Wednesday, March 11, 2009
D THE EX-GUERRILLA
Four days left 'til the Salvadoran presidential elections. I've been up since 4:00 PM Tuesday and today is Wednesday, no sleep yet. I showed up too early to LAX, had a long flight, connected in Mexico City, waited around for six hours for my next flight. I tried calling a friend in the city to meet up with but I couldn't dial the number right. I couldn't figure out how to dial it; if I had to dial 011 + 55 + the phone number or dial the number without the 011; and then someone told me that it's + 44 if the phone number belongs to a cell phone. After trying a combination of all the different ways of dialing the goddamn number, I just gave up and searched for an empty seat to sleep for the next six hours till my flight arrived for El Salvador.
I met a fellow member from one of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, El Salvador's leftist political party, the reason I'm going to the country) delegations. He was a Canadian citizen going to school at UNAM (National University of Mexico, Mexico City). Eli or Elijah. Of Dutch descent. He was wearing an FMLN shirt. I suggested to him that he maybe would want to cover it up since it was reported that some international observers from the last elections were detained at the airport but he just smiled and said in his Canadian-Dutch-Mexican accent, "I uh like to get in trabul."
After landing, we all walked to Customs. Directly above the Customs center there was only one advertisement: a huge lit-up ARENA (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, Nationalist Republican Alliance, El Salvador's right-wing political party) sign with their presidential candidate, Rodrigo Ávila and his big white face and receding hairline, his small, untrustworthy eyes squinting down on us.
The story of ARENA is one of ex-death squadron leader connections from the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980's, blatant and repetitious election fraud, cloaked agendas that involve the perpetuating of elitism by the country's rich families and corporations (which mostly are one in the same), and maintaining the ownership of the country's natural resources (i.e. water), its major industries and the press. I didn't take a picture for fear of unwanted attention from the Immigration Officers and heavily-armed State Police.
A friend from back in the States had arranged for D to pick me up from the airport. D was an ex-guerrilla of one of the several armed forces that made up the FMLN. He was living in the U.S. and in El Salvador; working for several months at a time, his wife visiting him occasionally, going back to El Salvador, spending a few months there and coming back, and the process repeating itself annually.
Our first stop was to the FMLN party headquarters in San Salvador, known simply as 1316 because of the building number. We were trying to find out where the other international observers were registering. We were told to go to the Instituto Politico de Farabundo Martí. I filled out the necessary forms, made copies of my passport and met Francisco from Minnesota and José, a chain-smoking ordained priest from Chicago that carried around a St. Augustine prayer book. We all called him Padre. There was a welcoming dinner for all the international observers at a restaurant called La Luna Casa Y Arte. D dropped me off there but it was too early; there were only two people, Francisco and Padre. We decided to walk around the boulevard, smoking cigarette after cigarette and headed toward the mall. We walked back to the restaurant to find it crowded with international observers from all over the U.S. and Canada, a few members of Amigos de Funes, an organization of Salvadoran and non-FMLN businessmen supporting the FMLN's presidential candidate Mauricio Funes, members of labor unions such as SEIU (Service Employees International Union) District 1199, lawyers, university students—both from El Salvador and abroad—and leading members of SANA (Salvadoran American National Association). I sat with Francisco and Padre who kept commenting on how lasagna was bourgeois Italian food.
After the dinner we all headed out to Soyapango for the closing of the official presidential campaign where the FMLN's elected presidential candidate Mauricio Funes was to give his last election-campaigning speech. I rode in the back of a pickup truck with Francisco and Jasmin, all of us smoking. I saw her looking around at all street vendors riddling the street, completely lining up entire blocks like an outdoor swap meet, the late-night hustle and bustle, each vendor shouting out special prices, telling you that you need these shoes or that pupusa, and Jasmin said, "all this, all this commerce and us [the Salvadoran people], this poor?"
I see incredibly similar situations in Mexico; insufficient working wages, intentionally affordable rent and high-cost necessities. It's a perfect formula for the average working-class citizen to be perpetually stuck with his income, never making enough to break out of his socio-economic class.
Jasmin spoke about living through the civil war in the 80's, how she was dating her boyfriend at the time and they broke up and the very next day he was killed by the army. Francisco spoke about how there was a lot of Mexican support on the FMLN's side; doctors and teachers would come from Mexico (as well as other parts of the world like Russia, Spain and Palestine) to help out. Francisco became real close with one of the Mexicans. After dying in the war, years later, Francisco named his first son after that man.
It was a huge turn out with thousands of red-clad people filling up a vast empty field waving FMLN and Salvadoran flags. I saw a few ladies wearing Cuidad Mujer T-shirts, which is a project begun by Funes to build assistance centers throughout the country, one in each of the fourteen departments (Salvadoran states), helping women with healthcare, day-care, educational, vocational, psychiatric and legal services. It made me smile, that shirt and what it represents, the level of intellectual involvement both in the supporters and the FMLN party that they can see that the general wellness of women in society is directly proportional to the prosperity of society itself. Both Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Seren, vice-presidential candidate, gave speeches to roaring crowds chanting, "Fu-nes! Fu-nes! Fu-nes!"
Afterwards, they dropped me off at D's house where I was to spend the night.
Before going to bed, D and I drank a Corona each and talked about the Left in El Salvador and throughout the world, its support, its ability to adapt and change to its location, how it evolves, sometimes going a more moderate direction if necessary to combat against the repressive opposition's reign in power. And as we were wrapping up the conversation, we heard three loud bangs like gun shots, one right after the other, BANG BANG BANG. D led the way up stairs to the balcony, his dog Rambo and I followed. We saw some smoke and smelled something burning, but after looking around the city, D had dismissed it as nothing serious, probably some fireworks. D was very cautious and constantly on guard and alert, sometimes nearing paranoia, but I remind myself that as a guerrilla, especially in El Salvador with the state-sponsored and U.S.-backed death squads murdering and disappearing people, sometimes even kids and priests (i.e. the famous assassination of Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero), it was a way of life so ingrained into a person's character that one doesn't know how to be anything else.
