Ruined.

In El Salvador there is an experience which is referred to as being ¨ruined¨. It is the state of being people often find themselves in following their first exposure to the country. To be ruined is not a bad thing, not necessarily. It´s to be changed. It´s to get hooked. It´s to (as a Catholic nun described it to us) contract a mild case of herpes. Though you may go through periods where its effect on you is invisible or below the surface, it´s always going to be with you. Its symptoms, which include an acute case of longing to return, can flare up at any time or in any place.

I had an unprotected encounter with El Salvador and I´m pretty sure I´m ruined.

To be sure, El Salvador is not a country to take lightly. Its capital is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. You can´t go a block without getting an eyefull of shotgun-toting security guards and endless spools of razor-wire. Within our first hour in the country, while driving from the airport to San Salvador, we were promptly informed that the daily murder rate in El Salvador, which hovers around the fourth highest in the world, is equivalent to the yearly rate in Nicaraua. It´s something like 11 murders per day in area roughly the size of Maryland.

The history of the country is littered with extreme violence. There was the initial invasion of the area by the Spanish during the 14th century in which, as they so often did, the Spaniards capitalized on superior weaponry and disease to kill their way into power. Eventually, when El Salvador ceased to be an economically viable investment, the nation of Spain relinquished its control over the region to the aristocratic class of Spanish descendents. This translated into continued subjugation and suppression of the indigenous populations within the area for several centuries. To wear indigenous clothing, to speak indigenous languages, to exhibit indigenous culture were all ways in which one could invite the wrath of the state. Attempts by marginalized classes to secure a standard of living consistent with even the most bare bones conception of human rights were met with unrelenting brutality. For example, a popular insurrection carried out by poverty stricken campesinos in 1932 resulted in weeks of indiscriminate killing on the part of the government. Children were pulled out of school so they could be shown capesino leaders being dragged through the street and hanged from trees. By the time it was over the state had eliminated some 30,000 of its own people, roughly the entire indigenous population. Today this period is known simply as La Matanza, the massacre.

This tendency towards state violence not only continued throughout El Salvador´s history, it actually intensified; and not without substantial, indispensible help from the United States. Throughout the bulk of El Salvador´s modern history, political power has rested in the hands of staunchly conservative military juntas. Legitimate elections and democracy were more akin to abstract theories than concrete realities. By the time the eighties rolled around political discontent and violence was approaching a fever pitch throughout the country. CIA trained death squads were dispatched by the state to eliminate anyone they percieved as threat. Documents uncovered after the war show that at times all it took to be considered a ¨threat¨ was to be a young female wearing pants and tennis shoes. The army gunned down college students in public squares. Monsenor Oscar Romero of the Catholic Church was shot dead while conducting service, after siding with the poor and pleading the United States to stop sending money to a government that was terrorizing its own people. This plea was not without merit. Over the course of twelve years, 1980 through 1992, four billion U.S. tax dollars were directed to the murderous junta dominating the people of El Salvador, this equates to approximately $1.5 million per day. By the time peace accords were signed in the early nineties, and the political leadership of the country was turned over to a party founded by the intellectual author of the junta´s notorious death squads, 80,000 Salvadorians had lost their lives. It was not until just last year that this same party finally lost its total control over El Salvador.

It might be difficult, in light of this sort of information, to understand why anyone would want to spend an extended period of time in El Salvador, but that´s exactly what I intend to do. I got ruined. I think it happened at some point between listening to the testimonial of a man who was twice captured and tortured by his government for resisting oppression, having my mind blown by a nun from New Jersey who, in addition to possessing a PhD in theology from NYU, has over a half century of work in the once ravaged countryside of El Salvador under her belt, and listening to the war songs of my ex-guerrilla host father after he showed us the softball-sized chunk of flesh that a bullet blasted out of his leg. There was a feeling in El Salvador, as cliché as this is going to sound, that I can´t describe. From the moment I got there, I felt like something clicked. I was more engaged, more curious, and more excited than I remember being at any other point since I arrived in Central America. The people, the food, the scenery, the stories, it was as if every experience was upstaging the one before. The only word that I can think of that scratches the surface of what we encountered in El Salvador is profound.

I left El Salvador with more questions than answers and I´m going back in a few weeks to spend a month searching for them. Who knows if I´ll find them, I kind of doubt I will. But that´s not the point.