Exploring the ruins

A delightful excursion yesterday - the Burgos family invited me to go with them to Tazumal, the largest and grandest of El Salvador's Mayan ruins.  We were joined by Jennifer, a norteamericana newly in El Salvador who teaches English subjects to Camila Burgos and her classmates in a bilingual school. 

Seeing Tazumal and listening to our very knowledgeable guide (above), I was reminded how recent we people of European stock and tradition are in this land's long history.  Tazumal and its surroundings have been continuously inhabited since about (hope I'm remembering this correctly) 1000 B.C.E., and the area is full of unexcavated remains from those earlier days.  Here's the main temple:

That earlier world still survives in many ways - in customs, in agricultural practices, in foods, in ceremonies, in family traditions - though in El Salvador it's been pretty thoroughly "translated" and blended into Latin-American life.  And, of course, that world survives in the people, especially in the campo: even though very few any longer speak Nahuat or Lenca, they carry the history in blood and bone. 

We finished our visit as those ancestors might have, walking across the street for lunch at a restaurant serving yucca, the premier dish of Chalchuapa, where Tazumal is located.   Yucca salchichada con chicharón and yucca frita con curtido - boiled yucca (tastes like the best potato you can imagine, only better) with pork rinds, and fried yucca with vinegar slaw - delicious.  Gracias a los Burgos for a wonderful day.

Remembering the Jesuit Martyrs

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the martyrdom of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter at the University of Central America (UCA).  I hope to be at the annual memorial Mass tomorrow.

(Icon by Br, Robert Lentz, OFM)

Tonight I am remembering them, their courage, their commitment to the people, their faithfulness and their hope.  In the words of Fr. James Martin, S.J.:

Today we remember the six Jesuits and their two companions who were martyred in El Salvador on Nov. 16, 1989. The Jesuits at the University of Central America in San Salvador stood with the poor and the oppressed in their country, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Liberator, and made the ultimate sacrifice for God, for the church and for their brothers and sisters.

Holy Martyr Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Ignacio Martín-Baró, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Segundo Montes, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Juan Ramón Moreno, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Joaquín López y López, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Amando López, S.J., pray for us.
Holy Martyr Elba Ramos, pray for us.
Holy Martyr Celina Ramos, pray for us.

Whitewash

San Salvador's Cathedral is a national gathering place, the site of massacres in the 1980s during the Salvadoran Civil War, the grave of murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero, the center for the Catholic community of El Salvador.  And until recently it was graced with a tile mural by Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort, with vivid and striking images of the people and the country.

In December, right after Christmas, this famous mural was demolished by order of the Cathedral authorities, without notice to the artist or to the people.  The reason given was that pieces of the mosaic were falling off, that tiles had become discolored in the sun and could not be replaced because new pieces would not match the existing ones.  The Archbishop said that an engineering and architectural firm working with the Archdiocese had recommended removing the mural.

To me it is a great sorrow that the church authorities destroyed this mural so quickly, so lightly.  Where Llort's bright tiles once brought life to the cathedral's facade, there's now a blank, whitewashed wall. 

Whitewashing the past, covering up history and art, has been too much the way of life in El Salvador.  The wounds from the Civil War still bleed - you will hear about them early in any conversation with a Salvadoran over 30 - because there has never been the kind of national process of memory and reconciliation that could bring healing.  Now the San Salvador Cathedral has lost its historical memory and imagery: another wound, another whitewashing.

Dia de Independencia

September 15, last Thursday, Suchitoto and towns all over Central America celebrated the Dia de la Independencia - Independence Day, celebrating the day in 1821 when Central America declared its freedom from Spain. It was, of course, cause for a good fiesta! The party began Wednesday evening with the traditional procession of the students at InSu, the Instituto de Suchitoto, equivalent to high school, complete with floats and wild costumes. My favorite float, created at the Centro Arte para la Paz, was a version of the famous San Salvador statue of Jesus standing atop the globe, and it had to progress very slowly and carefully so that the wires could be lifted with a long pronged stick as it passed every house. There was an angel (photo above) followed by a corps of dancing angels, a 19th century cart and horse, followed by students in Victorian dress, and the Carreta de la Chillona - Martha tells me that a kind of rattle lets you know when la Chillona is hunting down the living, and her carreta was appropriately decorated with skulls.

