Salt Rugs

Last year El Zachador and Yaneth showed me pictures of the salt rug they’d made during Semana Santa (Holy Week).  They live in Sonsonate, out west, the center of the salt rug tradition in El Salvador.  On Good Friday people take colored salt out to the street and make paintings with it, of Jesus on the cross or carrying it, the Divine Child, the Holy Family, the Holy Spirit (as dove), or whatever else they come up with.  The rugs in Sonsonate are detailed and quite beautiful. 

 

Last year I didn’t see any salt rugs in my village, although there was one crude sawdust rug.  They only recently started doing the full gamut of Easter ceremonies here in the caserío a few years ago, and they’re still developing them.  Every Friday during Lent there’s a procession through the Stations of the Cross, then several during Semana Santa, and a big one on the evening of Good Friday.  For this, the main procession, people made salt rugs this year!

 

To depart from rugs for a moment, I’ve realized that Latin American communities are set up according to a sacred geography.  In the center of town, of course, there’s the church with a park in front of it.  But somewhere along the edges of town there’s almost always a little chapel called El Calvario—the Calvary, or Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified.  Sometimes the neighborhood around El Calvario is named after it.  During the Vías Crucis, the Stations of the Cross processions, the people make small altars for each station along the way from the church to El Calvario.  Thus they symbolically turn their own community into Jerusalem, with Calvary on the outskirts.  Here in my community I realized I live right next to El Calvario, which is no chapel, but rather a tiny knoll with a giant mango tree on it and three crosses at the tree’s base. 

 

My neighbor Niña Fermina takes responsibility for keeping the area around our mango tree Calvario swept and neat for the Friday processions, which I helped with.  And when I found out she was planning to make a salt rug for the Good Friday procession, I got really excited.  It turned out, though, to be more of a multimedia performance art rug than a simple salt rug.  I helped make it, following directions and being amused by the aesthetic arguments between Niña Fermina and her son. 

 

The central piece was a drawing of a dove done by a kid, which doesn’t show up well in the photo, although you can see the rays of brown salt extending out from it.  Above were mountains and water made with colored salt and green wood shavings.  Below it said “Christ / Light of the World” in red salt.  Scattered around were flowers and designs of soap foam.

 

 

Here we see the multimedia performance art rug in its full glory, with sparklers blazing and a walkway lined with flaming alcohol-soaked salt mounds, ready for the procession’s arrival.

 

Here is the centerpiece of the procession: Jesus lying in a tomb-like box, lit up from within, for some reason carried by the shortest men in the community (perhaps to afford a better view inside).  The guy in the black shirt is Chiky, whose name I like because it’s the name of a delicious brand of chocolate-enrobed cookies.

 

 

There were other salt rugs at most of the other Stations of the Cross.  Below is one example.  The text reads, “I am the bread of life.”  The level of elegance and expertise isn’t up to Sonsonate standards, but it’s a pretty exciting tradition to start in the community!  And perhaps the giant expenditure of salt will encourage the cooks here to go easier with it in their meals.

 

 

Now we have a president

“Ahora tenemos presidente,” repeated my friend Haydeé, grinning after Mauricio Funes’s victory.  Now we have a president.  Her words captured both the satisfaction of the leftists in winning their first presidency and the calmness with which the nation has received the result.

 

My reporting is belated, but on March 15^th, in Latin America’s first election since Obama’s victory, El Salvador followed the North American lead.  Funes is a charismatic center leftist, often accused of being more radical than he seems, who comes from outside the world of the established political elite.  He based his platform on “secure change” and inspired a devoted following, especially among young people.  Funes’s party, FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), was the guerilla faction during the war in the ‘80s that laid down its arms in 1992 and became a political party.  They’ve been running socialist former comandantes since then, but this time around they finally got it and put forward this well-liked former television personality with no ties to the bloodshed of 20 years ago. 

 

This may partly explain why the campaign of fear that worked so well five years ago against Shafik Handal failed to swing the vote to the right in 2009.  This time the people just weren’t willing to believe, as ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance, the right wing party that’s been in power for 20 years) tried to tell them, that the moment the FMLN’s mild mannered journalist won the election he would call up Hugo Chávez and order a shipment of Kalashnikovs, or seize all private enterprise, or cut all ties with the United States.  The people wouldn’t be duped this time.  This election was a triumph over fear and misinformation.

