"To be poor is a way of life"- Liberation Theology and El Salvador

In writing an essay such as this, with the directions only of "exploring various issues of justice, God, and El Salvador, it helps to have a thesis. And forming a "thesis," a hammered framework through which to filter the torrents of information rusing through, in over our 20 American bodies, means believing in something (or at least 5-7 pages worth of believing); in choosing a point on the axis of hope and fear to pencil in. And standing solidly almost smack dab in the middle of our four month trip, what we choose, even just for the purpose of a measly little essay, has the real danger of actually meaning something. A bit terrifying, in the sense graduating from high school or travelling abroad for the first time is terrifying--in what lies on the other side of our doorstep now, in wondering who or what could possibly be standing at the peephole next. Injustice buzzing around your ears is one thing, but picking off the wings and lefs is almost a whole different animal, and rarely altogether too "pleasant" in the gory understanding it brings. More than listening to or reading others, it gets your hands bloody. Perhaps this is why so many seem to avoid the matter at all; it is an understandable paradigm that a lack of curiosity keeps you from smelling the blood of your hands. If some reason, any reason, can be devised to explain "why" without the risk of actually referring to the bodies involved historically it has been so graciously billed as "fact."
This is the purpose of Liberation Theology, to act as a lens through which to more intimately know death and, hence, poverty, and hence, of course, life. It is designed to make the reader question the risks he or she is taking on behald of life, and what kind of a life that is. Most importantly, it asks what it means to be "poor." As Gustavo Gutierrez, forefather of the practice says,

"...it is important to remember this--to be poor is a way of life. It is a way of thinking, of loving, of praying, of believing, of hoping, of spending free time, of struggling for a livelihood...Poor also means being involved in the battle for justice and peace, defending one's life and liberty, seeking a greater democratic participation in the decisions of society, organizing to live one's faith in an intergral way, and committing oneself to the liberation of every human person" (Option for the Poor, 23).

This past weekend I explored the on the ground reality of this theology of liberation along with 3 other students in the community of Tierra Blanca. Our guides, if you will, were Sister Helena, an Oregonian nun who has lived in El Salvador for 23 years, and Padre Pedro, a Spainard who has lived in El Salvador for the past 24 years. Here is a translation of some of the ground that we covered, how this particular animal looked under the lens.

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The four of us lay sprawled out in the bed of Roberto Hernandez's white Toyota pick-up on the dusty, sticky late September day.
Four and forty-two minutes before, we had been driving down the honking, chipped bright paint and smog of the central calle in San Salvador, past the Metrocentro mall on our left, the ___ mall on our right, the
until we jagged a quick left into a pale-dust filled parking lot
We stone-eyed and elbowed our way through the fast talking crossfire of taxi drivers


We had just an hour or so before stepped off the 3 hour bus ride from our program base in San Salvador, thrown our bags on the floor of the room in the community center we would be sleeping in , and ate a quick lunch when we were whisked off for our first venture into the greater Tierra Blanca community. Roberto was driving us to speak with the members of one of the areas most successful agricultural cooperatives. From that first step off the bus it was clear that we were far from the boxy, corporate big city of El Salvador, but the feeling of being "away" grew more real in the back of the pick up. We bumped and swerved along the rutted, packed dirt road for 20 minutes or so until we hit a lick of smooth black pavement. Twice we came to a complete halt to of droopy-eyed cattle
Pairs of children were dotted periodically along the side of the road, spreading corn kernels in a thin layer to dry in the blazing Salvadorean sun. Sister Helena told us later this was to ensure they didn't rot while waiting to fulfill their desinty of being boiled, pounded, rolled and slapped into the tortilla. Tall green trees seemed to surround us in a bustle wherever we went, lending a sweet, fresh air surely missed during our weekdays in the city. We pulled a right onto a dusty road, then another, and saw inching over the windshield the group of them we were coming to meet. Under the forgiving shade of a windingrow of trees they sat in a large circle of plastic chairs, hands folded quietly in their laps or knuckles grazing the grass behind them, sprawled out with their work shirts scrunched up to air their firm, just slightly rounded bellies in the occassional breeze. Their wore white woven "cowboy" type hats loafed on their heads toward the back or the front, either avoiding the sun or catching the breeze. The men were between their late 30s and perhaps early 60s, though age was difficult to estimate with their worn confidence and labor intimate bodies. The men across from me had the elasticity of skin of a 60, even 70, year old, but the slim, carved firmness of a man of 25. Most had their machetes tucked safely between the plastic legs of their chair, and most of them wore blue jeans. Somehow I was distinctly impressed with the image of them sitting there before we even started talking. Physically, in theory, they could be a group of manual laborers anywhere, organized in whatever manner, with their bodies and attires. But you could see how well they knew each other's laughter. You could see that they had held each other up in ways that perhaps there is not even a metaphor for. They looked like a cooperative.
Though this was a long way from our first conference with a cooperative on this trip, it was our first stilted on our own Spanish abilities, and it was our first real dialogue. We discussed the cooperative itself, neoliberalism, ARENA (the conservative political party currently in power in El Salvador), Bush, loans and education in the States, healthcare. Much of our discussion seemed to revolve around the spindle of privatization and the eternally shocking acts of "development" made everyday in its name.

