Taking a Long View: A Reflection on the El Salvador Immersion Experience
Originally written August, 2012
Fidel Castro once remarked: “A revolution is not a bed of roses.” While in El Salvador I observed the crushing reality of this statement as the country continues to recover from years of civil war and corruption. But I also saw its opposite—a country where roses flourished in the midst of depravation, just as they had for the peasant Juan Diego, on the dry and barren Tepeyac Hill. It was December when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to reassure Juan Diego by blessing him with roses as proof of God’s everlasting and ever-present love.
December is also the month when Jean Donovan, a lay minister, and 3 colleagues who were nuns, were raped and murdered for supporting the Salvadorian campesino’s revolution. As we learned from Father Schindler and the documentary, Roses in December, the women’s murders came not long after Jean wrote home to explain her recommitment to staying in El Salvador, despite its growing danger. Her love for El Salvador was expressed in her astonished appreciation: “Where else do roses bloom in December?”
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and her roses and their combined symbolic potency of restoring hope in the midst of despair continued to appear throughout our journey in El Salvador—in the rose garden at the UCA, planted to commemorate the martyred Jesuits; in the silk rose-draped image of Guadalupe hanging on the wall of the Ramos’ residence where mother and daughter were murdered by the Salvadoran military; in Archbishop Romero’s lyrical homilies that opened up hearts likes rosebuds and in the actual roses countless pilgrims strew across his crypt; in the serene bravery of Guadalupe who bloomed despite her desolate harassment by the state and the FMLN, persevering to eventually fulfill her dream to teach, finally, after she surrendered years of labor in sweat shops so her sisters and brothers could reach their goals; in the expensive floral tributes women sacrificed to buy and bring to the altar at Father Luis’s vibrant parish amidst the slums; in the rosy red soil that Vladimir, the FMLN veteran, shaped into adobe bricks to provide a home for his family; in the rosy cheeks of an ever radiant Maria, Minister of the Interior, whose FMLN origins were preserved in her utilitarian cropped hair; in the thorny persistence of Jenna and Maggie who won’t give up the struggle to create a country where young people can root and thrive.
All I encountered became a recurring reminder of the Lady of Guadalupe’s promise, symbolized in her roses that bloomed in December—“ Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”
This sense of protection in the midst of danger, of welcome among strangers, and of companionship among colleagues characterized a relationship that was building among those of us who had made the journey from USF to San Salvador. We began to see each other across the roles we played in our academic setting and to view each other with familiarity. Gently escorted around razor wire and armed guards by locals who knew us by name, we began to understand accompany as a theological concept. In coming to know each other and know El Salvador and its people, our familiarity was returning to its linguistic root: we were becoming family.
Taking a cue from this growing feeling of attachment, I made a point to make sure one of us had asked about the family of each generous soul we encountered. Whether cabinet minister or peasant, priest or infidel, male or female, young or old—what they all had in common was a joyful and grateful response to a question about their family: “How did your children grow up?” Did they go to school?” “How is your husband’s health?” “Where is your wife buried?” Whenever one of asked about someone’s family, the polite reserve dropped, the smile spread, the soul rested, and the essence emerged. We encountered humanity in its fundamental aspect in spite of the circumstances that that challenged the very existence of families. What we lived and what we learned was familia—from the intimacy of our community and those who opened it and entered in, to the intimacy we now felt as witnesses with a responsibility.
I initially avoided any thought of how to act on that responsibility when I returned home. I mindlessly resumed my routine, like walking my dogs on our regular route through a county park at the site of an abandoned quarry. But El Salvador continued to creep back into my world as I discovered on that first walk after returning home. Quite unexpectedly, while I had been gone, some earnest beings had built a labyrinth on the quarry floor. There is only one way in and out of a labyrinth; to walk it is to take an intentional journey of surrendering one’s own plans to take steps on a journey towards enlightenment and communion with magis. One walks a labyrinth as one reads a poem. Billy Collins advised that when reading a poem, it is a mistake to ask what the poem means. That question shuts down our imagination and limits what the poetic experience can accomplish. But when we ask, “Where is it going?” “How does it get there?” we open up a world of possibility and set out on an adventure that just might bring us to a moment of meaning.
When the universe presented in my own neighborhood a ritual reminder of Collins’ prescription, what I had learned in El Salvador came back to me as a journey I would continually repeat. Now every time I walk the labyrinth, another image from our trip returns, another sign appears. Moreover, even the received knowledge about which I had presumed expertise has begun to take on a new depth of meaning explicitly shaped by the encounter. For example, I went to El Salvador with academic proficiency in nineteenth century African American slavery, particularly the slave narratives composed by ex and fugitive slaves. But when I listened to the testimonies of those who had suffered or witnessed the oppression of others, I heard through my own ears and subsequently felt in my gut the sad reality that these narratives of slavery continue to be told by oppressed peoples around the world.
