El Salvador En Mi Corazón (cont.)

     Before El Salvador, I had already traveled to Latin America and knew about the poverty, the terrible presidents, and the machismo that ruled the region. I went prepared to learn about the issues that plague Latin America and Central America as a whole, but I wanted to experience it with my peers, who I now call my friends, and take the time to reflect in order to transform my faith. It’s true that the main goal of the trip was to learn more about the Catholic Church’s role in El Salvador during the civil war, but I, personally, learned much more. As I questioned God and reconciled with him on a regular basis, I discovered more about our humanity, how poverty is so universal, and how impunity exists without any challenges. I started to wonder about my role as a Christian, student at Stanford, and citizen of this world.

     Having daily Mass and a book to write down our reflections felt so empowering and appeasing, especially after the many talks with supreme court justices, environmentalists, young American girls working with juvenile gang members, and all of the people we met who shared anecdotes of their difficult lives but always with a hopeful tone. Despite hearing the terrible stories of girls being raped by parents and becoming pregnant at the age of fourteen, the desperation to do something about it turned into this faithful purpose under the guidance of God. I wanted to talk more and more to God, and my ears and heart opened up more than they had ever before to let him guide me throughout the trip. I can’t explain how weak, strong, infuriated, yet utterly happy I felt all at once during the trip. I can’t explain how it feels to have been in the Capilla Providencia where Monseñor Oscar Romero was assassinated, but I can say this: God has a plan for all of us. No matter if we choose to believe in future plans from above, or if, like me, we believe that praying won’t stop transnational companies like Kimberley-Clark or Pacific Rim to engage in mining and contaminate the limited water sources of El Salvador, God will takes us where we have to be and give us the strength to walk through the most difficult of ways.

     El Salvador was a difficult journey and one I never thought of embarking, but I trusted the warmth in my heart and listened to the little voice in my mind. God wanted me in El Salvador, and he will probably take me back to El Salvador this summer. Being in El Salvador can make anyone question God because of all the misery and stagnation that leads to nowhere. We can choose to give-up, not believe, and just blame God and others for the misery. However, I blindly chose to take God’s hand, hear God as he spoke through the people, and allowed him to enter my heart as he challenged me to carry my faith unto others. Thanks to the help of my parents and friends and the Catholic Community, I raised the money, I made friends with whom I share this secret journey. Thanks to God, I was guided with his love through a week that has forever changed me.

Andi Clark, 2015

     Early Sunday morning, we pulled up to the edge of Parque Cuzcatlán in a bus and, piled out onto the dusty street in a chattering herd. But our initial levity soon vanished under the knowledge of why we were there. We hadn’t come to play soccer or have a picnic, but rather to see the Monument to Memory and Truth, which encompasses a large part of the one of the walls of the park and lists all of the civilian deaths, disappearances and massacres that took place across 12 years of civil war.  It’s a painfully inadequate statement to say that the list on that wall was a long one. But what hurt even more than seeing these thousands of names was the knowledge that, my own feeble attempts to internalize the pain and the immense human tragedy represented here would be greatly in vain. Behind each of these names was a person whose abrupt absence merited the deep grief and agony of a whole web of family, friends, and neighbors. And all that the greater world knew of them was that they had once existed and the particular collection of syllables that had comprised their name. It seemed to do little justice to the situation.

     As I walked up and down this numbing sea of letters, my eyes, by a providential stroke of luck, happened upon a name that I recognized. I had met Ernesto Sibrian on this very trip almost a year before, and had heard his story as one of the “disappeared”, of being kidnapped as an infant, growing up in New Jersey, discovering his identity and eventually reuniting with his family in El Salvador. And there, five feet from my face, was his name, etched in a marble wall, more permanent than I could guess. I will never truly know nor understand what deep sorrow earned those names a place on that wall. But I came to realize what it means to remember. To remember is not to confront the litany of iniquities in the world as names and numbers, as a crushing statistic that paralyzes with the horror of the inhumanity that could have wrought such pain. To remember is to recognize that the stories of individuals, filled with their own particular beauty and anguish and strength, are not isolated occurrences, but are rather surrounded by and in solidarity with innumerable others in the history of humanity.

Peter Salazar, 2014