Bringing Social Justice from El Salvador
Last February I journeyed to El Salvador with associates from other Jesuit colleges and universities across the United States with the Ignatian Colleagues Program. We were challenged by many of our guides to engage in a solidarity pilgrimage and not allow our experience in El Salvador to devolve into solidarity voyeurism. With the eyes of the Salvadoran martyrs and the blood of those crucified Salvadorans within reach, we were humbled and challenged to enter into the perspective of those who sacrificed and were sacrificed every moment of our time in El Salvador.
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I set this context because it was a context witnessed to us by our guides and teachers who provided commentaries on our experience that still sends chills up and down my spine.
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Although the civil war ended nearly twenty years ago, the quality of life for most of El Salvadorans is quite dismal. El Salvador is ravaged by gang activity, public education is only compulsory to the 6th grade, water purification/sewage treatment systems do not exist, there are about 60,000 active gang members, and about 4,300 people were murdered through gang violence in 2011.
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While we were in El Salvador the political campaigns for elected offices were in full swing. Campaign materials, advertisements, rallies and radio and television campaign commercials inundated the country. It appeared that campaign strategies were more likely to divert attention from important issues than address them; were more often nuanced by allegations or defamation, character assassination, slurs and slogans. We frequently reflected on how and why the exports of the American experiment in democracy seemed to disenfranchise citizens rather than engage them as informed and responsible participants.
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Shortly after we left El Salvador, the national and local elections occurred. We mused that a miracle had happened: a military coup had not been precipitated by the results of the election. As solidarity pilgrims, however, we were not satisfied with stemming the worst possible outcome of the election in someone else’s country; we wanted to see how we could contribute to a less unjust system of government in our own country. What, we questioned ourselves, could we do, as citizens of our own country, to engage our voters in an election process that was more accountable to the truth, more disciplined about a full and open discussion of issues, based in truth and policy development rather than in nuances and deflected conversations.
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Discussing intervention strategies with some of my colleagues and friends at Loyola, we began to plan for a panel to address how money and media in the United States are negatively impacting both voter access to information about candidates’ positions on issues and responsible and ethical participation in democratic processes. We held the panel in the hopes of spurring civil discourse and increasing responsible and ethical participation in our democratic system of government. This is a small effort on trying to address social justice and transformation of less than just social processes as someone hopeful of being a solidarity pilgrim rather than a solidarity voyeur.
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