By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

SAN SALVADOR—One cinder block at a time Food for the Poor and the church in El Salvador are supplying Salvadorans with materials to rise above the rubble and help rebuild some of the over 150,000 houses and lives destroyed after earthquakes rocked the nation in January and February.

It’s hard to survey the magnitude of damage to this republic without going back at least two decades. The “terremotos” that occurred during the daytime Jan. 13 and Feb. 13 are the latest attacks on a country weakened and scarred by two years of cholera, Hurricane Mitch and a civil war from 1980-92 that killed over 70,000 people.

The first earthquake off the Pacific coast, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, shook hardest along the coast and the center of the country killing 746 people. The second, which struck the hardest east of San Salvador, measured 6.1 and killed 315. Over 400 churches and chapels were destroyed and the country continues to feel thousands of aftershocks as well as smaller earthquakes pushing frantic people from their seats into the streets. The majority of homes fell either because of poor construction or because they were in unsafe locations.

Local Archbishop Addresses Housing Crisis

Since Jan. 13 the Archdiocese of San Salvador has worked with FFP, the government, Catholic Relief Services, Caritas and various other organizations to distribute disaster relief aid, including food, clothes, shoes, emergency shelter and medical supplies. The second stage of relief involves building provisional houses before the dreaded rainy season that runs from May to December and could cause more mudslides and landslides, making harder the construction of permanent homes and daily living for refugees.

Consequently the government, FFP, the archdiocese and other groups are using sheets of metal for provisional houses. Refugees can use the metal later when constructing permanent homes. As a government report, entitled “El Salvador Is on Its Feet and Moving Forward,” outlines an extensive reconstruction plan for schools, houses and transportation systems, FFP and the archdiocese hope to provide provisional and permanent homes to the poorest of the poor overlooked by the government.

Father David Blanchard, a Carmelite missionary from Massachusetts who has been in El Salvador for 15 years, coordinates distribution of FFP aid. He has an immediate goal to build at least 200 provisional houses and at least 120 permanent ones.

Invited by Archbishop Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, FFP led a press trip April 22-26 to increase awareness of the need for international assistance. The archbishop told journalists at a dinner at the Princess Hotel in San Salvador that reporting their plight could be the most important thing they would ever do.

“I appreciate that you’re all here because the worst thing that can occur to us is that the whole world is going to forget about us,” he said.

With mass homelessness “it’s a heavy feeling that falls over us.”

He thanked journalists for their “generosity” and “humanity” toward El Salvador, calling the country “not a place for tourists but a place of danger.”

Upon touring refugee camps the archbishop said he’s found that Salvadorans remain faithful, which is God’s gift, not asking “why me?” but thanking God for their lives, and showing solidarity with each other. Faith and community are both essential.

“We are the hands and arms of God,” he said, and need to reconstruct El Salvador. “It’s important that every single family have a house that is dignified and secure and it’s important that every family does their part, as well, to put labor into building their houses. We’re discouraged about this, but we’re certain that we’re going to have an El Salvador different than the one here before.”

The archbishop also spoke of every person’s right to work and said Salvadorans are very hard workers, who need more jobs paying decent salaries. A shortage of decent jobs is a problem fueling Salvadoran poverty, he said.

Food For The Poor Fights Poverty

Founded in 1982 to fight poverty in the Caribbean and other neighboring countries to the south of the United States, FFP is the country’s fifth largest international charity, which has shipped more than $779 million worth of supplies to help the poor in 27 countries. It began serving El Salvador in 1996, and through the end of 2000 has sent shipments totaling $115,769,115. Since Jan. 15, FFP has accelerated shipments of nutritional supplies, medical equipment and housing materials and as of April 20 has shipped an additional $20,377,366.

According to FFP, before the earthquake almost half of Salvadorans lived in poverty with 80 percent of children under age 5 suffering from malnutrition. The illiteracy rate is as high as 40 percent in rural areas and 90 percent of all land is owned by the country’s few wealthy families.

Yet church leaders say the people of this Central American country, smaller than Massachusetts and wedged between Honduras and Guatemala, still stand on the rock of their Savior.

“Their faith in Jesus, the Lord of hope, is profound,” said Father Blanchard. “This is a country which is based on uncertainty. This is a country where the earth shakes, mountains fall down, volcanoes blow up, (a country with) disease and poverty. Jesus Christ is the only thing you can really count on. That was evident in the earthquake.”

Over 80 percent Catholic, El Salvador is the only country named after Jesus, Father Blanchard pointed out. “El Salvador is ‘The Savior.’”

