Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Jubilee Year
In the Bible, God calls for a Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25:10)—every fifty years, the
land is to be redistributed and debts are to be forgiven. Perhaps God figured that,
given the greedy nature of humankind, it takes about fifty years for economic in-
justice to build to a point that drives a society to violence.
Rich Christians can't imagine God was serious. But the sad modern history
of El Salvador shows the wisdom in the Biblical Jubilee year. There's a pattern
that I think of as Jubilee massacres: a dramatic spike in violence every fifty years.
Twice a century, landless peasants rise up…and are crushed. In the 1830s, an in-
surrection and its charismatic leader were put down. In 1881, peasants suffered a
big and bloody land grab. In 1932, after the great global depression and communist
influence made landless peasants both hungry and bold, an estimated 30,000 were
massacred following an insurrection. In the 1980s, the people rose up and were
repressed so cruelly that a 12-year civil war followed. The 1830s, 1881, 1932, the
1980s—during the last two centuries, El Salvador has endured a slaughter every
fifty years.
Interested to connect with this important facet of Central American culture, I drove
deep into the countryside, to a village where 90 percent of the people are indigenous and
the economy is based on pottery. I spent some time with Valentín López, a potter who's
passionate about keeping the pre-Colombian local art alive in his craft.
At his wheel, he demonstrated the traditional way pottery is made, painted, and burn-
ished. It's all organic: clay pounded by bare feet, brushes made of a woman's hair, and
giant seeds as burnishers. He explained how important it is for indigenous potters to be
in tune with nature. In the US, a potter orders clay on the phone. Here, they hike to the
clay pit and gather it themselves. As his son kick-started the potter's wheel, Valentín poin-
ted out that there's no electricity involved—“People power…our gas is rice and beans.”
Watching the boy getting the wheel really ramped up with his muscular leg, he added,
“This town produces very good soccer players.”
