Rural Salvadoran Children Suffer Poverty and War

SUFFERING RURAL WORKERS 

Rural Salvadoran Children Suffer Poverty and War:  Death came suddenly, but not unexpectedly.  

The hammer swiftly hit its mark as the last nail disappeared into the soft wooden board.  The last board had been fit into place forming a small box that would serve as the coffin.  The man laid down the hammer and took a long drink of coca water from a recently felled coconut and with a sigh greeted his two guests.  After a few short pleasantries, the small, barefooted man called to his wife who was washing clothes in a little pila (a small concrete tub) leaning against a tall, slim palm.  “It’s ready,” he said in a very matter of fact voice, “let’s do it.”  The woman stopped her work, dried her hands on her tattered, and stained remnant of what once was a white cotton dress.  She went over to a hammock swinging from the hut’s central support post and extending to a smaller post that sustained the outside wall of the grass hut.  From the hammock she picked up the frail, lifeless body of her two-year-old baby girl.  The skin was tightly drawn around the stomach and chest outlining the ribs and sternum.  The lips were drawn tight exposing a single brown tooth; the closed eyes were sunk deep into the infant’s small head.  A thin shock of yellowish hair lay plastered against the baby’s head hiding its ears.  The mother wrapped the body in a dingy looking cloth and handed it to the father who placed the baby girl inside the twelve by thirty-inch box.  She then stepped beside the father and gently placed the edges of the cloth over the baby’s face.  The father then nailed securely the top on the box.  Baby Elena was ready for burial.

For this middle class North American, the scene of Juan together with his wife and recently deceased child, made a long-lasting impression on me.  I had been present when people died, old and young; I had attended funerals for these people and comforted the grieving family and friends.  But the sight of Juan and Margot preparing the body of their third deceased child for burial was very new for me.  During these years, especially for Salvadorans, death was an ever-present visitor, taking old and young alike:  Death came suddenly to these people, but not unexpectedly.  Most people died of old age between fifty and sixty.  If a man or a woman reached sixty years of age, that person was relatively old during these years in El Salvador.  During the next several years I learned that for these reasons, Central Americans perceived death differently than North Americans.  

Life was hard and the work of the Salvadoran rural poor was physically debilitating.  Physical weakness also enfeebled the body’s ability to protect itself from bacteria and other death producing germs.  Death came often to children, either at birth or within five years.  Unsanitary conditions coupled with the lack of health care, provided the death angel with an ample number of victims.  For Juan and Margot, the death of Elena was simply the will of God.  These simple and plain country people did not know that life could be different:  That cleanliness and a simple change in their daily diets could have saved all three of their deceased children while providing greater health to their four-living offspring.  

Juan and Margot Santamaría, Elena’s parents, lived in a community called “Espíritu Santo” (Holy Spirit).  This rural community, located in the department of Zacatecolucas, was only three miles from the peaceful waters of the Pacific Ocean that gently bathed the white sands of these Salvadoran beaches.  Juan worked on one of the many, newly created collective farms, El Granjero, that appeared throughout El Salvador as a result of the agrarian reforms of 1980.  He grew up on this farm, the sixth child produced by the union of his Pipil Indian mother and his mestizo father.  Juan had learned to read early at the hacienda school and maybe because of this skill he had been selected to be a foreman on the newly organized farm.   From early morning until noon, Juan worked along with scores of other men, new owners of the coffee, cotton, and sugar cane farm where they had worked as colonos (sharecroppers) and peons for years.  Now the workers were the owners and managers of this new venture.  For two years these workers had labored together attempting to enjoy some of the wealth and joys that the previous owners had known.  For two years these workers felt frustrated at their new conditions:  As owners, they had been promised a part of the wealth that the previous owners enjoyed, but instead, they experienced the same conditions that they had known all their lives.  The previous year’s crop had been good, but by the time they had paid the annual quota to the bank for the land, the cost of operations, the seed and fertilizers, very little remained for the workers.  

The small casket remained on the table while Juan and Margot took baths and readied themselves for the burial ceremony.  The five families that lived nearby had previously pooled their resources and built a communal shower, simple, yet functional and private.   The cool water brought from a well that Juan and the other men had dug the previous year, felt refreshing in the hot and humid climate.  Using a gourd, Margot slowly poured water over her head, letting it trickle down the entire length of her body.  In the privacy of the shower, she thought of little Elena, how she played under the coconut palms pretending that sticks and stones were people.  Of all her children, Elena had been the most imaginative, always talking and always asking questions.  Margot wondered what could have happened if they could have taken Elena to a doctor, but there were no doctors or hospitals near Espiritu Santo.  The pastor at the church had said that God would heal baby Elena if she and Juan would just have enough faith.  Maybe they had not had enough faith.  Was it their fault, did they not have enough faith for God to heal their innocent daughter?   Standing there in the shower, alone and wet, Margot felt cold and so very detached from the rest of the world; she remembered little Xamora and Lizabeth, two other infants that she and Juan had buried.  At each of their burials, the pastor had said that they were so beautiful and sweet that God wanted them with him, so he took them.   As she continued to pour water, Margot thought about the pastor’s words and wondered why God would have given her these beautiful children if he was going to take them away so quickly.  Is God that uncaring, Margot questioned, and maybe Elena and her brother and sister might still be alive if there had been any medical help nearby or if they had enough money to take her to a hospital in the capitol.  Lost in her thoughts, Margot had lost consciousness of time and it was Juan’s gentle words that brought her back to the moment.  “Amor,” Juan was calling, “You cannot stay in there all day.”  Immediately, Margot laid the gourd on the side of the pila, took the scrap of broadcloth that she used for a towel and began to dry herself, her face and her tears were the first to be wiped dry.  In this little rural community, no one must see her crying.

At last dry, Margot walked quickly from the shower to the grass hut.  She put her towel down on the table and kicked the tunco (Salvadoran slang for pig) that had been napping in the breeze beneath it.  The sudden squeal from the tuncoalerted the hen and her six chicklets that had been scratching in the dirt floor in front of the box where Margot kept her Sunday clothes.  As Margot reached for her dress, she thought about how lucky she was to have a hen like this one; this set of chicklets was the third set that this hen had produced, and this is what had provided her family the only meat that they had eaten the past year.  As she pulled the dress on over her head, she opened her eyes and noticed the picture of Jesus standing in the middle of a green pasture with sheep on each side.  Underneath Jesus was the caption, “Jesus, the Great Shepherd.”  Though Margot could not read, someone had told her what the words said and for a moment, she pondered the caption.

It was still early morning when Juan, with the small wooden box hoisted on his shoulder, Margot, and eleven-year-old Juan Hijo, nine-year-old Santiago, eight-year-old Graciela, and three-year-old Bette left their house in route to the church.  They made their way through the knee-high grass littered with scraps of paper, plastic sacks, and other assorted waste materials along the path beside the neighbor’s hut and on to the main path leading to the center of the community where the church was located.  Some people were already at the little Pentecostal church when Juan and family arrived.  The inside walls of the adobe structure were plain and without decorations.  Material had been tacked to the bottoms side of the open rafters in an attempt to camouflage the leaky banana roof.  Seats were roughly hewed six-foot boards nailed atop two 12-inch tree trunk bases.  A cross was painted on the wall behind a simple pulpit, a chair leaned against the wall beside the cross, and a five stringed guitar stood in the corner.   Juan gently placed the small wooden casket in front of the pulpit.  It was cool in the church and a pleasant breeze lightly blew under the trees that surrounded the church building.  Juan and two of the church brothers slipped outside to the shades of large amatetrees.  Blue stem Bermuda grass, reaching well above the ankle, had grown over the church yard.  Juan nervously kicked at some of the plastic sacks and scraps of paper that hung suspended in the tall grass while his “brothers” offered condolences and their ideas about the death of children.  In the meantime, Margot became surrounded by the sisters awaiting her arrival.  The women too, offered their mournful condolences as well as their opinions on death.

