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Where have all the men gone?
Emigration viewed as both solution and source of problems in El Salvador
by Charish Badzinski
2007 GATE El Slavador program participant
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As our comfortable, air conditioned bus approaches the village of San Juan,
El Salvador, houses of the local families come into view. They are little more
than sheets of corrugated tin tied together with rope. Children wave to us from
the modest center square, holding a large, hand-colored banner. I feel suddenly
ashamed as our bus comes to a rest among these humble homes; it seems to become
garish—even obscene in the shadow of their simple lives. The children yell
to us cheerfully, “Bienvenidos!” their mothers looking on with broad
smiles. Something is missing here—and it’s not the sprawling estates
of rural America, sport utility vehicles or Starbucks—though they are nowhere
to be found. What is immediately striking about the village is the noticeable
lack of men.
Through Global Awareness Through Experience (GATE), a cultural immersion program
sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, eight U.S. citizens—most
from Wisconsin, were able to experience life in El Salvador last June. As we
learned, the challenges the Salvadoran people face are multifaceted, complicated,
even overwhelming. Throughout our intensive education on the Salvadoran experience
there was one common thread: the issue of emigration to the United States. At
times, the option was viewed as a panacea: 3.3 billion dollars are sent from
Salvadorans working in the U.S. to their families back home each year. But more
often emigration is viewed as a contributing factor to many of El Salvador’s
societal ills.
The economic realities of this small Central American country (smaller than
Massachusetts) create a prime breeding ground for the massive exodus of Salvadoran
citizens, most of them men, to the United States and elsewhere. The average
factory worker in El Salvador earns $157 U.S. per month, according to officials
at Equipo Maiz, an organization which empowers Salvadorans through education.
Of that, $40 is lopped off the top for health insurance and bus fares.
In rural areas the situation is worse; the average family lives on $68 per month,
though in the Village of San Juan, families survive on less than a dollar per
day. Carlos Armando Garcia of Equipo Maiz says conservative estimates dictate
a family of five in El Salvador needs $650 per month to support themselves.
Even for families with working parents who send their children to the busy intersections
of the city to beg for change (a disturbingly common practice), income doesn’t
keep pace with need. Add to that high unemployment: CIA World Factbook lists
it at 6 percent (though workers, struggling to meet rising costs, believe the
actual rate is much higher) and rampant underemployment for which there are
no figures. In a country where people who sell bags of water or tourist kitsch
to passing vehicles are considered “employed” it’s impossible
to statistically measure the true economic realities. You have to see the tin
homes along the railroad tracks, you have to look into the dark brown eyes of
the man sitting in mud on the side of the road, you have to slip some coins
into the warm hand of a young boy at an intersection who is juggling for his
dinner.
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It’s perhaps no surprise that according to officials at the U.S. Embassy
in San Salvador, 250,000 people emigrate from El Salvador each year—up
to 750 Salvadorans per day. “At this rate,” explains Phillip Thompson,
a political counselor for the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, “by the year
2030, the last person will turn out the lights,” in El Salvador. Three
million Salvadorans are currently registered as living in the U.S.
The decision to cross the border is not an easy one; the trip is costly and
riddled with danger. Families will sell everything they have to raise enough
money to go, and many are forced to return home. One poster declares, “Before
migrating we must fight because in El Salvador, we must live with economic,
social and political dignity. The price of the ‘American dream’ is
too much…
in 2006:
21,793 deported
136 dead
48 injured
4 mutilated
34 sick
and in 2007, how many more?”
While remittances from Salvadorans who make it to the U.S. help prop the lagging
economy, the effects on society are devastating. Families are disintegrating.
Children are left to live with extended family or abandoned entirely. The exponential
increase in gang activity in El Salvador is blamed not only on the poor economy
but on the search for a “family” on the part of these abandoned children.
Left to fend for themselves, they secure emotional support, income and safety
by joining gangs.
Says Garcia, “Thousands of youth join gangs. As gangs they steal, but at
least they can eat.” The prevalence of the gang problem was made clear
to our group when we inquired about the cracked windshield of our transport
van. While taking a man home one night, the driver had encountered a gang which
opened fire on them. They escaped without injury.
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Emigration is, at best, a short-term solution to the country’s myriad
problems. “Remittances are not sustainable over generations,” explains
a representative of the economic section at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.
“It’s not a sustainable thing to export your people as a way to support
the country.” Officials at grassroots organizations with whom we dialogued,
who are often at odds with governmental policy (including U.S. foreign policy)
agree that mass emigration is bad for El Salvador. But the promise of the American
way of life, particularly in stark contrast to the realities of El Salvador,
is irrefutable. A priest in El Salvador explains. “Our supermarkets carry
U.S. items. We are on the U.S. dollar. Our culture is not ours; most youth follow
the culture of the U.S.—the dress, television, their speech. They look
for boyfriends and girlfriends who look like Americans—tall blondes. They
look for ‘The American Dream.’” Since there are few jobs in El
Salvador, he says, they take the risk of going to the U.S. “We are not
terrorists. What we’re looking for is an opportunity to work.”
After our visit to San Juan, one of the members of our GATE group reflected
on the pressures adults must feel to cross the border, particularly when their
children are thirsty or going hungry, and the neighbors are receiving remittances
from their family members working in the United States.
The Salvadoran priest, like many of the people whom we met while on our GATE
trip, acknowledges the challenges posed to the U.S. related to immigration,
but at the same time encourages empathy. “Our brothers and sisters are
keeping your agriculture alive,” he says. As a man exiled to rural El Salvador
because of his Liberation Theology experience and views, he knows firsthand
the price that must be paid when choosing to side with the poor and marginalized.
“We know what we are supposed to do according to the Gospel, but we do
not do it because it is not in our best interest.”
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