The people will need that faith, as with an estimated $3 billion in damage, Father Blanchard believes the earthquakes will set the country back five years in terms of rebuilding the infrastructure, a task that will use up 75 percent of the budget.

Salvadorans Center Life On Churches Now Destroyed

Destruction from the earthquakes also set back Father Blanchard’s parish community, which has mounted projects for redevelopment, humanitarian aid and training for hundreds of other communities, whose churches had to be demolished.

“The center of our efforts is the Gospel and the eucharistic life of the community. Our humanitarian efforts depend on this, with the help of FFP,” he said. “Without a place to meet, to pray, to hear the word of God and to reach consensus for social outreach, the community will suffer horribly.”

His church members are volunteering at nights after work to rebuild their church. Other FFP projects nationwide include vocational skills training, school and church repair, school and clinic construction, medical supplies, water pumps, hospitals, educational supplies and feeding programs.

In a letter to FFP in January after the first earthquake, Archbishop Sáenz thanked the organization for $16 million in assistance at that point but also stated they’ll need three times that much aid by year’s end in food, clothing, medicines, vitamins and building materials. At the dinner he called for continued international solidarity, as Central and North Americans are brothers and sisters of the same God.

“How beautiful it would be if each one of us who has a secure and dignified house in the United States could think of your brothers and sisters in El Salvador,” he said. “We have to build 400 churches large and small and 150,000 permanent houses. It’s logical that we should be hoping that God will help us. We can’t only solve this ourselves. God will continue to help us through the intervention of many people and you will be enriched by helping us.”

Nearby in the San Salvador suburb of Santa Tecla one warm, sunny afternoon, church officials held an outdoor press conference at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, next to a large pile of crushed bricks where a church once stood. In front was a large collage reading “Reconstruir con Dignidad” with a map. Down the hill behind them was a government-run refugee camp with rows of blue tents with water jugs in front of them.

Pastor Father Peter Danaher, a tall, friendly Franciscan from Long Island wearing a brown robe and sunglasses, said God must have a sense of humor, as the weakest church building on site, the pastoral center, was unscathed, reflecting the earthquakes’ quirky patterns of destruction. In Santa Tecla about 4,000 homes were totally destroyed. The community will get dome material from an old stadium in Texas for the roof of the new church. This church community as well is working with FFP and the archdiocese to rebuild.

“We’re trying to do things to rebuild houses, churches and chapels, but our priority is to rebuild houses. Housing is a great need in general in our area,” he said. “It’s perhaps time to think about the infrastructure, when to build and how to build to be more secure.”

Father Danaher explained that the church is the center of the community in El Salvador, where people not only gather for religious services but also for community meetings.

“For many people the church is a symbol of the community. When the church fell down many people came and stood here and cried because they had grown up here and seen this place and had remembered significant moments of their lives and when it fell down it’s like a piece of them had been taken away.”

“We’re very Christian people. Although we can meet Christ anywhere to celebrate our faith, it says something about the identity of the people that they have a place to say, ‘This is our spiritual home,’” he said. “If we speak about destruction to the infrastructure, highways, schools, farms, places of work, housing, we cannot ignore destruction to churches, pastoral centers.”

Archdiocesan employee Elmer Gonzales said that the archdiocese, in working with FFP, has created a disaster infrastructure to distribute goods.

“The problem with the earthquakes, most of the infrastructure of the church itself fell down. This complicates in terms of distributing aid because we couldn’t use churches as centers for receiving aid because they are also falling down,” he said.

The approaching rainy season and financially strapped Salvadorans with fewer resources will make the second stage of reconstructing provisional housing more difficult.

“We’re trying to coordinate efforts with the government, to join forces” to build 7,000 houses, he said.

Families To Build Own Homes Block By Block

At Father Blanchard’s Chinanpa vocational training center sits the centerpiece of the housing reconstruction project he initiated, a two-room cinder block home with a porch which FFP will be giving persons materials to build, simple enough for women and children to be able to construct with a brick layer.

“The basic task is to give people a solid house on their own piece of land with enough land to build on for their family’s growth,” Father Blanchard said, with a salesman’s enthusiasm. “We’re giving people these options. What we wanted to do was to design a house that’s variable, but where they can build the basic structure themselves.”

