Can an ageing man find happiness in the central American country of El Salvador? If you're my friend, whom I'll call steve, the answer is, "Yes youcan"
Steve lives in Vancouver, a city that seems to be coloured grey most of the year. Then there's the politics of B.C. Steve is a committed progressive, who strongly believes that trade unions should organize the unorganized.
Unions don't seem to want to battle the bosses anymore, Steve points out. "Union leaders just want to collect big salaries and not stir up any trouble."
Meanwhile, progressive groups from Steve's younger days have shrivelled away or vanished.
When he was young, Steve sailed around the world in rough tough boats. He was a merchant seaman. He nearly died from a hernia in East Africa. He fought for workers' rights and social justice in Australia, Britain and Canada. But at the age of 82, he needed a new lease on life. Far too many of his friends had passed away.
The great painter Paul Gauguin in the 19th century went to Tahiti to find a new world. Steve chose El Salvador. He forked over more than a thousand dollars to go and oversee an election for the country's national assembly.
El Salvador has had its problems. This tiny central American country of roughly 6 million peoplehas endured two civil wars in the 20th century. In the second civil war over 30,000 poeple died, as leftist guerillas battled the U.S. backed ARENA party. The guerrillas grouped themselves around a group called "The FLMN". The war started int the late 1970's and ended in the early 1990's. Both sides laid down their guns and signed a peace treaty. "Thankfully, after the treaty process," says Steve, "the ARENA-backed death squads disappeared." The FMLN and ARENA then turned themselves into electoral parties and swore off violence.
But problems remain. Youth gangs armed with all sorts of guns, have kept the country an armed camp. El Salvador's crime rate is one of the highest in the world. And as Steve notes, "There are many poor people there."
On the journey to El Salvador Steve waited for three hours at Houston, Texas at the George.H>W> Bush airport. "It was tough staying in an airport with a name like that," Steve said. But after a three hour flight to El Salvador, Steve's mood markedly improved In the country he toured schools, retreats, and community-driven projects. He went to the wall on which were written the 30,000 names of the civil war dead..
And he met people. "There were incredible people down there," he says. He met progressive Americans, many of them from the U.S. northeast. They were mostly women, medically-trained, who were rebuilding the country's shattered or nonexistent health care system. He met a woman, a Catholic unun from New Jersey, who had helped build a retreat for poor people.
The progressive El Salvadoreans impressed Steve no end. "They were just incredible," he says. "They faced tremendous odds but they were committed to helping create a progressive country."
The country's poverty sometimes overwhelmed Steve. Side-by-side with a terribly poor slum, sat one of the biggest shopping malls in the Americas. Armed guards with macine guns patrolled its aisles and armed guards were everywhere Steve went. They guarded rich homes and private property.
On the day of the election, a submachie gun-toting guard casually strolled into the polling place that Steve was helping oversee. Outside, ARENA people sat in cars playing songs that siad, "Kill the Reds",
meaning kill the FMLN.
Alas, the FMLN lost the election. ARENA and another right wing split off from ARENA won more seats in the assembly that the FMLN. This means that ARENA is back in power. But this hasn't dampened Steve's enthusiasm for EL Salvador. In two years time there's going to be a presidential election "It'll be a hell of a time," he says. "And if my health holds up, I'll be there."
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