Juan and Margot were not real members of this little congregation although they were accepted.  In fact, most of the people attending the services were not actual members, for most of the people were in similar marital conditions.  Juan and Margot were not legally married.  Although they had been together (acompañados) for almost twenty-three years, they had been unable to legally consummate a marriage.  This unfortunate situation was due to the fact that when Juan was much younger, he had married, at the insistence of his family, the young daughter of a neighbor.  A boy was born from this union, but soon, Juan’s drinking and womanizing along with his wife’s promiscuity resulted in a separation. During this separation, Juan met Margot and they began living together.  For twenty-three years they had lived together and produced a family, yet, for those years, Juan was unable to get a divorce from his first wife.  The Salvadoran laws, greatly influenced by Catholic tradition, allowed for marriage to be arranged for a very small fee, but a divorce could be obtained only at the expense of more than a year’s salary.  Juan was never able to afford this luxury, therefore, he and Margot simply lived together.  The little Pentecostal church acknowledged this anomaly, but under the constitution and by-lays of the church, adopted during its nascent phase when a North American missionary influenced the formation of the church, no man and woman, living together without benefit of a legal marriage could join the church.  Of the twenty-five families that composed the membership of this church, less than half were legally married.  The others were joined in a fraternal relationship in the church and believed that God was just and that he would forgive their sins.  

RURAL CONDITIONS

Espíritu Santo was a typical Salvadoran farming community.  Within the communal area, composed by the limits of the old hacienda, lived almost five hundred people.  Most of these people had grown up on the hacienda, El Granjero, and had known the previous landowner.  Don Tito had provided some important assistance for his workers; they had a school for the children and once a month a doctor would come by to care for those who were sick.  The doctor would set up a small clinic in the hacienda’s central building where people would come and stand in line awaiting their turn.  The mal de mayo and the gripe were the most common ailments in addition to a few pains and aches.  More serious sicknesses were overlooked, and those patients returned to their little houses to await the death angel.  

The workers’ houses were scattered over the hacienda.  Groups of five or six houses were usually grouped together near streams that flowed through the property.  Those more unfortunate families lived on parts of the hacienda that were rocky and unproductive.  Very few hacienda workers’ homes had electricity and therefore, no lights.  No refrigeration was available for preserving milk or meats.  This inconvenience was overshadowed by other health hazards that were greater threats to rural family health and life:  The lack of sanitation principles practiced in homes, as well as in the community, resulted in much sickness and many deaths.  Most rural families lived in open straw huts, without doors or windows.  In most straw huts near the ocean, the wall ended about two feet above the ground.  This feature allowed water to flow through the houses during the rainy season.  The openness of these rural houses allowed the breeze to flow through and this was well received by the hard-working rural farmers.  But the openness also allowed chickens, pigs, turkeys, dogs, and cats to have free access to the house.  Often, pigs found coolness underneath the kitchen table and the chickens regularly found scraps of bread and other edibles on the floor.   But these animals, though very tame and domesticated, were threats to the children who played in and around the house:  Their droppings and excrements were normal and accepted happenings, but small children walked or crawled through the bacteria and parasite laden waste materials.  Most of the rural people were uneducated souls who did not understand what bacteria and germs were:  If they could not see them, they did not exist.  Unfortunately, these conditions supplied the death angel with most of its victims.   

These conditions were traditionally accepted surroundings for rural people who never realized that many of their sickness and deaths were caused by unsanitary conditions.  But other conditions contributed to bad heath.   Only 25% of rural workers had access to latrines.  This percent has increased to about 40% during the 1980s.  Often rural workers left human waste lying exposed beside the house, or in some instances, an open designated area was established by the community where all persons would relieve themselves.  Besides the health hazard caused by exposed waste through which children often stepped and were exposed to health risks, the dried fecal matter, in microscopic form, would be raised into the air by the early spring winds and blown into the houses, onto food being prepared, or onto plates resting on tables.  

Unwholesome diets acerbated existing conditions that contributed to poor health.  For instance, seldom did rural people get meat to eat and milk for children was only slightly more available.  Most infants, after having taken what milk the mother’s breast could provide, drank only rice milk (water in which rice had been boiled.).  Older children and adults faired marginally better.  Their diets were rice, beans, and corn.  For variety, they ate corn, rice, and beans.  Starchy foods with lots of fiber and good protein were abundant, but traditional rural culture discouraged eating green foods to supplement other nutritional needs.

These conditions produced a culture that accepted death and sickness as part of normal existence.  Rural peasants had been taught for centuries by Catholic priests, and more recently by evangelical pastors, that the death of a child meant that the infant would not have to suffer the hardships of life and that he would be present with God.  They were taught to accept the death of a child as a normal occurrence.  This passive acceptance allowed birth rates to reach as high as 60 to 70 per 1000 inhabitants and death rates to reach, in some extreme situations, 500 per 1000 births:  Death rates for normal Salvadoran rural communities ranged between 125 to 200 deaths per 1000 births.  For many humble, rural peasants, heaven was their only hope of escape from the rigors of this earthly life.

Work on the Hacienda

Juan was born in 1935.  His parents worked and lived on the hacienda owned by Don Tito Gonzalez.  Don Tito treated his workers better than many hacendados (hacienda owners) providing a school that taught the children how to read and write.  He also provided essential medical care.  Don Tito’s provisions for the workers had been carried down from generation to generation of Gonzales.  It had always been cheaper to give some attention to the needs of the workers than continuously hire and train new ones.  At the time Juan was born, the Gonzalez coffee farm had just passed through very bad economic times.  The worldwide depression that struck the United States in 1929 had also affected coffee producers in El Salvador.  Production had been reasonably good in 1934 and 1935, but export prices had remained low. Low prices meant low income for the landowners, and this translated into low income for the rural workers.  President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez had suggested to the landowners that they treat humanely their workers, but most of El Salvador’s rural workers suffered dearly due to the economic depression.  In comparison to other landowners, Don Tito had done well by his workers for the school remained open and a doctor continued to come to the hacienda clinic.  

Work on the hacienda was hard especially from December through February.  The workers, including women and children, started work at daybreak picking the red coffee bean.  They ended the day when the sun went down.  All day long they stood around, under, and sometimes in the coffee tree harvesting the bean.  For every twenty-five pounds of coffee beans, they received approximately seventy-five cents. During these three months, most workers earned their income that bought their annual supply of clothes or other important traditional necessities. From March through November, their work schedule was different.  During these months, the workers were allowed to plant and cultivate their own crop of corn and beans.  At harvest, the workers paid Don Tito half of what they had harvested as payment for the land. In addition to cultivating their own crops, Juan and his brothers worked with their father cultivating and clearing the ground underneath the coffee tree.  On these days that the family worked for Don Tito, Juan’s father earned a meager 15 to 20 cents per day; his earnings depended on how many children were also working.  That also meant working from sun to sun with all his healthy children.  

Rural parents gave little attention to their children’s educational needs and only because Don Tito insisted did Juan’s parents send him to school for three years.  In that time, Juan learned to read, write, and do arithmetic.  Juan studied four hours per day and the rest of the day he worked with his father and the other hacienda workers.  

The salary was minimal but generally it was sufficient to buy beans and corn at the hacienda store that Don Tito provided.  During periods when there was little work, Don Tito would sell essential food to his workers on credit.  Having the workers indebted to him also assured the landowner that his workers would be available on demand:  Attempts to escape landed the worker in the hacienda jail and no one wanted to spend any time in that hot dungeon.  Don Tito also helped the workers by occasionally allowing the campesinos to milk the cows for milk and butter.  The workers were appreciative for this arrangement for it added to the families’ nutrition.

Hacienda children led an innocent existence during those years.  They were considered an extension of their father and were expected to work along with him.  Most of the children had not been off the hacienda property.  Only from time to time would Juan’s father take him along to visit a relative who lived on the neighboring farm.  Juan was twenty years old before he visited the capitol city of San Salvador even though the capitol was only 35 miles from his home.  It was on his first trip to the city that he learned about movies, and of course, he had no knowledge of television.  Only occasionally, before Don Tito moved to the city, did he hear a radio and that was generally when the owner’s sons were home from the university in the United States.  Life for these rural children was simple with few complications.

Until Juan was 8 years old, he slept on a straw mat on the dirt floor besides that of his parents.  Usually, the family went to bed at dark; with no electricity there was no reason to do otherwise.  Like most Salvadoran rural workers, Juan’s family’s daily diet was generally rice, beans, and corn tortillas.  Tortillas were made from corn that had soaked the previous day and then ground into tortilla massa between two stones.   Mangos, bananas, and papaya were also abundant during March through June.  During these Spring months, anticipating a large portion of fruit, Juan enjoyed watching his mother prepare the corn tortillas on a round metal grill placed on dried adobe bricks that formed a “U.”  A fire was made in the middle of the “U” from wood collected during the day by Juan’s mother.  She, like most rural women, spent the greatest part of their day collecting wood to be used as fuel for cooking.

