Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
a periodic re-evaluation. It's a carefully weighed decision that I make with
my humanitarian principles (and with the plight of Beatriz and Veronica)
in mind.
Even if the rudiments of globalization didn't make people's eyes glaze over,
it's human nature not to want to know how our al uence impacts others. No
comfortable American enjoys being told how her cat has more “buying power”
than some hungry child just south of the border, how his investments may
be contributing to the destruction of the environment, how the weaponry
we sell and proi t from is really being used, or how—if you really knew its
story—there's blood on your banana. Privilege brings with it the luxurious
option of obliviousness. Most Americans don't understand or particularly care
about the impact of a new IMF regulation on a person who sews clothing in
Honduras or plants cof ee beans in Nicaragua. Here in the rich world, the
choice is ours: awareness and concern, or ignorance and bliss.
The City Built Upon a Garbage Dump
San Salvador's poorest neighborhood—a place that makes Beatriz's neigh-
borhood seem almost posh—is built upon a garbage dump. We wandered
for an hour around this “city” of 50,000 inhabitants, dusty frills of garbage
blowing like old dandelion spores in the wind.
It was a ramshackle world of corrugated tin, broken concrete, and tattered
laundry. I'll not forget the piles of scrap metal, the ripped and shredded sofas,
tire parts, and i lthy plastic bowls I saw stacked neatly at one point. h is was a
store entirely stocked by junk scavenged from the city dump. Even the store's
chairs, tables, walls, and roof were scavenged—made of battered tin.
Overlooking the shacks was a slap-in-your-face billboard from a local
bank, advertising home loans for the wealthy. It read, “With every day that
passes, your house is closer to being yours.”
We passed through a “suburb” of tin shacks housing people who lived
of the dump, passing yards where they sorted out saleable garbage, stacked
broken glass, and pounded rusty metal barrels into cooking pots and pans.
In a church there was a sandbox manger scene with two soldiers standing
over a slashed and bloody
campesino
positioned next to the Wise Men and
cows—the modern-day soldiers represented the government, while the poor
people saw themselves as Christ i gures, crucii ed for the truth.
h e people had done what they could to make their slum livable. h ere
was greenery, cute children bringing home huge jugs of water (two cents each),
