The 30th Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Romero

Today marked the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. While I was in El Salvador, I was considering going back for the commemoration. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would probably be a big disappointment. Even worse, it would probably have left me frustrated and angry. The lessons I am learning from my travels are all about remaining "at peace" in an increasingly troubled world. I would have been disturbed by the commemorations that have turned the remembrance of this great man's assassination into a "reality" show.

Other than a couple of articles online, including a comprehensive piece in ConsortiumNews.org, I have seen no mention of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia (renamed the Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation -- although its murderous mission is unchanged). Also called The School of the Assassins, in Latin America, it is called La Escuela de Golpes (the Coup School). It is there that Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, responsible for ordering the execution of Archbishop Romero, was trained.

There have been commemorative gatherings in churches of many denominations all over the world, but the main event in San Salvador is a very Roman Catholic one. The message of the Catholic Church hierarchy to the poor, who were so loved by Romero, is, as always, one of individualistic holiness and self-sacrifice in the hope of a heavenly reward. For themselves, and the powers that they support, the Church's message is one of continuing impunity.

At the time of Romero’s assassination, El Salvador was ruled by a US-backed authoritarian regime that secured the interests of rich landowners. The Catholic Church hierarchy gave its support (as it has throughout the history of El Salvador and, indeed, all of Latin America) to the government of wealthy landowners and the military, and "worked hand-in-glove with the CIA in anti-communist counterinsurgencies." However, there were certain Catholic priests who understood the message of the Gospels differently. Father Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit and close friend of Romero's, was one of those who embraced "Liberation Theology," combining the teachings of Christ with elements of Marxist theory, and seeing the mission of the Church in the world as one of uplifting the oppressed and supporting them in their efforts to achieve justice and dignity, even through armed struggle. On March 12, 1977, Rutilio Grande was assassinated.

This event was the turning point for Romero, who had recently been selected for the position of Archbishop because of his conservatism and because it was expected that he would maintain the status quo in an increasingly turbulent time. However, with the assassination of Father Grande, he was transformed virtually overnight into a passionate defender of the rights of the poor, challenging the government, the military and even the Catholic Church hierarchy that gave its blessing to the oppressive regime. With this change, his fate was sealed. Three years later, on March 24, 1980, he was assassinated while saying Mass in the Chapel of the Hospital La Divina Providencia, where he lived.

His assassination fueled the war between leftist guerrillas and the US-backed government. As thousands of mourners gathered for his funeral, snipers from the National Army opened fire on them, killing at least 50 people. By the time the war officially ended with the signing of peace accords in 1992, at least 79,000 people had been killed. At the end of the war, the FMLN (Frente Faribundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) political party was formed by a coalition of guerrilla groups that had opposed the government. Even so, the fascist Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party continued to rule for 20 years, "elected" through massive fraud, and the United States continued to exercise its power over the Salvadoran people through the government's neoliberal policies. One thing is for sure: "...U.S. policy has been motivated by its refusal to tolerate any major redistribution of economic resources in Latin America" (in "The Latin American Revolution II," by Asad Ismi, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). With social unrest growing due to the increasing poverty resulting from the ARENA government's policies, the FMLN finally produced its first president, Mauricio Funes, in 2009. Funes, a “moderate” former television interview program host and former correspondent for CNN en Español, has inherited the responsibility for leading a country wracked by extreme poverty, corruption and gang violence -- a situation that can (and I believe will) easily be exploited by the US through economic means and the CIA's usual covert destabilization activities.

Although the victory of the FMLN government was greeted by jubilation among the majority of Salvadorans, the hegemonic machinations of US geopolitics do not bode well for the new government, which has already begun bending over for the US. This posture is clearly shown by Omar Montilla, in a prescient article in Machetera, "What is going on with Mauricio Funes?" This article is a "must read" for anyone interested in being able to predict El Salvador's future.

It is not the future for which Archbishop Romero gave his life.

Peace

En León, La Lucha Sigue

I feel like I've been looking for León all my life. It's a place where I could live.