The maiz (corn) had been grown on a small patch of rocky soil, known as a milpa, that Don Tito provided for growing of basic grains.  Juan’s father had planted beans and corn, but only the corn had produced the past year.  Juan’s father sold some of the corn in order to buy beans.  Juan’s father worked almost every day, either in the coffee trees or with the hacienda’s cattle.  There was always work to be done for most of the men of the hacienda.  They were happy for the work since most had large debts at the hacienda store.

Juan was twenty years old when Don Tito and his boys decided to plant cotton and sugar cane.   This decision changed the traditional hacienda life of the workers:  The hacienda became a modern plantation.   The first change was that aging Don Tito moved to San Salvador in order to be nearer his children.  The workers missed their relationship with the patronizing but firm landowner.  In order to have supervision on the farm in Don Tito’s absence, the Gonzalez boys hired a foreman who also hired three corporales (straw bosses).  The foreman or administrator was less personal with the workers than was Don Tito.  A certain amount of work was determined for each worker by the foreman.  In order to be paid, the taréa (specific amount of land to be worked in one day) had to be completed.  In some cases, Juan spent two or three days working in order to be paid for one taréa.  Many of the workers complained to the foreman about the increased workload.  Often, those that complained were dismissed as a warning to others.  Juan missed the easy-going labor arrangement under Don Tito.

All flat and level lands were cleared of the old coffee trees; tractors and equipment were bought in order to work the lands.  To maximize production, large amounts of chemical fertilizers were used together with insecticides.  The sugar cane required less maintenance but required large numbers of workers during December, January, and February for harvest.   Working and cultivating cotton, usually started after the cane harvest, was new for Juan and his colaborers.  But they learned rapidly.  From early in the morning until late at night the men would plant, plow, hoe, cultivating the crops.   Caring for the cotton crop required more manpower than attending to coffee or sugar cane.  

The disruption in the family lives of the workers brought about by the changes in the operations of the farm were drastic.  Many of Juan’s coworkers felt deep resentment at Don Tito’s hired foreman.  In the past, Don Tito had compassion on the workers, but the foreman and his corporales were hard and stern making life more difficult for the peasant families.  Due to the increasing number of new families being produced by the farm workers, the foreman reduced the amount of land set aside for the workers.  Even older families who had been living for years on small plots were removed in order to make room for increasing crops of sugar and cotton.  These workers, displaced by increasing crop production, were relegated to areas of the farm that were rocky and nonproductive.  Traditionally, Don Tito had given each family four to six acres on which to raise their corn and some beans.  However, under the new management of the farm, each family was given less than one quarter acre on which to build their homes and worse still, each family had to pay fifteen to thirty colonies yearly.  This alteration from the traditional arrangement meant that the peasant workers had to depend almost entirely on their salaries to supply the needs of their families.  For the peasant families, this meant less food, less nutrition, and more suffering.

THE RURAL EVANGELICAL CHURCH

Juan and Margot started attending the little evangelical church almost ten years prior to Elena’s death.  They proclaimed to be Catholic, but they understood very little of their Catholic heritage.  Don Tito had maintained a small chapel where priests occasionally came and offered mass.  However, this service to the hacienda workers was discontinued in 1972 because the priests refused to continue offering mass in the El Granjero chapel.  

In 1975, one of the hacienda workers, José, returned from a visit to a nearby relative where he had visited a strange new church.  The relative had explained that this new church offered a religion more active and exciting than their old Catholic traditions.  The relative showed José his Bible and read some of the passages of Scripture that sounded very much like the words read at the occasional mass.  The relative invited José to an evening service.  He reluctantly went along.  The preaching was enthusiastic and lively and when the preacher finished, he invited everyone to come forward to kneel around the front of the church to pray.   José saw many people going forward at the end of the service and he also joined in.  Some people were crying, others were praying out loud, and still others were kneeling quietly.  The pastor came by and laid his hands on José’s head and prayed a long prayer of salvation.  The pastor asked José if he wanted to be saved.  In response, José shook his head affirmatively.  The pastor began to pray even louder, thanking God for another soul snatched from hell’s fire.  Soon, José too joined the animated praying and shouting.  Several minutes passed before the loud praying terminated, and when order had been restored, the pastor asked José for a comment.  José had never experienced this type of religious service previously, nor had he experienced the emotional outburst that he felt during the preaching and praying.  José stood and told how Jesus had taken away his sins, just as the pastor had said in the sermon.  Now he felt clean and good just as the pastor said he would.  His public testimony of salvation had served to link him with new friends.

José returned to his home and soon he was sharing his new religion with several families.  A few days later, Hermano(brother) Juan Ortega García, an elder from the neighboring church, came and started a prayer meeting attended at first only by José, his family, and one other farm family.  These new evangelicals soon began sharing their new faith with other neighbors and within two months over fifteen families had joined the prayer meeting.  Neighbors and family often chided newly converted evangelicals for having abandoned their traditional and cultural Catholic faith.  However, these families wanted more religious expression in their life.  Catholic priests offered mass only three or four times per year.  In contrast, religious meetings of this new religion were almost nightly.  José led the new mission in prayer, Scripture reading, and singing when Hermano Juan did not come.   The elder came two or three times a week for services and on occasions, he would bring with him a North American missionary who often taught lessons of the gifts of the Spirit.  Although Don Tito had, at first, threatened to dismiss the new members of this Protestant sect, he was convinced to alter his threat when he saw these people’s sincerity, and some of the nearby hacendados spoke to Don Tito telling him how these new religious sects encouraged work and honesty.  Instead of dismissing them as religious fanatics, he offered a place to build a small church building.  At first, there was nothing, but a square wooden frame built with banana leaves spread on top to provide relief from the sun and rain.  Within a year, adobe walls were formed around the outside and a cross was placed at the roof’s apex.  With the placing of the cross on the roof, the name Iglesia de Dios Universal de Zion Pentecostal was painted over the door.  

Juan and Margot were never able to join the church, but they were always present at the nightly meetings.  Often, they discussed whether they were sinning because of their participation in Protestant meetings.  Some of the priests insisted that all Protestants were heretics and worthy of hell fire for having taken people away from the mother church.  But Juan and Margot felt good attending the services.  The people always seemed happy and the loud singing and praying gave hope that present difficulties would soon be past, and heaven would be gained if they persevered.

Prayer meetings continued for almost a year.  During one of these prayer meetings, the elder announced a special Sunday service with a North American missionary to be held the following weekend.   The missionary and elder spent the whole weekend in the community.  They visited families and talked about a special divine healing service and meeting that would be held in the church on Sunday afternoon.  On Sunday morning, a slow rain started.  The missionary voiced his concern about the attendance that afternoon, but the elder countered that Salvadorans are very used to rain in the rainy season.   At two o’clock the gentle rain was still falling, and no one had arrived at the little building.  By 2:30 people started arriving and by three the building was full.  The service started at three with the elder leading several choruses and hymns.  The singing was lively, and people clapped their hands in joy keeping time with the rhythm of the songs.  The missionary preached how Peter and John had healed the crippled man outside the temple.  He emphasized that God answered prayer for healing only when people lived holy lives, totally free from sin.  In return for a sinless life, a life without “spot or wrinkle,” God would reward the Christian with spiritual power.  The missionary continued by pointing out that spiritual power resulted in answered prayer for divine healing and that special power was gained by following certain behavior standards.  These standards had much to do with honesty, integrity, hard work, abstaining from liquor, tobacco, dancing, and many games.  He vigorously insisted that a drop of guara or alcoholic drink would send someone to hell as quickly as murder.   These standards demonstrated one’s commitment to God while also reflecting the presence of the Holy Spirit who dwelled within the individual. The missionary pointed out that these standards, rigidly upheld, confirmed one’s personal holiness.  He told the people not to be concerned with the cares of this world, the hardships of life, or the temptations of wealth.  Submission to church leaders as well as to the government and the farm’s management would be honored by God and eventually blessed.  He told the congregation that if they maintained their vision only on Christ, looked only to him to meet each daily need, not be concerned with what their neighbors had or didn’t have, then God would supply all their needs.

When the preaching ended, the missionary called for all those who were sick or needed a special blessing from God to go forward and stand near the pulpit.  Almost all of the congregation had needs; some were sick, some were weak, some didn’t have food, and others, looking for some kind of a blessing just went forward.  After a long period of prayer, the missionary announced that the pastor and church elders had requested permission for the church to join the international fellowship of churches.  The congregation, however, needed to vote and approve the union.

