Skip to main content

The Meaning of Easter from El Salvador, that country


Maria C. is a journalist, who just returned from El Salvador on a fellowship. Here is her post (with my edits) from an email she sent me:
I live in a country, el salvador (remember)  where 10 corpses
turn up every day and they're not just gangbangers, (we all know
that loss weighs less on the soul)400 women are killed every year
by men that promised to love them and yet I was woken up this
morning to some lady with a megaphone asking God to forgive us,
el pueblo,for murdering a man nearly 2000 years ago.
What?!
Last Friday I wound up by mistake downtown in front of the
cathedral where they stuck Monsenor Oscar Romero's remains in
the basement. A bunch of ladies wearing ridiculously frilly lacy
veils, white,prayed as some pig faced evangelical preacher told
them that the King and Queen of Spain are in town...but you know
what...he intoned...all the powerful people (men, he said) could
come here and it wouldn't make a difference. it won't change the
poverty, the violence, the crime, no MAN can solve those problems.
Only el Senor. And it's not just the evangelicals, I'm at the same
park in front of the same cathedral today, left the house to stretch
and get a bath of reality. The FMLN, the student communist brigade,
the committee in honor of the Virgen de Guadalupe constructed these
huge alfombras (rugs) made of painted salt, of images of the virgen or
in the case of the communists, a campesino crucified to the cross.
A street performer is bleeding from the back and his act involves
shards of glass.I can't take it so I go inside the church where an
ancient, of course, archbishop is retelling the story of the
crucifixtion, for you non catholics think Passion of Christ.

Well that's great dude, same story 2k years later but now what do
we do? Have you looked outside, if you aren't killing someone they're
killing you. in the
u.s. i would say: have you look outside to see how
good we've gotten at killing people??


Credits: Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated during
the El Salvadoran civil war by the military.
http://microdot.gnn.tv/blogs/21902/Say_Hello_to_El_Salvador

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mary Alice, wife of Henry Cisneros, finds her voice in San Antonio as women battle for Free Speech in the Streets

She's a delicate bird of a woman, petite and beautifully apparelled. I know her husband, and she looks up to her supremely intelligent, charismatic, but scared of the status-quo husband. I suspect that she became a San Antonio councilwoman as a result of his lanky shadow. No matter. Yesterday, la Mary Alice stood up to the Man along with Councilwoman Lourdes Galvan and voted on the side of the Constitution and women's rights as one of two women on the San Antonio City Council who recognizes that anti-war or anti-immigrant protestors should be able to march on the streets without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. While the city-wide Fiesta! bacchanal takes over the streets for weeks. With a vote of 9-2, the San Antonio City Council overwhelmingly voted to pass a new "Parade" Ordinance yesterday despite the organized protest of free speech advocates - mostly women - who believe that the City Council is violating the First Amendment of its citiz...

A battered woman from San Antonio loses her reporting job

Gina Galaviz , 43, KSAT-TV's I-love-the-police reporter, "has been fired" from the television station , according to the San Antonio Express-News, and I'm quoting verbatim here from Jeanne Jakle's byline, "after she was charged with assault following a fight with her boyfriend," Ronald Aguillen, 46. Ok, so we in San Antonio know about the time in 2004 when Gina filed charges against another boyfriend, the former SWAT cop, who was a councilman at-the-time, Ron Segovia . There were allegations of an apple being thrown at her nalgas, which humiliated her, and that he also pointed a gun at her. It was not the first time, she told me. Tough-guy Segovia got off - I think he had three attorneys representing him if I remember correctly, and in this city, like too many, the cops are in bed with the grand jury - they need and depend on each other, and this grand jury decided there "wasn't enough evidence to pursue a criminal case against him." Seg...
Today is Tuesday, May 3rd, and so much has happened.  A brain tumor.  More yoga and walking.  A little less combat.  Weight dropping.  Spirit rising.  Back in the city, where I belong.  Looking for good photos to give you, organizing my crazy files.  And a new President!  So much to say, more than beating up on him -- that will only take us so far.  Time to hit the streets, challenge the fears that he represents.  Don't be afraid, no tengan miedo.  If I survived a massive brain tumor -- big as a grapefruit -- we can survive and transcend this. More tomorrow.  One day a week from now on.