in my little life in el salvador, in just 24 hours, i did just that and had many a series of events and encounters which pulled me out of just playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat and into a darknes which is sometimes blinding light.
tuesday evening i was walking home to casa romero, and i turned the corner just as a large refrigerated Tampico juice truck was driving by, i noted it, slowed down and greeted the little old salvadoran woman walking next to me. she smiled, called me pretty and wished me well. i passed a cop who stared at me, then greeted me and then a strange sound caught my ear. it was something soft hitting the earth. it was not very loud, but it was a foreign sound to the busyness of our street.
i looked up and saw that it was a grown man, who was falling out of the side of the refrigerated truck. he must have fallen asleep while riding with the door open and as he rolled on the ground the tires rolled over his body. it scared me, but i ran up to him, his hands were bleeding and he was in a ball writhing with pain. he was crying like a child does, i had never seen a salvadoran man cry before.
the cop did not run. neither did his police officer companions. they all looked at him. stared, and did not reach for him. at the same moment that the driver of the truck hopped out to see what happened, the first police officer began to run to check on him. she was the only one who reached out to him. everyone else stopped to watch, the cops asked if he fell, confirmed that he fell and told him to get up and go on his way, nothing had happened as far as they were concerned. his hands were bleeding, his pants were completely torn in half and his left leg was obviously broken. but no report was written. no ambulance called. no first responder medical care provided.
that night, i went out to dinner and a movie. i had never been to a movie in el salvador before. i felt like i was in santana row, i had no idea the place existed. it was pretty unsettling, really.
after the movie, along with emory and two students, i got a ride to the national monument to the constitution, it's located in a roundabout, not far from the National University. there i witnessed LGBT Salvadorans reclaiming their voices, organizing together as one community instead of multiple factions and fighting for rights as human beings. they addressed hate in the country, shared coming out stories, performed musical numbers..duh..celebrated their relationships, and looked discrimination in the face as people yelled hateful words from their cars and police occupied parts of their space. i witnessed the liberation of dozens of people i have been interviewing and seeking to accompany all semester.
that morning when i woke up, the national assembly signed legislation to ammended the Salvadoran constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal. additionally, they denied LGBT couples the right to adopt children. i read the paper and had a lazy morning and then a lunch with don chepe, lupita, lidia and her daughter bea; all who work for the casa and are part of my family here. we sat outside under the avocado and mango trees eat, listened and talked. somehow, the conversation was about cadavers that the cooks had seen in their childhood and adulthood. living in el salvador, this is not a strange conversation to have. but they shared terrible images of people being brutally assassinated by fire and machetes, and then told me of a serial rapist who did not discriminate before abusing his victims: young girls, youths, women, elderly. lupita shared a story about how a mute man in her community brutally murdered the rapist and the community charged the mute with no crime.
from there i worked on a couple of items for my project, sat in the hammock with emory while thinking about what the cooks had shared with us. and began to realize that i would only have the chance for one more meal like that with the cooks. after all, the students leave in 10 days, the program closes for a while. then i head back to the U.S. to an unknown future.
when the students got back from praxis, i chated with a couple of them, heard about goodbyes in their communities and walked with scott to buy tortillas for dinner. we had to buy them for all three houses, so we waited for a while. i mentioned to the woman making tortillas (she is called Nina Toya) that we were going to be having a spirituality night on salvadoran womyn martyrs. she began telling me about elba, her friend, co-worker, and companion who was murdered at the UCA alongside her daughter celina and the six jesuits. Nina Toya told me how Elba used to come to the corner and make tortillas with her. of the jokes they shared, and she kept talking about how elba just loved to smoke cigarettes. "she would have smoked like a chimney if she could have," toya told me. she laughed and with her 7 teeth told me of her times with elba, getting to know her daugther celina, "who was an excellent student" tells toya, and of learning of their deaths on the 16th of november, 1989. then we talked about swine flu, she told me about a youth here who has a suspected case, and with a smile, she handed us our basket of tortillas, we thanked her and went on our way.
later that evening after having our cleaning party (weekly chores to attempt to clean the house) we went to spirituality night where we heard from three womyn: Anita from San Ramon, Rosa Quintanilla a mother of 10 and Lidia. Anita shared about her friend Silvia who was martyred during the Civil War. Rosa told us the story of her two young girls being killed while she and her famliy fled the invasion by the Salvadoran army. and Lidia shared about her time with Elba Ramos.
i'll tell you all more about these incredible womyn another time. but i wanted to point out that in just 24 hours i had a number of experiences which made me stop. listen. and recognize that my life is so very small and privileged to have such incredible encounters and that i just can't take myself to seriously. because when we actually pay the attention that is due, there is so much going on all around us all the time.
