Nueva Esperanza: A New Hope

The students left for El Salvador in the wee hours of the morning on Monday. It was a miraculous success – no one needed to be dragged out of bed, everyone remembered to set their 4:00 am alarms, and all passports were in hand when they checked-in to the airport.

Last week, the students had countless sessions about Salvadoran history, politics and culture to prepare them for their intense 9 days in the country. During my semester with CGE: Central America, we spent a month studying liberation theology in El Salvador, and what we learned in those four weeks, they are squeezing into less than two. I reminisced, told stories about my month in the country and answered questions about drinking water, homestays and nightlife.

Through my nostalgic daydreaming, I realized that although I was in El Salvador for the shortest amount of time out of the three countries, it produced some of my most meaningful experiences – and some of the strangest stories. It was in a small community in the mountains that I first saw the fruits of liberation theology. It was in San Salvador that I, ironically, ate my first Cinnabon. And it was in the city of Suchitoto, the heart of the leftist political movement, that I celebrated the election of the first ever FMLN President.

The FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional), the leftist political party of El Salvador, emerged out of the Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s and 90s. It was a major military force unified by the collective guerilla struggle for peace and socioeconomic equality within the country. In 1992, the FMLN demilitarized and became a legal political party – one of the two most prominent and successful in the country.

In 1991, after 12 years of repression and forced migration, a group of like-minded Salvadorans founded the town of Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) in a region north of the capital. We visited the brightly colored and swelteringly hot town for a long weekend and stayed with host-families who had lived through the civil war, fled and returned to establish a peaceful and progressive community. The town itself has a population barely over 500 people. The tiny, picturesque town, resting near the basin of at least one active volcano, is one of the most politically charged and independently successful groups of campesinas and campesinos in the country.

Aside from visiting their farming cooperatives, we spent the majority of our time in the homes of local leaders. I had the opportunity to stay with a large family that consisted mostly of women. They were an unapologetically leftward leaning family who talked to my roommate and I about politics whenever they got the chance. To them, politics equaled life. The FMLN was a fresh start. If the party was in control of the country, at least there would be a chance for growth and peace.

Ten of us crowded around a tiny television screen in the courtyard of a family compound to watch Mauricio Funes, the FMLN presidential candidate, speak to a crowd of cheering supporters in the capital. For

me, the speech meant little more than a time to practice my Spanish listening skills and bond with my temporary mothers and grandmothers. For the families of Nueva Esperanza, the speech held decades of struggle for liberation. It held the hopes and dreams of their fathers, their daughters, their brothers and their friends who died for the cause of the FMLN. As I sat in my little plastic chair in the unbearable heat of a Salvadoran afternoon, I tried to connect my studies with their experiences. I tried to understand the enormity and significance of the likelihood that an FMLN candidate would win the presidency. As a visitor there will always be a divide between my life and theirs. I wasn´t there during the war; I lost no family members; I have not spent my life fighting against a faceless imperialist power. No books or articles or words could have captured the triumph of the moment. The closest I could come to understanding was to watch my 97-year-old host Granny quietly and shakily raised her left fist in the air; she kept it held high above her head, not uttering any words but believing in the holy silence that screamed “solidarity!” with generations. It was one of the most sacred moments of my Central American travels.


By Molly Bryant
CGE: Mexico Intern