Along a narrow dirt path going up a steep hill hidden behind the parish were abandoned cinder block houses with knocked out walls. One had “What God wishes for me be multiplied” written on it and another a bird-print cloth draped across a window. Homes had no roofs because some of the 318 families who had to relocate from the condemned area had taken the metal with them. A shirtless man with a machete wandered down the dirt path as a dog barked from above. Across the path was a hillside of dirt, which had buried homes and 20 people, whose bodies were not yet recovered. High above the parish was a mountainside of fine dirt, like an open wound, from a landslide, contrasting with the other mountainside covered with trees. One sunk when walking in the layer of dust which swirled up in the air.

People Show Resilience In Face Of Disaster

Archdiocesan official Father Fernando Rodriguez added that the most important things to lift up are the suffering people. He said the people have a strong desire to rebuild their churches to express their faith, yet worshipped without them during Holy Week.

“For all this destruction I believe we learned a lot—in the first place to give (the) importance to human beings that they should have,” he said.

An architect and parish volunteer added that the poor couldn’t receive help from banks there which makes international financial support imperative. Worsening the situation, he also noted that some will not be able to rebuild on unsafe land of former homes but must buy new land to rebuild temporary and permanent homes.

One three-domed cathedral that fell was in St. Agustin, along with 95 percent of homes in the urban area. The town, with its dirt roads and neighborhoods cluttered with remaining adobe, metal and bamboo huts, was in striking contrast to segments of San Salvador, which are busy with traffic and dotted with malls, multi-story buildings, Texacos and Toyota dealerships.

Standing where the church had stood, the pastor, Father Carlos Amilcar Perdomo, said in St. Agustin 24 people died, 54 were wounded and 23 severely injured. Fortunately more weren’t hurt because everyone was out working.

As town members waited in line behind him to get plastic bags of vitamins from FFP, he recalled how the town once had a strong agricultural industry but has suffered greatly since the war when the population dropped from 23,000 to 5,000. Many there were killed.

“After the war and Hurricane Mitch and the earthquake, in no way have these people been able to start up again. Right now a lot of people struggle with housing, people with no food, no money. All the aid sent here has been distributed by Father David,” he said. “People understand God wants a new house, new place, new soul. God wants us to be born again. People do not believe this is a punishment.”

He’s trying to organize teams of solidarity to move forward. “Most people here do have little plots from their last crop long before the earthquakes.”

Lives were cracked wide open in the Las Colinas neighborhood of Santa Tecla, which was buried by a landslide that killed some 400 people and destroyed hundreds of homes. Drivers now pull over to reflect on the tragedy, creating the sense of quiet sadness of a memorial.

Carlos Ramirez, 22, pulled over to reflect on his friend who was killed with his family. Having also had to move during the war to flee violence, he lost his home from the earthquake and has moved in with family. He’ll save money and is earning a good living of $250 a month in sales. Yet he is concerned for the job crisis, which will now become worse, and will drive people north looking for better opportunities.

“Ninety-five percent of Salvadorans want to go the United States,” he said. “If I had the opportunity I’d do it, but if not I’ll keep fighting for my country.”

Man Recalls Earthquake And Its Immediate Aftermath

Nearby Jorge Morales recalled the January earthquake. He was standing with his daughter in front of his house when he felt the earth move slightly, then forcefully. Confused, he was slapped by wind like a hurricane with slivers of wood flying. He smelled fresh cut wood and heard sounds like cracking wood, then silence. His house filled with dirt to the second floor and he looked in his neighbor’s house for survivors to learn that three women were killed in the living room that collapsed from tremors.

“I could see a woman neighbor running down the street like a crazy woman. She told me the mountain fell down and then I ran up to 14th Street. I could see all this mountain covering the houses,” he recalled.

Spending all night working, he rescued a woman and her granddaughter, who asked him to save her sister. It was too late for she was buried.

“We were panicked a few minutes but then we took control of the situation and went to help other people,” he said. “Today I found out this little girl was the daughter of my very close friend. We had a few successful rescues, but we lost too many people.”

Morales feels it wasn’t just a natural disaster but the fault of the construction companies, with government approval, building new homes on the mountain which caused the landslide. With neighbors, he is filing a complaint to the court system to prevent more construction there. He plans to rebuild his home there, despite efforts of the government to create a memorial park.

Rebuilding Schools And Their Mission

At a government building in San Salvador, Dr. Evelyn Jacir de Lovo, minister of education, spoke about the government’s reconstruction plan for public schools, as well as hopes to improve curriculum and address students’ psychological needs. There were 764 schools severely damaged, 198 schools destroyed and while about 95 percent of schools are in operation now, many meet in provisional facilities like hallways. About 150,000 children are not in school, with some parents afraid to send their children because of further earthquakes.

