The City
"The power is out again." My host tells me as I'm peeling off my sweaty jacket. I just got back from seeing some sights in San Salvador. It's almost sundown. The water has also been shut off, so I won't be able to shower after dipping and dripping through downtown traffic all day. Candles seems to be already set up around the property to help us see. This is the 2nd time the power has gone off during my stay, I'm starting to think it's pretty common in this country. The abundance of candles at the ready gives credence to my theory.
One thing about El Salvador is its density. Yes, it's much smaller than its neighbors so that makes sense, but it's also historically had a higher population than them too. I blame volcanism, personally. Just about every settlement in El Salvador has a volcano somewhere within 100km. Because of this, the soil is super fertile, which means more agriculture, which means the region can support a larger population. I think it's because of this that El Salvador has always been the noisy little brother of Central American nations.
When it comes to the capital, it's much different than what I'm used to in Mexico City. El Salvador is a much poorer nation than Mexico. The city of San Salvador has not had the resources to adjust to its blustering population, nor has the nation had the historical stability to prioritize it. The streets are narrow, no matter how many lanes there are or how big the highway is. Traffic is a little less aggressive than Mexico City, but the people are in just as much of a hurry.
Speaking of it's historical instability, El Salvador is not used to tourism. Even my home of Minnesota, one of the biggest flyover states, is better equipped for influxes of tourists. San Salvador isn't walkable, public transit seems to just pick up and drop off at random spots with little to no signage, and restaurants open and close whenever they want with little predictability. Things like Hop-on-hop-off buses are probably 10-15 years off. You'll never hear the words "Walking Tour." To function in a city like this, where things aren't planned they just are: "you just have to know."
I'm staying at a Bed and Breakfast. The family staying here wasn't too talkative, but there's a pool, AC, a little bit of heat in the shower, and breakfast is included. It'd be nice if the lights and water stayed on, though.
I walked to several restaurants on foot only to find they were closed. No hours posted outside, not even a sign sometimes. At one, passed by later and it was be bustling with workers on lunch break, doors open exposing a whole cafeteria inside. "You just have to know."
The Museum
I went to a museum dedicated to the darkest parts of El Salvador's history. El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen. There were 3 major events they spoke of:
It talked about "The Matanza" (The massacre) a 1930s peasant uprising that lead to a genocide of the Pipil native people. Their language is almost extinct as a result. A leader of the peasant movement was a member of the communist party, Faribundo Marti. After elections were 'cancelled' when communists won seats, the peasants revolted. Marti would have the left-wing insurgency named after him during the civil war in the 80s, the FMLN (Farabundo Marti Liberation Nacional). It's currently the name of the left-wing political party in El Salvador.
They also talked about the Civil War, with lots of artwork and testimonies from people that had lived through the conflict. There were artifacts from the war, such as rifles, uniform patches, handbooks, and Polaroid photos from the war. They even had an exhibit on the 'radio team', a group of guerrillas in the jungle who would publicly broadcast radio programs for the FMLN left-wing insurgency. The radio program interviewed the survivors of massacres, reported on government atrocities, and would encourage people to join the effort against the military. Many members of the international press would use their broadcasts as a source of information on the conflict. The radio team's equipment was eventually captured by the military. Knowing they would keep it, they planted a bomb inside a radio. It detonated in a helicopter, killing a top-ranking officer, Domingo Monterrosa, who was known to "keep war trophies" like the radio that killed him.
There was also an exhibit dedicated to the Archbishop of El Salvador, the recently sainted San Romero. He was the highest ranking catholic in the nation and spoke out against the government of El Salvador for massacring villagers at the start of the Civil War. In 1980, he was assassinated by the right-wing government by a gunman who shot him in the heart and escaped. The UN Truth Commission investigation into the conflict found evidence the military had ordered his death. The killer was never found. In 2015, Pope Francis donned the late Archbishop Romero with Sainthood. An exhibit shows a personal collection of his photographs which were donated to the Museum around a decade ago.
The Wall
A few blocks south of the museum and I found it in a public park. There was a wall dedicated to the innocents killed during the Civil War. I knew the history behind it and I couldn't help but scowl. I stood there staring at the wall, face hardened like stone looking at all the names. I was disgusted. I was angry. I'll tell you why:
The UN Truth Commission found that 85% of all human rights abuses were by the Right-Wing Government. They cite 5% of atrocities as being conducted by the FMLN. The rest were from various international actors.