The Isolated Church

Salvadoran country peasants always had needs.  Sickness caused by unsanitary conditions was the principle need of these pleasant people.  But confusion and frustration at the changes in traditional lifestyles produced more uncertainty and emotional stress.  When this writer first visited Santo Espíritu and the community Pentecostal church, it was most apparent that these poor people had needs and problems; their lives were being challenged in ways for which they were unprepared.  Some families complained for the lack of medical attention, other for the lack of land to plant their small milpas (garden of corn or beans); other families saw their young teenage boys give up hope for a future and joined newly formed armed revolutionary groups; union and rural activists were constantly in the rural community encouraging the men to join FECCAS (a regional association of farm workers)  saying that rural workers who united together could pressure landowners to be more compassionate and pay the workers justly.  Neither the pastor nor the people knew how to deal with these pressures that the social unrest and a changing world had placed on them.  As working conditions changed on the farm, many workers joined FECCAS, some of the younger men disappeared from the community, but their families knew they were in the hills with the guerrillas.  

Most rural evangelicals pastors had little or no formal training.  They felt that God would lead and guide them by “His Spirit.”  Questions and problems to which God had not given Biblical answers were left unattended.  For instance, if God had been silent regarding the questions of justice and equity for rural workers, then they too had nothing to say.  Besides, God had given to nations government which was to assume responsibility for the problems like those that occurred in El Granjero.   Consequently, rural evangelical churches’ reaction to these stresses was to internalize the pressure by cutting themselves off from other institutions, organizations, and even other churches.  By isolating themselves from the world of landowners, the foreman or the plantation administrator, from the Catholic church as well as other evangelicals, and the warring factions, it relieved itself of all responsibility for anything other than the spiritual life of its members.  Most rural churches, following the advice of missionary teachers and pastors who considered politics sinful and those who participated in politics as sinners.  Other churches, Catholic and evangelical alike, practiced false doctrines, therefore, it was better to remain isolated and protected from “false” teachers that could creep into the church.  As the missionary had preached, “if they maintained their vision only on Christ, looked only to him to meet each daily need, not to be concerned with what their neighbors had or didn’t have, then God would supply all their needs.”

The little Pentecostal church that Juan and Margot attended was very similar to the hundreds of other evangelical churches scattered throughout El Salvador.  The pastor preached personal salvation and piety:  The Holy Spirit would only help those who resisted the temptation of evil thoughts, read their Bibles, and prayed.   Members were encouraged to pray, live honestly, and work hard.  They were encouraged not to get involved with politics nor join any of the rural organizations. Church doctrine also taught that cigarettes and liquor were sinful and economically wasteful.  The teaching emphasized that only God could help the community, that outside people would only corrupt the members’ daily lives.  Too much involvement with people who were not members of the church would pack their heads with thoughts and ideas that were not godly.

RURAL POLITICAL ACTIVISM

This attitude of isolationism was not, however, the attitude of the local Catholic church nor the rural political activists.  Many of the local priests and students from José Simón Cañas Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) University and San José de la Montañas seminary and many rural political and social activists worked long and hard attempting to make changes in the political structure of El Salvador.  These changes were intended to bring about justice and equity in return for the peasants’ labor.  About the time that Don Tito’s children converted the hacienda into a modern plantation, other haciendas were also making the same changes.  These changes were destined to make El Salvador into a capitalist society that could merge easily into the world’s economic system.  These changes, however good intentioned, caused grave damages to the rural peasants.  As new plantations produced handsome profits from the export of coffee, sugar, and cotton, the rural workers were undergoing changes that wrecked and brought havoc to their innocent traditional way of life.  Into this social rural upheaval marched the religious and political activists who saw capitalism as a demonic system designed to rob and exploit the rural peasants.

From the many books and thesis written and published in recent years, it is now clear that the Catholic church activists were leading the fight against the Salvadoran rural capitalistic system.  In Espíritu Santo, priests and other activists divided the area into small sections.  Each section elected leaders that subsequently directed the weekly religious activity of the sector.  Each sector eventually developed into a Christian Base Community (CBC).  

The CBCs became the primary communication links between the diocesan priests and the rural peasants.  Recent studies by Carlos Cabarrás and Octavio Cruz, priests who worked and studied the Salvadoran rural organizations, made clear in their written works that the Catholic church’s purpose was to produce a specific political consciousness of unjust exploitation of peasant labor.  The activists wanted this newly acquired consciousness to produce a revolutionary response, an uprising of the rural workers that would overturn capitalism and implant a Christian socialist economic system.  In order to cause a worker’s revolution, the church activists developed a program to evangelize the rural workers through local Christian Base Communities.  For the promoters of Salvadoran CBCs, evangelization was an activity, supported and advanced by the church, that recruited and trained political activists among the rural peasantry.

Catholic church activists taught the workers their rights as Christians and Salvadorans.  The priests divided communities like Espiritu Santo into various sectors.  Community leaders (delegates of the Word) were sought out and given special training:  Some were taught how to lead groups discussions and how to teach Bible lessons.  Others were taught how to gather social information and take polls on various subjects.  Information gathered by these workers were discussed at the many community meetings conducted by the priests or the delegates of the Word.  Many meetings of the community groups were for the purpose of concientizar (making consciously aware) the rural workers of the many abuses perpetrated by the landowners through the economic system represented by the haciendas/plantations.  In some of these meetings, the leaders taught how the landowners were using the labor of the rural workers to make millions of colones (Salvadoran currency) while forcing the workers to live on salaries that were insufficient to purchase adequate food and medicine for their families.  Increasing impoverishment of the rural workers, lack of health care, and education for their children, caused many of the rural workers to join rural organizations in hopes of protecting themselves from further impoverishment.  The priests and delegates encouraged the workers to join together and form unions or associations of workers so that collectively they could bargain with the landowners.  

The results of changing from a traditional hacienda system to a modern capitalist plantation system produced consternation and hardships in the daily lives of Salvadoran rural workers.  The rural workers’ reactions to these changes were sufficient reason for concern in the hierarchy of the Catholic church.  Since the bishops’ conference in Medellín, Columbia in 1968, socially progressive sectors of the church became very concerned about the conditions of the Salvadoran rural peasantry.  Changes that occurred in the Salvadoran hacienda system subsequent to World War II, undoubtedly stimulated the need to pursue causes of equity in rural El Salvador.  The changes made in the haciendasmay have advanced El Salvador’s international image, however, they impoverished thousands of Salvadoran peasants.  The causes of impoverishment, the Catholic activists believed, were sufficient reason to promote rural organizations that would aid the rural poor in their quest for justice, liberty, and equity.

Organizing the rural peasants was made easier due to the relations that developed between the rural workers and the new plantation management.  In contrast to earlier days when Don Tito lived on the farm and had direct contact with the workers, under the plantation system and its administrator, the workers had no contact with the landowners.  By the beginning of the decade of the seventies, most landowners lived in the cities and relegated the management of the plantation to an administrator or manager.  Consequently, the workers felt alienated and detached.  Previously, the patronizing landowner took care of his workers who were ferociously loyal to him.  Later, when the administrator became the communications conduit between landowner and rural workers, loyalty to the landowner became overshadowed by resentment toward the cold, determined, and non-passionate administrator.

The administrator was generally not a cruel person.  He had been given production goals and his salary and benefits depended on his reaching those goals.  The workers became a means only of reaching production goals.  They were not families with needs as they were with Don Tito.  As sentiments developed between the rural workers and the management system, Catholic church activists, Christian Democratic party organizers, and rural workers’ associations began informing the workers of their rights as Salvadoran citizens.  Resentment toward the new plantation system grew causing many rural workers to join nascent rural workers’ organizations.  These organizations were political voices of rural workers who had been forbidden to form union since 1932.

The rural workers voiced their rights through rural organizations such as FECCAS and, later, through the Popular Revolutionary Front (BPR).  The rights to education, health, and a decent living were common themes of these workers.  Through the decade of the seventies, the workers, through their growing members of rural organizations, increasingly voiced their disapproval of the government and its support of the plantation owners.  To voice their disapproval, thousands of FECCAS, BPR, and CBC members demonstrated in the streets which called attention to the rural workers’ plight.

In response to the rising cry of justice by “enlightened” rural workers, the military and local civil defense organizations often attacked these workers during their demonstrations.  During the attacks, often demonstrators were killed.  Those killed became martyrs and acted as catalysts to solidify the workers who believed that the government and its security forces were ungodly and unfeeling sinners who protected the rich landowners.  “God,” they were told, “would vindicate the poor in their fight for justice.”  An honorable death in their hopeful fight for justice was considered preferable to death caused by starvation.  

