dying in El Salvador...

I'm not even sure how to write about El Salvador. So I've been putting it off; which is a shame, because it's a fascinating place.

I look forward to our arrival here and the process of learning and analysis that students begin in their Liberation Theology course. In Guatemala they learn a skill, they learn to speak Spanish. Here in El Salvador, they learn about a reality that hardly seems possible, and one that certainly hasn't created ideal conditions for hope. They have the opportunity to hear people's testimonies and they are challenged both in conversation and in readings to 'take people down from their crosses'.

In El Salvador crosses and suffering aren't figurative. People are dying at incredibly saddening rates. According to the blog Voices on the Border, there were 440 reported murders in the first 5 weeks of 2010. Keep in mind that this is a tiny country - with a total population about equal to that of New York City. To put that number into perspective, New York City only reported 419 murders for the entirety of 2009. It's a problem that keeps getting worse - and people don't really know why. The majority of the victims are gang members, and are young males. However, many have been bus drivers or "political activists, presumably killed for their opinions and public pronouncements".

It's incredible that in a "post-war" country, people can't leave their houses at night. This situation of such extreme violence has brought the military back to the streets to attempt to protect civilians. During the war, the United States sent an average of 1.5 million dollars a day to support the government's attempt to wipe out the 'communists'. The Truth Commission after the war reported that the guerrillas were responsible for approximately 5% of the war crimes. In a conflict that took about 70,000 lives, that means the 'bad guys' the US was paying so much to fight were responsible for about 3,500 deaths...over the course of 12 years.

If murder rates keep up their current rate - El Salvador will loose 4,576 people to violence this year alone. Last year 4,365 were killed.

What is the US sending now? USAID is working on some development projects, and non-profits are doing what they can; but mostly, the US is sending trade agreements that favor the powerful and deporting poor Salvadorans back to a place where there aren't any jobs, and there's a whole lot of death. It sure isn't sending 1.5 million a day. Of course, a million a day wouldn't be the answer (would it?). I don't know what the answer is, but this tiny country's current plight deserves to be heard.

In our religion class we're encouraged not only to ask ourselves about 'taking people down from their crosses' but also "How am I complicit in building crosses?" As a citizen of one of the most powerful nations in the world, living in a reality like El Salvador's, this question haunts me daily.

(pictures: sketches of salvadoran torture victims - rendition of the stations of the cross from the UCA chapel in San Salvador)