Our Final Week: Looking Ahead, Looking at Hope

One of many hugs shared during our final week

By Janet Crenshaw

If there are two things I learned this week, its that we have to have hope. And that re-entry into the U.S. is going to be, well, hard.

“We will have to talk about you going down there, I wouldn't be real interested in having one of my daughters in jail!!” he said.

After I emailed my Dad my final project, in an attempt to not have to explain all that we did and learned in our 10-day travel seminar in El Salvador, I received this reply in response to my comments on the School of the Americas. Immediately after to a talk we had a couple of weeks before with Sister Kathy Long about the School of the Americas, I immediately called my Dad and told him he should go to the protest that weekend at Fort Benning – just an hour from my hometown of Atlanta. Sure, we joked how if I went and was arrested, that the phone reception would be worse in jail than it is with the Casa Verde phone, but I’m starting to realize that I am going to face some tension in integrating my experiences here with my life in the U.S.

In our last few hours of the program, during our Social Change Lab Group, Julie gave us a big warning and very detailed suggestions to help deal with this re-entry concept and the whole “How was Mexico?” question. One typical reaction she talked about that scared me was the “reversion reaction” – where one just closes up and doesn’t talk about their experiences and just falls back into one’s old life as if the past semester had never happened.

After a day filled with final presentations that are intended to educate those at home about El Salvador, I have faith that our group won’t forget. With Elsbeth’s beautiful “rompe cabeza” (which translates into “head-breaker”, but it is a puzzle), I know she will get people looking closer at the images that make up the history and current situations of El Salvador, and also encourage others to “speak their own truths” as those we met also did. And Kathryn is bound to get her tune parody of School House Rock actually on the School House Rock program – maybe kids will start to learn the real U.S. history, about the U.S. role in El Salvador, and that “guerillas aren’t just monkey’s anymore.” Oh, and Dan, he might just start a [insert swear word here] revolution.

All of the speakers we’ve had, families we’ve lived with, the staff and professors at CEMAL, and all of the students – all of them have given me hope that maybe this big concept of “social change” is something we can actually tackle. Yes, I did think I would found out what to do with my life, I thought I’d be fluent in Spanish (ask Megan, I’m not – but the Spanglish is going well), and yeah, I thought maybe we would get the answers and formulas on how to change our world.

But no, believe it or not, there is no cheat sheet for Social Change 101. But in order to make efforts to change our world, we do need hope. And each other.

“If you don’t have hope, you die. And there are a lot of dead people walking around,” said James Cone, a black liberation theologian.

At our closing ceremony at Ann’s house this Friday, we all read a pledge as to what we are going to do once we return home.

“I pledge to not lose hope,” I said.

I pledge to not lose hope that one day maybe Licha will change the church from working within it with Liberation Theology, that I can go to a School of the America protests and have my voice heard and not get arrested as my Dad seems to worry about, and yes, that maybe the Casa Verde phone will one day work better.

My mom told me this would be a radicalizing experience. I thought she was just exaggerating. I believe Mexico changed us all, and the most important thing I’ve learn from this dynamic, silly and thoughtful group is that we can’t change the world alone as individuals. So why don’t you all join us?

As Dan quoted in his final project, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

–Margaret Mead

In addition to her “Ask me about El Salvador” shirt, Kathryn also sang three song/tune parodys for her final project to sing to her music fraternity and friends (and maybe in concert one day, right Kathryn??)

El Salvador: Our 10 day travel seminar

The full Crossing Borders 07 group on our last day in El Salvador

By Elsbeth Pollack

In the past two weeks, we spent our time in the country of El Salvador, focusing on social change and historical memory by visiting with over 15 people who shared with us their stories and passions from the past and the present.

Students in the ARENA office during our visit. The man in the photo at the left is Roberto D’Aubisson, the founder of ARENA

One of the most challenging parts of the trip was our visit to the Legislative Assembly where we met with deputies from the ARENA and FMLN parties, the two major parties in El Salvador at this point. What made the visits so difficult for me was that, taking into account their history and their politics, it is hard to place them as political parties.

