Berkley Center

My bio is a bit out-of-date. I did spend my fall in Ecuador, studying through Georgetown’s program at La Universidad San Francisco de Quito. However, I am currently studying in San Salvador, through La Casa de la Solidaridad. Santa Clara University runs Casa, but the program draws from universities across the United States.

As you may guess from its name, Casa focuses on living in solidarity with the Salvadoran people. We take classes at La Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), where in 1989, a government-supported death squad murdered six Jesuits, Ignacio Ellacuria, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Ignacio Martín Baro, Amando López, and Joaquín López y López; their housekeeper Elba Ramos; and her teenaged daughter, Celina Ramos.

The death squad was the Atlacatl Batallion, whose leaders were trained by US troops at the School of the Americas. The Atlacatl Batallion also committed the El Mozote Massacre in 1981, one of the war’s worst massacres. The Atlacatl Batallion slaughtered an entire town, leaving only one survivor, Rufina Amaya.

One of the UCA Jesuits, Jon Sobrino, was out of the country when his fellow priests were murdered. Sobrino then spent a few months at Santa Clara University, where he developed a close relationship with the heads of the university. A few months later, Dean Brackley, S.J., came to El Salvador to continue the work of the UCA Jesuits. While visiting Santa Clara in 1997, Brackley became intrigued by the idea of a program wherein students of US Jesuit universities studied in El Salvador. He began working with former Jesuit International volunteers Kevin and Trena Yonkers-Talz, and in the fall of 2000, Casa welcomed its first class.

Honestly, I have no idea what to say about my experience at Casa. The other day I was chatting with two housemates about how we are going to make our friends "get it" after we return to the United States. How can we explain the Casa experience to them? I explained that I don’t really know how I can make other people "get it" if I still don’t "get it" myself. I still don’t know what Casa means to me or how this experience will affect me in the long term. I think that’s a good thing. My struggle to explain the Casa experience shows how meaningful it is to me.

Though I am perfectly all right with being unable to explain my time here, I would like to at least attempt to relate it to others’ abroad experiences. With a supersaturated schedule, I struggle to stay aware of international news while abroad. Nevertheless, I am keeping an eye on the Middle East, and not just because my roommate is studying abroad there. (Stay safe, chica!)

I am intrigued by how Salvadorans view the current crisis in the Middle East. All Casa students spend two days a week doing praxis, the combination of practice and study, when we accompany marginalized communities. I spend praxis with a family in an urban community north of San Salvador. The father, Lolo, makes and sells candles. Unrest in the Middle East has caused prices for his candle-making materials to increase, particularly paraffin. If Lolo raises prices, he will sell fewer candles. But if he does not raise prices, he will lose profit.

Meanwhile, Obama is coming to visit El Salvador at the end of March. Last night at the vigil for Monsignor Romero, the priest referred to Obama as a man in tune with Martin Luther King and Romero. (If you don't know who Romero is, I recommend the biographical movie Romero.)

If you do know who Romero is, then you understand what high praise it is to compare Obama to Romero. Many Salvadorans I meet support Obama, and Lolo said that he felt joyful when the United States elected Obama. He thought, "If the United States can change and elect a leftist president, why not El Salvador?" I understand that many Americans don't support Obama or view him as a leftist. Regardless, Lolo’s comment highlights the importance of Obama's coming visit. Yet when I read the Salvadoran newspaper's coverage of the Libya conflict, it remarked that the unrest in the Middle East will likely overshadow Obama's visit. This visit, which means so much to the Salvadorans I know, may not receive much coverage in the US media. I don't know what to think of this, but I see it as another example of interconnectivity. El Salvador, the United States, Libya—we're all intertwined. Now study abroad seems a little less far away.