Chalatenango, El Salvador. I am sitting in a virtually empty one-room house, empty except for the make shift stools we are sitting on, a basic bed, a hammock, and a small table hosting a grinder for the corn and coffee grown in the nearby fields. There is a two-month old baby in my arms and two equally beautiful but significantly dirtier children standing near the door, shyly smiling at me when I catch their eyes.
I am here with a nurse, who is giving their mother Marta, an inoculation. Marta has a kind and intelligent face and a tiny frame. At twenty-two years, she is two years younger then I am. After I tell her I am from Canada, she tells me that her husband is in the United States, and even though this is something you hear more often than not in El Salvador, I am surprised. In my two months here, I have been to almost a dozen rural communities but this is the first time I have seen this level of poverty. Marta lives in a very remote community of eighteen families all of whom are subsistence farmers, growing only enough to feed themselves. They survive on a diet of only the corn, beans and coffee that their breathtakingly beautiful mountains provide them with.
Unable to imagine, I ask how her husband went to the US. She answers the obvious, “a pie”, meaning “by foot”. She brings out a photo he has recently sent back. In it, he is sitting on a sofa in a carpeted room, wearing new clothes and a gold watch. There are matching curtains and cushions, coasters and decorative candle-holders. It is what we in North America would describe as a typical living room but, in contrast to the barren room I am sitting in, it seems luxurious, even extravagant. It is unbelievable that someone can walk away from this small house and make it to the living room in this photo, to this other world. I am overwhelmed by the seeming injustice of this woman’s situation, left alone to bear the burden of poverty, but the look on her face prevents me from expressing this. Instead the words, “He looks happy”, fall from my mouth. She agrees.
It is estimated that, every day, hundreds of Salvadorans leave their country in search of the opportunities that exist as an illegal immigrant in the United States. Most of them go a pie, often spending all of their family’s savings to pay the guides that will sneak them through the Guatemalan, Mexican and American borders. El Salvador is a country of 6 million. There are an estimated 2 million Salvadorans living in the United States, and over 150,000 in Canada. In 1999, the country received just over 6 billion US dollars in remittances, money sent from relatives abroad, accounting for about 17% of the country’s GDP. In Latin America and the Caribbean, El Salvador is second to only Jamaica in the rate of remittances.
I am in El Salvador as a youth intern, benefiting from the CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) program that sends over 400 new grads and young workers overseas every year. Through my work with various youth groups, I have met many inspiring young Salvadorans who are organizing their peers and communities to fortify their collective voice. Their main concern is always the same: there are no opportunities for young people in this country. Many cannot afford the supposedly public education and even those who have education cannot find jobs.
The youth I work with are intelligent, motivated and optimistic. Generally they are from one of two socio-economic backgrounds. The majority, like Marta, are children of poor rural farmers. They are generally poorly educated and many are illiterate. The boys work the fields with their fathers, the girls in the houses with their mothers and very often have babies of their own. They have only one “good” outfit that they wear to all the workshops we deliver. The other group is from comparatively wealthier families in bigger towns or small cities. They are socially and politically active in their communities and have a high school education with good grades. However, their families cannot afford to pay for university and they cannot find work to support their families or their own education.
I think about my relatively excessive wardrobe, my collection of CDs and books, and the nights I spent waitressing in Toronto before taking on this work with the Marquis Project, when I would walk home with $150 in tips in my pocket. I think about my education at McGill and my general access to intellectual, social and cultural stimulation.
They ask me about Canada and many express their desire live in North America. When I first got here, basking in the warmth of this country, I would try to dissuade them. “It is a difficult place to be as an immigrant, especially if you do not know the language”, I would warn, “and the weather can be very cold.” This is still true, but after meeting Marta, I cannot manage to say it. I went through feeling anger at this man for leaving his family and for buying a gold watch, and sadness for her being left behind. But these people live in a harsh reality and the money he sends home is probably more useful then the extra hands in the fields. And who am I to judge the hard choices that poverty forces people to make?
The reality is that the lives of young people in El Salvador are going to be difficult. There are going to be huge obstacles to hurdle in their quest for happiness, for fulfillment. But without opportunity, difficulty can too easily turn into hopeless. So now, instead of dissuading them, I give them my email and tell them to write me if they ever do come to Canada so I can have them over for dinner. In the meantime, our work at Marquis is to help them in a small way to better the lives that they have here in El Salvador.
|