On the other hand, the Salvadoran evangelical church accepted no invitation to join the Salvadoran social activists.  Isolated from the ongoing social upheaval, evangelical pastors and evangelists continued their efforts of proselytizing rural workers.  Preaching a message of political noninvolvement and one of spiritual encouragement, evangelicals maintained an apolitical position.  They preached and accepted the status quo as the will of God.  (See following book on the growth of Evangelicalism in Central America.)

Rural evangelicals were also affected economically by the rural transition to a plantation economy.  However, evangelicals, rather than organizing against the landowners, chose to pray about their economic conditions.  As an answer to prayer or because of the economy of hiring nonviolent workers, many rural evangelicals kept their jobs while others were hired.  On many farms, rural activist peasants were replaced by passive evangelicals whose lifestyle opposed violence, drinking, riotous behavior, and chaos.  Cabarrás complained in a speech made in 1978 at the UCA university that male Protestant converts stopped their womanizing and drinking.  Their conversion to evangelicalism resulted in more money for family needs.  By increasing income in the family budget, the rural evangelical family rose in economic status and therefore, the social activists were unable to organize the evangelical communities.  Nonparticipating evangelicals weakened the influence of rural activist organizations.  Landowners, though Catholic themselves, promoted evangelicalism among their rural workers as a means to counter the activity of the Catholic social activists.  

Although evangelical churches grew slowly prior to the decade of the eighties, the increase in social and political activism by rural peasants had the effect of causing many rural peasants to turn to evangelical churches as a means of finding spiritual hope as well as stable jobs.  Some writers feel that many conversions to evangelicalism were made in order to find physical safety.  The Salvadoran army knew that most evangelicals were uninvolved in revolutionary efforts and therefore, rural evangelical churches and church members were harassed less than their activist Catholic counterparts.  Landowners also sought evangelicals to work on their farms; evangelicals who would not become radicalized by revolutionary activists.   As rural organizations became more radicalized, violence increased in rural areas making evangelical Christians and churches objects representing the peaceful and traditional past.  Some Catholics resented the evangelicals who benefitted from government and landowners’ skepticism of rural activist workers who were also members of rural organizations.

Juan was around twenty-five years old when Don Tito’s farm began changing.  Juan remembered the day that big trucks began arriving at the hacienda.  Most of the furniture was loaded on the trucks and taken away.  The hacienda house was never empty, only very sparsely furnished after that day.  Don Tito was seldom seen on the farm afterwards.  His sons who came frequently to the farm told the workers that Don Tito was getting old and that he could no longer carry on the work as he had done in the past.  Then, came Señor Marroquin, the administer.  Juan never liked the administrator nor his caporales.  They acted cold toward the workers and never allowed the workers any of the benefits that Don Tito had given.  The last change was what Juan most resented:  The administrator removed Juan from the parcel of land that Don Tito had designated for him and his family.  Instead of having three manzanos (five acres), Juan was given just enough land on which to build a small house.  The land that went with the house was small and too rocky to produce any corn or beans.  The same happened to Juan’s neighbors and they too resented the administrator’s arbitrary demands.  To make matters worse, the administrators had sent word that everybody would have to pay 55 colones per year (about $20) for the privilege of living on this rocky land.  Juan, like all the other workers felt degraded and demeaned, as if something had been taken from them.  

Juan had first built his little house on land just a short distance from his parents and brothers.  When the administrator began making all the changes, two of Juan’s brothers protested to the administrator who dismissed them as troublemakers and replaced them with new workers.  Juan’s father who was old and unable to work as before, was also dismissed from the farm.   Without any land and no place to go, the father and the dismissed sons and their families lived for a while in shacks built from cardboard in a ravine that ran beside the farm.  They knew that with the first rains, they would be washed away.  However, they had few choices. 

The same happened to many of Juan’s friends and their families.  Land that Don Tito had given Juan on which he was to have raised his family, was made part of the cane field.  Every time Juan passed the cane, he felt alone and sad; he remembered the happy days of planting his beans and corn, of harvesting; with Margot’s help, their labors produced the annual supply of corn and most of the beans.  This piece of land represented the security of his family.   Somehow Juan could not help the feelings of resentment toward the sugar cane that now occupied what he considered his land, his home.  On occasions he thought, “If Don Tito were still here, this would not have happened.”  Some of the workers argued with Señor Marroquin, explaining that they were not paid enough to now pay for their house and buy their food.  They also complained that the administrator had done away with the school and now no doctor ever came to visit the sick.  The administrator brushed away their complaints by saying that now they were hired workers who could live on the salaries paid them and pay for their own medicines.  Their children could be sent to the public school up in Zacatecolucas if they wanted to learn, but they would not be spending plantation money to educate the workers’ children.

All complaints fell on deaf ears.  The administrator would not listen to the workers.  Without doubt, the conditions for the workers worsened.  They had no land on which to raise their own corn or beans, no school, no doctor nor medicine.  By the middle of the 1970s, these conditions and the rate of deaths were unthinkable.

Rural Repression

One day, Juan’s coworker and friend, Ramón, invited Juan to a meeting.  At the meeting, a priest was telling those present that they did not have to live under such inhuman circumstances:  That as human beings and Christians, there was no reason for the landowners and administrators to exploit the workers in such fashion.  The priest told how God had delivered the children of Israel from captivity in Egypt and led them to the promised land.  He explained that the rural workers’ captors were the capitalist landowners and that the rural organizations and armed revolutionaries were the poor peoples’ liberators.   Liberation, the priest explained, would happen to the farm workers if they would all join the organizations and work together to rid the country of these hired capitalists.

After many meetings, Juan and his coworkers joined FECCAS.  They knew that their demands were just and honest.  They simply could not live on the low salaries paid them.  They could not afford medicine for their children, nor education.  The priest had said that education and health were human rights that everyone should have.  Therefore, their demands for their rights were just.  The union of workers called a meeting with the administrator.  On the day of the meeting, the workers arrived at the old hacienda house, now the farm offices, and faced a group of Guardia Nacional (National Guard).  Being that the priest was with the workers, no action was taken by the National Guard, but nothing was accomplished by the meeting either.  The union leader shouted his demands at the administrator.  The administrator shouted his demands and threats to the workers, and nothing happened.  

The next morning after the meeting at the hacienda, Juan and some of the workers were called aside by one of the priest’s helpers.  They were informed that during the night, some heavily armed men had come to the house of Esteban Escobar, the union leader, and taken him away.  Just a few hours earlier, his body was found beside the road leading to the hacienda:  His body had been tortured before his captors severed his head.  This was a sign to the other workers not to make trouble or the same would happen to them.  Juan and the whole community of workers were scared.  What could they do?

Juan asked to be excused from work for a few hours.  He was afraid and concerned about what could happened to all the workers.  He quickly made his way to the little adobe house beside the church.  There Juan briefly told his pastor how events had led to the confrontation between Esteban and the plantation administrator.  With hands shaking and his voice quivering, almost breaking, he told how Esteban had been found.  Juan, deep in his heart, knew how the pastor would respond.  Often Juan had heard messages about salvation, about the soon return of the Lord for the righteous ones, but never had he heard his pastor preaching about justice and social conditions that led to poverty.  Juan had heard the pastor as well as some missionaries teaching about obeying their bosses; about how they would one day be rewarded in heaven for their faithfulness.  Though Juan had never heard his pastor speaking about politics or the miserable conditions of rural life, he was not surprised to hear Pastor Durón say, “The results of involving oneself in dirty politics is death and heartache.  God is not pleased that any of his saints take sides in the political contests.  You have a family, and your job is your family’s economic protection.  Your job is a sign of God’s blessings on you.  I suggest, Juan, that you do not involve yourself in any of the political discussions.  God will provide for you and your family.  It is enough only to believe and trust in Jesus.”  After a few more exhortations to stay away from confrontation, the pastor quoted two verses of Scripture, “Do everything without complaining or arguing.” (Philippians 2:14) and “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” (Colossians 3:22) Juan pondered these verses as he left the pastor’s house.

But Juan was also concerned about his father and his brother.  For several months they had lived just outside the farm property in makeshift champas (shacks).  One night after dark, Juan’s brothers and father came calling.  Their news was very disturbing and caused Juan not to sleep for the rest of the night.  They were leaving for Guazapa:  Juan knew that meant to join the guerrillas.  Juan argued against this decision, but Martín angrily retorted that it was better to die with dignity fighting for their rights than die of starvation by the roadside.  Juan understood their frustration.