There is a definite temptation, while traveling in Nicaragua, and especially here in León, to leave aside the work of sharing my experiences in this blog and simply allow myself to absorb and assimilate the beauty and the pain of life, shutting out comparisons with the place where I usually live and just letting the Nica world change me. There is a sense of discomfort that comes with looking back on the privilege in which I am steeped “back home.” Perhaps there is an element of guilt involved in making comparisons but, if anything, it is a kind of participation in the collective guilt that arises from the knowledge that I am the recipient of immense, unearned privilege there -- privilege bestowed on me, as a white person, at the expense, in part, of the people of Nicaragua (and El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, etc.). And so, I blog ... to share the love of this country and its people, and to try to open the hearts and minds of the people who live in el norte to the responsibility we have to acknowledge our unearned privilege and to begin to look at ways to address the terrible, everyday inequities in which we participate every day, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Canada is truly a world apart, a crystal palace constructed of the frozen tears shed by its earliest inhabitants and their descendants, and by those in “third world” countries who toil sewing fashionable clothes in sweatshops, cutting sugar cane, picking coffee beans and hauling bananas out of the jungles. But we who live in the privileged North cannot be faulted completely for the bubble mentality that has been created for us by an entire succession of governments (starting, in Canada, with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and then Government Agents, and now the international finance capitalists) that have been involved in the brutal colonization of the upper third of North America -- that is, we cannot be faulted unless we know.

There is a difference between knowing, in the intellectual sense, and knowing experientially. Anyone who has been educated in a Canadian school system or who reads Canadian newspapers “knows” about the conquest of Canada, about the genocidal policies practiced upon indigenous peoples by such means as deliberately induced illnesses (like smallpox), forced sterilizations, tearing children from their families and placing them in residential schools, differential incarceration rates (with 4% of the population of Canada making up nearly 20% of its prison population), and the continuing racist exclusion of Canada’s so-called “First Nations.“

Relatively few (and here I include myself) have actually seen the reserves without decent housing, drinkable water, electricity, adequate health care and relevant education. And so, I believe that most do not really “know.” I like to believe that, if they/we did know (in a personal, experiential way), there would be no more heart wrenching newspaper articles about “boil water alerts” or about young people sniffing glue or committing suicide because of the hopeless conditions that prevail on so many reserves.

This is, perhaps, another reason I am reluctant to share my experiences and observations about life in Canada. I find that when I do, many people react defensively, thinking that I am trying to lay a guilt trip on them. I don‘t want to provide them with opportunities to exercise their denial -- it serves no one well. At the same time, I cannot keep my opinions to myself, remaining a part of the conspiracy of silence that allows these abominable conditions (and the attitudes that support them) to continue.

It’s strange … I find it easier to speak out about conditions in Nicaragua. Yet, things are the same here in many ways as they are in Canada -- but they're different. One difference is that things are relatively so much better, in the material sense, in Canada that calling attention to injustice and exploitation there leaves one open to being criticised as a whiner or a complainer. And yet, we know that there are many among us whose hopes for a good life are fading day by day as our government makes decisions to remove needed services, wages an unjust, illegal war, participates in "extraordinary renditions," and removes our Constitutionally-guaranteed Rights and Freedoms. Those of us who are not directly affected tend not to see the similarities between what is happening in North America because we are individualistic, trained not so see that "an injury to one is an injury to all."

There is a connection I feel with Nicaragua that I’m only now (since I’ve been here) beginning to explore. My mother once taught Lillian Somoza, the daughter of Anastasio Somoza Garcia (founder of the Somoza dictatorship dynasty). My mother identified more with the ruling class, represented by the Somozas, than with los pobres who were his victims. I, her daughter, have always identified with the poor and have never desired to be in the company of the rich. For this, I was ostracized within my own family; and because of this, I learned to stand alone. In Nicaragua, and especially here in León, I feel at home among those who fought with the Sandinistas against Somoza and who now find that their conditions have changed very little under the government of the Sandinistas (or, as the say here, las oficialistas, making a distinction between those who fought alongside them and those who now rule over them -- although in many instances they are the same people). The people are undaunted.

While far from covering every aspect of the revolution, the Al Jazeera video, Nicaragua: an unfinished revolution, offers an excellent overview of this time in Nicaragua's history. Especially poignant -- and revealing of the character of the people here -- are the campesinos, one who fought on the side of the Sandinistas and the other who fought with the Contras (seen in part 4, at 00:39), who now work together, united in their poverty and their humanity.

"¡Sandino Vive! ¡La Lucha Sigue!"

Peace

Let the world change you ...

Che Guevara said in The Motorcycle Diaries: "Deje el mundo cambiarle y usted puede cambiar el mundo" ("Let the world change you and you can change the world"). Although these words can inspire a person to think about moving out beyond the boundaries of a familiar and often stultifying culture, the truth they contain can only be experienced by actually taking the trip. How does letting the world change us make us better able to change the world?