The government is implementing a decentralized reconstruction plan, giving local school communities power to make major decisions about rebuilding according to their needs. This also promotes democratic reform, she said. Local communities will make sure buildings are earthquake-proof, adequately equipped and have aesthetic appeal.

Decentralization “has been for us a tool empowering us through local education to respond to the needs of schools,” the minister of education said. “When speaking of a plan of reconstruction we have to look at this like a new opportunity. We don’t want to leave things like they were before the earthquake, but we want to make things better.”

The focus will also be on improving the quality of education for Salvadoran children, which has been inadequate, she said.

The government is launching a national campaign to get children back to school by not requiring fees, uniforms and shoes and will convoke meetings with teachers and parents to educate them on adjusting the curriculum. In partnership with companies, the government is taking out loans and reallocating education money intended for other areas for rebuilding.

“We are completely under-financed and have to wait for assistance from the international community,” she said, regarding the $95 million in damage to schools. “I can’t be waiting until that little money will come in. I’m honest with people. Our hope is as we do this we’ll be able to find these funds and receive (the) aid we need to be able to respond, to progress.”

FFP representatives then surprised de Lovo with a gift of 30 containers of school furniture and supplies and $5 million worth of nutritional drink and vitamins through November. To make healthier students, FFP has a nutrition program that primarily serves children, as well as the elderly and pregnant women.

Class Structure Hinders Advancement

For FFP staff member Milton Villatoro, the lack of adequate health care is one of the biggest problems for the republic, which still exhibits sharp class divisions. Some of the poor and others without jobs and insurance are limited to certain health clinics and hospitals that give poorer service, he said.

Villatoro, 27, seemed impassioned as he spoke about the country’s recovery from the war, which was fought between guerillas and the military over more fair distribution of land ownership. He escaped military recruitment in the war and believes those years of fear and terror left people scarred but no better. While the peace accords have not been broken and the human rights record has improved, El Salvador has one of the highest crime rates in the hemisphere and there are hundreds of gangs whose members are on crack and were deported from Los Angeles, he said.

“Today there exists a rancor in the people, in many people. And the peace process hasn’t been like we had wanted,” he said. There is “more poverty, more exploitation. I feel that the poverty isn’t better but worse. For me, to be poor here is more difficult than racism . . . After the war we thought we were going to be able to have more access to health care, democracy and freedom, but we haven’t seen that.”

He added that factories of foreign corporations help the country as long as they provide good wages and health benefits, and that his dream is to see Salvadorans leading these businesses. Earning a college degree, he’s determined to build his community through FFP. “Being together as a whole country is the only way we’re going to survive this earthquake.”

Salvadorans Recall ‘Voice Of The Voiceless’

One source of Villatoro’s hope is martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero. A place he has visited since his youth, Villatoro stood and reflected beside the white tomb and colorful mural of Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated beneath the Cathedral of San Salvador while celebrating Mass in 1980. The archbishop experienced a personal conversion through the poor, Villatoro said, to become a forceful advocate, despite persecution, struggling with them for their rights against their oppressors.

“He became what is called ‘the voice of the voiceless’ . . . He represents hope, solidarity, someone who defended their rights,” he said. “(Archbishop Romero) himself said when being persecuted that if he were to be killed he would be resurrected in the souls of the people and I don’t have the slightest doubt that with his death, his words, he’s given a lot of faith for people to continue to struggle. And every March 24 people still go into the streets to celebrate his anniversary and not his death but his resurrection.”

If Archbishop Romero were alive he’d respond to the earthquakes, Villatoro surmised, by calling the church to be in more solidarity, accusing the government of not responding sufficiently and reflecting on the poor, the worst affected in natural disasters.

“In the United States when there’s an earthquake what happens there doesn’t happen (here),” he said, adding that these two earthquakes are like x-rays of El Salvador. While class struggles are often unseen, “we’ve easily discovered what’s here. This is the reality of our country.”

Father Blanchard believes in his lifetime the slain archbishop was a voice of clarity speaking out for the poor and has now become a voice of unity among rich and poor alike. As the country struggles to rebuild, Father Blanchard noted that Archbishop Lacalle has a complementary message.

“What Romero did is he gave people confidence to speak out, but Romero was their voice,” he said. “Sáenz Lacalle speaks for the poor but encourages them to speak for themselves.”

May both archbishops lead their people to rise in faith from the rubble.

For information on assisting El Salvador through FFP call toll free 1-(800) 395-6100.