Thursday, March 12, 2009
THE FMLN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DELEGATION OF INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS, PUPUSAS, AND A FLAT TIRE
Three days left 'til the Salvadoran presidential elections. Woke up in my apartment in Valley Village, California, dreaming that I was in El Salvador as an international observer hanging out with ex-guerrillas, driving in the back of pickup trucks, chain smoking, smelling the street-corner pupusas with thick globs of crema, and then I actually wake up in D's guest room.
For an ex-guerrilla he has an amazing house: two stories, at least four to six bedrooms, around three bathrooms, an indoor open-ceiling patio, a live-in maid, a big German Shepard named Rambo. No hot water though, a common thing in most Salvadoran homes, no matter what the size. It's OK though; the hot tropical weather warms up the water pipes perfectly in the morning.
I took advantage of waking up early and had some yerba mate, a strong South American tea, which I brought along for the trip. I gave some to D and the maid but they didn't like it.
We headed back to the Instituto Farabundo Martí for International Observer training, thirty minutes early. He dropped me off and I completely forgot to pay him for driving me around and giving me a place to sleep. I made a note to myself to see him before I returned back to the States.
The walls in the Instituto were filled with pictures from the Salvadoran Civil War.
The place was packed with people from all over the world: Australia, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, the U.S. and more. The training was fairly simple. We each received a folder with the detailed rules of the voting tables, the things we can and cannot do, what to look out for, the common types of fraud, etc. After training, I met up with one of the other Mexicans traveling from California and we walked down the street to grab something to eat. The Instituto provided a van and bussed out the Southern California delegation of international observers to the Beverly Hills Hotel in La Libertad, a department neighboring the capital, San Salvador.
My delegation was made up as follows: Perla (unsure of her profession), Gaily (UCLA film student), Romél (UCLA film student), Claudia (Oakland/Bay Area lawyer), Parish (lawyer), Carla (unsure of her profession), Eyvin (lawyer with the Los Angeles County Public Defender, with a Che tattoo on his shoulder like mine) and myself (sex shop worker, though I made it a point to tell most that I work in a regular video store).
There was to be a press conference with SANA in the lobby. Minutes before the press conference it was found out that the U.S. State Department released a public statement promising neutrality in the Salvadoran presidential elections, that the U.S. does not back either candidate and that the U.S. government will work with whichever political party wins the elections. A small victory that both SANA and CISPES (Citizens In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), working with representatives and senators, were striving for. On top of this, Californian Congressmen and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs, Howard L. Berman, made a public statement denouncing the recent statements made by some Republican (one from Arizona) Congressmen that the U.S. won't or shouldn't work with El Salvador if the FMLN wins, that people won't be allowed to send money back home and, of course, that Salvadorans were going to get deported:
"Sunday's election belongs to the people of El Salvador. As Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, I am confident that neither TPS [Temporary Protection Status for Salvadorans in the U.S.] nor the right to receive remittances from family in the United States will be affected by the outcome of the election, despite what some of my colleagues in Congress have said."
So much hype around so little said, but that's the necessary language of politics, of U.S. politics anyway.
After the press conference we waited in the lobby for a promised van to take us to a promised house that we were all going to rent. The directions, whereabouts and details were kept a secret. After a few hours of waiting for the mysterious van to take us to the mysterious house, some of the group started talking about possibly staying at a hotel. A truck was rented. The van eventually showed up but then the group had to be split up to wait for the delivery of the rental truck. I went with Carla, Romél and Gaily. We asked where the house was and the driver and lady in the passenger seat didn't know, or didn't want to tell us. I was nervous, not sure how everyone else felt but it was definitely suspicious. We started heading up into the mountains to a place called Los Planes de Renderos. Carla knew where we were so we—I—felt more at ease. We eventually arrived at the house which turned out to be a hostel called Finca José Dolores. This was another amazing surprise, at least four to five rooms, a huge kitchen, around three bathrooms (with hot water) and to top it all off it had an outdoor wooden patio deck with an amazing view overlooking a bright-green forest with several gardens with bamboo-lined walkways on the ground level.
In El Salvador the two-finger peace sign is more symbolic, meaning 'V' for victory, specifically for the FMLN and its supporters. If you were to do it to an ARENA member or any other anti-FMLN supporter, they'd either flip you off or just turn away.
The hostel also had a little living room next to the dining table with an impressive bookshelf: Lenin, Fidel Castro's History Will Absolve Me, Marx, various literature on indigenous people through the world and the famous Salvadoran poet, Roque Dalton, just to name a few. We took the truck out to get some pupusas. We were told that Los Planes de Renderos had some of the best pupusas in San Salvador. I ordered about four and even though I'd had little experience with pupusas throughout my life, these were by far the best.
Upon getting back to the truck we noticed that the driver side's front tire was completely deflated. I checked for a stab mark, found a few scratches but wasn't completely convinced that it was deep enough to cause a puncture. The front tire's air valves didn't have their caps so the air could've been let out by anyone. Perish, Victor and Eyvin put on the spare. Perla questioned the parking lot's security guard and then the managers of the pupuseria. Everyone denied any malicious intent and said that maybe we had ran over a nail or something sharp. The restaurant offered to pay for the fixing of the tire. This could be seen as a sign of things to come.