The next morning all the school kids in town and many from the colonias marched through the town. We hung out the door and a window as they passed, almost every school with some students in costumes and a marching band. And then there was La Ciguanaba, the old witch who dangles her sausage breasts in vain attempts to catch a lover. And there were these little girls dancing up the street.

I've lived in cities most of my life where parades are very organized rituals with professional floats, and I can't tell you how much fun it is to be part of the crowd hanging out on the edges of these two happy parades. ¡Viva la Independencia!

La Memoria Vive

Yesterday I had my first chance to see the new museum that is part of the Centro Arte para la Paz, and I'm delighted and amazed at all that is there, all that has been accom-plished. I haven't had time to do more than a quick look yet (this is one of the 150% of time periods when I'm getting ready for our November eye screening mission), but I can hardly wait to watch the videos and read all the posters and look at all the artifacts.

This museum is called "La Memoria Vive," or Living Memory, and it's a museum of Suchitoto history, with special emphasis on the living history that Suchitoto youth captured in their video interviews with elders, warriors, artisans, campesinos. Interactive video screens are scattered throughout the museum, offering interviews on different topics. And it's all very beautifully and imaginatively put together.

The museum opened September 26th, and already has logged 900 visitors, an impressive number in this small town. Best of all, it's attracting and educating the young people of Suchitoto, helping them to understand their own history. Congratulations to Peggy O'Neill and the talented staff of the Centro Arte who've made yet another dream become reality.

El Salvador del Mundo

Today, the feast of the Transfiguration, is for the capital city of San Salvador - and for the country as a whole - the country's patronal feast of El Salvador del Mundo, the savior of the world. This photo is from the parade in downtown San Salvador a couple of years ago, borrowed from the internet as nothing would lure me to the capital on this day of crowded and jubilant fiesta.

Almost everyone had yesterday and today off: school is out and for many, the whole week has been free for enjoying "the August festivals." Here, as during Holy Week and Christmas Week, the religious and secular holidays bump shoulders, with processions and firecrackers and dances and parades and trips to the beach all blending together in a happy stew - ¡Fiesta! ¡Que disfruten! Have a great time, everyone!

But the more solemn reality of this feast was beautifully stated by Monseñor Romero on the 6th of August, 1977: "I tell you, beloved Catholics, that all of us, the Church, are the Transfiguration of Christ: a people illuminated by faith, encouraged by a great hope, held together by a great love. We are in truth the glory of the Lord, most when we are conscious that this glorious name of our country is a gift of favor of the Lord."

Images from Calle Real

Most of these photos need no words: they were taken between 1985 and 1988 at the Calle Real Refugee Camp outside San Salvador, and show children at school, on a walk, at first communion, and at an improvised concert. Some of those children - now adults with children of their own - were hugging Andrea and Margaret Jane today.

The last photo is an image from the memorable day when Archbishop Rivera y Damas, the successor to Archbishop Romero, visited Calle Real, so that he could see with his own eyes and testify to the authorities that it was indeed a refugee camp, and not a place where guerrillas were operating. And, of course, that's Hermana Margarita (Margaret Jane) greeting him.

An El Salvador weekend

Our great mission team got on the plane very early this morning - at least most of them did: a few are relaxing at the beach or with family, Zach Pedersen is on the way to Panama, and Cathy MacKay has started a three-month language-learning stay in El Salvador. Kathy Garcia and I drove back to the base house in Suchitoto and well-deserved naps.

Between the end of clinics on Friday and the plane ride this morning, our team members expanded their understanding of this beautiful country. We spent Saturday in the capital, San Salvador, visiting the Hospital de Divina Providencia where Monseñor Romero lived and was assassinated in 1980; we heard the story from Sister Bernadita, a Honduran nun and the only person who makes Kathy Garcia look like a basketball player. At the University of Central America (UCA) we learned about the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter nine years later. And we took a little time for shopping and sightseeing.

