Today was our first full day in El Salvador, and a busy day, from 7 AM breakfast to 8:30 PM reflection and debriefing.
We first visited the National Assembly, where we were addressed by a legislator of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FLMN), the former guerrillas turned politicians, and the main leftist party. The current president is from FLMN, the first time they have controlled the presidency. FLMN have instituted many social programs, such as free school uniforms and shoes for all students, a daily glass of milk, preferential contracting with small to medium businesses, and other policies aimed at lifting the status of the lower socioeconomic classes. A worry in all this is the deficit spending that is required to fund these programs, coupled with slow economic growth and limited tax revenues.
Next a representative of the right wing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) party gave their side of the story. The legislator himself didn’t show, so an economist talked to us. ARENA’s position is that the deficit spending is at the expense of needed infrastructure projects, and that land redistribution to cooperatives has reduced land productivity (even though corn and bean yields were a national record last year). Privatization and pro-business policy is the order of the day at ARENA.
After lunch in town we visited the University of Central America (UCA), a private university run by the Jesuits, and the scene of the 1989 murder by an Army battalion of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. A clumsy attempt to pin the crime on the guerrillas was not credible, and the senselessness and brutality of the murders went a long way towards forcing a negotiated peace. Today the site is a shrine to the martyrs and to Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose 1980 murder marked in some ways the real start of the 12-year civil war.
Finally, after supper back at the hotel, we met with Damian Alegria, a somewhat unwilling combatant along with his wife in the civil war. He only wanted to make a decent living, but felt compelled to act, given the atrocities being perpetrated by the military on the people. He suffered imprisonment and torture on several occasions, but survived it all with his integrity and ideals intact. Damian and his wife Carolina now run a small hotel in San Salvador, and Damian is a legislator for FLMN in the General Assembly.
At the end of a long and sometimes shocking day, we met to reflect on what we had seen and what we might do to alleviate the suffering that still exists for many Salvadorans.
In peace,
Paul Smithson
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