Some of the men of the community wanted to call another meeting with the farm administrator.  Juan thought that maybe it was a good idea; that his story about his father and brothers would make the administrator realize that the horrible conditions were causing people to turn toward revolution.  The meeting was called and about 150 workers attended.  Beside Señor Marroquin stood two soldiers from the Guardia Nacional.  Ramón García, who had taken the place of Esteban, began to talk.  He explained that with the salaries that they were paid, they could not provide education and medical care for their families.  That just last week, two infants had died on the farm; there had been no one to take the mothers and the two sick children to a doctor.  Ramón complained that with their salaries, the workers could not buy sufficient beans, rice, corn, oil, and sugar, much less other needs of their families.  Then Juan spoke up and attempted to make an unrehearsed speech.  He told how his father and brothers and gone to Guazapa for they felt no other option.  Juan explained that without work to supply food, health, and education for his brothers’ families, they had left to join the armed forces of the “liberators.”  He told how that his brothers argued that it was just to be able to pay for food, medicine, and education from one’s labors.  Without gaining these benefits from one’s own work, why work?  For these reasons, Juan explained, his brothers had opted for revolution.   Juan’s reasoned speech caused many of the workers to shake their heads in agreement for they too knew that many of their relatives also had joined the revolutionaries for just the same reasons.

When it came time for Señor Marroquin to speak, it was apparent that he was very upset at the workers.  His face was red, and his hands were shaking in rage.  “You people are just lazy and you do not want to work.  Your coming here today was just an excuse to get away from your labor.  First, I want you to know that you will not be paid for today.  I will not pay you money to come here and try to bargain with me.  And furthermore, your families that left for Guazapa left here because they were troublemakers.  They were lazier than you are, and they only wanted to cause problems.  The communist priests caused them to rebel against my authority as administrator of this farm.  It is the communist agitators that are causing all these problems.  I suggest that you do not listen to them.  They will cause you to be dismissed from your work and where will you be then?  You will be without work and your families will starve to death.  You only want more money so that you and buy more guara (a local drink) and get drunk.  The farm cannot pay you any more money.  You will have to make do with what there is.”  With these words, the meeting ended, and the foreman disappeared.

For several hours after the meeting, many of the men stood around and reflected on the events of the day.  Some were very upset; others were vowing to join the rebels in Guazapa.  Juan started to relay the passive advise of his pastor, but others indignantly called Juan a traitor to national tradition and culture by joining himself with these foreign sects.  He remembered the days immediate after his and Margot’s conversion to evangelicalism.  He remembered how many neighbors ostracized his family, called them names, and refused to speak to them.   Juan could hear the intensity in the voice of the speaker, so he decided to remain quiet.  There was no use attempting to convey a message that these emotional and nervous men could not accept.  So, he kept quiet.

That night, Juan was awakened by the light of a flashlight in his eyes.  Three men were standing in the doorway of the champa with guns pointed at himself and Margot.  “Get up, you communist” shouted one of the men.  “You are going to pay for your rabblerousing today.”  Juan was not allowed to put on his pants.  “You don’t need pants on to die” scowled the leader as he pushed Juan out the door.  Margot began crying loudly and the children screamed when they saw the men with guns roughly pushing Juan out the door.  The leader stuck his gun back in the door and shouted for Margot to be quiet and warned her not to tell anybody what happened, or they would come back and kill her and the children.

Juan was thrown into the back of an old army jeep.  His hands and feet were tied with rope.  One of the men jumped into the back of the jeep and set down on Juan’s left shoulder.  Juan felt sharp pains in his right side that was against the metal floor of the jeep.  He had been thrown on top of a car jack and its sharp edges pierced his side.  Juan complained of the pain, but the butt of the soldier’s gun struck his left temple and silenced Juan’s complaints.

In the darkness Juan recognized the outline of the trees when he was being pulled out of the jeep.  It was a favorite fishing spot that most of the men visited on their days off, only a couple of miles from Juan’s home.  Becoming more conscious of his surroundings, Juan could see the outline of another vehicle parked a short distance away.  Someone else had also been captured and brought to this lonely spot to die.   The men tied Juan firmly to a tree and then disappeared into the darkness.  Juan began to think of the day’s events.  He had not lied about his family.  He had not joined FECCAS just to cause problems.  He also knew that Ramón was very intense about his role in the meeting, but he also knew that what Ramón had said at the meeting was true.  So, why was he attacked and brought here to this place to die?  

Suddenly, Juan thoughts were shattered by a shrill scream of someone in pain.  Though distorted by severe pain, Juan recognized Ramón’s voice.   “Tell us who are you meeting with,” was the deliberate and demanding voice of an interrogator.  “We want to know the names of the priests and the names of the workers with whom you are meeting.  They are communists and all of you are going to pay with your lives.  So, tell us now and make this easier on yourself and us.”  Juan could hear the sounds of the gun butts hitting their target, Ramón’s chest and stomach.  “Tell us,” Ordered the interrogator, “or you are going to feel more.  So, you are a tough guy are you, we’ll see.”  The sharp ends of two wires were roughly stuck into the testicles of a screaming and squirming Ramón.  Then the electricity of a car battery was sent through his writhing body.  Juan could hear the screams, but he was helpless, fearing the same fate.  Shortly, there was quietness.  Ramón had stopped screaming.

A few minutes later, three men stood around Juan.  One of the men’s right arm, pants, and shoes were stained red with fresh blood.  “You heard what happened to your compadre Ramón.  Do you want the same?” asked the interrogator.  Juan could tell that the men were agitated for they had not been able to get all the information they were seeking.  “Who have you been meeting with?” asked the inquisitor.  Juan knew that these men were aware of the FECCAS meetings, and he also knew that they knew who were attending.  He also knew that they were looking for names of people from San Salvador who were organizing the rural workers.  The interrogator Juan did not know, but he recognized one of the soldiers at his side; he was one of the Guardia Nacional soldiers who stood beside Señor Marroquin earlier at the meeting. 

At a signal from the interrogator, the two soldiers cut the rope that bound Juan’s arms behind the tree.  Each soldier twisted Juan’s arms until the elbow was leveraged against the trunk of the tree.  The soldiers held Juan’s arms at the wrist and begin pushing toward the tree putting a backward pressure on the elbow.  Pain pierced through Juan’s arms as each soldier applied more pressure.  “Tell us,” Demanded the interrogator, “With whom are you meeting?  If you don’t tell us, we will break both your arms before we kill you.  Tell us and make it easier on yourself.”  Juan told the names of the men from the farm, but these were all that he knew.  “Who else?” demanded the leader.  Juan did not know the names of the young men who occasionally came with the priests.  He knew that some of the young people were from UCA, others were seminary students, and he remembered meeting someone from the national university.  But that was all he could remember.   Suddenly, Juan screamed with pain as the soldier holding the left arm pushed harder toward the tree.  Pain engulfed him causing his stomach muscles to contract; waves of nausea overwhelmed him.  Juan felt lightening run up his left arm.   His elbow and broken arm folded backwards tightly against the tree.  Assessing that they were not going to get more information from Juan, the leader pointed to the jeep and one of the soldiers went to it and got a brown plastic bag from beside one of the seats.  The soldier placed the bag over Juan’s head while the other soldier tied the broken arm to the right arm behind the tree.  Then the bag was tied under Juan’s chin.  “You’re going to die, communist,” said one of the soldiers who then hit Juan squarely in the stomach with his gun.  Juan coughed and the bag filled with hot air and liquid.

Juan did not understand the political implication of the meeting earlier that day.  He only wanted to supply sufficient food and daily necessities for his family.  His life had changed when the farm altered its operations; that was when Señor Marroquin came.   Juan only wanted what he had previously received from Don Tito.  But this, this end was totally unexpected.  He did not know why he was about to die.  He did not understand why the soldiers had broken his arm.  His mind went back to the counsel of his pastor a few days earlier.  “Politics is dirty,” was the phrase that he remembered.  But Juan also thought of the needs of his family.  He thought about the medicines for the parasites that had once been supplied by Don Tito but now were denied by the new administrator.  He thought about the school that he attended, but now education was denied his children.  Though Juan was in severe pain and agony, he felt solaced because he knew that his comments to the administrator that day were just and honorable.  “Why God, why has this happened to me?  We work hard and don’t have enough food for our children.  So why God, why has this happened to me?”

The air in the plastic bag was becoming humid and heavy.  Juan’s body ached with pain, and he knew that within minutes he would be dead.  “Oh God, take care of my children and Margot.  Please God, meet their needs and give them food.”  Juan’s head felt light, and the plastic bag stuck to his sweating face.  Little air was in the bag and as Juan struggled to get air, the bag tightened around his nose cutting off any air to his lungs.  Juan’s body fought against death, his body lunging against the tree trunk, the pain from his broken arm now unnoticed as death approached.  Unconsciousness fell over Juan as the back of his head pounded the tree to which he was tied.  Unknowingly to the unconscious Juan, convulsions jerked his head backwards knocking bark from the tree and miraculously tearing a small hole in the plastic sack.   Fresh air began filling the bag.  Had God saved his life?

