My ten weeks in El Salvador were spent shadowing the work of the Salvadorian NGO IMU or the Instituto de Investigación, Capacitación y Desarrollo de la Mujer. We took part in two contrasting placements in terms of living arrangements and their focus. The first experience saw us living in a family house in a community, and for the second in a hostel 40 minutes from the community due to security reasons. This meant the first placement gave us a far greater insight into the community and gave us the opportunity to get to know some of the local people, their lives and history. The first placement focused on gender and sexual and reproductive rights, based in the IMU funded women’s health clinic, this saw us taking part in workshops with local youth and painting the clinic. The second placement was based around IMU’s sustainable agriculture project aimed at empowering local women by allowing them to support themselves; we took part in a wide range of activities from helping in the greenhouse, to inspecting chicken coups, to donning our aprons to help in their bakery. What these placements both had in common was that we worked with local women’s associations which were supported by IMU.
Perhaps the principal realisation I came to during the experience was the relationship between gender and conflict. El Salvador had had decades of rule by an oppressive military dictatorship before civil war broke out in 1980. The concept of women’s rights was non-existent in El Salvador before the war, but the important and pivotal role of women as part of the guerrilla’s fight against the government gave women a voice. As a result IMU, and other women’s organisations, were formed to fight to establish a place for women and for women’s rights. Working alongside IMU gave us an insight into the unresolved problems facing El Salvador since the peace accords were signed in 1992, after 12 years of Civil War. This was a Civil War which saw over 30,000 civilians murdered, disappeared or tortured. It saw an Archbishop who spoke out against poverty and social injustice, Monsenor Oscar Romero, murdered as he celebrated mass by a member of the National Guard who has only recently been arrested for his crime. (www.diariocolatino.com) The government was only able to continue the fight against the rebels thanks to $1.5 million dollars of aid pouring in from the US every day and only stopped their support when the UN was brought in in 1990 to begin peace talks. The conclusion of the peace talks in 1992 with the Peace Accords signed on January 16th, did not resolve the underlying tensions in the country; stemming from poverty and social and gender injustice. A lack of a robust restorative justice process has done nothing to help resolve these lingering and central issues.
It was in El Salvador that I first saw and had no choice but to acknowledge the damaging effects of neoliberal policies. El Salvador is rated by the World Bank as a middle income country, so I did not expect to see the level or amount of poverty which we did and I was shocked to find that 37.81% of the population live below the poverty line. A figure which has dropped by 1% since 2000, indicating the country is struggling to make progress towards Millenium Development Goal 1 (to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty). During our time in El Salvador we saw first-hand a mother struggling to feed her ill baby, when we accompanied local health visitors. We saw a 3 generations of a family living in a small mud hut with a barely waterproof tin roof, kindly donated by the government. We saw extreme, shocking poverty and it would have been difficult to avoid. The way out of this poverty is immigration to the US, where a third of El Salvador’s population (3 million) now reside illegally. However, this is an opportunity few women are able to take up because of the dangers and because they are often left behind as mothers by men who feel no responsibility towards their children. We heard first hand of these dangers from men who had returned from the US and if you are in any doubt I would recommend watching the film Sin Nombre, which was recommended to us by a Salvadorian. (data.un.org) (web.worldbank.org)
The lack of opportunity for young people in El Salvador was perhaps the biggest problem facing the country and one which has links to gender and the Civil War. During the war many Salvadorians escaped to the US, it was here that faced by the ruthlessness of US Gangs: Salvadorians banded together to form their own gangs, MS 13 and 18th Street, with a savage reputation far our stripping their rivals. After all Salvadorians had seen and experienced death in the Civil War, killing was nothing new or shocking to them. Inevitably the US government deported MS 13 and 18th Street gang members back to El Salvador and the gangs established themselves in the home country and continued as the greatest of rivals. Today for young people in El Salvador if you cannot afford to be smuggled into the US (the cost we were told is upwards of $4,000) your other option and perhaps only option, is to join a gang. If your parents themselves have immigrated to the US to support you then joining a gang and finding somewhere you belong is even more likely.
The sad irony of the cyclical process of the US’s involvement in intervening and escalating El Salvador’s problems doesn’t end today. The US prolonged a Civil War which led to many Salvadorians immigrating to the US to escape the slaughter; where faced by US gangs they formed their own tougher gangs; which inevitably were deported back to El Salvador after the Civil War. Then neoliberal policies stemming from the US were implemented in El Salvador, this left young Salvadorians facing the prospect of a dangerous and expensive immigration to the US or to join a gang. The latest instalment in this saga came this week with Obama placing El Salvador on the US drug’s black list, blaming street gangs. (www.bbc.co.uk) This explanation clashes with the reality of life for the gangs, if gangs are forming drug cartels why are they living in such poverty? In 10 weeks in El Salvador I saw rare signs of exuberant wealth which would surely be associated with such a reality and this misconception is something addressed in Ross Kemp’s 2009 documentary where he lives alongside gangs in El Salvador. (Ross Kemp on Gangs: El Salvador) The conclusion must be that Salvadorian government corruption must be complicit in this surge in drug smuggling. Such corruption seems inevitable given the limited restorative justice put in place after 1992. Perhaps the US needs to invest more in its aid programme to El Salvador and to review the effectiveness of its “Democracy and Governance” Programme. elsalvador.usaid.gov
The determination of the rural women we met to change their situation, despite the considerable odds stacked against them, and to see the progress they have made has instilled in me a belief that a better, fairer and more honest world is possible. I have been shocked at the depth and consequences of all levels of US intervention in El Salvador over the last three decades. Perhaps most poignantly I did not expect to find, two decades after the peace accords were signed, a country which has come no further in resolving the poverty and social injustice issues for which the guerrilla’s fought for in the Civil War. As part of the International Citizen Service Scheme, which I went to El Salvador with, we are committed to organising a UK action project, but beyond this I need to establish how I can best invest my efforts into changing our world and telling people my story from El Salvador.
Useful Links
El Salvador's teenage beauty queens live and die by gang law, The Guardian (2002)
Ross Kemp on Gangs: El Salvador
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ross+kemp+on+gangs+el+salvador&aq=0&oq=ross+kemp+on+gangs+EL
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ross+kemp+on+gangs+el+salvador&aq=0&oq=ross+kemp+on+gangs+EL
