San Salvador at Lunchtime

I just finished eating lunch on the 3rd floor terrace of the office. It's much cooler up there than inside, and there's also a beautiful view of the city. I can hear horns, a vendor announcing the prices of his fruits and vegetables by bullhorn, bus cobradores (assistants who collect fares) yelling out their destinations in front of the entrance of the church and the roar of school bus engines as the 30 revs up when the light turns green. I'm above it all and can only picture the scene below as I eat rice, avocado, broccoli and cheese with loroco flowers.

The other two pictures are from the farm last week... Hiking to the river and the view of 3 volcanos from our cabañas...

My last week of travels

I just returned from a week on a beautiful farm in the mountains of the Sonsonate region of El Salvador for the mid-year strategic planning meeting of my organization. Sounds boring, but because Centro Bartolomé de las Casas is founded on methodologies of popular education and self-care, we incorporated dancing, stretching, hiking, and a process of biblio-drama to enter into the intense programming discussions we had to get through. I had the opportunity to assist one of my co-workers in the process of facilitating the planning meetings for all the programs (Masculinities, Mental Health, Youth Leaders, and Biblio-Theology) and learned a lot from him about the complex process of program development and planning.

Although I am involved in a number of projects here at Centro Bartolomé, the work has gotten off to a slow start. I’ve been feeling the frustrations that come along with the limitations of a 10 week internship, and wishing I could stay longer. One of my projects is assisting my coworker Deisy with the Mental Health and Living Memory program. Last weekend I went with her to co-facilitate a workshop with survivors of war atrocities in Arcatao, by the border of Honduras in the north of El Salvador. The workshop is part of a research project about Religion, Gender and Memory, with the goal of creating a documentary and involving a group of survivors in a process of healing and sharing of collective memories. In the workshop, we incorporated visualization activities and dance with more a more intense process of creating a timeline of all the important massacres, killings, and mobilizations during the war. I found myself very emotionally affected by the stories this group of mostly elderly men and women told. I was also incredibly inspired both by the level of organization of the community and the effectiveness of the methodologies implemented by Deisy in helping this community heal from intense trauma and loss.

The other major project I’m working on is helping the Masculinities program evaluate the impacts of their Equinox School (which involves group of men and adolescent males in a process of exploring the meanings of masculinity and impacts on gender-based violence). So far, I’ve started organizing and photographing what they call the silouettes of the Hegemonic model of Masculinity. These silhouettes are drawings of what each group interprets as what it means to be a man both physically and emotionally, and what roles men are supposed to play. It’s an ambitious project, but really interesting to compare how different groups represent the model. I hope I can give back as much to Centro Bartolomé and the communities they work with as they have shared with me.

Street life

I've been learning over the last few weeks how to maneuver through the chaos of San Salvador's streets. Every morning I take the number 52 bus to work. It's either a big school bus or a microbus, which is like a large van. The microbuses fly through the streets, grabbing passengers at each stop while yelling out their destinations. I watch out the window as we pass by shopping centers, street vendors selling pupusas, candy, juice and newspapers, traffic circles, parks and people on their way to work. The air at 8AM is already cloudy with exhaust hanging low over the city. I get off the bus at the Alcaldía stop (mayor's office) and walk 5 blocks to the CBC office. The streets in the city's center are lined with vendors. I pass by about 15 pupuserías in 5 blocks, varying from actal restaurants inside of buildings to steaming grills set up on the streets with women standing behind them flipping the cheese-stuffed tortillas. One must walk precariously, sliding by teenage boys toting wheelbarrows full of mangos, buses, CD vendors blasting Michael Jackson songs, rotting garbage and women selling bread out of baskets set up on stands on the corners. Once I finally enter the Rosario church where CBC's office is located, I can take a calm breath of relief as I look up at the strange-looking curved walls inset with rainbow-colored stained glass windows.

Pictures from last week's workshop

The first picture includes Ivette to my right, who is a forensic psychologist and shared a cabaña with me; behind her is Mitzy, who works for the Casa de la Mujer in Santa Tecla, a woman's organization that works closely with the mayor of Santa Tecla to promote women's rights; Marisol, a Chilean woman who's lived in Guatemala for 15 years and fought in the Guatemalan civil war; and Pilar, a lawyer from Colombia. Pilar and I spent a lot of time together last week visiting women's organizations in Santa Tecla and a youth center in Popotlán (the center is a space for youth who are at risk of becoming involved in gang activity in one of the marginal neighborhoods of San Salvador. One of the women at the workshop, Ceci, is a Catholic sister who works at the youth center and lives in the neighborhood).