The next morning, Juan slowly gained consciousness as he felt his body being lifted into the back of a truck.  Some workers had found him still alive and were taking him to the local hospital.  Juan was alive to tell his story, but Ramón had been disemboweled and his throat cut.  Juan knew that a caring God had saved him from sure death.

THE DISPLACED PEOPLES’ CAMP

Juan’s life had been spared, not by compassion of his interrogators, rather, by the hand of a caring God.  At Rosales hospital, the broken elbow had been set and after two days, he was released.  None of the men from the farm were able to visit Juan in the hospital; they were not able to take the day off from their labors.  No one was able to come and help him on his journey home.  With his arm in a fresh sling, he went to the bus stop in front of Rosales, took a bus to the East Terminal where he caught a bus to Zacatecolucas.  From Zacatecolucas, he took a small, crowded bus to Espiritu Santos.

As Juan stepped off the bus, a neighbor whom he had known all his life spotted Juan.  With a shout that was heard all around, Roque came running to greet Juan.  “I thought you were really dead.  When they took you away, I thought that I would never see you again, compadre.”  Roque quickly guided Juan away from all the people.  There in the shade of a “fire tree,” Roque, in detail, explained what had taken place in Espíritu Santo during the past two days.  “Instead of the usual two National Guard soldiers that were always at the hacienda, now there are twenty.  And besides, at night soldiers from ORDEN patrol the roads all around.  The word to the wise is that with any more trouble like what you and Ramón caused, we will all be killed.”  Quickly, Juan replied, “We did not cause the trouble, we only told the truth, and you know it.”  “Yes, I do know it, but what can we do?  If we open our mouth, they will kill us like they tried to kill you.  And then the same will happen to our families as what happened to yours.”  Cold chills ran all over Juan.  “My family,” gasped Juan.  “Did something happen to my family?  Where are they?”

Roque did not know for sure the whereabouts of Margot nor the children.  “The same day that you left for the hospital,” reported Roque, “Señor Marroquin and the caporales came by and told Margot that they could not live on the farm anymore.  They were forced to leave immediately.  I understood that they were going to the campo de desplazados(displaced peoples’ camp) near Zacatecolucas.”

Two bus trips later, Juan arrived at “El Limón,” just as darkness was settling in.  El Limón was the new settlement of people who had been displaced from their homes due to the increasing violence that was spreading throughout the countryside.  El Limón consisted of row after row of shacks made from cardboard.  Other dwelling were makeshift tents, frames made from tree branches with black plastic stretched over the wooden frame.  Juan found Margot setting on a block of wood beside a fire in front of a plastic tent.  Margot and the zipotes (slang for kids) were overjoyed, happy, and excited to see Juan and know that he was okay.  Even in the miserable surroundings of the camp, the family felt safe because Juan had come home alive.

From 1977 until 1981, Juan and his family lived in El Limón.  Various organizations helped the unfortunate and displaced people; some with food, other with medicine, and still other groups gave clothing.  Even with the help of these organizations, life was not the same as it was before on Don Tito’s farm.  As the years passed, Juan had sought work in the village, but little work was to be found.  From time to time, he found work in someone’s garden, or in a road gang. But there was no constant work for these people.  They only existed.  It was here among the sickness and diseases of El Limón that Xamora and Lizabeth died.  From birth, they were weak children.  Their diets consisted of rice milk, there was no cow milk, a little rice and some beans.  There was no medicine and no doctors to care for the dying.  And death came often in the camp.  Juan and Margot lost two children, but hundreds of families also lost children at El Limón.

Juan and Margot lived in El Limón for four years.  During those years, when Juan could find sufficient work, they made trips to El Espíritu Santo to visit the church and see their friends.  They learned that many of Juan’s companions from the farm had joined the guerrillas.  Interestingly, most of the people who had been members of the little church were still working on the farm.  They had not joined FECCAS nor any of the other rural organizations that had been formed.  None of the church members who had remained passive toward the new changes on the farm had been harassed in any way. Although some of the church members thought Juan should have endured the hardships as a testimony of God grace, when he and Margot visited the church, they were always received as special guests of the church.

The decade of the seventies was very difficult for rural workers.  Those that had been dismissed from their work found it difficult to find jobs.  By the end of the seventies, most of these unemployed rural workers were in displaced peoples’ camp or living in barrancas or begging for food in the major cities.  Over the central zone of El Salvador there were many of these camps where those who had no home or job could find a measure of safety.  Food, however, was hard to get.  Sporadically, government trucks took essentials to the camps.  These rations of beans, corn, rice, oil, powdered milk, and sugar were entrusted to camp overseers.  When it came time to deliver the food to the hungry, only half of the grains and oils were distributed:  The balance was sold to city food markets and other distributors of food goods.  Government officials or camp overseers even sold the powdered milk, so badly needed by the infants and children, to bakeries and ice cream factories.  The poor people of these camps knew of these anomalies but were helpless to complain.  In fact, most did not even mention it for fear of reprisals against their families.

The Catholic charities sometimes brought items directly to the people, but most often the Catholic charities distributed their goods through government channels where much of the goods were diverted to private ends.  Evangelical church groups often came and gave food goods directly to families.  When the evangelicals distributed food and other goods, they always got to the needy people.  Unfortunately, the evangelicals usually had very little of the needed foods, clothing, or medicine.  They were always willing to give, but generally, they had very little to give.  When foreign evangelical missions gave food, it often went to evangelical churches where, first, it was distributed to people of the congregation, and later to those who attended a church service.  Many of the displaced people resented this type of proselytizing and claimed that the evangelicals were trading beans for souls.  In too many instances, this was exactly what happened.

Hunger and disease were constant in El Limón.  There was never enough food.  Medical attention was also scarce.  At times, government doctors came to the camp, but mostly medical school students came to give medical examinations.  The doctors usually told the patients very little about the illness or disease that afflicted them.  After a brief examination the doctors would give a prescription for the needed medicine.  But no one had money to acquire the needed medicine.  The government also had little or no medicine for the people of the displaced peoples’ camps.  Therefore, many people, especially, children died due to the lack of adequate care.

Many of the sicknesses could have been avoided if simple community health measures had been taken.  Often children, women, and some men used the pathway between the shacks to relieve themselves.  Feces were constantly tracked into the houses where children, playing on the dirt floor, contracted diseases.  Pure drinking water was scarce and often water was obtained from nearby streams, or contaminated ponds.  Water flowing in nearby streams or that collected in ponds often had fallen from the roof tops on to the pathways between the houses and out to the street where it confluenced with other sewage and stagnated or ran down to the nearby stream or ponds.  Contaminated water caused the majority of sicknesses that occurred in the displaced peoples’ camps.  Proper teaching and training could have helped the people avoid most of the sickness and death that they endured.

COLLECTIVE FARMS

In October 1979, a military coup overturned the government of General Humberto Romero.  Labor strikes and demonstrations, provoked by the various political movements, made it impossible for General Romero to continue as head of a nation in revolt.  Confrontations between leftist groups, urban and rural workers, along with political parties who argued for liberalized laws were constant, almost daily events.  Political murders averaged more than 500 monthly.  Bombs destroyed buses and factories.  The kidnapping and murder of wealthy family members along with foreign businessmen funded the incipient violent mass movements and the armed guerrilla organizations.  Some writers estimated that these leftist factions accumulated a war chest in excess of eighty million dollars from which they bought the majority of their bellicose materiel.   Many North American companies had already abandoned the country by the time of the military coup, and as the violence increased, most of the remaining foreign companies also packed their bags and fled.  

The following months were chaotic in El Salvador.  Violence continued in the streets of the cities as well as in the countryside.  Two government juntas attempted to rule the country: both with no success.  The first junta issued agrarian reforms that nationalized farms of 2100 acres or more.  Workers who were working on the farms at the time of collectivization were made owners of the new rural businesses.  The workers were also given the responsibility of paying the government-imposed mortgage to the previous owners.  Some farms allowed rural workers who were not part of another collectivization to solicit membership in the new enterprises.  In this manner, Juan and Margot were allowed to return to El Granjero, the farm of his birth.  On the day of inauguration, Juan and Margot were present and proud members of the new collectivized farm of Don Tito.

