The Saga of Sustainable Development in El Salvador: Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Romero

Hope Beyond Martyrdom:

Reflections on the 20^th Anniversary of the Assassination of Archbishop Romero

The Saga of Sustainable Development in El Salvador

(From March 19^th to March 26 a group of 16 people from the Philadelphia area joined others from around the world to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. The group included the two pastors and five others from Central Baptist Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania, a partner congregation of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (BPFNA). This group was part of a larger delegation from the SHARE Foundation, a group that promotes relationships between the people of El Salvador and the U.S. and focuses on sustainable development. Andy Smith, a member of the BPFNA Board of Advisors offers his reflections on the trip.)

Las Anonas, El Salvador, a small rural community in the flood plain of the lower Lempa River, is a sister city of Philadelphia and of Central Baptist Church (CBC) in Wayne, Pennsylvania. The families of Las Anonas settled on land they seized after fleeing into the mountains during the civil war. Fighting continued around them as they returned to make a new life. I first visited Las Anonas in 1990 with a group from CBC, shortly after the residents arrived and were just beginning to clear the land for agriculture and build houses. Las Anonas was in a conflicted zone. The army patrolled on the main highway a few miles away while combatants of the FMLN hid in the area around Las Anonas. The town welcomed our delegation on the first evening with a dance complete with local musicians. Joining us were several young combatants, teens who laid down their packs and rifles to dance with us. The following morning a group of residents gathered on the road, machetes in hand, to go forth for a day of clearing land.

Many changes were evident as we returned to Las Anonas in March 2000,. The army no longer patrolled the main highway or monitored traffic across the Lempa River bridge. They were nowhere to be seen. The dirt road that led from the main highway to the settlement was now a decent, very dusty, rural road, a marked contrast with the narrow mudpath that required a four wheel drive vehicle to negotiate ten years earlier.

Walking through the village we saw new houses of concrete block built with funds and labor from the United Nations Development Program. An interfaith group from Philadelphia had constructed additional houses the previous summer. One woman prepared tortillas over an open fire on a small earthen platform in the house. She turned a large wheel to draw water from the well. Water is plentiful just below the surface so each home or group of homes had a well, although it is not potable because of chemical pollution from agriculture and flooding. A young girl bathed in the pila beside the well, an enclosed area with a concrete basin for the water. The drainage flowed onto the ground and ran toward the road. A pig enjoyed the cooling effect of the mud. We walked to a nearby cashew orchard. The trees, about ten feet high and equally wide, were only three years old but had already produced their first crop the year before. The red fruit with the cashew pod hanging below looked like plump red peppers. This would be another year of good harvest. The trees are hardy and survived the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in the fall of 1998. Our local guide described the difficulty in growing organic crops. The Aguacate River at the edge of the orchard often floods and spreads its chemically polluted waters onto the field. Sprays from nearby cane fields drift into the cashews.

That afternoon we gathered at the home of Sebastian, the mayor. The smell of smoke filled the air from the charcoal making operation beside the house. Several women from the community joined us with young children in their arms. They told of rising at five in the morning and taking care of chores at home before going into the fields for the day. Their reluctance to speak about the hardship of their lives was evident as the men of the community sat on the other side of the circle. The women's pain pierced the silence as they spoke of their disappeared children. Many had no idea what happened to sons and daughters during the war or if they were alive or dead. We sensed that they seldom spoke about their losses. Healing would come slowly. The experiences of reconciliation and truth in South Africa had not begun here.

The residents of Las Anonas acquired title to their land in a land redistribution program following the end of war in 1992. They were given 30 year loans with the expectation of making enough to repay them. The government later forgave 80% with money from USAID and other countries but the people struggle to produce enough crops each year to continue to hold the land. With the peril of flooding always present during the rainy season, Las Anonas exists on the edge of survival.

The Lempa River is the largest in EL Salvador. It begins in the mountains of Honduras and Guatemala and flows to the Pacific through El Salvador. When Hurricane Mitch hit in October 1998, waters from the Lempa devastated a wide area. Most crops in Las Anonas were lost. Houses were totally destroyed. These residents are at the receiving end of a series of environmental, social and economic disasters. A natural event like a hurricane accentuates the interrelationship of these problems.