Maria, the rebel turned cabinet minister reminded us that “the biggest slavery is to be ignorant,” and everywhere we saw the effects of this maxim. But we also came to understand that ignorance extends well beyond those denied formal education. Even those of us fortunate to enjoy the privileges of earning advanced degrees were still, in some respects, slave to our ignorance of how much of the world lives. Fredrick Douglass’s claim about slavery, that “to understand it one must needs experience it; or imagine himself in similar circumstances,” came alive for me as I made the journey through my imagination by listening to the Salvadoran stories. I experienced what I thought I already knew. What I heard returned to me the same message communicated by countless iterations of the slave narrative tradition: Write because you believe in and want to inspire change; but do so knowing its only effect may be to reaffirm your own humanity.
How I heard music also changed. The Ballad of the Fallen is the title track of an album by Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra that I have written about and long appreciated. It is a song from El Salvador, based on a poem found on the body of a student who was killed when the U.S. backed National Guard of El Salvador massacred people at a sit-in at the university in San Salvador. This song tells two stories: one the story of the martyred student who composed the words and also the story he tells in his poem. I had heard the song countless times before, had analyzed the diction and remarked on its historical context. But after being in El Salvador I heard more than I ever heard before.
“The Ballad of the Fallen” is a significant liberation anthem because, characteristic of the slave narrative tradition, the character of the protagonist is established in his humility; he wishes to be remembered as one of the people. He writes, “Don’t ask me who I am/Or if you knew me/The dreams that I had/Will grow even thought I’m no longer here. /I’m not alive, but my life continues/In that which goes on dreaming/Others who will continue the fight/Will grow new roses/In the name of all these things/You’ll find my name…” The poet directly links his own identity to the dream for which he fought and sees his immortality embodied in a future of liberation as symbolized, of course, by roses.
As happened in El Salvador, we are invited by the song to adopt his transformative imagination: “Cry with us all those who feel it/Suffer with us all those who loved them/Fall to the earth on your knees/tremble with fear/All those who on that fateful day…assisted in the murder.” The poet establishes a clear sense of justice for the righteous and the unrighteous and links his identity with the future: “My true age is the age/Of the child I have liberated…”I only die/If you give up/For those who die in combat/Live on in every companero...”
The urgency of the poet is expressed as strong horns that bellow out a sweet and floral melody while maracas keep a gentle rhythm accompanied by the sensitive strumming of a guitar. Humming The Ballad of the Fallenagain while walking the labyrinth after our journey in El Salvador, I let the mystery of the poem happen beneath the surface and kept walking. I understood better where the poet was going and how he got there. And this time I went with him as his sister. As family.
These experiential moments cast into sharp relief the more typical academic adventure I had immediately preceding our trip to El Salvador. I had come from Atlanta, Georgia, where the heat was similar but not much else. There I spent a week with 24 other academics, in a hotel conference room, discussing fine points of comparative theologies and theories of religious pluralism. While ostensibly the seminar was designed to promote dialogue across religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries, this seminar was all in my head; it made few demands of my soul to wake up as El Salvador would do a week later. Mostly the seminar challenged everyone to compete for the title of who knows the most or says it best. The memory of this recent encounter came back to me as an extreme juxtaposition when Marco, our gentle and thoughtful and ever practical spirit guide, asked us to reflect on our El Salvador experience for a USF documentary video.
Language left me and all my academic Jedi mind tricks were useless in trying to conjure up a response for Marco. I realized that all I learned could be summed up in a word: surrender. There is no appropriate academic answer to a question about our El Salvador immersion experience. So I surrendered to the example of the people we met, described aptly by Sister Eva as “swimming in grace”: live life with alert deliberation, sincere gratitude, and enduring patience.
When Harriet Jacobs wrote of her experience in slavery and freedom, she traced the movement from one to the other as the result of a God who “raised me up a friend among strangers.” Those of us who went to El Salvador experienced a similar transition, an alteration that is particular to each of us depending on where we started but shared in our journey from strangers to friends to family.
Given the symbolic trajectory of my experience, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when my subsequent research into Romero unearthed a poem that said it all and said it best. “Rose Garden” has an evocative power that is the poetic equivalent of the experience we shared in El Salvador. Like the labyrinth it takes us in to God and sends us back out to the world believing that we can do something and do it well.
Rose Garden
It helps, now and then,
to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts;
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime
only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise
that is the Lord’s work.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted
knowing they hold future promise.
We lay foundations
that will need further development.
We provide yeast
that affects far beyond our capabilities…
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very, very well.