways - income, access to basic services (housing, healthcare, education, sanitation and clean drinking water), life expectancy etc. In El Salvador 13.1 % of the population will die before they are 40 years old and 14.1% of all children are underweight for their age (children under five), 32.4% of all adults still cannot read and write, 65% do not have access to potable drinking water, and 38.9 % have no access to healthcare. When comparing all this data to other countries, El Salvador is the 100th poorest nation in the world. But the majority of the departments of El Salvador, (Cuscatlan, San Miguel, Santa Ana, Sonsonate, La Paz, Usulutan, San Vicente, Chalatenango, La Union, Ahuachapan, Morazan and Cabañas), are poorer than that in fact, the last two are poorer than some of the poorest nations in Africa, the poorest continent in the world. Only San Salvador and La Libertad are "better off," largely in part due to the urbanization trend that has made some small steps in improving access to housing, healthcare, water, education, etc. (data from UNDP's report on Human Development, 2001). Salaries in urban and rural El Salvador are four times less than what conservative estimates show that a family needs to cover their most basic needs. (Center for Defense of Consumer Rights, CDC)

In rural El Salvador, a majority still lacks even the most basic infrastructure that is crucial to development, and essential for living with dignity. Further exacerbating the problem, is the lack of production infrastructure. Farm to market roads and irrigation systems are non-existent or poorly maintained. Storage facilities for delicate agricultural products are few and far between. There is little access to favorable credit or agricultural extension systems for sharing sustainable technological advances with poor farmers.

The third problem facing El Salvador today is the high level of environmental degradation. Deforestation, contaminated rivers, unwieldy garbage problems, industrial pollution and heavy use of pesticides by small and large farmers alike are just a few of the things that put the delicate eco-system at risk. In addition, mismanagement of hydroelectric dams further exacerbates flooding in river basins all over El Salvador.

In fact, the greatest tragedy of Hurricane Mitch (October 31st, 1998) and the earthquakes (January 13th and February 13th, 2001) was the tremendous lack of preparedness that they brought to light. While the world is no stranger to natural phenomenon like hurricanes and earthquakes, the poorest nations with the greatest degree of social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities always suffer from the greatest human tragedies. Poorly constructed homes built in areas that are not safe (and no zoning to prevent that), insufficient government preparedness for responses to disasters and poverty creates a population not able to survive the economic impact of losing a home or a job exacerbating any natural disaster.

Many, including Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gómez and Catholic Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the Baptist Federation of El Salvador and others, have criticized the response of the Salvadoran government to the needs of reconstruction. Rosa Chavez has commented several times that the government of President Francisco Flores has preferred to isolate itself rather than dialogue with ample sectors of Salvadoran society, including the poor and the churches. Dialogue would be important to find ways to work together to overcome the gross inequities between the "haves" and the "have nots." In the absence of dialogue, he asserts, the poor will continue to suffer more from natural phenomenon that rapidly become human disasters.

September 11th has also left its mark on the Salvadoran economy. A well respected Salvadoran analyst, Hector Dada Hirezi (president of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences and member of the Municipal Council of San Salvador) says that the early numbers indicate two problems: a downturn in the US economy is already manifesting itself in less orders to the maquiladoras and a firing of thousands of workers; and the same economic woes will show a reduction of the family remittances sent by Salvadorans living abroad to their families here. Furthermore, Dada says there is strong evidence that the ruling ARENA party and President Flores will be less willing to build consensus on how to overcome El Salvador's problems. According to Dada Hirezi, President Flores is the most authoritarian civilian president El Salvador has seen.

The Politics of Poverty:

Most of government in ES is still controlled by the ARENA political party. The ARENA political party is well known for organizing the Death Squads in the 1980s. A man named Roberto D’Aubisson founded both the ARENA political party and the Death Squads. He is also the man, which the United Nations Truth Commission found to be responsible, among other things, for the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. ARENA is a political party that has a dark history in terms of its past actions during the war.

ARENA came to power in the mid 1980s and has maintained their grip on politics in El Salvador ever since. ARENA defends the interests of the extremely wealthy in El Salvador, some of whom play active roles within the party. In 2001, businessman Roberto Murray Meza (the owner of the largest beer and shoe companies in El Salvador) was elected to the presidency of the party. ARENA controls the executive branch of government, and together with the conservative PCN party dominates the Legislative Assembly. ARENA's biggest feat since winning the presidency in 1989 (with the election of President Alfredo Cristiani) has been to turn El Salvador's economy into a completely "neo-liberal" economy.