As we flew over the country on our return to the US, I noted the brown hills below. Wood is the primary source of fuel for the poor. Many forests have been cut down. Every stream showed heavy signs of siltation. The reservoir on the Lempa behind a hydroelectric dam is filling up. It cannot contain the high waters from storms of the rainy season. When the waters rise the operators release the floodgates, often without warning to the villages below. They have no system to estimate the amount of water that will come from any storm. USAID is planning to donate six million dollars for a measurement system with the condition that the Ministry of Agriculture provide the people to run it.

The government of the country is controlled by ARENA, the same party in power during the war. ARENA is the legacy of the sixteen families that once owned the country. It is the same government that received a million dollars a day from the US to fight people like the residents of Las Anonas who wanted dignity, respect and a share of the land. ARENA has not moved away from its policies during the war, having no comprehensive plan for rural development in spite of a population that is 70% rural.

When the land on the lower Lempa was owned by large plantation operators (rice, sugar cane, cotton) before the civil war, a dike and drainage system helped prevent flood damage. The government used army labor to maintain the system As those landowners left during the civil war and the lands were taken over by poor people, the government no longer maintained the levees. Waters from Mitch washed out the bridge on the main highway in the mountains. All the heavy truck traffic now travels the lower road near Las Anonas. A converted railroad bridge provides one lane traffic causing long lines of trucks to wait for their turn to cross. Japan is now building a new bridge on the Lower Lempa that would rise above the flood waters. The Japanese are also completing a levee system to protect the villages and crops of the Lower Lempa.

USAID in Salvador has committed all of its annual 35 million dollars to reconstruction in the Lower Lempa Valley. Director Ken Ellis believes in working with the people. USAID is involved with about 14 communities in the Lower Lempa. Ellis met with us one afternoon immediately after returning from a meeting with representatives from those communities. He has also signed an agreement for development drawn up by the United Communities of the Lower Lempa . Ellis expressed doubt that the government would ever sign that agreement but indicated he would encourage any move he saw toward a government plan for rural development.

The ARENA Party today is what remains of a party founded to serve the ruling oligarchy. While it says the right things during elections, it returns to old ways afterward. The ARENA idea of economic development is to create free trade zones and establish maquiladoras. We drove past several groups of maquilas on the edge of San Salvador, large sheet metal buildings resembling warehouses. Hundred of workers filed out to board long lines of waiting buses. These assembly plants for items like clothes sold in the U. S. by K Mart and J C Penneys receive duty-free materials and ship them out as finished products. The only economic impact on the country comes from the meager wages paid to the workers, about 45 colones a day or just over five dollars. A living wage for a family of four is estimated to be $506 a month.

While the ARENA government has no rural development plan, others are moving ahead. We visited San Augustin, another town of the Lower Lempa. The government of Luxemburg has given aid for a potable water system in several communities including San Augustin. Work proceeded as we walked through the streets. Men were in the trenches digging by hand and laying pipe. Streets in much of the town were impassable. FMLN inscribed in red letters on park benches and a picture of Che Guevarra in the public square indicated that San Augustin is controlled by the FMLN, legalized following the war and now the major opposition party to ARENA. After elections in March 2000 the FMLN has over half the mayors in the country including most of the municipalities in the Lower Lempa.

We met in San Augustin with the local Municipal Development Council (CDM) which had arranged the water project. The CDM is not political and works with both ARENA and FMLN towns. Christina, the president, spoke articulately about the needs of the community and how 14 communities in the vicinity were working together. She later took us to her house outside town to see the new stove installed as part of the water project. Her home was typical, made of mud covering a frame of wooden poles. The new stove was a cement box about two feet high that had been about half filled with sand. A shallow rounded area provided a place for the tortilla pan. The wood fire built on top of the sand inside burned much more efficiently than the open fire used previously. Christina represented the best of the leadership in the community. Her male colleagues had confidence in her abilities to lead the CDM forward.

Outside her house a small enclosed area held two pigs. Chickens ran freely. Behind, a narrow rugged dirt road led past avocado, mango and cashew trees to an open area filled with banana and papaya trees. Rainwater had gouged large ditches on each side of the field, the result of deforestation on the hill above. A newly built dam of stones in one gully would catch earth following the next storm, part of the reclamation of the land.

