When my mind tries to wrap around the idea of El Salvador there are
these hideous image that I can't stop from coming into my mind's eye.

El Salvador is a place where the yawning abyss, the great divide
between the dirty, stinking rich and everybody else started going
run-away, going amok more than 100 years-ago.

By the early 20th Century this country (which is named after
cheese-us) was the classic banana/coffee/sugar republic. Coffee
accounted for over 90% of the export earnings and enriched 14 families
(the oligarchy). When everyone else tried to organize, tried to stand
up for basic Human Rights, the oligarchy killed everyone with the
assistance of United States provided weapons, U.S. trained death
squads, U.S. anti-communist rhetoric. For the business of the United
States is business it's own self. And U.S. corporations such as United
Fruit profited immensely from this business-as-usual.

Then the crash of 1929 happens. The rural poor become destitute. They
have a peaceful demonstration. The U.S. armed, the U.S. backed
El Salvador army kills everyone. At least 30,000 unarmed campesinos
are killed in February 1932 - The Matanza - The Massacre.

The campesinos begin an armed rebellion. But the leadership of the
uprising are captured and killed on the eve of the struggle. It never
becomes organized. It never becomes effective. Thousands more are
killed. The rebellion is put down in ten days.

In 1979 there is a successful revolution against the Somoza family in
nearby Nicaraugua. There is reason to hope that something similar can
happen in El Salvador. The campesinos start occupying the estates of
the dirty, stinking rich. U.S. armed, U.S. trained death squads kill
everyone again. People were killed for looking like they were
indigenous. People were killed if they were young and looked like they
had leftist inclinations. People were killed if they were involved in
any union activity. People were killed if they were university
students, academics, clergy. People were killed just so the military
could hear the sound of their U.S made guns.

Monsignor Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador, who began to speak for
the speechless, was killed by a U.S. armed, U.S. supported death squad
while saying mass in San Salvador's main cathedral on March 21, 1980.

On December 2, 1980, Jean Donavan, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, and
Ita Ford, four young Catholic Church workers who were providing food,
shelter, transportation to medical care for the families of death
squad victims and burying their bodies, were beaten, raped, and
murdered by the Salvadorean Army.

President Jimmy Carter suspended assistance to the Salvadorean Army.
It resumed within six weeks when Ronald Reagan became president It was
one of the first things he did when he became president.

During the height of the civil war $1.5 million of U.S. aid is
provided to the Salvadorean Army - every day. The war continued until
1992 .The Salvadorean Army's, U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion killed
as many as 1,000 people, most all of the population of the village of
Mozote. At least half of the murdered were children. When an officer
of the Atlacatl Battalion was later asked about why the children were
murdered, he said, they decided not to wait until the children grew up
to be insurgents so they just decided to get it the fuck over with.

Both the U.S. and El Salvador governments denied the massacre had
taken place, until the mass grave was found.

The civil war is said to have ended in 1992. At least 75,000 were
killed. And yet the horror continues.

During the civil war many Salvadoreans from both sides fled to the
United States. Many ended up in Los Angeles. They became embroiled in
that endemic gang violence which pitted the Salvadoreans against the
Mexican and the Chinese gangs.

And then many of these Salvadoreans are deported back to El Salvador.
In the 1990's commercial jets full of Salvadorean gang members begin
landing in San Salvador.

El Salvador is now considered to be the bloodiest, most violent, most
dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. State Department
is now advising U.S. companies, U.S. citizens to stay clear of El
Salvador, to forget about business-as-usual. They site incidents in
July in which known gang members used threats and violence, burned two
buses, killed eight bus drivers to shut down San Salvador's entire
transportation system

It was done to display their power.

And yet a more typical example of Salvadorean gang violence is the
case of Marcela, a 15 year-old girl who was shot in the middle of a
busy intersection at close range. Her offense was that she lived in a
gang controlled section of San Salvador and was crossing into a
section of the city controlled by another gang, to sell tortillas.

Most of the gang violence is against the poor. And yet, there is also
evidence that the gangs work with corrupt government officials in the
weapons and narcotic trades.

When I started this voyage of the bloody, snake chariot, (see
libbyhome.blogspot.com) I had no idea, no plan about going to El
Salvador. And yet, these voyages always take on a life of their own.
And when I embarked, in earnest, on the road to Costa Rica, the road
went from Guatamala City to San Salvador.

I arrived in San Salvador with these images in my mind's eye - which
perhaps are now in your mind's eye. And yet, in San Salvador, in El
Salvador it was all totally cool, nothing but warm, authentic human
contact.

There's a beautiful sweetness, a beautiful sadness in a Salvadorean's smile.

Even though The Poet Ruben Dario is Nicaragua-born, his genius
pervades the Salvadorean world also. Among the things he said is, "The
science of life is most about the art of loving". Perhaps there's
something of that in a Salvadorean's smile.

I am now arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica. And this weekend I'll be at
the Envision Festival in Uvita, on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast with
some of my favoritest, favoritest, favoritest people in the whole wide
world - the wonderful peoples of Elephant Revival.

And before I end this - I'd just like to interject this concept...

Now that the U.S., now that the whole friggin' world has become a
banana republic, (According to Oxfam (the Oxford Foundation) the
richest one percent control more of the world's wealth than the 99%
rest of us. The 80 richest people in the world, control more capital
than the poorest 50% of the world's population.) this is the time to
consider El Salvador.

And vote - do everything in your power to bring about The Bern.

And be grateful that your struggle/our struggle is not like the
struggle of El Salvador.