El Salvador Today
By Dwight Longenecker
About the size of the state of Connecticut, and sometimes referred to as the “Tom Thumb” country, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America. With a population of about 6.5 million, 20% of El Salvador's GNP comes in the form of US dollars sent back to El Salvador by family members who have made the long journey to the USA to find work. The ‘remittances’ sent back from expatriate El Salvadoreans dwarfs all the other industries in the country and presents it own set of economic problems. While it provides much needed income, the 2.2 billion dollars is spent on consumer goods rather than being invested in the development and infrastructure of a country that is still desperately poor.
Much of the poverty comes from a history in which the native peoples and the poor were oppressed by a few landowning families. The country was dependent on a few cash crops like coffee, and when the market went elsewhere times got tough. The weary progression of revolutions, civil wars, military regimes and juntas have been all too common in El Salvador’s history, and each one sapped the strength of the people, and drove the country into further depths of poverty. Despite recent improvement, 16% of El Salvadoreans live in extreme poverty. This means they live on less than $1.00 a day. We're talking a shack with a dirt floor with no sewage, running water, trash collection or electricity.
The per capita income is $2,450.00 a year. This compares to the highest ranking country: Norway at $60,000.00 and the lowest: Burundi at $100.00. However, while $2,450.00 is the per capita income this isn't what each person gets. In El Salvador the richest 1/5 of the population receives 45% of the countries income while the poorest 1/5 gets just 5.6% of the country's income. That means most of the people live on considerably less than $2,450.00 per year. The only way out for many families is for the breadwinner to make the long overland journey through Guatemala and Mexico into the United States to find work. The journey costs about $5,000.00 and each person risks his life, putting himself in the hands of unscrupulous guides. Should he wish to see his family again, the immigrant worker has to make the same return journey overland.
An outline of El Salvador’s troubled history and present state of affairs can be linked to it’s most famous son, Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero was appointed as Archbishop of San Salvador for his conservatism, but witnessing the plight of the poor and the victims of his country’s long running civil war, he soon espoused a non violent form or resistance. He was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980, and the cause for his canonization was opened in 1997.
The bloody civil war that claimed over 75,000 lives El Salvador in the 1980s was brought to an end with a peace treaty in 1992. The two factions, the conservative ARENA party and the left wing FMLN are still the opposition parties in El Salvadorean politics. Archbishop Romero’s influence is still felt throughout Central America, and when you travel around El Salvador his portrait looms large in wall murals in the left wing parts of the country.
The left may have claimed Romero as their revolutionary hero, but the reality is more complex. It’s arguable that Romero was not a liberation theologian. He simply spoke out, as any Catholic should, against the oppression of the poor by the rich, against violence, war and bloodshed. He spoke with the proper prophetic voice and was martyred for doing so. The truth commission set up by the United Nations after the civil war determined that Roberto d’Aubuisson, the leader of the right wing ARENA party ordered Romero’s assassination.
The present leaders of ARENA distance themselves from past, but the fact that ARENA has controlled the democratically elected presidential elections for the last fifteen years suggests that quick action to canonize the murdered Archbishop might be detrimental to the still delicate relations between church and state in El Salvador.
There are seven Catholic dioceses in El Salvador, and during my recent visit I interviewed Right Rev. Elias Bolaños, the Bishop of Zacatecoluca in the southern part of the country. Bishop Bolaños had been ordained for four months when Romero was assassinated. He said that things were much improved in El Salvador, and the right wing government is doing much to help the poor and bring a more equal distribution of the country’s wealth. I asked about ARENA’s relationship with the presidency of George Bush. The El Salvadorean president, Tony Saca, sent troops to Iraq, and he is perceived as being one of George Bush’s ‘poodles.’ It was the Bishop’s opinion that the ARENA government, while influenced by Washington, is not controlled by Washington. The influence of the United States is, for the most part, a good influence, but Bishop Bolanos said the left wing forces still perceive all American influence as evil.
I asked Bishop Bolaños about liberation theology. He said perhaps liberation theology was necessary. The people were very oppressed, and it brought a new perspective. However, the situation has evolved, and a new kind of liberation theology is necessary. In other words, liberation theology was a temporary influence conditioned by the times and the circumstances. Its earlier incarnation, so loaded with Marxist ideology, is passé.
That ‘new liberation theology’ may already be in place. However, it is not a theological and political theory, but a theology that is acted out through particular people and in particular places. Our mission team went to work in a housing project called CIDECO. Partly funded by the papal foundation, the El Salvadorean government, and private donors, CIDECO provides modest and safe housing for the poorest of the poor. The housing is within a safe gated community. Fresh filtered water is provided along with a simple water and electricity supply. There will soon be a church. There is already a market square, a professionally staffed clinic, and, most importantly, a school.
The poor are invited to apply for housing in the CIDECO community. If accepted they are given training to learn how to get a job and keep one. They have to pay a modest mortgage payment, and will eventually own their home. In addition they and their family receive excellent basic health care and the children are educated at the school. Pastoral care is provided by the local parish priest, Fr. David Aguilar as well as visiting priests from the ecclesial community Legionaires of Christ. The CIDECO community is supported by the Catholic Church, and is providing an excellent resource that moves the poorest of the poor towards true liberation. Not content with political solutions or simply ‘throwing money at the problem’ the CIDECO administrators and staff are involved at ground level educating the poor out of the cycle of poverty and giving them the economic tools for their own liberation.
Padre Pepe is a Salesian priest who works in the slums of El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador. A short man in his fifties, Padre Pepe seemed hot wired with boundless enthusiasm and energy. Building on the teaching of the Catholic Church in the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Centessimo Anos, Padre Pepe works with the unemployed, with gang members and those with no hope at the bottom of El Salvadorean society.
Not content just to get them jobs, he wants the young men and women to be entrepreneurs, not just employees. To do this he has started a residential technical school built on a former trash dump in San Salvador. With his budding entrepreneurs he has arranged finance, started businesses and helped build over 150 different businesses across the country. He wants to develop the whole person, and quotes Pope Paul VI that, ‘development is the way to peace.’ For Padre Pepe, liberation theology is not a theory but a way of life. Like the team at CIDECO, the poor will find liberation not by being given a gun, but by giving them education, aspiration and the means to develop their whole being.
Bishop Bolaños said that the Catholic Church in his country is doing well. There are over three hundred seminarians studying for the priesthood at this time, over 100 of which come from his own diocese. Despite aggressive missions by Protestant groups, the Catholic Church is identified with the people, and ministers well to the vast majority who still call themselves Catholic. Part of this, he admitted, was the ongoing witness of Archbishop Romero. El Salvador is one of only three countries in the world where abortion is still outlawed totally, and the Church continues to be involved both at the national and the grass roots level in ministering to the people of El Salvador.
The church is strengthened with its ties to American Catholic mission groups, but more help is needed. The Legionaires of Christ are very active in El Salvador, and work with Catholic Medical Missions to bring American Catholics on mission trips to the country each year. Bishop Bolaños would like creative and positive links with American Catholics to help support his burgeoning numbers of seminarians, and he encourages schools, parishes and dioceses in the United States to visit his country so that the Catholic Church throughout the Americas can work together to bring the true liberation of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of El Salvador.
Fr Dwight Longenecker is the Chaplain of St Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina. He takes a school mission trip to El Salvador each year. Contact him at HYPERLINK "http://www.dwightlongenecker.com" www.dwightlongenecker.com
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