On Sunday morning all hundred delegates from the SHARE Foundation attended mass at the church in Tierra Blanca, just across the Lempa from Las Anonas. A banner with a picture of Monsignor Oscar Romero greeted us outside the church. Padre Pedro, pastor for thirty years, followed the legacy of Romero. His congregation came from the nearby communities of the lower Lempa, poor campesinos. "God has to be experienced in the context of the poor. The community is Jesus Christ and the Spirit unites us," he said. Padre Pedro welcomed us, extending the passing of the peace until he greeted everyone. He spoke of the universal community represented in the communion. It was clear that all who accompanied the people were part of the community and were welcome to participate. I sensed in him the presence of Romero, a man committed to his people and willing to give his life for them. The lively music in the mass spoke of the daily lives of the people, images of their reality and Biblical truth.

Speaking with us afterward Padre Pablo called for globalizing solidarity. In the context of an increasing attempt by the government to privatize services, most recently health, he warned that God cannot be privatized. During the service he read a letter from medical workers on strike against privatization and said the congregation would support them. Padre Pedro indicated that out of the base communities like this one, we must see the realities, judge them by the only book of stories about the poor, the Bible, act on our judgement, and celebrate the presence of God with us. “You must immerse yourself in the lives of martyrs,” he said, reflecting on the life of Romero, “because baptism always leads to martyrdom.”

As we gathered two days later in Santa Ana at the Evangelical Baptist Seminary of Latin America (SEBLA) we heard again the call to reflect on the reality we saw with the stories of the Bible. SEBLA is now located in a house. Its students are laity as well as those training for ministry. All work during the day. Following the end of the war a group believing that faith is not involved with the social and economic realities of the people took control of the Baptist Convention. Several churches left and started a new group, the Baptist Federation of El Salvador (FEBES). The seminary was forced from its building in the Baptist school and had to redefine its mission. It is now a center for Baptists and others seeking to make their faith and their daily lives come together.

Ruth Orantes, one of three faculty members, spoke eloquently about using the Bible to reflect reality. "It's like a mirror. I ask the questions, and then let the people see the realities. We've been reading the apocalypse. The dragon is the Roman Empire.” Ruth continued to speak about the reality of women. In an already chauvinistic society, many men were killed or wounded in the war. Women were left with everything. They had to tend the children, take care of the home and bring in some income. "Reading the stories of the Bible and bringing it together with their reality gives them strength."

We had come to El Salvador with people from around the world to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Romero, affectionately referred to as "Monsignor." Romero became archbishop in 1977. He was the candidate supported by the ARENA government, a conservative who was friends with the President. Shortly after his installation, a close friend from seminary days, Father Rutillo Grande, was assassinated. Romero went to the President and military leaders for an explanation. Recognizing that they were behind Grande's brutal murder, he began a conversion. He refused to attend any official state functions and did not throughout his time of leadership. A pastor at heart, he saw the daily suffering of his people and began to speak out. His sermons and speeches were broadcast on the radio. He reflected the harsh economic and political realities of his people with Biblical stories. Romero was the voice of the people, one of the few who spoke loudly and publicly. The government, recognizing the strength of his voice, sent assassins who shot him through the heart while he was saying mass on March 24, 1980.

On Friday, March 24, 2000, twenty years later, we gathered with 25,000 others in San Salvador before the statue known as The Savior of the World to celebrate a memorial mass. Our celebration of the Eucharist remembered the lives of two martyrs, each killed by the political authorities of their day, each because of their love and commitment to their people, each committed to address the social and economic powers with the power of love. Romero followed Jesus in the path of martyrdom. Padre Pablo had reminded us earlier that baptism always leads to martyrdom.

At the end of the mass Archbishop Mahoney of Los Angeles led the candlelight procession in a march to the Cathedral. We walked for two and a half hours to join the ecumenical service in front of the cathedral. Shortly before reaching the Cathedral Square I noted many homeless men and women sleeping on the sidewalk, a reality I had seen in New York, Philadelphia, and Johannesburg. The poor are forgotten wherever they are, cast aside as worthless in societies that value money as the measure of all else.

Many international clergy spoke and brought gifts at the ecumenical service--Episcopal, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Catholic. The service closed with a litany based on the life of Romero. As we were leaving the square a young man in front of me turned and handed me his program and a poster. Several thanked us for coming. The spirit of Romero lives today and is celebrated by the people. El Salvador, the Savior--the hope of these people is our hope, the presence of God in the midst of community wherever it appears.

Andy Smith

Good Friday, April 21, 2000

Article published in Baptist Peacemaker , vol. 20. no. 2, summer 2000, available from Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, 4800 Wedgewood Dr., Charlotte NC 28210

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