Take ARENA, the National Republican Alliance, for instance. It was founded 26 years ago by a man named Roberto D’Aubisson, who graduated with high honors from the School of AmericasFort Benning, Georgia (a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, that teaches such “great” skills as counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics, to be used against their own people in [1]). The School of the Americas, now known as the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” was started in attempts to “promote democracy and keep out communism”[2] in the countries of Latin America, who the United States saw susceptible to this form of government. This mindset goes hand in hand with the platform and beginnings of the ARENA party. As ARENA deputy Mariela Pena Pinto shared with us, “D’Aubisson saved us from being a communist country into being a nationalist country….He brought an awareness of the danger of communism”.[3] Although I disagree with the School of Americas wholeheartedly, if a country wants to fight against being communist, that is fine with me. What scares me the most about D’Aubisson is that he was the intellectual mastermind behind the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. Romero was a major leader in the liberation theology movement in El Salvador, and spoke out strongly against the treatment of the poor and marginalized by the powerful. The ARENA party is also a heavily conservative Christian party. As their deputy shared, “that the party believes in God is one of the principles of ARENA. Our people are Christian here and that gives us hope to win in the 2009 elections.”[4] Coming from the United States, where the separation of church and state is a highly important and debated issue, for someone to be so outright about this connection, especially when there are other religions in a country, is a bit disturbing.

And don’t forget the FMLN! The party started as a guerrilla group in 1981 but was institutionalized as a political party with the UN Peace Accords on January 16, 1992.[5] They came together for many reasons, but one of the major reasons was that they saw a lack of democracy in the country. To go from fighting this to being a part of a democratic system is something that seems a bit contradictory, although I can understand how they are able to make change in different ways now. FMLN deputy Blanca Flor Bonilla, who took part in the guerrilla struggle during the war, shared this same problem of vision, saying that the “transition from military guerrilla group to political party has been very difficult” in that some of the members thought that the FMLN should no longer be a revolutionary force, but should be transformed into a social and democratic party, while others maintained that they should stay as a revolutionary group because that would be the only way to obtain the rights they were seeking.[6] I tend to look at the situation like the latter group of people and have a hard time seeing how real change can take place when there are restrictions and when a group is fighting within a structural institution. Many former FMLN members, when discussing the FMLN as a political party, have pointed to their differences of opinions, although never explicitly, mentioning that while they respect the party as people, they don’t share their opinions.[7] There are some, like Hector Ibarra Chavez, former comandante of the FMLN, that are “ashamed of comrades who fought together but are now big politicians”.[8] It just makes me wonder if institutionalizing a social movement is the best way to enter into change. The FMLN deputy also shared that although during the war, the FMLN really knew how to give personal attention, but with the onset of the government party, it is hard to give personalized attention because they have so much more to focus on as a group. In speaking with Hilda Parduchi, a member of Las Dignas, the first feminist organization in the country that emerged out of the FMLN, there are still major problems with the structure of the FMLN as a patriarchal institution with the ideology that “when all class issues are resolved, then we can focus on women’s issues”.[9] This focus on economic struggle without much regard for sexual and bodily rights comes right from Marxist ideology, of which the FMLN is heavily influenced by.

Even though I feel contradictions between ARENA and FMLN serving as political groups, I am very glad that they are fighting in a democratic political front for electoral change, and not in another war. Leslie Shuld, director of The Center for Exchange and Solidarity with El Salvador (CIS for short), however, presently sees a situation with similar conditions for war which she feels could result in a social explosion, fighting against the increased poverty and “unbearable economic situations” that the country is presently under.[10] These conditions are such that, half of Salvadorans live on $2 a day[11]; the price of beans, a staple in the Salvadoran diet, has increased over 100% from 50 cents to $1.25[12]; common crime has risen, resulting in beatings and killings for little more than $5-$10 dollars all throughout the country[13]; and remittances from the United States have become close to 20% of the Gross National Product of El Salvador, reaching $3.5 million every year.[14] Through all of this, however, there are still groups living and working for change, such as the cooperative community Nueva Esperanza in the south of El Salvador.

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[1] The SOA Watch: www.soaw.org

[2] Sister Kathy Long, 11/13/107

[3] Mariela Pena Pinto 11/23/07

[4] Mariela Pena Pinto 11/23/07

[5] Carlos Garcia, 11/22/07

[6] Blanco Flor Bonilla, 11/23/07

[7] Rolanda Cazeras, 11/27/07

[8] Hector Ibarra Chavez, 9/24/07

[9] Hilda Parduchi, 11/22/07

[10] Leslie Shuld, 11/22/07

[11] Leslie Shuld, 11/22/07

[12] Carlos Garcia, 11/22/07

[13] Carlos Garcia, 11/22/07

[14] Leslie Shuld, 11/22/07