San Salvador: Poverty and Security

Action
It’s hard to not talk about poverty and security when discussing Central America. After 5 weeks of language school in Guatemala, we headed to the city where these two issues are perhaps most important: San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

For background, we were staying with Paty, a friend of a New York friend. Paty had invited us to stay in her family’s home, in a working class neighborhood outside of the city. She had cautioned beforehand that her home was “simple”. Half of it contained the family’s scale-making shop, and the other half consisted a dining/living room, small kitchen, and three bedrooms for the six or so family member who regularly slept there. Like in most Central American houses, the floor was concrete and the roof was sloped metal plates. A patio in the back contained the toilet and washbasin.

During most of our time in San Salvador, Paty escorted us around to specific sites by bus, taxi, and foot. After visiting several isolated cathedrals, museums, and the Jesuit university, we went downtown to see a few sites in the city center. As Paty explained, most people rarely go downtown, because of the crime and insecurity. We quickly visited the cathedral of the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero and El Rosario church, site of a military massacre. The other buildings and parks downtown were fairly run-down, and many people seemed to be looking at us intently.

We boarded a minibus to head to another part of town. The bus became very full by the time we wanted to get off, and we had to furiously plow our way out through a solid mass of shoving people. As soon as we stepped out of the bus, I noticed that my wallet was missing from my pocket. I said so loudly, and we went back to the minibus door. The minibus attendant didn’t respond much, and a man by the door gestured down the block and said that he saw a guy in a white shirt down there take my wallet. Paty, Renate and I shuffled about a bit unsure of what to do, and soon both the minibus and the dubious “guy in a white shirt” were gone.

We went to an internet café to report my stolen bank cards. Paty kindly let me use her cell phone, and an hour later my cards were all cancelled without any damage done. I ended up losing $40 in cash, along with my driver’s license, bank cards, and the wallet that I’d used since middle school. All of us grimaced every time I had to disclose to the bank representatives over the telephone, “Actually, I’m in El Salvador. Yes… El Salvador.”

Reflection
For a few hours after my wallet was stolen, I was damn angry. First, I was angry at myself. Just that morning, I had thought that I should leave my important cards behind at Paty’s house and only bring the bare minimum in cash… why hadn’t I done so? And why was my wallet in my pocket in the first place? Clearly it would’ve been safer in my bag. I’d almost always kept it in my pocket, when traveling or not, holding onto it with my hand whenever passing through a pickpocket area. This time people in the bus were pushing so much that I had to hold the handlebar with one hand and my bag with the other. Clearly, I could have prevented the theft.

Renate reminded me not to blame the victim, however. I then became angry at the thieves and other people on the bus. I was angry at the gall of the probable thief to look me in the eyes and say that some other ambiguous person had committed the crime, right after distracting and robbing me. I was angry that neither the bus driver nor anyone else on the bus came to my aid, seemingly treating the theft as an acceptable act. Unlike most other tourists in Central America I had tried to give San Salvador a chance, and on my first and only visit downtown, the locals had done their best to prove the stereotypes right.

Finally, I was angry at the general state of San Salvador. I was angry that all the kind and honest city residents, such as Paty and her family, had to live in such a situation. I was angry that for so many other people, who certainly weren’t born criminals, crime was arguably the best option they had for getting by. How could I really blame those living in extreme poverty for wanting to steal a wallet that represented a month’s earnings? I was angry that the US government had spent billions of dollars supporting and encouraging El Salvadoran state violence - helping to turn the country into a war zone, devastating the social and economic system, and making violence the societal norm.

During our two months in Central America, I witnessed more poverty and felt more insecurity than anywhere else I’d been in my short 26 years… more than in post-war Bosnia, rural Ukraine, Kurdish Turkey, or inland China. Central America was the first place where the sight of men sprawled unconscious in the street, or former paramilitary guards wandering the sidewalks with automatic weapons in hand, seemed so regular as to not provoke a reaction from passersby. In Central America I encountered such unholy combinations of statistics as 17% with a water connection, 13% finished primary education, 60% living in extreme poverty, and over 30,000 killed by state death squads (whose directors are often still in power). Our language tutors in Guatemala and Nicaragua suggested that people had been subjected to such extremes of poverty and violence as to become virtually desensitized.