It's not just the physical act of placing ourselves into the unfamiliar surroundings of another country, of an unfamiliar, "third world" culture, that creates change at the deepest level of our experience. The change begins to happen when we move out beyond the limitations of what is normal to us into a social landscape that features people who, although they want to make us feel welcomed, wouldn't even begin to know how to make us feel comfortable and esteemed. They've never had the experience of being treated the way we're accustomed to being treated. And even if they knew, they couldn't afford to approximate the fulfillment of our desires. Getting to know people and learning to see the world through their eyes also gives a chance to see what we look like to them.

Most people in the "third world" world have to put up with us. We are culturally imbued with a sense of superiority. We invade their countries, puffed up with a sense of entitlement, flush with cash and equipped with stuff they can't even dream of owning. Even if we feel pity for them and wish they could participate in "our way of life," we also like them the way they appear to us: simple, colourful and slightly obsequious.

But they see us as we are. And perhaps that's what makes us feel slightly uncomfortable around them. It's only when we become "strangers in a strange land" and begin to see ourselves through the eyes of the "strangers" (to whom we are the extraneros) that we get the priceless opportunity to free ourselves from our delusional sense of superiority. The chance to see a larger reality is one of the most wonderful benefits of traveling in a "third world" country. It helps us to put those things that often disturb us about our home cultures -- our materialism, our consumerism, our laziness -- into the proper perspective. It gives us a clearer vision of what needs to be changed and better ideas about how to change it.

It naturally leads us to think about justice. We have not been educated to think about our experience in the world in terms of justice. We've never been encouraged to wonder why our way of life, and the comforts and conveniences we've learned to expect from it, should be so dependent upon the hard work of the people in the countries we love to visit. We've never been taught to think critically about the distribution of wealth in our world or to wonder why people who live in these lands, with all their natural resources and wonderful climates so well-suited to the production of so many of the things we enjoy and depend upon -- coffee, fruits, minerals -- should be so "backward" in their ability to access the wealth of their own countries.

These are the questions one begins to ask when traveling. These are the topics of discussion among many of the travelers I've met staying in hostels. They will be some of the subjects I will discuss in future blog posts. I hope that anyone who reads this will decide to travel to a "third world" country to have the experience of being changed. The change will do you good.

Back in Managua Again

I would loved to have stayed at Oasis for another week or two or three, but Im just not getting any work done. Yesterday's trip from Granada back to Managua was uneventful. The Backpackers' Inn seemed just as I left it. I even got the same dorm bed as I had last time. Only the faces of the guests have changed. It's still a cool place to hang out, but I have to say that Oasis has become my second home. Oasis is extraordinary. It's a 5-star hostel. Just look at this lovely pool. I'm thinking of going back there for a few days before I leave for Costa Rica. strangely, the thought of leaving Nicaragua is not appealing. But I got my ticket to Costa Rica when I was still in El Salvador, so I'm kind of committed to going. I'm beginning to think about not going to South America this trip. I may just go as far as Panama, then turn around and come back to Nicaragua. I've fallen in love -- with a whole country.

In today's sweltering heat, I've only been able to work for a couple of hours on my micro mini-documentary video of the ex-banana workers affected by Nemagon. I tried editing it while lying in a hammock, and ended up sleeping for a couple of hours. Students at Bucknell made a video last year (featuring some of the same people a friend and I interviewed there). It's called Missing Seeds.

From now on, I'll have to take videos with my digital still camera because my handycam lost a lens. I discovered it was missing at the Masaya volcano. It would have been nice to get some good video of that beautiful smoking volcano. I may be able to get the lens replaced in Costa Rica, but it's more likely that I'll have to wait until I get home. Too bad, but these things happen. Fortunately, thanks to someone who posted an eruption of Masaya on YouTube. What an amazing sight. The Spaniards called Masaya Boca del Infierno (the mouth of hell). I could just imagine Father Bobadilla performing an exorcism on it.

The evening breeze is coming up now. I'll spend some time on my Spanish lessons and head off to bed. There's not much else to do in Managua in the evening. For a capital city, it's pretty boring. Granada is way more fun.

A Visit to the Masaya Volcano

Because a youth group had booked the dormitories at Oasis, I had to find another place for a couple of nights. I checked out a couple and, unintentionally, booked what was probably the worst one.

