The History of El Salvador, through Indigo

On Sunday Robert took us on a tour of Suchitoto. In the course of it, we stopped in at Arte Añil where Irma keeps alive the local tradition of dying cloth with añil, indigo.

Or perhaps I should say that Irma has brought back to the life the ancient tradition. She explained to us that, although making indigo from the leaves of this plant  goes back thousands of years, the ancient methods of making indigo and dying cloth had been forgotten in most of El Salvador by the end of the middle of the 20th century.

When the conquistadors made their way in 1522 to the region that was to become El Salvador it was inhabited by various indigenous people, the best known group being the Mayans. 

On Wednesday Robert and Tita took us on a tour of local sites, including Mayan temples

Tita, who, unlike the vast majority of El Salvadorans is not of mixed blood,  Meztizo, but is from a pueblo of indiginous people, is the same height as the average pre Columbian Mayan was.

The Europeans´ diseases had preceded them already killed 80% of the population. Those left resisted the invasion, yet, despite many battles, the city of San Salvador was established by 1537. Pedro and Gonzalo de Alvarado.

 

The Spanish were disappointed to find there was no gold to be had, but quickly discerned the potential profit in the indigo dye made by the natives. The Spanish dubbed it “blue gold”.

On our tour, at San Andreas, we got to see the remains of a
16th centureyIndigo factory

 This became the first in a long line of mono crops that was to be the basis of El Salvador’s economy, with the local people forced to work in slave-like conditions for a small number of wealthy landowners who exported, mainly, a single crop. Though over the centuries there were many rebellions, and many efforts made to redistribute the land, no fundamental change would come until the end of the civil war in 1992.

But, back to the 1500´s. Irma explained that the conditions set by the Spanish in the making of the dye were very harsh and many people died. They tried importing African slaves, thinking they might survive the work better. This did not go on for long, but there is some African within the mix of genes in the Salvadoran people.

characteristic look of coffee plantations, with the squares formed
by trees used to make shade and break the wind.

El Salvador obtained independence from Spain in 1821, but the landowners remained in control. Over the course of the 19th century coffee plantations began to appear, and when in, 1857, synthetic dyes were discovered, the indigo factories were entirely replaced, mainly by coffee plantations. The government operated for the benefit of the landowners and for the vast majority of the population there was no alternative to working on the plantations.

In 1931 the military dictator Maximiliano Hernández came to power in a coup d’état.  Meanwhile, the Marxist revolutionary leader Farabundo Marti was organizing indigenous farmers to oppose the government and demand the redistribution of land. In 1932, Hernandez responded to Marti´s efforts with an operation that came to be known as La Matanza, the Slaughter. 30,000 people, including nearly all of El Salvador´s indigenous population were slaughtered. With them went the knowledge of the ancient art of añil, indigo.

Farabundo Marti was executed, but he was not forgotten, and when the opposition reformed in the 1970s to demand the redistribution of land, they named their party after him. The Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, or FMLN was the major opposing force to the government during the 12 year civil war.

 But, back to indigo. Like I said, the ancient art has been revived by people like Irma. On Tuesday she led the five of us girls in a dying workshop.

El Gringo´s



The public buses are all old school buses from North America,
mostly "Bluebirds" made in Canada.
They are always elaborately painted, and no two are alike.

After a few days, I suspected that the girls and I would tire of staying at Dolores´s house. Not that she and her family were not incredibly nice, and the tropical garden in the back was lovely. The many parrots in their family´s courtyard would have driven me crazy if I was in their house, but, from across the driveway, I enjoyed hearing their cacophony of nearly intelligible, nearly human voices that seemed to chat and laugh and argue. But our windows looked out on the street and driveway and had to remain covered, and there were too many mosquitoes in the garden to enjoy the hammocks. El Centro Arte para la Paz, where we spent much of our day (post on that to follow, I hope!) was pretty far away. The family was off in their house and courtyard, and the only activity on the street were those incredibly loud commuter buses that roared up the street starting at 4:30 in the morning. So, I started to look for a different place to spend our last week, which would give us about 6 more days at Dolores´s.

When I fell into conversation with a young woman from California, who was in Suchitoto holding workshops for midwives, I asked where she was staying. She told me that she was at “El Gringo´s”, a Mexican restaurant and hostal run by a nice family, and just 2 blocks from El Centro.

The name was intriguing. Gringo is a somewhat pejorative term for North Americans and Europeans. It would be like living in a rural town in Georgia and naming your restaurant “The Yankee”.  We went over for lunch on Sunday., little suspecting that we would be moving in within 24 hours.

We liked the neighborhood with children playing in the street and women and old men sitting in their doorways.

kids in the neighborhood

The kids from the barrio who came for Maggie´s birthday party, the following week.
Well, they came for the piñata!

The girls at the store across the street.

Across from El Gringo´s is a sort of neighborhood corner store, with plenty of traffic.











The building itself is an odd affair with large heart shaped Iron Grill works in front.

Leaving El Gringos.
A woman across the street takes in laundry and
dries it on the railing to the left of the building.

Adele took this picture of us with Robert in the restaurant.

The restaurant is simple but pleasant, an open patio covered with plants and geckos, next to the kitchen. There were some 20-somethings, back-packers and people on service trips, eating at tables, and a man of about 45 who would have been big in the States, and here has the appearance of a small mountain. He gave us a welcoming smile and, laughing, said, in English, “Come on in. I´m Robert, el gringo of “El Gringo”. I think he talked to us the whole time that we were eating lunch. Which might have been irritating except that he is exceptionally friendly, funny and informative.

