El Salvador 1

We were just today trying to figure out how to download all the pictures Dad took on his new digital camera. I'm hoping to put them on a website so friends like you can take a peek. Until then, I have my journal entries and many memories.

It was a truly blessed Easter pilgrimage! It seemed that every single day we spent there felt more like three. It was amazing to us how the Lord provided for each and every need and especially the needs we could never have foreseen.

We flew into the airport on Wednesday evening. If it hadn't been for Andrew's girlfriend, Meg, we never would have made it through customs, because she is very fluent in Spanish and we are very not (she spent time in Nicaragua in college). The six of us hustled to a taxivan and found our lodging for the remainder of the trip: Alfalit Guesthouse, which is run by the Reformed church. Alfalit is right in the midst of San Salvador, near the national university (not the UCA). As we discovered, most of the savvy gringoes stay at Alfalit, because they provide safe food and potable water. In fact, we would not have had such excellent accomodations if one of the professors at Xavier hadn't arranged it all. Her name is Irene Hodgson, and she translated Romero's diaries into English. She taught Meg and she knows Andrew; when one of her Crispaz (sp?) delegations cancelled, she offered the reserved bunkbeds to us. What a blessing! We had a lovely, cool place to return to at the end of each hot day.

The heat was at record highs. Even for the Salvdorans it was hot. But still the dry season, so no worries of malaria. We wore brimmed hats, wet handkerchiefs, and carried bottles of water.

On Holy Thursday morning we gathered with all the crowds at the Divina Providencia for an ecumenical peace procession down the main street to the Cathedral. It was quite a thing to be surrounded by 20,000 chanting Salvadorans honoring Romero as we trekked through the center of the highway, police on either side keeping the traffic at a standstill as we marched by. While excerpts from his homilies were broadcast on mobile loudspeakers, various marchers erupted into cacophanous rally cries and joyful songs.

Halfway to downtown, we stopped at the gardens where a wall of names has been erected; it was a bit like the Vietnam Memorial-- for each year of the bloodshed, from 1977 through 1991, two columns were inscribed; one column listed the homicides for that year- a second column listed the Disparecidos (sp?), the Disappeared. Romero was simply listed alphabetically with the R's under the column titled "1981 Homicidos". We also found the names of the four churchwomen. Then we headed off once more to the Cathedral, where a photoessay had been set up featuring the photographs of the many hundreds of Martiros, martyrs..

"Romero Vive Vive! La Luche Sigue Sigue!" they cried.

That night we went back to the Cathedral for Holy Thursday Mass. I thought it singularly appropos that we should pray- on the feastday of his martyrdom- in the same place where Romero served as Archbishop, just as we had spent that morning in the Chapel where he had been assassinated. We felt very much at peace, though we all expressed surprise at how nonchalantly people strolled through the Cathedral during the middle of Mass! "Just passing through, don't mind me!" Unreal.

The current Archbishop is an Opus Dei prelate, so the liturgy was highly ornamental. When we returned to Alfalit, we decided to have a simple footwashing ceremony, with just the six of us. As we were wrapping up and singing together, some of our fellow lodgers returned from their busy day, hoping to find us. They were Fr. Peter Hinds (sp?), a Carmelite, Betty, a Sister of Mercy, and Sr. Margaret, a Franciscan. Peter and Betty had founded Crispaz back in the 70's as a response to the poverty and civil strife.

They had come in from Juarez to celebrate the 25th Anniversary, and they were hoping to do us a kindness, because they knew we had come down as a pilgrim family. They were hoping to have a footwashing ceremony with us and tell us about their work in El Salvador. To their shock, we were in the middle of washing feet when they came in; they joined us and we washed each of their feet. Then they told us stories and asked about our plans for the trip. We told them about our goal of heading out to the rural village of Ellacuria, a sister community that our parish supports financially. They said, "Well then you guys need to meet Yvonne!"

Andrew had received an email from a woman named Yvonne. So he asked if she was the same woman who had the connections in Ellacuria. They told us that there could only be so many Yvonnes living out in the rural campo of Chalatenango province. It just so happened that Yvonne had come into the city for that morning's procession and was headed back to her house in Ellacuria. She was lodging in a guesthouse just a few blocks away. They called her and she came right over.

What ever would we have done if Yvonne hadn't entered our lives that evening? Our entire trip transformed. Yvonne Dilling has been working with the people of Central America for decades, and she is a decorated author of the struggle for human rights. She is also one of the most pleasantly delightful people you could ever hope to meet. She not only lives in the village we were hoping to visit, she knows every single villager on a first-name basis. She asked us what our goals were, and then began to chart out an itinerary for the weekend that would involve visiting, lodging, and eating with the villagers and the community leaders. She is trained to lead delegations of foreigners and works professionally as a translator. She instructed us on all the finer points we would need to experience a true cultural immersion.

We agreed to meet Yvonne the next morning with a taxivan that would drive us two hours north into the province of Chalatenango, past the village of Guarjilla, to a small comunidad that doesn't even appear on the map: Ellacuria, where we would spend the rest of Semana Santa meeting the people who were only known to us as the recipients of our parish's Lenten alms.