Taking all this into account, my stolen wallet doesn’t seem like such a big deal now… but it sure did at the time.

Question
What makes you feel secure or insecure in a place? How has a theft or crime changed the way you think?

Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua- What are these language schools of which you speak?

Acción
Starting in November, Josh and I spent five weeks at Juan Sisay Language School in Xela, Guatemala. Xela is peppered with language schools, many of them similar to each other. We chose Juan Sisay because it is cooperatively run and part of the revenues are used to support a student scholarship program. Our classes were from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, including a half hour (at least) break. We met one-on-one with our teachers. I switched teachers nearly every week; Josh kept the same one for 4 weeks. Our lessons were a mixture of grammar drills and chatting in Spanish with our teachers about our life experiences, cultures, and politics. On our walks home in the afternoon, Josh and I would try to out-do each other with the things we tried to explain, in Spanish, to our teachers. (e.g. “Today, I explained how the Federal Sentencing Guidelines take power away from judges and give it to prosecutors.” “Oh yeah, I described vegetarian shark-fin dim sum.”) In the afternoons, the school would organize trips to nearby towns, lectures and other activities. The language school also coordinated our stay with a host family.

After five weeks in Xela, my brain felt mushy, and we decided to take a week-long break from school. We traveled through El Salvador for a week and then continued our Spanish studies at CENAC language school in Esteli, Nicaragua. We just finished two weeks of studying there. The structure of CENAC is similar to that of Juan Sisay: We spent 4 hours a day in one-on-one sessions with a teacher and the school hooked us up with a host family. The proceeds of the school help fund a retirement home. My classes at CENAC began with a discussion of the Spanish children’s book I had been reading, newspaper articles I had read, and politics and history. After a coffee break, we worked through grammar exercises in a textbook. In the afternoons the school organized meetings with local organizations and institutions. We visited a coffee-roaster, human rights center, natural medicine laboratory, prison, university and the local offices of the Sandinista political party.

Reflexión
How much Spanish have I learned? Am I learning fast enough? Oh, wait; this is still the reflection part of the blog. I vacillate between being pleased with how much Spanish I’ve learned and feeling despondent over how much I have to learn. For example, I experienced the thrill of victory when I went to a salon, described the haircut I wanted (in Spanish), and got it. My greatest victories, though, are when I intentionally make my teacher laugh, even if it takes me 5 minutes to tell a joke. The agony of defeat occurs when I have to ask someone to repeat a question 3 times before realizing that they’re just asking some variant of “Where are you from?” When a conversation occurs without any context, like random conversations on a park bench, or with background noise, I get lost easily.

I’m constantly looking for yardsticks to measure how much Spanish I comprehend, other than how long it takes for me to tell a joke and how good my hair looks. Counting how many times I need to consult a dictionary per column inch of newspaper text, though, is too compulsive by my standards.

There was one incident that provided the perfect metaphor, however, for my level of Spanish comprehension. When we were in El Salvador, I spent a morning playing with the niece (age 6) and nephew (age 4) of Paty, our hostess. They developed a ball game that was a sort of variant on the simple game of catch. The girl would tell her brother, Josh, and I to stand in different places and after throwing the ball around for a while, she announced a winner and a loser. When I wasn’t sure of where to stand she would gesture or physically move me. I wasn’t always entirely sure how I was supposed to throw the ball or to whom. Usually, I would just mimic my girl-leader. After a few minutes of playing, I felt comfortable developing my own style and moves, like throwing the ball so that it would bounce once before reaching the intended recipient. Just like in Spanish, I kinda got the gist of what was going on. Here, it was throwing the ball around. In Spanish, if someone speaks clearly and/or uses hand-signs, I can generally understand what they’re saying. After some time in a new situation, I even develop the confidence to contribute to conversations myself. But I’m often not sure of what exactly is going on around me and I have to rely on context clues.



