(no subject)
So I´m sitting here awake and I really should be in bed, but I am kind of plagued by thoughts right now. I just watched a video about an Archbishop here named Oscar Romero and I just...I dunno his story plagues me. Basically, he was made archbishop shortly before the civil war broke out in 1981. At that time a militaristic regime was in charge here and a guerilla force had formed basically because the regime oppressed workers so badly for the benefit of a few and peaceful demonstrations were being ignored and/or repressed violently. So as the military became more violent in their tactics for ridding the country of the guerilla forces, many people ¨disapeared¨ or were murdered on suspicion of organizing the poor or supporting the left. Many priests began speaking out against this, saying that God would be against the killing of innocent people and that something had to change and that the priests needed to take an active role as leaders to denounce the sins of the army, but at first Romero was kind of on the side that said the church should not be involved in what´s going on outside the church. Then a priest who he was really close with was murdered for no particular reason except that he publicly supported the poor people and disagreed with the violence going on and so he was accused of being a communist and with the guerillas. Romero spent the rest of his life standing up for the right of the Salvadoran people to be free of such repression and denounced the regime from the pulpit as arch bishop. He even wrote to our president, Jimmy Carter, asking him as a fellow man of principles to stop sending the Salvadoran army aide (we sent them money then and throughout the war and supported the movement against the left more fervently during Reagan´s administration sending I think 1.6 million a day to the Salvadoran army and training a battalion of soldiers that performed repeated sweeps of towns, killing virtually every man woman and child there). Jimmy Carter did not stop sending aide, but Romero increasingly gained the love of the Salvadoran people and pissed off the military. So they hired a man to shoot him straight in the chest with a bullet made to blow apart on impact during his mass at his church.
So I guess I wanted to share that because from what I´ve been saying you may have gotten the idea that things are great here. And I mean in some respects they are. I mean it really is amazingly beautiful here. But I don´t want anyone to think that El Salvador is okay because its not. And I feel bad for only saying positive things when I´ve learned so many bad. Last week we went to the memorial for the people killed during the 12 year civil war and a great majority of the names were people who had simply disapeared...kidnapped from their families and never recovered. 75000 people or around that were killed and most of the killing was done by the Salvadoran army that was equipped with American weaponry...left overs from Vietnam a lot of it. I had a man who fought in the guerilla forces walk us around a museum of the war and show us the crater where an American bomb exploded in an attack on the guerillas. I met one of I think two survivors of a sweep the army did of El Mozote in Morazan, bringing all the people out of their homes, separating the men women and children and then killing them in groups. The women were raped and then shot....a lot of men had to dig their own graves before being killed. This woman Rufina managed to run away and hide somehow, but had to hear her childrens screams as they were murdered. And even when she told her story and reporters from Time and somewhere else had pictures of the bodys, our government denied it happened and continued to send aide. On top of which Rufina has told us that she has recieved nothing for the books that have published her stories. She had never seen the book we read about El Mozote that used her picture and her words.
And now the situation has not improved for any of the poor people here. The cities here are very modern and American and there are rich American looking neighbordhoods all over, but they have barbed wire and fences so high you can´t even see the house sometimes. Some even have glass shards all over the top of the wall with the barbed wire. This is because there is still such a small percentage of people who have the money here and kids are joining gangs like mad. One guy told us more people die every day NOW from that violence than during the war. If this seems surprizing, consider that the majority of the people here live on 155 dollars a month and they work in sweat shops, many of which are from Japan I believe. And the U.S is actually deporting Salvadorans from our country who have been involved in gangs in the U.S which is not helping. And whats even more sad is that the culture is so Americanized that even when we stayed in rural communities where most people didn´t have the luxury of plumbing or in some cases matresses, people still had televisions. So they see how much we have, especially the younger kids. The worst thing was we went to this supposedly fair trade clothing factory called Just Garments and they told us how they treat their workers so well and their the only ones with unions and all this. That day we talked to a human rights lawyer and mentioned we went there and he told us they were lying about everything. They haven´t payed their workers in 5 weeks and though they´ve taken benefits from their checks, they have only pocketed it for themselves. And the workers have been decieved into thinking they own most of the company after this long battle with the repressive owners from Japan, but in reality they own nothing. So even that beacon of hope is kind of shot. At least from what we´ve heard so far. I don´t know there is a lot more, but its so awfully depressing to see how our free trade policies have cheated the people here at the benefit of a few in the cities.
I really need to sleep now, but I hope that someone reads this and gets something from it. I feel a little helpless to help the situation, but maybe telling what I know is something I can do. Goodnight all.
So I guess I wanted to share that because from what I´ve been saying you may have gotten the idea that things are great here. And I mean in some respects they are. I mean it really is amazingly beautiful here. But I don´t want anyone to think that El Salvador is okay because its not. And I feel bad for only saying positive things when I´ve learned so many bad. Last week we went to the memorial for the people killed during the 12 year civil war and a great majority of the names were people who had simply disapeared...kidnapped from their families and never recovered. 75000 people or around that were killed and most of the killing was done by the Salvadoran army that was equipped with American weaponry...left overs from Vietnam a lot of it. I had a man who fought in the guerilla forces walk us around a museum of the war and show us the crater where an American bomb exploded in an attack on the guerillas. I met one of I think two survivors of a sweep the army did of El Mozote in Morazan, bringing all the people out of their homes, separating the men women and children and then killing them in groups. The women were raped and then shot....a lot of men had to dig their own graves before being killed. This woman Rufina managed to run away and hide somehow, but had to hear her childrens screams as they were murdered. And even when she told her story and reporters from Time and somewhere else had pictures of the bodys, our government denied it happened and continued to send aide. On top of which Rufina has told us that she has recieved nothing for the books that have published her stories. She had never seen the book we read about El Mozote that used her picture and her words.
And now the situation has not improved for any of the poor people here. The cities here are very modern and American and there are rich American looking neighbordhoods all over, but they have barbed wire and fences so high you can´t even see the house sometimes. Some even have glass shards all over the top of the wall with the barbed wire. This is because there is still such a small percentage of people who have the money here and kids are joining gangs like mad. One guy told us more people die every day NOW from that violence than during the war. If this seems surprizing, consider that the majority of the people here live on 155 dollars a month and they work in sweat shops, many of which are from Japan I believe. And the U.S is actually deporting Salvadorans from our country who have been involved in gangs in the U.S which is not helping. And whats even more sad is that the culture is so Americanized that even when we stayed in rural communities where most people didn´t have the luxury of plumbing or in some cases matresses, people still had televisions. So they see how much we have, especially the younger kids. The worst thing was we went to this supposedly fair trade clothing factory called Just Garments and they told us how they treat their workers so well and their the only ones with unions and all this. That day we talked to a human rights lawyer and mentioned we went there and he told us they were lying about everything. They haven´t payed their workers in 5 weeks and though they´ve taken benefits from their checks, they have only pocketed it for themselves. And the workers have been decieved into thinking they own most of the company after this long battle with the repressive owners from Japan, but in reality they own nothing. So even that beacon of hope is kind of shot. At least from what we´ve heard so far. I don´t know there is a lot more, but its so awfully depressing to see how our free trade policies have cheated the people here at the benefit of a few in the cities.
I really need to sleep now, but I hope that someone reads this and gets something from it. I feel a little helpless to help the situation, but maybe telling what I know is something I can do. Goodnight all.