The streets of San Salvador are chaotic with colorful former school buses, cars spewing black smoke, pick-ups with people clinging to the sides'10 years after the signing of peace accords, chaos is no longer violent. The army has been scaled back, police force overhauled and the 'guerrillas' are now a peaceful political party. The war has ended, but outright violence has been replaced with something quieter, less likely to make the headlines'economic violence and the erosion of a culture.
In 1980 most people in the United States could not find El Salvador on a map and 20 years and billions of dollars later many just have fuzzy ideas of a violent past. That ignorance is one luxury of being a powerful nation. The people of El Salvador are aware of the United States, as our foreign policy decisions have shaped the last two decades of their history.
The U.S. embassy in San Salvador is a behemoth of white concrete taking up four city blocks. It stands in stark contrast to the sprawling city with mismatched architecture and small ramshackle homes. El Salvador is a tiny country, about the size of Massachusetts, yet it has one of the largest U.S. embassies'a product of the war.
At the height of its involvement in the late 1980's the U.S. government sent over $1 million a day to the Salvadoran government, most of which was funneled to the military, the same military that supported death squads and committed over 95 percent of the war atrocities. The rationale: anything to fight communism. Unfortunately, they had not done their homework'who were the \communists?"" The civilian population.
Citizens suffered violent attacks on peaceful protesters, disappearances and military rule. Events culminated in the murder of Archbishop Romero in March 1980 when the war began in earnest. For nine years the war raged quietly. In 1989, six Jesuit priests and two laywomen were murdered by a battalion led by U.S.-trained officers. Finally, outcries were enough to end military aid and the war.
For 10 years U.S. presence was felt with weapons, today it is felt by Coca-Cola signs that plaster stores even in remote villages and Eminem music that plays on buses. Mainstream culture has pervaded Salvadoran society. However, U.S. influence is felt at deeper levels. In 2001, the Salvadoran government ""dollarized,"" creating confusion with the 8.75 colones to a dollar conversion rate and forever pegging El Salvador to the U.S. economy.
Free trade zones have opened up like sores, and within their borders, many of the country's women pour into factories surrounded by barbed wire to produce trendy clothing for Gap and Liz Claiborne. The current government supports these ""maquilas"" because they are a large part of the economy. U.S. economists and politicians say what looks like low wages are actually good for ""those people"" and that sweatshops are just building blocks to better jobs.
In reality, these wages are not a living wage and leave nothing for savings or investment, while long hours prevent women from attending school and poor conditions destroy health. Workers are fired and blacklisted for attempts to improve wages or conditions. Maquilas are black holes where young women work for 5 or 6 years until they are blacklisted or their health is too poor to continue. The maquilas are not a sustainable source of development for the workers or for the nation in the long run.
In July, over 500 maquila workers were poisoned while working for Hoon's apparel in the Olocuilta free trade zone. Factory owners and governmental institutions immediately moved to cover-up the incident rather than investigate. The maquila owners' association, backed by President Francisco Flores, first claimed that the women were all suffering from ""mass hysteria."" When the Red Cross and the attorney general's office later proved the presence of toxins from the factories in the worker's bodies, they claimed it was ""terrorism"" by a group who wanted to attack the industry'like a union. The Salvadoran government is willing to protect the maquila industry even at the cost of the health of it's own workers. The U.S. government supports them in the name of free trade and development.
U.S. citizens need to take an active role in monitoring how their decisions affect other peoples and how our government policies affect other nations. We ignored and supported a 12 year war under the guise of fighting communism; now we must not ignore economic violence in the name of free trade.