Cuestión
How have you learned languages? When did you feel like you understood a language? What games have you played where you didn’t know the rules?

Xela, Guatemala: Day of the Dead

Action
Our first day in Xela, November 1st, was Dia de los Muertos - Day of the Dead. In Guatemala (and many other Latino and non-Latino places), people honor this day not with solemn memorials, but rather vibrant celebrations. Families gather to clean and decorate the graves of loved ones, have a picnic, and chat with friends and neighbors. Vendors pass through the cemetery selling flowers, ice cream, and fruit. Kids fly kites and run around the graves playing. The already colorful Guatemalan cemeteries turn into virtual rainbows, bursting with people and sound.

Visiting a nearby planning office

Reflection
After many years of bedridden illness, one of my grandmothers recently passed away. One of my first thoughts was of Day of the Dead. I don’t think about death very often, but I appreciated the Guatemalan approach that we witnessed on Day of the Dead. Think and talk about what you loved about the person. Enjoy the moment, as you would if the person were there. Keep the person’s essence alive in the life you live. Incorporate memories of the person into a new happy experience.

Question
How do you honor the dead? Or how would you like to?

Zunil & Cantel, Guatemala: A Tale of Two Co-ops, or How to Buy/Sell With Dignity

Action
During our time in Xela, we often visited surrounding towns, on trips organized by our language school. One such visit was to the town of Zunil, to see an indigenous women’s weaving cooperative and some religious buildings. The religious buildings were underwhelming (another story in itself), but Renate and I were more interested in learning about the co-op anyway.

When we arrived at the co-op, our guide introduced us to a worker representative and then left. For the next five minutes, the woman explained that the co-op was not making enough money, and so it relied on people like us to buy its products. We asked a few questions about how the co-op worked, but only got short responses. The worker invited us to peruse the products for sale in the two tiny front rooms, for the 20 minutes remaining until our guide would return. The products were all quite expensive (even by US standards), costing several times as much as similar products in other markets. Most of us were done (not) shopping after a few minutes.

Zunil	Mayan fabrics drying on a balcony

A couple weeks later, another school trip took me to a nearby glass cooperative. This time, we started with a thorough tour of the coop’s facilities and a description of the glass making process. One of the workers demonstrated the liquid properties of molten glass and enthusiastically answered our questions about the co-op’s work. After our tour, we all walked through the coop’s small storefront to see their products, and when we were ready, we left.

Unloading glass	A glass worker dripping glass

Reflection
Renate and I left the weaving cooperative feeling fairly bitter, if not peeved. We recognized that the co-op needed money and that we could better afford to purchase their goods than locals. At the same time, we felt that our guide and the co-op representative had only related to us as walking moneybags whose sole purpose is to buy local handicrafts. While admittedly we enjoy buying the occasional handicraft, we also were hoping to learn about how the co-op was managed, how the products were made, and the services and activities that co-op members participated in. In fact, it is often precisely this learning that makes the products meaningful for us (i.e. makes us want to buy them).

Our language teachers had repeatedly told us that we should treat the indigenous women with human dignity, rather then reducing them to or objectifying them as colorful walking photo-ops. Agreed. Likewise, we also hope to be treated with human dignity, rather than be reduced to or objectified as wealthy foreign consumers. I felt that both sides treated each other with dignity at the glass co-op, and what would’ve been just a monetary transaction became a social interaction. And best of all, you’ll all now receive ornately decorated glass vases in the mail for the holidays! Or at least packages of jagged glass shards… cooperatively made, of course.

Question
What does buying/selling with dignity mean to you? How do you relate with handicraft sellers?

Xela, Guatemala: On the Abundance of Soda

Action
Walking around the towns of Guatemala, we often encountered the sight below.


