San Salvador nestled in its hollow at the base of an old volcano. TACA airlines 747 swept to the south and landed on a high plain outside the city. Soldiers and Guardia Nacional scrutinized debarking passengers with the suspiciousness of soldiers who never know exactly who the enemy is nor from which quarter he may attack.
I stood in line at customs to be searched. The search was thorough.
“Esta used un periodista?”
“Si. I am an American journalist.” I showed him my credentials from Consolidated Press International and Tulsa Tribune.
“For the war?”
“Yes, for the war.”
I hitched a ride to the capital in the back of an old pickup truck. Refugee shanty towns clung to the sides of canyons as we neared the city, and many people walked along the road. Truckloads of troops sped back and forth.
There was no doubt that the country was at war. It was the 1980s and that was why I came to Central America—to look at guerrilla warfare and the making of revolution.
So far, since crossing the Rio Grande, I had logged hundreds of miles by plane, truck, bus, ox-cart, and on foot. What I was seeing reinforced my conviction that the United States was inextricably involved in revolution and guerrilla war—like it or not. (And later in the War on Terror).
Transistor radios strapped between the horns of oxen and TV antennas on grass thatched huts are encouraging people long kept illiterate, ignorant of outside influences, and tied to the land to question why they have so little when others have so much and why government remains abusive and unresponsive to their demands.
“Is it necessary?” people are asking, and the asking is creating a growing restlessness throughout underdeveloped Latin America.
I met Autberto in San Salvador at a cheap guest house not far from the central market.
“Come, I will show you,” he said.
Ninety percent of all Latin Americans live in poverty. Autberto showed me the scenes: ragged people swept like garbage into canyon slums; the old and the crippled turned into beggars; children running the streets hustling colones. A street vendor sold papusas and little cakes and candy while her ragged 10-year-old daughter slept on a piece of cardboard. Pedestrians stepped over her with hardly more than a glance.
“They have eyes and they have ears,” said Autberto. “They know there is a better way of living. They ask for something Norte Americanos take for granted. They ask only for the opportunity to do better.” (TO BE CONTINUED)
“The wife of a former mayor of Beverly Hills hosted events for the latest tin-pot socialist dictators and declared the hero communist Marxists in Latin America as no concern of hers. “I don’t regard them as a threat to my way of life.”
From Crushing The Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing, by Charles W. Sasser. Now available at most fine bookstores, on WND.COM, Amazon.Com, and BarnesandNoble.com.
Your description of El Salvador reminds me of Mexico in the early 1950’s once you drove outside the better parts of the bigger cities. I haven’t traveled into the interior since 2000 but I believe the peons are still in subsistence living conditions today. The upper 10% control 90% of the nation’s wealth and Mexico is probably in better financial shape than Central and South American countries. In spite of strict gun controls, there are reports of citizens arming themselves to remove corrupt polititions and narco terrorists from their towns when the Federales prove to be ineffective.
Hey, Jim. You are so right–El Salvador hasn’t changed much-in fact, the majority of the gang MS-13 originate in El Salvador–and we can see the havoc raised by this bunch of thugs. I like the Salvadoran people–but they have real problems.
Hope all is well, my friend.
chuck sasser
Your story triggers my memories of growing up in Venezuela. My father was an oil man in Central and South America. When I first arrived in Caracas I was just old enough to begin school, my Dad already there and just surviving a revolution, the ousting of Dictator Perez Humanes. I remember the pattern of machine gun holes all over downtown Caracas by my Dad’s office. Living in a beautiful home near the American Embassy it didn’t take much of a walk to see all the poverty. I quickly picked up Spanish even going to a private British School Roedean. I was learning the culture quickly and even feared the leftist parades, wondering if the poor may move toward that direction. One day my older brother and I were watching from a hill Vice President Nixon arriving at the Embassy, gun shots broke out and my brother took a stray bullet across the top of the head, bleed a lot and had to have stiches but okay. My dad tookus and his work after that to Anaco Venezuela where I went Escuela Anaco and began a new segment of childhood in the south. As your story go’s on I will share the stories my Dad shared with me of the spill over from El Salvador he dealt with in Guatemala during the late 70’s.
John. Thank you for sharing this great story. I think it might be very valuable if you put all your experiences together into a book. Do you still live in Venezuela–Socialism has certainly made a hell hole out of what was once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. I’m looking forward to reading more of your stories.
chuck sasser