Our El Salvador (in an eggshell)
El Salvador. A tiny country squeezed against the Pacific, nearly swallowed by Honduras and hard-pressed by Guatemala - never mind the brutal political forces that imposed upon its past and continue to bear on its present.
A few weeks into our visit I came across a New Yorker article about the number of Salvadorian deportees from the U.S. There have been a hundred and fifty-two thousand since 2009. It’s a story - not an isolated one - about the U.S.’s fickle and misguided intervention into geopolitics. During the 80s and 90s, over a million Salvadorian refugees fled to the States, escaping an eleven-year war that killed 75,000 people. Just two per cent were legally granted asylum, many choosing to stay illegally rather than return to a violent country in shambles. The U.S. wasn’t merely a benign, unwitting participant in the conflict itself : it backed the military against the leftist guerrilla army (and the ever-constant Communism paranoia), pumping 6 billion dollars in aid and military know-how to the militia -- a militia who had racked up an atrocious record of human-rights abuses. The meddling only served to prolong the conflict. Meanwhile, the largest contingent of Salvadorian refugees settled in Los Angeles, straight into another kind of war, marked by drugs and gang affiliations. Now, because of stricter policies clamping down on illegal immigration, Salvadorians who have lived in the U.S. for twenty years or more are being deported. And the battle continues in their new home -- a 2015 United Nations report granted El Salvador the dubious distinction of murder capital of the world.
But I’d be lying if I said this dominated our thoughts as we explored the coasts and the volcanic landscapes of El Salvador. There we were: happy, unguarded and willing to listen. We loosened up and told ourselves it was okay to stay awhile. So we got caught in a swill of coffee and talk. First, in the lovely Juayúa, surrounded by plantations and rocky canyons and mountain springs -- a gourmet weekend market with dozens of busy stalls selling seafood, meat and vegetables blackened and streaked by fire. People sipped from enormous pineapple chalices -- their entire contents hollowed out, blended with rum and returned to the prickly shell. On our way we gingerly stepped over the street, full of rubbish, dogs and dirty diapers. We tried not to gag or get too bleak.
We lingered longer in places, letting our paths momentarily tangle with other travelers. We hiked to a mountain spring with a Kiwi couple we’d seen in Mexico. We spent time talking to a German girl at our hostel who’d hitchhiked all the way from South America; she’d traveled the same way across Europe - from Turkey to Germany. What we would have ordinarily dismissed as crazy, we found was in fact a person at harmony with her world - both her life and mortality. She was at liberty to do anything, unwilling to be restricted by fear.
There was the South African traveling alone - the first we’d met since Mexico. She had quit her steady teaching gig to explore her true calling. She had found herself pushing back against the system at the Muslim girls’ school that felt increasingly suffocating to her. We laughed that she was a lone backpacker with a rolling suitcase; she would give all her clothes from home away before she left. At the night market, over a banana-strawberry crepe, she asked me about my faith and I stumbled over words, finding all my diction and Christian education deficient. Together, we wondered if faith means letting go of proof and reason. Somehow it was enough that we were two women from different hemispheres who didn’t feel all that dissimilar now, talking to one another about truth.
Then there was Santa Ana Volcano -- an easy climb significantly more sweaty by the mid-day heat in which we were forced to hike with the guided tour. At the top we peered into the sulfur-bubbling crater -- most recently carved by the 2005 eruption. From here we went in search of parrots and panthers in the Parque El Imposible, which sat above a roiling river and overlooked the Pacific Ocean to the south. Next, we were drawn to the coast for days, surfing El Zonte and Sunzal where we were one of a hundred surfing the most perfect righthand break. We got caught in the drift of sunrise surfs, afternoon siestas and evening surfs and sundowners with new friends and for a while seeking swells was purpose enough.
We drifted from the coast for a time and venturing inland brought perspective. We happened upon the town of Sochitoto, sitting high over a sheer gorge, carved into the side of a duckweed-ridden dam. As it happened we were invited to stay for free in the parking lot of a convent turned Centre of the Arts for Peace. Without really probing we could sense there was a magnetism here, a generosity and healing salve in a region deeply affected by the conflict. A stamp on the exteriors of many of the town’s homes read: “This house if free of violence against women.” We could see there was something to glean and perhaps even something to give if we stayed but, feeling the urge of the road, we moved on -- this time with an extra companion.
We had met Josue in Juayúa. A Salvadorian university student studying English and tourism, he was eager to travel his own country and asked to tag along for his last week of holidays. He was passionate about coffee and card games and we had instant simpatico. Together we ventured to Alegría, a small hill-stashed town where we found ourselves camping on an orange and coffee farm - again, because of a local's generosity. After an extraordinary sunset and sunrise over a volcano-studded valley, we departed with a bag full of coffee and oranges, heading for the sea. We landed at an eco-lodge on a fairly remote stretch of beach, cocooned by palms and strewn with swimming pools. It was a gringo paradise where people wandered from yoga and Spanish class to surf lessons by day (all free of charge for guests), and never missed a happy hour by night.
At sunset people gathered at the beach to watch the release of dozens of turtle hatchlings. The owner purchases them off local poachers on an unregulated black market -- admittedly an imperfect resolution but a means of immediate action as authorities stutter and stall and fail to enforce their own laws. The eggs are incubated until the babies hatch and are ready (or not) to brave the big wide world.
How do I describe the dumb faith that sends a tiny turtle hatching seaward? We cheered as we watched them -- mere specks -- struggling toward the frothing waves, bobbing on the surf momentarily, only to disappear into the abyss. It’s futile, I thought -- one in one thousand will survive to adulthood. Shouldn’t we be weeping instead of rejoicing? Nevertheless it was always a happy moment seeing the tiny, weak things of the Earth bear all that impossibility on the chin. I thought: Yes, we have to be a little naive to be so brave and, despite the odds, keep hope afloat.