Saturday evening we had the traditional pizza-beer-and-coconut-ice-cream dinner, this time at the home of Leslie Schuld, Director of the CIS (Center for Interchange and Solidarity), and got to hear Leslie's take on politics, economics, crime and development in El Salvador, knowledge borne of 16 years in the country.

Sunday was our Suchitoto day, beginning with an inspiring conversation with Sister Peggy O'Neill at the Centro Arte para la Paz. Peggy reminded our team that the medicines and glasses we offered mattered less than the attention, respect and dignity we gave our patients; and that our consciousness of the limitation of what we could give was also a grace.

After a few hours to walk and shop in Suchitoto, the team headed for our new Base House and lunch and time to sit under the lemon tree and relax. Then it was back to the Novo Hotel, our elegant weekend lodging, to debrief and pack and get to bed early for the long trip home.

A time of terrible memories

Today the Jesuit community of the UCA (University of Central America) is remembering the Jesuits assassinated 20 years ago on their campus. Last night the community of El Sitio Cenizero, a village settled by survivors of the 1983 massacre of the people of Copapayo, remembered those who died during the three terrible days of killing. Margaret Jane and I heard the story of the Copapayo massacre two years ago, when the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace sponsored a week of study and reflection in El Salvador. I turned the story into a poem, and in memory of all those lives squandered so terribly during the Civil War, here it is:


Copapayo

He stands staring into his hands
moving them back and forth
talking to the ghosts that live there.

He cannot lift his eyes to look at us
because we are the ones who were not there
and so are still living.

He is compelled to tell the story
again and again, talking into his hands
to the ones who are not here,

Mamá. Papá. Tia. Hermana. Sobrino.
How they came down into the canyon to the lake
looking to go home again, was it safe? Was the Army
somewhere else? Looking to go home to plant the fields
with corn and beans, to harvest oranges. Peasants, paisanos,
thought to be ripe for communism, wanting rights
they shouldn’t have. He was just ten,
old enough to help. They sent out scouts,
the army came back after them, there was no time
to run, no where to hide, they started shooting,
bodies fell, beloved ones fell, blood fell into the lake.
After a while the army rounded up the survivors
and marched them away. The officer told some of the men
they could take the young girls, do as they liked with them.
He heard the girls screaming as they marched the others up
the hill away, he hears them still.

They were thirsty, hungry, so afraid. The soldiers said
they’d take them to a camp. After a while. First they were marched
to another village, not their own, He found his aunt and sister on the march,
still living, walking, and they walked together, kept together,
They were divided into three groups, sent to different corners
of the village, his group in tall grass when he heard the shots begin
and dived back, a small, thin boy, into the tall grass, trying to tell
his aunt, his sister to come hide with him, but then he was alone
alive holding silence while the world erupted into gunfire
and the soldiers joked and reloaded and shot some more
and tossed some branches over the dead and went away
and only he and Pedro were left, and Pedro, older boy, was
wounded so he couldn’t walk and he tended him for a night
and a day, fetched water for him, but he couldn’t carry Pedro
and he had to leave and the weight of what still feels like betrayal still
hides in the lines of his hands.

But he left and walked back to the canyon, past the bodies of the girls
now torn and dismembered by dogs, past the bodies of the ones
who had died in the canyon, no one left, no one alive to break
the silence, and he walked back to the village where the corn fields
were still unplanted and the orange tree hung heavy with fruit
and he hid in a hole in the earth like a dead boy until he heard
voices and it was the guerrillas gathering oranges and he came out,
and there was his uncle, the only one left, who put down the oranges
and gathered him up, cipote, precioso, and then the story
is over.

He stands staring into his hands
moving them back and forth
talking to the ghosts that live there.

He cannot lift his eyes to look at us
because we are the ones who were not there
and so are still living.

He is compelled to tell the story
again and again, talking into his hands
to the ones who are not here.

Reading Monseñor

A while back, I bought one volume of the six-volume set of Monseñor Romero's homilies, the volume that holds his reflections (in Spanish) on the liturgical readings for Cycle B, from June to November, 1979. Thirty years later, we're hearing those same readings proclaimed on Sundays.

