Adventures in El Salvador - part II

After our first 2 1/2 days of building, this wonderful group of people set off traveling across El Salvador to learn about the country's history, visit some key historical sites, and learn about the community organizations that are working to respond to social issues in the country.

We started in San Salvador, the capital city, where we visited:

The Cathedral where Archbishop Oscar Romero, advocate for the people during the civil war, is entombed

The civil war memorial wall, which starts with a mural depicting the country's history

The wall continues with a list of the approximately 75,000 civilians who lost their lives in the 1980-1992 civil war

The alter where Archbishop Romero was saying mass when he was assassinated

The little house where Father Romero lived. It has been turned into a sort of museum.

The garden at the University of Central America, where 6 Catholic priests and 2 innocent women, were murdered by the government controlled army.

A mural at TECHO, a youth-led organization that seeks to engage youth in volunteerism and building temporary shelter for people in need.

Andy, a volunteer at Youth Against Violence, an organization that works primarily in educational settings with kids.

We also visited with a number of other governmental and nonprofit organizations, such as Glasswing, International, Peace Corps El Salvador, United Nations Habitat, and a few others.

After our days in San Salvador, we hopped back on our bus and traveled a few hours north and east to the department (i.e., state) of Morazan. We stayed at a mountain resort in the community of Perquin, which is just next to the border of Honduras. It was in this region that the most intense fighting of the civil war took place and many innocent people were killed. To learn more about the war, we visited the tiny hamlet of El Mozote.


The story of El Mozote is a particularly tragic one. In December 1980, an elite battalion of the Salvadoran army arrived and killed nearly 1000 people in a planned massacre. To commemorate the enormous death and destruction that occurred, the people who had escaped the massacre and returned some 10 years later from refugee camps in Honduras or the other places to which they had escaped, have built a peace garden and monument. It was a powerful place to visit. I can't say that I've cried that hard anytime in recent memory.

Peace garden, showing images of children playing. One of the most emotional realizations of this visit was that about 2/3 of the people killed at this specific part of the massacre site were children - most under the age of 12.

Beneath the mural of playing children is a list of all of the children who were killed here. This panel shows some of the youngest victims, were were only days or months old. Note that those listed as "hija" or "hijo" are children whose entire family was killed and, therefore, those memorializing them were unable to determine the child's name. Instead, they were listed as "son or daughter of" and then a parent's name.

The group wrapped up our time in Morazan at the Museum of the Revolution, a crude museum which chronicles the war from the perspective of the guerrillas who fought against the army. We had a wonderful guide and were able to see photos and artifacts that detail the build up of tension which led to the 12-year-long war, the battles that took place, and the resolution of the conflict.

As we traveled back to Usulatan to build for 2 1/2 more days, we stopped along the way to visit a community called Divisadaro. This was a struggling community with limited resources and, unfortunately, it was a good example of the poverty in some areas of El Salvador.

View of some of the houses in the community. Notice the toilet set-up in the left of the photo.

An average home. Inside, they had two hammocks strung across the room, which served as both couch and bed, a mattress on the dirt floor, an electric stove (a major improvement over the wood-burning stoves of the past, which cause lung issues).

After all of our travels, we were happy to return to "home" to Usulatan to our partner family and the friends we had made. Our learning during the travel days really deepened our connection with these people, as we had a much better understanding of their experience of the war, social issues in the country, and poverty in the country. It was an eye-opening and emotional experience.