As part of our language school, we heard lectures about the history and politics of Guatemala, where we learned facts such as: less than 20% of Guatemalans have access to potable tap water.

Reflection
I would mumble to myself each time I passed a soda truck unloading in front of a shop, “Don’t worry, People of Guatemala! There’s enough Pepsi for everyone! Your tap water (assuming you have running water) may be filled with diarrhea-causing parasites. Your hospitals may be short of medicine. You may not be able to afford to send your children to school. You may be unemployed. There is, however, enough Pepsi to go round.”

In other words, what made me most irate was the sheer abundance of an unhealthy product in a land where basic needs aren’t being met. Then I would start to think about all the money that Pepsi was spending to supply Guatemalans with soft drinks. Does it cost more to produce soda, fill and deliver bottles, and advertise the product than to purify drinking water? Why does Pepsi get to decide what Guatemalans drink?

Question
What did you think when you saw the picture? Did the statistic about access to drinking water change what you thought?

Xela, Guatemala: Yes Means No at the NGO

Action
While living in Xela, Renate and I studied Spanish at Juan Sisay Language School during the mornings. Since our afternoons were relatively free, we tried to volunteer with some local organizations. I found an organization that happened to be organizing participatory budgeting (the topic of my masters thesis) in some nearby towns. Responding kindly to my introductory email, the human resources director set up a time for me to visit. When I arrived at the office, I was warmly greeted, and then transferred to two young men from the participatory budgeting program.

We talked for around 45 minutes, as they tried to explain some of the complexities of the program (e.g. people reluctant to participate because of remaining fears from state genocide) and I tried to explain what I was interested in helping with (e.g. translating, research, writing English text about the program). They said they were sure I could help and we could learn from each other.

Over the following weeks, I came into the office several times to help out, and we chatted and surfed the web together. They also took me along for a few work visits to the nearby towns, which mainly consisted of us chatting with city planners about nothing in particular. Whenever I asked them, or other people in the office, if I could help in more substantial ways, they said “certainly” or “of course”. At one point, another worker mentioned that she needed to prepare a guide describing their participatory budgeting process, but that she was too swamped to work on it. I mentioned that I’d prepared a similar guide in Toronto, and that I’d love to help out with this one too. She responded, “Yeah, that’d be great, oh it’s so busy and the work is difficult, anyway I should get back to this report…”

I never ended up helping with the report or any other work. After a few weeks, I became too busy with school activities and had to stop volunteering.

Visiting a nearby planning office

Reflection
My attempts at volunteering validated previous expectations, but also surprised me. Based on my Peace Corps experiences, I figured that NGO (non-governmental organization) work in Guatemala would be much less structured and more laid-back than in the US. I didn’t go in with huge expectations to save the world, or even complete a project. I anticipated that communication barriers would complicate and limit the work I might do, and that the people I’d work with might have difficulty delegating responsibilities.

I didn’t anticipate, however, how nice and welcoming people would be, nor how little this would seemingly mean. I was repeatedly surprised when everyone I spoke with gushed about how glad they were that I was there and how sure they were that I’d be very helpful, seemingly without reason or justification. I was equally surprised that none of these people seemed interested in discussing how I actually could help. The result was somewhat awkward – I felt compelled to come into the office because people asked me to, but once I arrived, there didn’t seem to be anything for me to do.

I described this predicament to my activist-y language tutor and asked for his thoughts. He grinned and shook his head, and said that when the NGO workers told me that yes, I should come in and help, they probably meant that no, there wasn’t much I could help with. According to his explanation, people in Guatemala tend to be overly polite and find it very difficult to say no, and so they instead say an unspecific and kind yes that should be understood as no. He advised that, unless the other person invites me to help with a particular task, I probably won’t end up doing substantive work. And that to avoid awkward office loitering, I should seek an agreement on what exactly I’ll be doing from the start, even though this seemingly goes against the nature of the local laid-back NGO environment.

Question
Do you think my tutor was right? What else might have been going on? What would you have done in this situation?