After an exhausting tour of Masaya, the Kalala Lodge didn't seem so bad the first night I stayed there. A dorm bed was only $5. Granted, the lockers, located across from the front desk, were only about 12"x12", and the mattress was almost wafer-thin. But since I had left my backpack at Oasis in anticipation of my return, and had the six-bed dorm to myself, the first night was tolerable. I was able to close and lock the door. Although the Kalala Lodge advertised that it offered free internet access, it did not. The woman at the desk said, "Maybe tomorrow." Right! Even so, I was able to watch a documentary I had downloaded to my laptop, and found a way to accommodate my bones to the metal bars beneath the mattress. Sleep came easily enough. The second night was hellish. All five other beds were occupied. Every time the person in the bunk above me shifted position (which he did often because of the mosquitoes that had easy access to the room through the open door and joyously feasted on us all night)the metal bed creaked ans swayed.

On Tuesday I went on a tour to the Masaya Market and the Masaya Volcano, and went 35 metres below ground into a bat cave. Our guide, Oscar (with Nahua Tours), was wonderful. He was an endless font of local knowledge. At the volcano, we were provided with respirators (because of the toxic fumes emitted from the crater). Oscar told me that people living near the volcano experience many health problems from breathing the fumes. When I asked why they don't move away, he explained that they have been living there for, perhaps, a thousand years, and wouldn't have any idea where to go. They accept their fate, which includes blindness, respiratory ailments and, of course, early deaths.

The market has a wonderful variety of locally made goods for sale at amazingly low prices. These include leather goods, cigars and coffee (some of the best in the world), beautiful paintings, weavings and ceramics, Unfortunately, I have no space in my backpack for anything more than what I'm traveling with now; but I bought a couple of things anyway -- a couple of dolls dressed in Nicaraguan costumes for my granddaughters, and some organically grown coffee beans. My first purchase from a street vendor was an oddly-shaped ceramic piece similar to those sold by the hundreds in all the markets an on La Calzada, but signed by the artist and especially attractive. Peter from Kelowna, who is also staying at Oasis, calls it "the vessel. Some items currently taking up space will have to be sacrificed to make room for these things.) I hope to travel this way again, so after I've left my winter clothes behind in Bolivia, I'll have space for more.

The bat cave was amazing. For this part of the tour we were equipped with flashlights and hard hats. The bats that live there are ordinary bats -- much appreciated in Nicaragua, since they eat mosquitoes. We descended 35 metres below ground to a world of stalagmites and stalactites. Oscar explained that this cave was used as a camp by US-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza's army in his fight against the eventually victorious Sandinistas. The Masaya volcano was also the horrific scene of Somoza's death squads dropping the dictator's political opponents into its mouth from helicopters. So many beautiful places in Central America have such bloody and barbarous histories.

I was happy to get back to Oasis and chat with friends, use the internet and take a nice swim in the pool.

Glitches and Opportunities

I have to move to another hostel, since the dormitorio I've been occupying at Oasis will be taken over today by a group traveling together. I'll see if there's room at the Bearded Monkey, which is also highly rated by travelers. The Oasis has been fun, and I've met some interesting and fun people. Most of the travelers I've met have been Canadians, and most of these have been from British Columbia.

Over the next few days I'll have to focus on editing the video I did of the ex-bananeras at their protest camp in Managua so that I can give them copies when I return. After a couple of days there, I'll be off to Costa Rica and Panama. From Panama, I'll have to find a way to get to Bolivia. There are possibilities for traveling to south America from Panama. It's possible to go to Colombia by boat, although I'd prefer to find a boat going to Ecuador. From there, it's either on to Bolivia (a long, difficult trip over the Andes) or to Peru, and then on to Bolivia (also a long, difficult trip over the Andes, but perhaps at a lower altitude -- according to someone who knows a little about traveling in this region). As always, my itinerary is difficult to predict. I've found that it works well for me to take it step by step and get travel tips from people I meet along the way.

One thing I've discovered is that travel books do not usually provide up-to-date information. Things change quickly, and what was good information when the book was printed has changed in the year or so since its publication. Even online information is incorrect when it comes from travelers blogging about their trips. A lot depends on how adventurous or demanding the writer is. I've stayed in hostels that were criticized by people submitting comments to Hostelworld or sites like Lonely Planet, and yet I've found them to be wonderful places to stay. I've stayed at others that some people found adequate, and yet I didn't find them adequate at all. The best information comes from the travelers you meet along the way.

Well, I'm off to check out the Bearded Monkey. Later today I'll be taking a trip to the Masaya Market and the volcano. More about that (and photos) soon.

Ain't Life Granada!

I like to blog long and philosophically, but my time in Managua was so filled with happenings I had very little time to think about the meaning of my experience. I’m in Granada for a couple of weeks to write, edit videos, relax and get some sun. After investigating (in a minor way) the mining situation in El Salvador, and visiting the protest encampment across the street from the Asamblea Nacional to videotape interviews with the ex-bananeras in Managua, I have a lot of work to do. Somehow I’m not getting to it because Granada is even more interesting.