Reading Monseñor's 1979 homilies is a multilayered experience. I'm aware of the passion and power of his reflections, of his deep love for scripture and for the church. He also comments every week on what is going on, the increasing repression and reprisals that would lead to his own assassination only a few months later. Reading what he said over the radio to the people of El Salvador (and everybody sat by their radio to listen, I'm told) I feel a great sorrow for the loss that is still to come, the loss of this great and clear and loving voice.

It's powerful to hold these homilies and the terrible times in El Salvador 30 years ago in mind and heart as I look at today's world. Better here, yes, but tonight there's another tense situation in Honduras, and there are places of loss and agony all over the world. I've also just finished The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn, a book that took me back 70 years to see and know some of the ordinary lives that were wasted in the Holocaust. Reading Monseñor and Daniel Mendelsohn, one sees the horrible, repetitive, banal quality of evil, of what can be unleashed when the restraints are off, when some humans have become prey, have been seen as less than human because they're Jewish or Tutsi or thought to be communists. The supposedly civilized times of my life have known too much of evil unleashed.

Settling and unsettling

I'm happily back home in Suchitoto after an excellent month in Antigua during which some clarity about verb tenses may have settled in. It feels good to be settling in to the house, good to be listening to the winter rains in the patio. Today's rains were fierce, creating little rivers on their way to the drain and big rivers out in the street.

What's unsettling is watching the U.S. attention span shift with such speed from the coup in Honduras to Michael Jackson's death and the affairs of Governor Sanford. Here in Central America what happened in Honduras, and what happens next, has huge repercussions. All the countries of Central America, except perhaps Costa Rica, have a long history of military coups, mostly backed by previous U.S. governments. But it's been 16 years since the last military coup in Central America, and it has seemed that stable democracy was finally here to stay. But a look at the front page photo in today's Prensa Grafica (above) shows something all too familiar to Latin American readers: the man who was selected, not elected, as President, Roberto Micheletti, ushered forward by the officer right behind him: there, you could say, is his backing!

What has happened so far in international and U.S. and central American reaction has been encouraging. Honduras finds itself isolated and threatened with the loss of financial aid and market access that will be devastating in this very poor country.

In Guatemala and El Salvador, there's been immediate notice and concern that a successful coup in Honduras could lead to others. What happens next will determine how likely that is. Tonight Manuel Zelaya, the elected President of Honduras, is here in El Salvador as the guest of President Mauricio Funes. And tomorrow?

Miscellany

Tonight I am present in prayer with the delegates to our Congregation Chapter, and especially with the Sisters who have been nominated for leadership. Tomorrow the process of election will begin with the election of the new Congregation leader. May the Spirit be hovering over Elberon, New Jersey, and over each of these women! We will be blessed in the outcome.

On a much more mundane note, my friend Pat wrote to ask who the Próceres are and how they march. She's referring back to yesterday's blog about El Salvador history. A Prócer, my dictionary tells me, is an important person, a great man, a leader. And Los Próceres are the founding fathers of El Salvador. They are memorialized, in the Boulevard de los Próceres, by very large, blocky head-and-shoulder statues without much individuality or expression. I would have tried to photograph one, but stopping on the Boulevard de los Próceres would be a suicidal act.

And on a more joyful note: I went to the La Laguna botanical gardens today with Ana Lazar, who is down here from the University of Southern Maine on a teaching Fulbright. Getting there was quite a challenge, as it's down in the middle of an industrial district, and there are no signs to guide you, but it's a beautiful place where the city feels far away. Above are flowers from the garden, a purple orchid and a red vine flower, colors to make you sing.

