Sometimes it’s ludicrous how life events come full circle – as if God were trying to find a way to remind us of the past and force us to reflect. It’s not easy to write about life experiences without almost always finding something which reminds me of what I was doing ten or so years ago.
LEFT: Theologate in San Salvador.Right now I’m in the middle of second semester in theology at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador. But according to the Salvadoran education department I’m not officially enrolled at the UCA because I haven’t provided an authenticated and translated original of my high school certificate from 1989. So I’m waiting patiently now for that certificate to be mailed from Queensland, and I’m thinking back to the grades I received in high school, and what happened that year that started me on a journey in search of God, beaches, interesting places and eventually the Society of Jesus. It seems, however, that a copy of my high school certificate has already arrived in El Salvador, but an empty envelope bearing the El Salvador postal mark was returned to sender in Brisbane. Someone living somewhere along the postal route between Brisbane and El Salvador (via Los Angeles) has my high school certificate! Though I doubt my results will be of much use to anyone. I was sick with malaria twice that year after traveling to Papua New Guinea on a “Mission Experience” hosted by the MSC-run Downlands College in Toowoomba. Downlands always invited two vocation hopefuls from my school, St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ College.
They say malaria never leaves the bloodstream and it seems the travel bug I caught during that brief three-week experience on the remote islands of PNG’s Milne Bay province hasn’t left me either. I prefer to think of the travel bug as a search for God. I’ve certainly had some life-altering experiences in my travels between 1989 and 2004 – for better and for worse – calling me to question my faith, and at times having left me with nothing but faith. My idea was to join the MSCs after high school, but at age 17 I thought I’d put the decision off for at least a year. So I repeated my final year of high school in rural Chile as part of an exchange program. I was hoping to receive a scholarship from the Toowoomba Diocese to study journalism when I returned from Chile, so I’d been attending meetings hosted by the then bishop of Toowoomba with young people interested in media studies. The bishop heard of my travel plans and warned me about the dangers of liberation theology in Latin America. I remember being naively confused about how theology could possibly be dangerous if it was about God. So I asked someone who knew more about this and was told about a movement of priests and lay people in Latin America who were supposedly meddling in politics and trying to create heaven on earth. At least that’s what I thought the person said. This was 1989 and six Jesuits and two female employees had just been brutally murdered at the UCA in El Salvador. And in 1990, the year I would be studying in Chile, President Augusto Pinochet would be handing over control of the country to a democratically-elected government after more than a decade of repressive dictatorship where liberation theology was forced to bury itself deeply underground. I thought surely if they’re killing people involved with liberation theology in Latin America there must be something fundamentally wrong with it. And many good people also believed that.
The then bishop of Toowoomba was a deeply spiritual man, and the many Salvadorans who rejected the message of solidarity from Archbishop Oscar Romero and the Jesuits also claimed to be firm believers in Jesus and the Catholic faith.
March 2005 marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Romero. During a theology class recently with a visiting teacher from Colombia’s Universidad Javeriana, we were discussing the resurrection when the question was asked – where is Romero now? Many students replied that he lived on in the hearts of the Salvadoran people. Oscar, our Colombian professor, replied that if Romero were alive in the hearts of Salvadorans today the country wouldn’t be in its current state. Apart from the peace accord which was signed 12 years ago when the civil war officially ended, nothing much has changed according to reflections I have heard from many Salvadorans. The same radical right-wing party (ARENA) has been in government since the war, having been re-elected for the fourth consecutive time in the poll of May this year. The majority continue to live in poverty and they are aware the situation is bad. But they fear voting for the party representing the former resistance movement (FMLN) will only antagonize the country’s influential and wealthy families and make things worse. ARENA party propaganda funded by the US bandied about myths in the press that the FMLN were planning to turn El Salvador into another Cuba. The fear was unfounded, but the campaign was extremely effective.
Even though El Salvador is not the poorest country in Central America, there’s an atmosphere of heaviness and stress in the air that I didn’t sense in Nicaragua or Honduras where the poverty is much more widespread and standard of living lower. El Salvador is densely populated and heavily fortified. Guards with pump-action shotguns scan the queues of people waiting to enter banks. Even delivery van drivers are accompanied by armed guards. Homes are surrounded by iron fences with razor wire and few windows facing the street. Bus services stop at 8.30pm as passengers avoid the danger of assault. The fortress mentality has its roots in the war. But the fear of violence from the war has been replaced by gang violence. Entire sections of the newspapers are dedicated each day to reports on death and violence associated with gangs, or maras as they are called here. Three students from the UCA have already been murdered on buses or in the streets of San Salvador this year, two of them associated with Jesuit pastoral ministries. It’s understandable that a government decision to ignore constitutional rights and allow police to arrest people simply for belonging to gangs proved to be a popular election platform earlier this year.