Some numbers that seemed to leap out of their mouths and down my throat:

23%- Interest rate Citibank charges the coop for their land.

700- Amount of El Salvadoreans attempting to migrate every day (out of the country's 5.7 million).

$7,000- Price to pay cojote to cross the border into the US, which 15 in their community had done (out of 30 families)

$200- The price of a medication prescribed to a woman in the community. "For $200," a man in the group repeated two, three, four times, "for $200, it is easier to kill yourself. For $200 it is easier to kill yourself." The other men followed the speaker's arc of emotion in unison, from a self-contained, shoulder-shaking chuckles to a wrinkled, solemn silence, stares at sun-baked stalks of grass.

While these men were obviously kepy busy working long days at the coop, many of them found time to periodically lend their hands to a small papayeria don the road. We went to visit the next day, and though the visit to the simple, tiny papaya farm was brief, the impression made was in brave disproportion to its size. When we first arrived in Tierra Blanca and sat down at the picnic table for lunch with Sister Helena, one of the first things she told us about was the return of two members of the community who had been sent away. I had forgotten about this when I hopped out of the back of the pick-up truck and walked up to the farm. Sitting in front of the home by a few wheelbarrows of papaya was a young (18? 20? 25? I have trouble telling here) mother holding her beautiful round-faced baby, staring up at me with those wide eyes like pools of chocolate syrup. I walked my pale, long body over to the pair, smiling at the mother and wiggling my fingers at the little girl. Nearby her sister stood watching us, wearing a rather fancy looking red velvet dress, worn nubby and thin in patches from use. Kneeling by the little baby, she stared blankly back at me with those wide chocolate eyes, mouth agape in a perfect pink little O. I grabbed her little hand, the same whitewashed stare echoed in her eyes, seeming to lie somewhere between unaware by my presence and stunned into dazed stillness by it. My own stare was starting to echo hers in confusion when my gaze wandered over her little teacup face. Here, as per usual, the beginnings of the bold black Salvadorean mane were starting to sprout in dark tufts, except for one heart-dropping tist--thick clumps of hair interspersed with strips of almost bare scalp. I looked over at her older sister, fingers shyly in her mouth, and she, too, had her anemic braids crowned by pale glimpses of scalp. Brain churning, I realized that these were the two members of the community that had been sent away--the two little girls that the church had paid for to be sent to a renutrition camp, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to save them from the acute starvation that gripped their family at home. The fact that home was a papaya farm is punch in the guts ironic, if literary devices apply to starvation. The church paid for the girls to go, they also were supporting their stay at the papaya farm, allowing them to live in the house in exchange for ork, and even giving a $4/day stipend.
(INCLUDE MORE ABOUT NO OPTIONS)
They had absolutely no other options. No other options. This is not a restraint Americans grasp easily. The ramifications of the church's presence in the community here was concrete and indismissable. In the face of odds insurmountable along, the church here, representative of hosts of other examples I saw in the community, buoyed the community so they could remain afloat in a rocky sea of bone-soaking, lung-filling injustice. It was this that touched me so about my time in the community--the role of praxis in liberation theology, in its by-definition inability to keep resigned to dusty, far away offices and textbooks, big words and still starving children.
Padre Pedro offered us an important insight into the role of Liberation Theology church in an increasingly globalized world in his statement "When privitization begins to occur, the first thing to be auctioned off is the mass." In his words and, far more importantly, in his work, he illuminates what I saw in Tierra Blanca that is so lasting a feeling--the stance of his church on the dirt floors, in the muddy fields, in the bellies of hungry children and in the hardened bodies of exploited workers, where "God" or "faith" or whatever word you choose to use for humanity for humanity is, and where religion belongs.