i descended into a cloud of heavy brown air pollution as i approached san salvador, the capital of el salvador at about 2:30 PM on Thu Dec 12, 2002. the flight was easy and i had a little sleep on the plane, but was still feeling the physical impact of catching only 4 hours of sleep for several nights in a row then staying up ALL NIGHT the day before i departed. unfortunately, the connection at Atlanta was so tight that my back pack didn't arrive with me. i hope to retrieve it today (Sat Dec 14).

i was greeted at the airport by 7 members of Margarito's family, including chief Adrian Esquino Lisco and Ephraim, Margarito's 19 year old son. it was a moving, emotional moment for all of us. they are clearly deeply appreciative of having a visitor come down from the states to see fist-hand what their life is like and to participate in their ceremonies.

Adrian gathered us together in a circle right there in the airport and said a short blessing to welcome me to their country -- it felt very, very nice to hear his prayer, especially after the wonderful circle we had a my home the night before i left.

we drove over 2 hours to the city of sonsonate where ANIS has an office of sorts. the air pollution was almost unbearable! not only is the capital city choking under a brown fog of unregulated diesel and auto exhaust, all the roads are over crowded with buses and vehicles spewing thick clouds of black-gray-white-brown pollution. my lungs hurt, my nasal passages feel swollen and infected, my skin feels clogged with microscopic soot. i can't wait to reach the mountain village of san ramon, the cultural center for ANIS and the location where they hold their annual ceremony.

our first stop was the city of sonsonate (on the map at the link below it is located just west of Izaldo). the city is a crowded town like many others in central america and has been destroyed many times by earthquakes over the years. cars fly down the narrow streets, billowing white-gray-and-black fumes, barley missing the thousands of pedestrians. everyone is selling something -- from shoes to tomatoes to used car stereos, bootlegged cd's, food...

the ANIS office is located along a narrow, bustling street. the entrance is marked with a sign that reads, "Centro Clinico de ANIS." the inside is a humble open-to-the-sky narrow courtyard surrounded by a building destroyed in an earthquake about 1.5 years ago. everyone could see that i was dead tired, so they swept and mopped one of the rooms that is not being used, rolled out a mattress for me, covered it with a sheet, and i went in to take a "nap." i slept until 7:00 am the next morning, almost a full 12 hours!

they are taking NO chances with my safety and always have someone assigned to stand with me. i wanted to walk ONE block down the street from the ANIS office to use an internet cafe and i was escorted by Fredy (the ANIS secretary) and Ephraim (margarito's son). they sat right next to me while i typed my message. it is a mixed feeling -- on the one hand i appreciate the care and concern they are showing; on the other hand i feel very isolated from the general population of salvadorians.

on Fri, i was asked to sit and wait for about 4 hours before i could leave the ANIS office. it was nice to sit, practice my spanish, watch the chickens chase each other around... i was given some bread and coffee and shot some video of the people there to share with Margarito when i return.

i was taken into a meeting with don Adrian and a few other folks (including Margarito's brother, whose name i can't recall right now, and Fredy). the meeting was an effort by don Adrian to explain to me that they NEED OUR ONGOING FINANCIAL SUPPORT -- something that is quite clear, even before heading out to the villages.

these people have NO money -- at all. when i went walking with Ephraim and one of Margarito's young cousins, it was lunch time and i offered to buy them lunch in the central market of sonsonate. they were clearly amazed by this small gesture and it was clear that it was a very special occasion for them. i purchased three lunches for about $4 -- plates of rice, beans, salad, meat, and tortillas with jugos on the side.

during the meeting, i made it clear to don Adrian and the other's there that we do want to help support ANIS and it would be helpful to us if they could develop a long-term PLAN for what they want to do, what specifically they need money for, how much it costs... to explain what their priorities are. They said they have three priorities:

1- ANIS administration, which includes things like a computer, a photo copy machine, internet access, a fax machine, office supplies, and some money to pay staff.

2- Credit, which was a bit unclear to me. i didn't know if they wanted to pay off creditors, or they needed backing to receive loans for other projects they are trying to initiate. i'll have to clarify that one.