I'm staying at Oasis in Granada, and an Oasis it is. (t's beautiful, with comfortable beds, free coffee all day, wireless internet, a beautiful (and really clean) pool, an inexpensive and delicious breakfast served in the morning, and lots of interesting travelers eager to share travel tips and perspectives on life in Nicaragua.

At the same time, I’ve been participating in a “lively” (or perhaps “deadly”) exchange on FaceBook about the protests in Vancouver against the 2010 Olympics. I’m fortunate to have a few intelligent, sensitive people, committed to seeking justice “on my side” (although I hate the necessity of having to being on one side or another, and hope that one day we will all be on the same side against injustice, exploitation and the everyday violence of poverty). If it were not for this comradely support, I would be depressed by some of the supercilious comments I am reading about “violent” protesters (and those who don’t take a stand against them, like me). These are the people who seem to live comfortably in that bubble of unreality that is my community. They seem to think there is nothing wrong as long as their own lives are running smoothly. Concepts of justice and compassion do not appear to figure in their thinking. I prefer to think that it is only to their ignorance and fear, rather than hostility toward these ideas, that keeps them inside the bubble of unknowing. Ignorance dissipates with knowledge, and fear can be overcome.

Meanwhile, the realities of the larger world -- those I am seeing in the places I travel to, those I come across in my research and those brought to my attention by people I meet -- keep expanding the range of dots to connect and keep taking me further outside the bubble. Seeing more than most people do, or even questioning my own “received knowledge,” has repercussions that are difficult to predict and sometimes unexpectedly unpleasant, but they always lead to an expanded awareness.

As it is in San Salvador, El Salvador, and the Sunshine Coast, Canada, the daily experience of most people here in Granada is far removed from the machinations of the governments that rule over them. People learn to live with the contradictions, the lies, the corruption, the impunity and the exploitation that surrounds them. People get by to the best of their ability, hoping for better days. The difference I’ve observed in Central America is that the poorer people have a stronger sense of community in adversity than I’ve seen in North America, and they have demonstrated time and again their willingness to rise up together against the powers that be.

The people of El Salvador briefly experienced a sense of collective power when the FSLN won the election last year. Now they are learning that simply replacing a right-wing military government with a left-wing “revolutionary” government has made little or no change in their daily lives. “No matter whom you vote for, the government always gets in,” the saying goes -- and the first order of business for any government is to secure its continuity in power. Power no longer comes from the people, the natural persons. It is conferred or withheld by the legal persons, the transnational corporations and the banking institutions.

In El Salvador, the apparently (and avowedly) moderate left-wing government of Maurcio Funes presides over a country of incredible beauty and an abundance of natural resources, a crumbling infrastructure and rampant gang violence. Although his party, the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) was born out of a revolutionary movement," Funes compares himself to the US president, Barack Obama, who has already proven himself -- to the disappointment of followers who were expecting "change"-- to be decidedly big business-friendly. This is not a good sign.

In the New World Order, big business-friendliness and improving the conditions of a nation's people have a negative correlation. Is that happening here? Despite the recent assassinations of anti-mining activists in the Cabañas region and the death threats being made against journalists keeping the story alive at Radio Victoria, the anti-mining issue appears not to be any way near the top of the Funes government's agenda. Little progress has been made to find and bring to justice those responsible for the killings and there is no ongoing coverage of the anti-mining struggle in El Salvador's mainstream press.

To learn more about the anti-mining activists' struggle and to add your name to a petition calling for the government of El Salvador to: investigate the murders of the anti-mining activists, to provide effective protection to activists organizing campaigns to defend their land from the despoilation of mining, and to make mining illegal in El Salvador, please visit the PetitionOnline site.

My first impression is that the people of Nicaragua seem, in general (and I realize it's a sweeping generalization, based on only the few people I've met and spoken with), a little less oppressed than the people of El Salvador. One San Salvadoran, noticing the number of flag-emblazoned t-shirts people were wearing at Playa El Tunco, asked me if I'd ever seen anyone wearing a t-shirt with a Salvadoran flag. I shrugged, and he said, "That's because we're not proud of our country."

I will be posting on some of my experiences in Managua and Granada over the next while. From now on, my blogs will (I hope) be shorter and more frequent, with more photos. Too much is happening for me to let it pile up and then try to bring it together. That would take a really long essay.