Neo-liberal economics are the policies currently being sponsored by international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and our own government. Other words you’ll here in conjunction with neo-liberal economics are:

privatization (selling government entities such as telephone companies, water services, pension plans like our social security system, hospitals, etc. to private business, thereby putting public services into the profit market and not at the service of the poor),
free market economies (competition is more important than ensuring equitable distribution of resources - salaries and benefits go down in order for business to remain competitive with other countries),
free trade (capital, or money, can cross borders without restriction, while giant walls are constructed to keep the poor of the global south out of the wealthy nations),
reduction of the size of the state (and hence a withdrawal from the State's role in providing services to the population) and more.
Liberalized labor markets (lowering the minimum wages and benefits paid to workers in and lowering the environmental standards in order to attract more businesses away from places that offer better wages and benefits to workers and work harder to protect the environment.

Free market economies are usually not all that free, and El Salvador is no different. While the government reduces it’s support for the very poor, and opens key items like land up for sale to the highest bidder rather than the neediest farmer, they heavily subsidize private investment. One multi-million dollar scandal was the government buy-out of the Credisa bank, whose poor investments brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. TACA virtually controls the airport, giving it an unfair advantage over other airlines wishing to fly in and out of El Salvador. Pilsner, owned by ARENA president Roberto Murray y Meza has the exclusive rights to sell beer in El Salvador, restricting imports of any other brand into El Salvador. (Pilsner is the only importer of foreign beer). At the same time, the government has taken away subsidies for family and cooperative farmers, savings and loans cooperatives and other grassroots alternatives for development, claiming that this would make them less competitive. They offer maquiladora jobs as the solution to poverty, but a close examination of what that means shows this is no answer.

In El Salvador, a livable wage would be about 4,400 ($506) colones a month for a family of four. The minimum wage is about 1,100 colones a month, ($114). Maquiladora workers (or sweatshops workers), who assemble clothing earn the minimum wage. If a worker says, “I need 1000 colones per month to survive,” the boss will say, “in Mexico I could get somebody to do your job for 50% of what I am paying you now, so I simply can’t raise your wages.” The opening of the labor market, or the liberalizing of the labor market translates into the deepening of poverty and the closing of spaces for dialogue and negotiation.

The major opposition party is the FMLN, the former guerrilla group legalized just after the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992. This party is recognized at that which has traditionally represented the values and the needs of El Salvador’s poor majority. However, in spite of a good showing in the last elections (the FMLN holds 29 seats in the Legislative Assembly and enough city halls to govern over half of the 6 million person population of El Salvador), internal disputes have weakened the FMLN's capacity for real power to turn back the tide of devastating economic policies.

Nonetheless, at the municipal level, FMLN mayors and municipal councils have been able to make some changes in access to services and building up of social infrastructure. For example, Tecoluca, governed by the FMLN since 1994, has community roads, potable water for over 85% of the communities, access to education for all its citizens, a women’s health care clinic, a new market and flood protection infrastructure. In the wake of the two 2001 devastating earthquakes, Tecoluca mayor and council were able to work together with their population to respond rapidly to the need for shelter and food, and have one of the most comprehensive reconstruction plans under way as a result of good planning and excellent mayor-community relations.

Thinking about the solutions:

Monseñor Romero challenges: "Those who wish to treat with charity that which must be treated with justice make a caricature of love." (April 12th, 1979) When SHARE strategizes with our partners in communities and non-governmental organizations, we try to think in terms of structural issues and solutions to those larger problems, rather than charitable responses to short term crisis'. There is a very simple reason for this – if El Salvador doesn’t address these structures that favor poverty’s death grip on the population, poverty will deepen and despair will prosper, and then there won't be enough charity to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

One of the strongest signals of injustice is that people who work very, very hard, cannot get ahead! Here people work from sun up to sun down—but salaries are not enough to get by, much less save up for a rainy day. In ES you will pass through urban and rural slums. Poverty is vivid – people living in shacks made of tin, cardboard, and sticks. You will see dirty drinking water, children with distended stomachs from disease, and hunger in many faces. But you will also see incredible mansions, imported cars, US restaurants, and stores. This provides ample material for reflection. Why do a small minority have a lot of material wealth, while the overwhelming majority live in abject poverty? Again Monseñor Romero calls on us all to be architects for change. "No Christian should say 'I won't get involved, I won't commit myself,' because this would to be a bad Christian, and also a bad citizen." (March 5th, 1978)

Signs of Hope

With the disheartening panorama outlined above, it is easy to get frustrated. But El Salvador’s people continue to be at the forefront of effective poor peoples’ movements that are capable of moving mountains! Here is a laundry list of a few successes of the past 20 years:

Repopulations from Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and urban El Salvador to communities in the war zones of El Salvador. People demanded their right to live in their places of origin, and people from around the world, including the United States, walked with them to offer the protection of solidarity.
The Peace Accords brought a negotiated end to the war, but in order to implement the largest part possible of the Accords, international and national pressure was necessary. Together in many countries we worked with our Salvadoran brothers and sisters to make sure the repressive police forces were dissolved and to ensure that the Land Transfer Program was completed, giving land to 35,000 formerly landless peasants. (This land came with a cost - a 30 year mortgage and loans in order to produce)
In 1997, strapped with a debt burden over 15 years old, cooperative farmers and PTT beneficiaries successfully struggled and lobbied internationally to win debt cancellation. This was a vital first step for family farmers to gain access to credits and to become productive once again.
After several years of flooding, culminating in three floods the year after Hurricane Mitch, dwellers of the Lower Lempa region lobbied their government, garnered international support from the US and Japanese governments and took to the streets to force the Salvadoran government to rebuild the existing pre-war flood protection infrastructure. Construction began in 2000 and continues to date.
Sister Parishes and other rural communities throughout El Salvador have won important struggles to bring schools and teachers to their communities, as well as to promote their own popular teachers to the full rank they deserve. The organized poor have held local governments accountable in areas like road maintenance, electricity, potable water and health care. And they have created successful alternatives for combating poverty. Adult women’s literacy courses have given poor women a chance to read for the very first time. Men and women are learning together how to prevent domestic violence. Peasant leaders who have frequently been marginalized are now leading efforts to build consensus within their towns about how to wisely and fairly use limited funds.
Remembering the martyrs with public commemorations, in communities and in the capital, has provided important forums for celebrating and renewing commitments. The old remember and recommit to their own involvement in the struggles for justice, and together with their children and grandchildren they reaffirm their commitment to build brighter futures for the next generations. We too in the United States can find strength in the voices of the Salvadoran people, and share with them the hope we draw from our own heroes, such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and more.

How does SHARE accompany our sisters and brothers?

In two words, our mission could be defined in EMPOWERMENT and ACCOMPANIMENT: to empower ourselves and the Salvadoran poor to take decisive action for positive change, and to accompany our sisters and brothers spiritually, financially and politically as they struggle to change the structures of poverty and injustice.

SHARE has a three pillared approach to solidarity. For over twenty years we have physically accompanied our sisters and brothers as they have moved back to their homelands and as they continue to struggle to make change. Our delegations to El Salvador and tours of Salvadorans to visit us in the United States give a real physical presence to the solidarity we try to show morally and spiritually every day. When we are home in the States, we write letters to our partners, we lift their names up in prayer, and we celebrate their resilience in our churches, community centers and homes.

SHARE also advocates with our partners in El Salvador to make the structural changes we have talked about. During the 1980s, our most important work was to lobby our own government to cease the policy of repression by stopping the nearly $2 million dollars a day of military aid given to the Salvadoran military regime. Today, in the absence of war, we are called upon to advocate for change in the economic policies promoted by the U.S. in the international banks such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). We do this by accompanying the advocacy initiatives of our partners – and our work manifests itself in many ways from educating people to writing letters, calling and visiting our Congress people, the banks and more.

And finally SHARE finances a range of projects and programs from literacy to advocacy. In other words, we work very hard to place funding that will empower our partners by building skills that they have identified as crucial for continuing their struggle for justice. Organizing and advocacy are key ways to help our sisters and brothers hold their government accountable for the basic human rights of their people, including jobs, housing, healthcare, education and dignity.

When we accompany the people of El Salvador, we help to give voice to the voiceless, and we help to remind them, and ourselves, that all human beings are created with dignity and rights. Together we remember that “we are right, we do have reason. When we ask for justice, when we struggle, when we work hard and put in my 8, 10, 12 hour day in the fields, in the factory, when we can’t find a job, and we've looked everywhere to get one; Tenemos razon! And when our jobs don't pay us a livable wage, we are right when we clamor for justice.” This is the important work of solidarity, when we cross physical limits of borders and the mental borders of thinking that God doesn't want us to live in injustice.

Monseñor Romero was emphatic in his role. He said, "I will not tire of signaling out that if we truly want to cease violence then we must remove the roots of all the aggression… and this violence is structural violence - social injustice." (September 23rd, 1979)

By keeping alive the vision of Romero and so many others, and by lifting up the voices of the living martyrs, the poor who struggle to make ends meet, and the poor who organize to make change, we can build God's Kingdom, the New El Salvador.