Very brief history of El Salvador, part 3

During the Spanish colonial era, El Salvador was part of the Captaincy of Guatemala, but by the beginning of the 19th century colonial days were coming to an end. The success of the American and French revolutions provided a powerful example. Spain has been on the losing end of several wars, and was finally invaded by Napoleon, who deposed the king in 1808. Internal causes included the resentment of the creole population (people of Spanish blood born in the Americas) at being excluded from the most important government positions and at the lack of commercial freedom. (Most of the information here is from Wikipedia and the Equipo Maiz History of El Salvador)
The first cry for independence was raised in 1811 by Padre Jose Matias Delgado in San Salvador. Popular uprisings followed, protests against Spanish taxes and heavy-handed authority. The authorities from Guatemala put down this first rebellion, which was followed by other uprisings, led by the Proceres, the notable men who are regarded as El Salvador's founders (and who now march, blockily, along the Boulevard de los Proceres, a major San Salvador street). The Act of Independence of Central America was signed in 1821.
More problems followed quickly. Mexico wanted to annex Central America in the process of creating a Mexican empire, an idea opposed by the Salvadoran leaders. Then, in 1823, La Republica Federal de Centroamérica was founded, with Salvadoran Manuel José Arce (pictured here) as the first President. Dissension and rebellion followed, including an uprising of indigenous people led by the revolutionary Anastasio Aquino, who was betrayed and shot in 1833. After years of internal warfare and struggles, El Salvador became an independent state in 1840 after the dissolution of the Federal Republic. It was, and has remained for most of its history, a country controlled by the wealthy, where the poor, and especially the indigenous people struggled for survival.

Very brief history of El Salvador, part 2

In 1492, as we all know, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and found a new world (to him) of people who thought they were doing just fine without being "discovered." For the native people of the Americas, discovery led to wars, forced conversion, forced labor, forced concubinage and rape, widespread death from newly introduced diseases. It's estimated that between 1500 and 1600 the population of Central America diminished by 90% from all these causes.

In 1524 Pedro de Alvarado, the conquistador of Guatemala, invaded Cuscatlán, present-day El Salvador, and was wounded in a battle with the Pipiles. It took the Spanish 15 years to complete the conquest; in the process, they founded the city of San Salvador (1525) and divided up the land among themselves. During the colonial period, the Spanish introduced livestock, the plough, the water mill, wheat, sugar cane. They exported cocoa, cotton, balsam, and indigo. In the encomienda system of royal land grants, the indigenous people either worked for the dueño (owner) or paid tribute in corn, beans, cotton, honey, wax. During the colonial period - and long after - those with most power were the Spanish or the Creoles, children of Spanish parents born in Central America. Next came the mestizos or ladinos, people of mixed blood who had no right to private property, but were given the better jobs. Finally the indigenous people were the most dominated and exploited.

The Catholic Church was a power parallel to the colonial administration, the center of education and culture, sometimes a power for the good, mediating between the indigenous people and the authorities, but more often demanding conversion, attendance at Mass and work for the church.

A very short history of El Salvador, Part I

As someone addicted to words, I can't help thinking that naming this very small country "Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesucristo El Salvador Del Mundo" (the Province of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World) was asking for trouble. That's not a safe name, and this has never been a safe place.

It's hard to understand El Salvador today without understanding something about the Civil War of the 1970s-1990s. It's hard to understand the Civil War without understanding something about the long history of the Spanish colonizers, the landed families, the generals. And it's necessary to begin even further back, with the Pipiles and the Lenca.

The Pipiles, speaking Nahuat, an Aztec-related language, came from what is now Mexico and settled to the southwest of the Rio Lempa; the Lenca lived north and east of the Lempa. The Pipil, about whom more seems to be known today, lived in well-organized communities, with each family assigned a piece of land to cultivate (the origins of the current milpa or corn field). Both peoples cultivated corn, beans, root vegetables, squash, cacao, and a great variety of fruits; smoked tobacco; made pottery and wove textiles from cotton, palm and bamboo. They practiced slash and burn agriculture. They lived in a class-structured society, with few privileges for the laborers at the bottom of the social order. Some things have not changed much. The principal community of the Pipiles, near present-day San Salvador, was named Cuscatlán, which means "the land of precious things"

The Pipil and Lenca were on the outskirts of the great indigenous civilizations of the Americas, the Inca, Maya and Aztec. Today only a few communities in El Salvador shelter a handful of Nahuat speakers, and there are no Lenca speakers. Both languages are essentially extinct. The knowledge, stories, histories and jokes of the Lenca and the Pipil have been lost, and not through any natural process, but through centuries of fierce repression. But that's the next part of this story.