 

Funes joins the emerging pan-American left of Obama, Chile’s Bachelet, Argentina’s Kirchner, Ecuador’s Correa, and Brazil’s Lula, among others.  His first visit after winning was to Brazil to get tips from Lula, whom he wants to emulate.  El Salvador could certainly further develop its social programs, and a laid-back samba vibe wouldn’t hurt either—perhaps Funes’s Brazilian wife will dedicate herself to that end.

 

Funes takes office June 1^st, and I can’t wait.  I hope it’ll go well for him.  A peaceful change in power and governmental shakeup may be the best thing that can happen to El Salvador right now.

Ilamatepec in…photos!

 A few days after the soccer game, on April 1^st, I hiked the tallest and most recently active volcano in the country, Ilamatepec (7800’), renamed Santa Ana by the Spanish.  In 2005 Ilamatepec hiccupped and belched and spewed a bunch of ash.  Some people died and the coffee fincas on its slopes suffered a lot of damage.  The mountain looks intimidating—the forests abruptly end a couple thousand feet from the summit, and the rest is covered in multicolored ash raked with grooves.  This picture is from partway up the trail that starts in the saddle between Ilamatepec and Cerro Verde; from Lago Coatepeque several thousand feet farther down, the mother mountain seems to occupy a realm of its own in the skies.

 

 

 

 

 

 Once the forest ends—which happens just as abruptly as it looks from below—the vegetation is almost purely grasses and agave.  Soon the grasses end too, and there are only the big, spiky agave plants growing out of the rock and ash, some of them with 10-foot tall Dr. Seuss-like flower stalks.  It seems so crazy to me that such a thick-leaved, heavy plant is the first thing that can grow in the volcanic material, even before grasses.

 

 

The hike from the saddle to the crater rim—roughly 2,000 feet vertical—only took a little over an hour.  With ten minutes left the slope lessened and we found ourselves walking through a much more barren, gray landscape than the colorful, agave-dotted side of the volcano.  Clouds whipped past and everything seemed quieter.  Here and there were rocks that had been thrown out of the crater in 2005, including the truck-sized one below, with their own little impact craters around them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then all of the sudden the crater opened up below us, 1700 feet deep, with a turqoise lake at the bottom.  Bubbles rising from the middle of the lake and steam wreathing its surface indicated its fiery restlessness.  Hans, our volcano expert who hikes Ilamatepec regularly to monitor instruments he’s put up there, claimed the lake has a pH of 1.  He also introduced me to the term “nested crater,” which is now somewhere close behind “monadnock” and “peneplain” on my list of favorite geological terms.  A nested crater shows several episodes of eruptive activity.  In the picture below you can see a flattish plain halfway up the crater, which is the remains of an older crater floor.  At eye level and farther away you can see an even older crater floor. 

 

 

 

We enjoyed lunch and a volcanology lecture from Hans on the crater rim, then threw and slingshotted rocks into the crater for a while.  I figure it can’t do any harm in a place that’s still so geologically active.  We observed a small landslide on the inside of the crater at one point, not caused by us.

 

I wanted to hike around the crater rim, which is a 2- or 3-hour proposition, but our police escorts were getting restless about the weather.  It’ll have to happen another day, hopefully a clearer one.

¡La tuvimos! We had it!

Life in the Savior hasn’t been uneventful lately, I just haven’t been writing.  The blog merits an update.  You merit an update.  Thank you for caring.

 

 

Let’s go back two weeks, to San Salvador, Estadio Cuscatlán, where El Salvador played the U.S. in a World Cup qualifying game.  There was the possibility of a poor game between El Salvador’s less-than-mediocre squad (which hasn’t been paid in some months) and a strong U.S. team that had just dominated México.  There was also the possibility of getting hit with bags of urine; it had happened before.  Gringos make good targets.  Despite these discouraging factors, lots of volunteers were excited to go to the game.

 

I showed up with my PCV friends, most of us dressed in Salvadoran jerseys, to find that my ticket had been sold to someone else—confusion between the two Gabriels in Peace Corps El Salvador.  El Zachador and Jenny had just convinced the doorman to let them in for free, citing the rumor we’d heard that gringos got free admittance.  The rumor was bogus, but Jenny’s blond cuteness was not.  I tried the same thing, in bad Spanish, despite not being as easy on the doorman’s eyes.  He and his buddy flat-out denied me.  I switched to good Spanish and continued wheedling, to no avail.  But finally a third, higher-ranking doorman walked up and let me in for no good reason.  5% of my monthly budget saved!  A good start to an amazing game.

