Continuing on with our adventure, our day started at 7am with breakfast at Happy House, and by 7:30 we were on our way to the government buildings of El Salvador.
We first got a tour of the government complex, seeing rooms where important meetings take place and visiting each level of the building, where different issues are discussed. We also visited the main meeting room where representatives from other countries come to meet with El Salvador.
Our first meeting was with a deputy from Arena, the right-wing party of El Salvador. This office was very much like an American government office might look. We sat at a conference table and he addressed our questions, one by one. We asked about education, healthcare, economy, international relations, etc. When we asked about his position on US/ El Salvador relations, he took a typical politician approach and never really answered our question. But he did tell us, “Carter was the worst president ever, and Reagan was the best.”
In this photo, the people who have an X across their face are those who separated from Arena to form Gana, a new political party.
After this meeting, we headed to the FMLN office, the Left-wing party that is currently in office. 2199
We had a similar meeting with a deputy from FMLN. We asked the same questions about education, health, economy, etc. His response to our US/El Salvador relationship question addressed the question a little more directly. He said, “in order to become stable, El Salvador needs to be able to support itself and stop depending on immigration, remittances, etc. from the US.”
It was very interesting to compare/contrast the answers from both parties. Obviously the problems that El Salvador is dealing with are huge, and simple answers do not exist. I won’t bored you with all the details about our discussions, but to be honest, I found myself agreeing more with what the FMLN deputy said than with the Arena deputy.
After our meetings, we headed back to SOYA for lunch. I was so happy to be out of the air conditioning and it the sun… it was freezing in the government building.
After lunch, we visited the US Embassy to talk to a representative from USAID. The US Embassy is located in the richest part of San Salvador, and as we drove from SOYA to the embassy, we noticed the drastic change. On the right side of the road, large shopping centers, car dealers and fancy restaurants filled the land. On the left side sat a poverty stricken community without electricity and running water, where the majority of the people live on less that 1$ a day. Seeing the difference was shocking. It threw in my face the extreme differences in economic levels that exist within Latin America. I’ll never forget that image.
Getting into the US Embassy was a process. We weren’t allowed to bring cameras or bags, just our passports and notebooks. At the front door, they lined us up in alphabetical order. One by one, we entered the building, they checked our passport, and we walked through a metal detector. Then, we were escorted to another building where again, we lined up in alphabetical order and passed through an additional metal detector. There, we turned in our passports and were given a visitor pass to clip on our shirts. We were escorted everywhere, even to the bathroom.
Our meeting was to be with a USAID representative. The person who walked into the conference room does work with USAID, but was only 3 weeks into the job. Because of this, she wasn’t really able to answer a lot of our questions.
Instead, we asked her about her life, what brought her to El Salvador etc. She explained the time she had spent in Jamaica, Guatemala, Haiti, and a few other countries. But her explanations showed me how someone can spend half of their life in foreign countries and never really understand or become a part of or understand the culture.
We talked a lot about violence and the programs that USAID has to take care of violence, especially in El Salvador, a country ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The programs involved education and cleaning up parks… good ideas, and functional in many ways. She talked about violence in Jamaica, and how she could feel it there, but she can’t feel the violence in El Salvador. I think it has to do with her living situations…. In Jamaica, she lived and worked within the community, was escorted around and had a guard at her door at all times. In El Salvador, she doesn’t need that because she lives near the US Embassy in the richest, most protected part of the country, which provides a “safety wall” from the existing violence.
I asked her what she felt the root of the problem was, and how USAID was working to address that. She said the root is the economic disparity that exists, but didn’t really have an answer for the second part of the question. I agreed with her first response, and as much as I would like to find an answer to the second part, I understand it isn’t easy. In fact, that is one of the biggest questions I’ve thought about, after seeing all that I have during this experience.
After our meeting, we headed to the beach. It was a beautiful night and we enjoyed our time eating good food, dancing to music, hanging out by the pool, and listening to the ocean.
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