The second picture shows the facilitators for the workshop. First is Walberto, who's my supervisor here at CBC. Then Pansho, a social worker from Chile who I spent a lot of time with during my first week here. Following Pansho is Rutilio, one of the facilitators for the Masculinities program. Then Larry, the director of CBC- I'll write more about him later, but he's awesome; finally Wilfredo, a professor of community psychology.

The third picture is a group shot of everyone...

Mental Health and Living Memory

(Picture is a view of the mountains surrounding La Palma, Chalatenango) Today I finally sat down with Deisy and Walberto to put together a workplan for my time here. All of a sudden, I'm inundated with projects! Hopefully I'll be able to complete them all in the 2 months that I have left to work here.

One of the projects I'm going to be working on is the Mental Health and Living Memory program in the town of Arcatao, Chatatenango, right near the Honduran border. For a few years, Deisy has been working with a committee of community members in a process of community-based healing from the many massacres, disappearances and other acts of violence committed in Arcatao before, during and after the war. The idea behind this is that the community experienced collectively this violence, so the healing process should also be experienced collectively. In cooperation with a woman from Holland, community members engaged in many kinds of natural healing such as massage, breathing, visualizations, art therapy, dance therapy and exercizes focusing on energy centers in the body in order to learn strategies for self care and self healing.

After this experience, the committee wanted to do something more to seek justice for what had happened and to give a proper burial to their loved ones. They decided to work on three projects: a book of testimonios (personal stories of violence), a Museum of Memory and a process of exhumation of massacre sites. Deisy is also involved in a participatory research project with another woman from Holland related to the themes of Memory, Gender and Religion. I'm going to be helping her put together workshops for this research project and collect interviews with a few key community members. I'm so excited to be able to go back to oral history work, especially in a situation where it's actually useful for a community's process of healing!

Feminists, Franciscans and Football

Just before Rutilio through the balloon into the air, there was a moment of anticipatory anxiety and excitement in the room full of women. Once the balloon had taken flight, chaos broke loose. The women in the center jumped and smacked the balloon, trying to get it to their goalie armed with a tack for popping it. Within seconds we were all screaming, swatting and sweating. One after another, participants in the game were getting injured- scratched, hit in the face, falling off chairs, breaking jewelry.

This was just one of the interactive games we engaged in during the Allied Women workshop for the Masculinities program of CBC. A caravan of three microbuses full of women arrived on Friday at the Franciscan retreat center in the mountains of La Palma in Chalatenango. Each of the women who participated either works with or is friends with one or more men who have gone through the process of the masculinities program. Through games like these, we were able to analyze how we act out the hegemonic model of masculinity. This model lays out the roles that men are supposed to play, how they should look physically, emotionally and psychologically. If men don't fit into the hegemonic model in some aspects of their lives, they exaggerate it in others. For instance, a man who can't provide for his family because he's unemployed might try and become physically abusive of his wife and children. The process of the masculinities program helps uncover this hegemonic model, explore questions of sexuality, fatherhood and prevention of gender based violence by helping men to examine how they have experienced masculinity in their own lives.

The methodology of the masculinites program is really cool. We engaged in exercizes in which we held hands and had to hold each other around the waist, activities that make men uncomfortable as they don't usually touch each other very much. We also participated in reflective activities where we quietly thought about what parts of the hegemonic model we take on as women, and then taped those qualities to our bodies. Like in balloon-soccer, many of us are violent in our daily lives, not caring what harm we do to others in the struggle to reach our goals. This model of the masculinites program could be powerful for men in the states as well.

Bienvenida

Yesterday was my first day of work at the CBC office. The staff gave me a wonderful bienvenida (welcome). We sat on cushions in a circle around a big candle placed in the center of an embroidered burlap mat. After a round of introductions, Walberto passed around a gourd filled with stones and asked that each of us move the stones around and listen to what they have to say. At the end, everyone shared what the stones had said to them. Larry told us that the stones came from the Rio Lempa in Arcatao, where the organization works on their Mental Health and Living Memory project. He said each stone has a story, and that during my time here I´ll hear these stories and add new ones to the gourd, as it isn't full yet.

I'm adding here a few pictures of the CBC office, which used to be a school run by Dominican nuns and is attached to the Rosario church in the center of the city. The first photo shows Monseñor Oscar Romero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero) and the gourd of stones. The second photo is a view of the metropolitan cathedral from the second floor of the office.