 

The game was amazing.  I sat with about six other volunteers, four rows up behind one of the goals.  We were in our seats over an hour before the game started, and the energy was already incredible.  Chants and waves flowed around the stadium as if governed by the sixth sense that controls flocks of birds.  I could look out at the crowd and count on one hand the number of people not wearing blue or white.  I thought it was loud and energetic already, but when the Salvadoran goalies came out to warm up, I could feel the roar in my whole body.  And when the American goalies came out, the chant of Culero! Culero! (roughly, “gaywad”) was intoxicating (apologies to my gay friends and readers).  The Salvadoran fans in front of us, curious to see our reaction, turned around, only to see us chanting harder than anyone, and doing the middle finger tomahawk chop.  We were their friends from then on.

 

We talked and joked quite a lot with the Salvadorans around us.  A cousin of Cheyo Quintanilla, El Salvador’s star forward, was sitting right in front of me.  There was also a man who’d flown down from Fairfax, Virginia just for the game; and a woman who joked with El Zachador and Jenny, who both live in the department of Sonsonate, about the reputation women from there have for being big-chested, waving her breasts at us in her hands.  Everybody bought each other beers.

 

When El Salvador scored, and then scored again, the celebration was incredible.  We were slapping fives and hugging each other in big knots and jumping around and screaming like the town crazy person.  By this point I was fully committed to rooting for El Salvador.  No more bullshit like I’d been telling people in my village, “Well, I’d like El Salvador to play well and preserve their pride, but they probably can’t beat the U.S.”  El Salvador was ahead 2-0 and I was thirsting for more gringo blood.  Take it to ‘em!  Bring ‘em down a peg, those arrogant North Americans!  Maybe the senior doorman had let me in because he could see in my eyes the latent potential for swearing a blue streak in Spanish at my own countrymen.

 

After the game I talked to a trainee who told me about cheering when the U.S. finally scored, and I immediately thought, “What a tool.  Only an idiot who’s just been in the country for two months would cheer for the U.S.”  But of course I normally root for the U.S., and I look forward to them doing better in South Africa in 2010 than they ever have in a World Cup.  I apologize for my reflexive thoughts to the trainee who didn’t know I thought them.

 

In the second half the Salvadorans who’d been playing their hearts out, and truly outshining the powerful U.S. squad, started to go down with cramps and injuries.  The gringos tied it up, but only on an offsides goal that wasn’t called back, and another goal that was scored while a Salvadoran player was down on the field.  Rooting for El Salvador really got into my blood in that stadium.  Ever since I’ve been wishing that the offsides had been called, or the U.S. had done the courteous thing and kicked the ball out when that player was down, or the ref had called a penalty for El Salvador when it probably should have been called.  They came so close to winning!  It would have been only the second time against the U.S., and everyone would have been so happy.

 

The headline in the newspaper the next day was so sad: ¡La tuvimos!  We had it!  …But we let it slip away…

 

Oh well, the rest of the evening was still fun.  El Zachador, Jenny and I met some rich young Salvadorans and went out to the Arab country club with them.  It was fascinating to me to see where the rich Palestinians who control most of the agriculture, industry, and politics in this country relax.  The pool was large, the tables were spaced discreetly, and the hummus was delicious.

Is it true you can also talk in a different way?

A couple of recent variations on the conversation below have made me want to put it up here.  This conversation is all too common with uneducated people in the campo.  It comes in various forms—from strangers in a pickup or people I know well, from kids or old people, etc.  From a guanaco (male Salvadoran) or a guanaca (female Salvadoran), and hence I use the hip, gender-neutral “guanac@” in my script.

 

Guanac@:        Your Spanish is very good.

Me:                  Thank you.  It took a lot of work.

Guanac@:        Is it true that you can also talk in a different way?

Me:                  Why yes, it’s called English.  It’s actually a different language.

Guanac@:        And can your dad talk that way too?

Me:                  Yes indeed.  Not only my dad, but my whole family, and all my friends from the United States, and lots of other people all over the world.

Guanac@:        And when you talk that way your friends understand you?

Me:                  You bet.

Guanac@:        Really.

Me:                  Really.

Guanac@:        When did you learn to speak that way?

Me:                  Ever since I was a baby, just the way you learned Spanish.

Guanac@:        It must have been hard to learn.

Me:                  Not really.  It’s something every kid does, just like the kids here learn Spanish from the time they’re a baby.

Guanac@:        [pondering] …and when did your dad learn it?

Me:                  When he was a baby, just like everyone else with whatever language they speak natively.

Guanac@:        [mind blown, retreats into silence]

 

It’s amazing to me that people can compliment me on my Spanish, indicating that they have a concept of second-language-learning, but fail to grasp the idea that other languages can be first languages.