The hardships that the members of the new collectivized enterprises endured during 1981 and 1982 were considered part of the cost of their new project.  Food was scarce and medical care was even less available.  ISTA (The agrarian reform agency) often sent doctors and other social development specialists to the newly collectivized farms.  These professionals taught many seminars and classes on public health and family well-beings.  Other sessions gave instructions on how to plant and cultivate crops.   These sessions were well received, for they gave people confidence that the new owners would be able to overcome the difficulties of the first years.  However, by 1983, many of the members of the collectives were giving up hope that life was going to get better.  Although, ISTA sponsored community health meetings, their medical doctors seldom gave workers medical attention nor was medicine made available to cure even the simplest diseases.  Farming methods were important, but they meant nothing without health for the workers, seeds, equipment, or fertilizers for the farm.  The farm members appreciated the teaching sessions but hope slowly ebbed out of the new owners who saw their lives still as impoverished as when they were simple farm hands.  Juan and Margot were happy to be back home, but life, even as part owner of the newly collectivized farm, presented just as many problems as experienced before.  Juan had been elected as part of the farm’s board of directors, and as such, he now had responsibility for the outcome of the farm’s production.  He, as well as the other members of the board, had no experience in administrating the farm.  They all had good intentions, but no one knew how to get production from a farm that had no seeds, little equipment, and farm workers who had given up hope on immediate profits as new landowners.

By 1983, the members of the El Granjero farm were discouraged at their progress.  The lack of seeds, tractors and plows, continuing sicknesses and deaths, and no nearby schools to which they could send their children were not the picture painted by the priests and other rural organizers.  Some of the farm members blamed the government for not providing money to secure the necessary seeds, equipment, and other requirements.  Those that argued for more government help constantly made trips to the capitol requesting help.  Each time they returned elated at their success only to be disappointed after weeks of waiting and no positive answer to their petitions.  These were disappointing days for Juan and Margot.  They too, had expected to see better results.  Even the church had prayed for success in the new venture, especially since many of its members were also members of the new collective farm.  They had prayed for positive results, but it seemed that only hardship and trials awaited their every turn.

PARALIFE INTERNATIONAL OFFERS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

I first met Juan and Margot in late 1983.  They were about to bury their third child:  A death that did not have to occur.  This child’s death was caused by parasites and the lack of an adequate diet. 

A primary purpose for which Paralife International was founded was to teach principles of Development Compassion to churches who could pass on to their community the life saving measures.  By mid 1984, teams of community development specialists, including medical doctors and nutritionists were regularly visiting El Granjero.  These groups were teaching expectant mothers how to care for themselves during their pregnancy as well as how to care for newborn infants.  Communities were taught the importance of community sanitation and then they were instructed in methods of maintaining community cleanliness.  Nutritionists taught mothers the importance of good nutrition and then showed them how to nutritionally prepare foods that were available in their locality.  

From 1984 through 1989, Paralife had an ongoing program of community development in El Granjero.  Many lives were saved, and others totally changed by this program designed to let people see that God was also interested their human conditions.  By the time Paralife completed its program of development, the teaching had positively influenced several families.  With this specific result, the organization decided that time had come to withdraw from its constant presence in El Granjero.   Various families put into practice the development and health principles taught them during the years.  These families worked extra hard to pay a minimal charge for clinical and dental care.  They also worked hard to pay a token fee to the school so their children could have a needed education.  These families tried extremely hard to be models for their children and for their community.

Paralife faced one major problem during its program of Christian community development in El Granjero:  That problem was the same in almost all communities.  The small evangelical church that Juan and Margot attended was typical of most rural churches.  The problem was that the pastoral staff (There were six pastors in all during our stay in the community.) was never truly convinced that community social development was beneficial to the church.  These pastors were very concerned with the eternal abode of their parishioners but because they had little concern for the health and social well-being of their community, some of their church members made an early entrance into their heavenly abode.  It was unfortunate, but Juan and Margot’s pastors never attempted to encourage their church members to practice the very principles that would preserve their life and that of their community.  As a consequence, the local evangelical church nor many of its members became sound models of community health and social development.

Sound and quality community development is achieved over many months and even years of teaching and producing community models.  In communities of seventy-five to two hundred families, we feel very fortunate if five to ten percent follow the instructions for producing heathy families and clean communities.  These five to ten percent become models that others may successfully follow in years to come; if not the adults, maybe the children will see the difference between their families and those community models and decide to follow good examples.

Another development problem came to light almost a year after our primary work had ceased in the community.  A local church groups decided that El Granjero would be an excellent place for their invited foreign medical team to practice their Christian charity.  Without seeking advice from Paralife, a team started visiting El Granjero even though the community had contracted a doctor (a sign of positive community development) to make regular visits to the community clinic.  In accordance with Paralife’s teaching, those who sought aid from the clinic had to pay a token fee (another sign of positive community development) for medical care.  However, the visiting medical team came to the community, disregarding the development processes that had been taught, and proceeded to attend the medical needs of the community.  

The results of these actions produced backward steps in the community models that had been gained through five years of patient work.  Even the model families questioned the wisdom of paying a token fee to the regular visiting doctor when medical aid was freely given.

Through the years of patiently teaching and training the community, Juan and Margot had become a model family.  They practiced health principles both inside and outside their house.  They worked extra hard to have money to take their remaining children to the doctor and dentist.  “But” they told me, “Why should we spend our money when these good Christians want to help us with our medical needs?”  The real question is, “What will Juan and Margot do when the community health program is dissolved due to the lack of local support and the occasional visit of the foreign medical group ceases?”  

Many North Americans have greatly contributed to the establishment of Evangelicalism in El Salvador.  However, too often North Americans fail to realize then their gifts of food, clothing, and even medicine are damaging rural workers long term development.  If Juan and Margot, along with the other family models of El Granjero, cease to depend on their own ability to provide health care for their families, and instead return to their old behaviors when they depended on Don Tito, or handouts from government agencies, they will not have advanced one step toward self directed living.  Instead, they will have returned to the days of dependency.  It was unfortunate that Juan and Margot’s little evangelical church was unable to address their real long term social needs during the time that important decisions were being made on the El Granjero farm.  It is just as unfortunate that after all that Juan and Margot endured, foreign and national evangelicals, unknowingly, could cause these rural workers to regress their community’s society to the days of dependency rather than helping them advance toward self directed living.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this chapter is threefold:  First, I wanted the reader to understand something about the personal battles that many of the Salvadoran rural evangelicals experienced during eleven years of civil war.  I wanted to demonstrate the pains that poverty produced; the burdens that rural activists provoked; and the inability of the local evangelical churches to address these problems.  The poor rural workers were confronted by a changing economic system that before valued the worker as a person, but later devalued the person and valued only the worker’s labor.  This shift in priority by the landowning system along with the multiplying number of rural workers, placed the workers in a very disadvantageous position.  Before they lived with some dignity as respected workers and sharecroppers, later they were held in contempt for their collectivized requests for a just and honorable salary.  Juan and Margot are excellent examples of rural evangelical workers who sought for justice but found hardship and death for their children.

Another conclusion to be drawn from this chapter is the condition of the isolated, vertically oriented evangelical church.  In addition to dealing with social ostracism of their friends and families for conversion to evangelicalism, newly converted evangelicals also had to deal with their own church’s inability or refusal to stand with its members against an exploitive and often, sinful system.  Without doubt, prayer is the most powerful weapon that the church has in opposing Satan’s offense against the earthly body of Jesus Christ.  But why would anyone think that God would answer a Christian’s prayer to aid them in their time of need when the answer to the rural workers’ needs could be provided by the church’s involvement in community development.  I refer to the poor health of many rural communities that could be improved by individual care and practice of community dietary and sanitation principles.  But it seems that the church had rather pray for health rather than work together as a community to improve community health.  The consequences of this evangelical mentality resulted in the death of Juan and Margot’s two-year-old daughter, Elena as well as their other two children.   Salvadoran evangelical churches could be more effective spiritually if they were more horizontally oriented to the needs of their community.

A third conclusion to be drawn from this chapter is directed to foreign church groups who want to evangelize and perform acts of community charity.  Most church groups who want only to help the poor survive their spiritual and physical challenges are very welcome in El Salvador.  However, they should seek guidance from local missions or well-established churches before marching into unknown areas to perform their missionary acts of charity.  Many of these groups should be practicing community development compassion but are so eager to help that they do not know when not to practice Samaritan Compassion.   These groups truly hold the future of many Salvadorans in their hands and the wonderful Salvadoran people are worthy of careful handling.