3- LAND. ultimately, the main thing they want to do is purchase land so they can support, in safety, their own people in cooperatives working off the land.

it was a good meeting, but only the first of several. my spanish skills are terrible and there is no one in their entire circle that speaks english. i'm using a spanish-english dictionary to help me along the way and ask for clarification when i need it.

so, i left sonsonate last night on a bus and returned here to the capital. the daughter of my dear friends the Rayners is here on a peace corps detail and, coincidentally, was also in the capital last night. so, i met up with her and a bunch of american ex-patriots living down here via peace corps. it was a real shock to me. while these kids are well meaning, americans are so terribly ugly -- not just the way we look, but the way we ACT. they were all sitting around drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, watching american basketball then the idiotic sit-com "Friends." they were all preparing to head out for the night, using hair blow-dryers, makeup, perfume... it made me sad. even though they are here working with rural el salvadorians, it turns out that they are promoting new agricultural crops and techniques that encourage the growth of tomatoes and green peppers that the villagers can then sell on the open market and get a higher monetary return than they do with their traditional corn crops. also, they are being taught how to use industrial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides which the rural farmers do not have any experience with -- they do not follow the application instructions and wind up poisoning themselves, the soil, the rivers, the animals... it is a vicious cycle of industrialization-modernization-exploitation. the peace corps volunteers i met did not seem to have a political or economic analysis of the central american circumstance... they seemed more like the stereotypical frat boys and sorority girls.

anyway, i'm off to find my back pack at the airport and return to sonsonate.



Luke's Journal from El Salvador #2

Dec. 15 2002: "The Old Man" Back here in Sonsonate! I retrieved my back pack and got back to the city of Sonsonate at about 4:30 PM - don Adrian Esquino Lisco was sitting in the courtyard of the ANIS compound with his shirt off, waiting for me. I was told that there had been almost 100 people there to see me that morning, including the dance group that wants to plan a trip to the states in a couple of months. We immediately took off on a public bus for the town of Nahuizalco, about 1/2 hour drive up into the hills outside of the city. We stopped along the way to see a little artisan community and visited with an old man and his assistant who are weavers. I video taped his explanation of the weaving process and visited with him for about 1/2 hour before continuing on to Nahuizalco. Once there, Chief Esquino and I walked through a crowded market (it was still quite crowded, even though it was about 8:00 PM on a Sun night!). We had a thick, hot drink made from corn meal and milk, with a splash of hot sauce and about a dozen red beans added in just to make it more interesting. It was quite good, but I caused a real uproar when I said, "esta sopa es deliciosa!". They NEVER call this hot drink soup, so they' have been teasing me about it ever since. I met a woman who said her age was, "a few years past 100." It was a very lovely night...

I'm with don Adrian Esquino Lisco all day every day, and this is a truly wonderful honor! The old man is amazing. Wherever I go with him people treat him with total respect. People know him in every community we enter - he is very famous down here. In addition to shop keepers and the town's leading police officials, the average "man in the street" calls out to him or stops him as he passes by. In the eve. of 12-15, I walked with Mr. Esquino Lisco to his medicine woman at about 8:30 PM. A drunken voice from a man who looked to be in his late 30's called out to us from the shadows; "E'quino! E'quino! Bless me, Father!" The old man raised his hand in the direction of the voice without pausing and said, "amen." The voice called back, "gracias, padre... gracias..." Then, on our way home, a bus driver pushed open the window of his bus while driving by and shouted into the street, "Lisco!" We just continued walking - it's like that wherever we go.

It appears that ANIS was quite active in the reconstruction/reconciliation process in the early 1990's when the ANIS organization was able to mobilize over 10,000 votes in the Sonsonate region. Today, however, the political influence of the organization is almost non-existent and they are struggling to re-define themselves. As I talk to people around here, it is clear that they are all pinning the future of ANIS on Margarito. If he doesn't return to El Salvador, ANIS may cease to exist after don Adrian passes on.

Dec 16, 2002:
"Peace Corps Redux"
I'm happy to say that the folks down here don't view me as a gringo. while i do try and give credit when it is due, i hesitate to give a pass to these white peace corps kids too quickly. After all, the recent surge in applications for peace corps does not reflect a resurgent calling by American youth culture to learn about oppression and the root causes of poverty and environmental destruction. on the contrary, unemployment in the u.s. is continuing to grow and job opportunities for college graduates is not what they were in the 1990's -- that is the real cause for the surge in applications to join the peace corps.

let's face it, these kids on peace corps are serving u.s. foreign policy objectives and promoting models of development that favor the interests of multi-national corporations, NOT the people themselves.