Those 85% of atrocities were done by the government that was funded by the United States. Why?
In the context of the Cold War, the US was afraid that a left-wing government more aligned with The Soviet Union, Cuba, or Nicaragua would come to power in El Salvador. The FMLN had communist roots, an appropriate response to the absolutely dismal income inequality in the nation. On average, only 2% of El Salvador received over 95% of the wealth the country produced over the course of the 20th century. There wasn't enough money amongst the poor to even buy food in many areas. The 1970s had global petroleum crises that exacerbated inequality even further. As Marx put it in his manifesto, when things get this bad: revolutions will occur. That's exactly what happened when the civil war popped off in 1979.
Back to the US, the Carter, Reagan, and then Bush Sr. administrations were worried El Salvador would turn communist. It's also well-known that the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, and Cuba were funding, training, and giving arms and supplies to the FMLN insurgency. In the context of the cold war, the US was going to assist the government by any means necessary to keep El Salvador from turning leftist. That meant giving about $1,000,000 per day, or about a billion dollars over the course of the war, to the right-wing government.
That same government had been trained by the United States to use extremely violent tactics to stop the insurgency. One tactic was to "drain the sea" where they would stop locals from joining or supporting the leftists by simply killing them all. They would march into villages suspected of harboring leftists and they'd massacre everyone. Massacres. Death Squads. Women raped and murdered. Children stabbed with bayonets. Infants with their throats slit or left to die of exposure in the jungle. The names of these known victims are on the wall.
The Pill
Let's rewind.
When I was about 20 years old, I came back from college to find a prescription pill in my car that was left at home for the semester. It was Adderall, a drug used to help people with ADD and ADHD focus. It's an amphetamine, probably one of the most popular in the US, and after researching online to be sure it was safe to take recreationally, I did. What a bad boy, huh?
That day I ended up at a Barns & Noble bookstore, the one across Wayzata Blvd from the Ridgedale Mall, next to Target. I remember going into the history section and finding a row of books dedicated to Latin American Cold War History. I was enthralled. In my hyper-focus, I read the backs of several books and just HAD to buy them:
-A book on Cuba and Nicaragua's revolutions
-A book on the Reagan administration's funding of the counter-insurgency "Contras" in Nicaragua
-The book written by the brother of Pablo Escobar, his accountant, which gave some scope of the US War on Drugs that occurred at the same time as these cold war revolutions.
-There was also a book I bought on Pablo Noriega, Panama's dictator in the 80s.
I ended up reading those books. It was there, on Adderall, I gained a curiosity on Cold War Latin America history. I learned about the atrocities the US funded to keep the countries "in their backyard" from going communist.
A Mission
The day I bought those books changed my life. In a way, it opened me up to wanting to learn more about the dark history of the United States. It opened a window into a world of information that was seemingly kept secret from me.
As someone who grew up in the shadow of 9/11, I grew up accustomed to American Exceptionalism, where the US focuses on how we're ONLY the good guys, that we've never done any wrong, and that we're better than everyone else. We see it today with book burnings and bannings in schools. In many places, Americans not allowed to talk about the Civil Rights Movement or anything that shows the United States in a bad light. This censorship disgusts me. Dark history needs to be taught.
After I read those books, I asked my parents what they knew about the atrocities the US had committed or permitted with its support. They knew about some things a little bit, but not to the extent that I had. Scandals like "Iran-Contra Affair" would rouse some feelings and emotions, but details have been lost. These wars and events are now decades away and we've had time to dive deeply and investigate them, so there is much more to know. If you grow old without revisiting what's been learned, the events can be forgotten.
From then on, I've even made it a point on my 2W1C YouTube Channel to show the dark history of the US. Many of my videos are on the wars and conflicts the US had with Native Americans across the West in the 19th century. I've now taken that mission and applied it here in Central America.
We've done some bad stuff here. People need to know.
I continue my scowl at the wall. If you paid taxes in the years between 1979 and 1992, your money went toward making this wall and almost every name on it. At the end of the wall, there was a portion where they'd chisel in new names. Victims are still being named, even recently.
The only thing I hope you do is remember. Even if it's not the details, just remember that the US, with it's star-spangled glory and global might, has done perverse and deplorable things in the world. If we remember, we'll take an extra step to think before we act on anything that comes our way in the future.
-JT
6/12/2023