It’s common for foreigners to visit El Salvador with good intentions to help people and alleviate poverty. Helpful ideas that seem practical from a first-world perspective often become blurred in the initial disillusionment at the deeply ingrained and structural nature of disadvantage and inequality. In El Salvador there’s a particular cultural cringe associated with people from first world countries who travel to Central America to help the poor. There’s a suspicion that many gringos visit El Salvador to see how the other half live, then visit the tomb of Romero before flying north to their ivory towers feeling relieved and fortunate that they don’t have to live in such conditions. It’s seen as a form of poverty tourism in which the visitor feels a brief sense of solidarity with the poor which eases the guilt of enjoying an opulent lifestyle based on the third world accepting a much smaller slice of the pie. And Salvadorans are aware how much of the pie they are missing out on. Out of the 8 million Salvadorans living in the world, 6 million live in El Salvador and 2 million live in the United States. The Salvadoran economy relies on the income of these 2 million, many undocumented, labouring in menial tasks in the US. When working fathers send money home to their families in El Salvador, there is often pressure to spend it on luxury items such as Nike sport shoes rather then education, so the money consequently returns to the US. US consumer practices have created needs here that are way out of proportion with income. The $5 spent at McDonalds or Pizza Hut may be a cheap meal from an Australian or US perspective, but the same $5 Salvadorans are spending on a hamburger meal could feed a whole family for more than a day here.
Some things that seem benign in a developed country like Australia often appear to be glowingly evil here. There is a crass row of US fast food outlets along the boulevard leading up to the UCA that is creating a new level of spending that wages can’t keep up with, and this money either heads to the US or stays in the hands of El Salvador’s so-called top 10 families. It’s easy to see why there’s a love-hate relationship with foreigners. Ingrained poverty creates a vicious cycle of apathy, frustration and anxiety where there often doesn’t seem to be any other solution than the illegal and dangerous border crossings though Guatemala and Mexico into the southern US to find work.
Roque, the father of this family, left for the United States soon after I met him to find work to support his family on the border zone between El Salvador and Honduras.
Roque and his wife fled to Honduras during the civil war. With border markings unclear in these remote mountains, they have recently been told that their home is actually in Honduran territory.Increasing interest in trade pacts between the US and Central America will prove to be a mixed blessing according to advocates for the poor. Free trade agreements may benefit an Australian farmer who’s got the resources to compete fairly in a global market, but the US won’t be buying corn from the humble harvest of poor Salvadoran subsistence farmers. They’ll be buying coffee from the huge plantation owners who rely on the cheap labour of the same poor and desperate farmers. And in return they’ll flood the Salvadoran market with cheap US corn that the local farmers can’t compete with.
As you may have realized, it’s difficult to reflect on life in El Salvador without referring to politics. In the hills of northern El Salvador where I work with parish pastoral team members on weekends, there’s been an increasing division between Catholics and evangelical Protestants in the villages. The evangelicals challenge the Catholics about their involvement in politics, particularly those active in the pastoral team or community development programs. It’s the old faith only versus faith and works debate. The evangelicals criticize the Catholics for their desire to do the work of salvation themselves, without God. These poor and rugged hills, which were the heart of the resistance movement during the war, seem an unlikely place to be playing out one of the struggles of the Reformation in 2004. Although it’s not officially religion that leads to conflict here, many of the struggles involved in faith and action are still being played out. And it’s right here where innocent blood was spilt as a result of people taking action inspired by their faith during the civil war. Members of the pastoral team try to convince community members that a decision to stay out of politics or community development programs is actually a political decision itself, a stance which supports the structures of inequality that deny them decent health care, education and a decent diet. The ruling ARENA government is quite pleased about the growing number of Salvadorans entering the evangelical churches, especially among the poor.
While it may not appear that parish projects in rural areas are doing much to affect immediate changes, they at least serve to arouse a consciousness of reality and a sense of community in service of the Kingdom. And the reality for many in El Salvador is that to live or to survive is to believe. Location is important when doing theology, and theology in El Salvador quickly becomes a reflection on reality rather than mere intellectual ponderings. But anyone anywhere in the world can pick up a book written by Jon Sobrino SJ and read it in the comfort of an armchair. So why come to El Salvador to enroll in a course that is merely a closer reading of Sobrino’s same text that I covered in week 8 of my Christology course at the UFT in Melbourne? Sobrino says that the poor hold a place of privilege in the Kingdom of God that people with a full stomach have no right to claim. He says the poor provide us with a light or a perspective that can’t be matched anywhere else, just as the crucifixion of Jesus shines a light on our thoughts that doesn’t come from anywhere else. Seeing the world from the perspective of the poor prevents manipulation and guards against theology becoming ideology, he says.
I’m thinking back to 1989 when the bishop of Toowoomba warned me about the dangers of liberation theology in Latin America. And he was right because reflecting on reality is dangerous. It presents us with the choice of either hiding inside an armed camp surrounded by razor wire and armed guards, or opening the door to see the view from the other side.
A woman prays at Oscar Romero's tomb in the crypt under San Salvador's Cathedral. He was originally buried in the main part of the cathedral but the archbishop who succeeded him moved his grave to below, allegedly to keep the upswell of emotion and support from followers at a distance.
The chapel at Divina Providencia home for the terminally ill where Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying Mass. As Archbishop of San Salvador, Divina Providencia was his official residence.
Altar where Oscar Romero was saying mass when he was gunned down.
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