today was an incredible day. i was sitting with chief Adrian Esquino Lisco with about 8 indigenous peasants. Adrian asked them to speak about what they felt they needed from the people of the u.s. two men spoke and said that they needed financial support to purchase chemical fertilizers to increase yields on their various crops so they could grow more food for export. then chief Esquino Lisco spoke for about 45 min. -- he directly contradicted these statements.

he said that the people needed to be working towards self sufficiency using organic methods of production that do not destroy "mother earth." he wanted to see indigenous communities trading goods with each other and not growing crops for export. he pointed to example after example of communities that have gotten caught up into the cycle of growing crops using chemicals, trying to maximize yields for export, only to find that their streams were so polluted they could no longer support fish, that the birds were disappearing, that the children were born with defects, that people were no longer living to old age but dying young with strange illnesses -- he was arguing for a balance with mother earth and community-to-community, cooperative models of development. this is a vision i share, and it is NOT what the peace corps is teaching.

another thing about the peace corps that i don't like is how it sets these young WHITE kids up to be teachers to these much wiser and experienced BROWN elders. these kids come in and are showered with affection and attention because of all the fetishization that is thrown upon whiteness (even the homes of the more traditional native people here have photos of walt Disney characters, white jesus, white angels, Brittany Spears... the works). i don't like the dynamics at all - the peace corps kids are not here to listen and learn and bring this wisdom back to the states so we can reform our ways -- they are here to teach these peasants how to be more like us and how to integrate into the "new world order."

i don't like it at all and i don't think we should simply smile, excuse our disgusting behavior as the excesses of youth, and praise these kids for wanting to do good. i think we can expect more and find ways to be better allies.



Structural Adjustment and Intergenerational Illiteracy -
Luke´s Missive #3

Margarito Esquino Lisco lives in Silver Spring, MD just outside of Washington DC. Margarito has been in the states for almost 10 years and has been active in many ceremonies held down at the Piscataway Indian Nation land (e.g., Tayac Territory) about an hour south of DC - including 9 years as a sundancer at the annual Tayac sundance. It is through Margarito that I came to learn a bit about the indigenous people of El Salvador, including the amazing life of his father, Chief Adrian Esquino Lisco, the spiritual leader of the Nahuatl, Lenca, and Mayan under the umbrella of a group called "ANIS" - the National Association of Indigenous Salvadorians. After striving to help Margarito in DC on various projects to support the ANIS organization, meeting don Adrian Esquino Lisco on his last visit the DC area last year, and following many invitations to participate in their annual inter-tribal gathering-ceremony, I thought it was time for me to travel down here and spend some time getting to know the life of these people on a first-hand basis.

What I have to report is a bit sad and, unfortunately, not very encouraging.

El Salvador is a text book case study in why the neo-liberal era economic policies promoted so vigorously by Bill Clinton/Tony Blair, international finance institutions, and some of the worlds largest corporate powerhouses are a TOTAL failure.

El Salvador is still trying to find some way to heal after the vicious civil war fueled by U.S. ideological paranoia against anything remotely "socialistic" or "communal" where we once again unnecessarily forced an escalation of a capitalist v. communist conflict where many other ideologies were at play and other options for social organization could have been pursued (including a little thing called democracy which seems to be something the world has totally lost sight of).

(please see or

In the face of this lingering horror, the nation seems averse to all forms of political debate. There is virtually NO access to information about the status of the country's economy or what is going on regionally, let alone globally. The irony is that El Salvador is the poser child for why structural adjustment programs don' work and how the international financial markets promote the very forms of injustice that led to the brutal civil war here a few short years ago.

So, where to begin my story?

The annual ceremony is conducted by Chief Adrian Esquino Lisco atop a small hill in the tiny community of San Ramon in the Sonsonate district (the ANIS office is in the city of Sonsonate itself). San Ramon is within walking distance of the city of Sonsonate where the ANIS office is located - it is a long two hour walk along narrow roads where busses and old and beaten down pickup trucks fly past, spewing clouds of noxious fumes into the lungs of everyone and covering everything with a film of black poisonous dust. The road leads through a smaller city called San Antonio del Monte (where I am sitting at an internet café to write this short essay for $1 U.S. per hour). At the far end of San Antonio del Monte, the main road turns to the right, crosses a little cement bridge, then climbs about 1 mile straight up a steep hill. The concrete road is in fairly good shape, all things considered and if you can avoid the massive drainage troughs that cut across the road. It finally turns into a dirt road before reaching San Ramon, which is nothing but a series of houses on either side of the road behind dust-covered cactus and tall grass.

Here is the heart of the ANIS community. Beautiful families living as best they can.

Trash blows everywhere throughout this country, and San Ramon is no exception. Some of the men have shoes, but most of the people have simple plastic thongs repaired with twine. Most houses have access to running water near by and a few have electricity. Simple mud-brick houses with sheet metal roofs are the norm, but almost half are made of reeds with poorly constructed thatch roofs.

Here is where I met Margarito's family - his son's, daughters, wife, and mother. It was very emotional for all of us. They taught me a LOT about life here in El Salvador. They said that there sister was not there because she works in a Maquila - 7:00 am to 4:00 pm for $4.50 a day. She is the only person in their family who has a job and travels over 2 hours each way back and forth to her job. The rest of the family work land each day to grow food for themselves - mostly corn. The land they work used to "belong" to them - they held no title but didn't ever think they needed one. Then, during reconstruction following the civil war here, most land in the country fell into the hands of wealthy land lords who expanded their holdings, including land worked for generations by indigenous communities like those of Las Hojas and San Ramon. So now they are tenant farmers and indebted to wealthy land owners. (The community had a very tough time finding enough food for the annual ceremony, but they traveled far and wide to collect donations of chickens, a goat, some flower for tortillas...)

I found only one person in the entire community that could read and write in Spanish, Fredy, who serves at the ANIS secretary (4 years working for ANIS with NO pay - this volunteer position is his only job). Most of the families are supported by the women who work from "can't see in the morning until can't see at night." A great example of this is an amazing woman by the name of Elba who has worked with ANIS for about 30 years! She is always the first one awake in the morning at the ANIS office (where I've been sleeping) and has coffee and some form of bread ready when the rest of us get up. She keeps the entire office compound clean and is the only one who goes near the cooking area. She is also the ONLY person with a set of keys to the office compound! She is also the last one to go to bed a night - washing cloths by hand daily before heading to bed. I wanted to wash my socks and t-shirt but as soon as I started the process she made it clear that I was stepping into her territory - she actually took the socks out of my hands and said, "No." I don't mess with Elba... so that's that. She is simply amazing and will have a long interview on video with her about the role of women in the struggle when I return.

But this note is about structural adjustment. - see the ".pdf" reports on El Salvador.

No schools, no services, no spirit of community participation in political process. When I talked about the possibility of developing a local ordnance on traffic patterns in Sonsonate (it seems obvious to me that routing the busses and trucks along designated routs along the edge of the city instead of straight through the narrow and crowded center would cut down on traffic accidents and limit the impact from the pollution on the vast majority of people living in the city), they all agreed that it was a good idea but they had no say in such matters. They said, "the transportation ministry of the central government in San Salvador controls local municipal ordinances and they are corrupt, only concerned with the interests of the rich."

Margarito's family told me that they used to have a school in San Antonio del Monte, but under structural adjustment El Salvador privatized the school system and they now charge a fee which the poor cannot afford. The community of San Ramon tried, under the leadership of don Adrian Esquino Lisco and ANIS, to create a communal school system - not unlike the one operating in Chiapas MX . However, the schools was a target for paramilitary violence (including shootings near the school while children were studying their traditional language, Nahuat, and bombings, shootings, and death threats against Chief Esquino-Lisco himself. The right-wing government viewed the independent school as an ideological threat. The school has remained closed for approx. 10 years - an empty concrete building with wire mesh windows a few hundred yards from the front door of the Chief's house and an easy 3 min walk from the ceremonial grounds itself.

My next note will focus on the ceremony itself, which I'm afraid to say is not a happy story either. Chief Esquino-Lisco is always sick (this week it is a fever/head cold) and NO ONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY KNOWS HOW TO CONDUCT THE CEREMONIES! (Many people are saying that the future of ANIS will depend on Margarito returning to El Salvador to continue the work of his father - no one else seems ready to take on a leadership role...)

I've been given the honor of conducting the "Temescal" ceremony tomorrow, Friday Dec. 20, which is similar to the inipi / sweat lodge we do back home but in a much larger cement dome structure instead. The trouble is that we don't have enough wood to build a big enough fire to heat the rocks - wood is so scarce and is the sole source of fuel for cooking in rural El Salvador and a close second to propane in the smaller cities. I'll keep you all posted on how that goes... wish me luck...

Much love and peace to you all...

Further reading: Especially the link to the article, "Structural Adjustment in El Salvador. An alternative Emerges."