Robert and Tita

Robert is from San Diego, but his mother was Salvadoran and so is his wife, Tita, short for Cortita, for which there is no good translation in English. It would have to be something like “adorable small female person”. She is from one of the few remaining villages of indigenous people in the country, and is quite small. In fact even sitting down Robert is a little taller than her standing up. She has the sweetest smile, and usually is smiling. There oldest, Carla, is married to a local boy, Marvin. They have a 1 and a half year, Angel, who is usually at Marvin´s parents´ house, just next door. They also have a 14 year old son, Roberto, a 7 year old daughter, Janet, and an adopted niece of 12.  Tita is the chief cook, assisted by whatever family members are around, and a young woman from the neighborhood

 Though she and the children understand English pretty well they only speak in Spanish.

Marvin and Angel



The stairs to the dorm

Looking up from the hostal toward the street.
I could not understand why this part of the stairs
where so covered with mold and moss,
until there was a rainstorm and it became a waterfall.

Robert showed us the accommodations. The house is on a hill, so we walked downstairs to get to the two levels of rooms.  The construction is all cinderblock and has the feel of a garage. None of the rooms get much light, but they open up onto covered patios. The first level has two rooms and some decent furniture, chairs, a coffee table and desk, but the patio only faces a cinderblock wall. The bottom floor is a dorm, one big room with 6 beds and a partition in the middle. All lit with one bright bare bulb. But that patio has a couple of hammocks and looks out onto a hillside.

The girls on the patio in front of their dorm room.

the more civilized quarters that I was able
to move into after a week. Do you know
that living in a dorm room with 5 teenage girls
can be a bit taxing?

Robert apologized for the general look of dilapidation, and the cinderblock walls, decorated only with the many geckos that race about catching insects. “We´re renting this and the landlord is, to put it mildly, not supportive. But the mattresses are good. I don´t get anything I wouldn´t be happy to sleep on myself.” He said we could move in the next weekend, and he´d give us a break on the price, both levels for 35$ a night. After 5 days in Suchitoto, it all seemed quite acceptable, even charming. Besides, I love geckos.

On Monday, we went over for dinner. Just as we began the short walk from El Centro, the rain suddenly began with a vengeance. By the time we arrived thunder and lightening had begun and the electricity had gone out all over town. The rain on the metal roof of the restaurant was like listening to an energetic drum solo blasted over enormous speakers.  But the usual crowd of back packers and service volunteers at El Gringos were enjoying the effects.
Tita brought out candles for the tables, and Robert told us what was they could actually make from the menu with what cooking implements were left. Power outages are common during the 6 month rain season, so they have the refrigerator hooked up to propane and they keep a couple of traditional wood fired kettle pots going.  As we sat eating beans and tacos, we could see the water rushing down the sides of the street in two muddy streams. As the torrent of rain continued the two streams started to meet in the middle, and I began to understand better the crazy height of the sidewalks.

Walking back to Dolores´s house in the dark- no street lights in Suchitoto, as we passed the Resurrection Funeral Parlor, a hand shot out and stroked Claire on the arm, and the girls heard those familiar sht-sht, and kissing noises. Yuck! Was it a resurrected zombie sort, or one of those young men that work there?

That night, at Dolores´s place, soon after I had fallen asleep, I became aware of a commotion in Claire and Maggie´s room, which has a window looking out to the sidewalk. Like all windows and doors, it has a metal grill over it. It also has wooden slats over the bottom half, so no one could see in, but we could make out the silloettes of three young men. They were making those icky sounds and saying mercifully unintelligible words. How I wished I could swear in Spanish at that moment! I yelled and hit the blinds but they just kept it up. Though we managed to get the wooden shutters closed, they came back a few times during the night anyway.

That was it. The girls were ready to move the next day, even though it meant all of us in the dorm with a young woman, Sara, who was already there.  Robert was hesitant. Perhaps he thought me a bit mature for the dorm life, but we assured him we would be all right, and it turned out that Sara had three younger sisters back home, so she was fine with the arrangement.

The girls took right to the hammocks, but it took a bit of adjusting to the slugs in the shower, the many enormous moths, and having all those geckos carrying out their various life functions across the wall and ceiling. With good reason, Robert warned us – don´t look up with your mouth open.

Robert took us on a tour of Suchitoto. His youngest, Janet is in front.

Another tour, this time to a crater lake where we had lunch.
Tita took the day off from the restaurant and joined us.

One Hour (in) Bath

[Another guest post by Matt.]



Jeff, My Tour Guide



As I got on the train to Bristol, England yesterday, I noticed that it stopped in Bath. I checked the time, and decided that I could take an hour to have a look around. I figured that if I could see Moscow in an hour,[1] Bath should be a piece of cake. So I walked to the nearest taxi stand, and hired a life-long resident of the town named Jeff as my driver and tour guide.



Bath Circus

Jeff first drove me to the ancient Roman baths that gave the city its name. The sulfurous water gushes out of the ground at nearly boiling temperatures. The source is still a mystery, he claimed. He described how the English aristocracy began to visit the baths in the 18^th century to partake of their healing powers. They constructed an entire city around them in a short time, resulting in an architectural purity that’s rare in any town.


Royal Crescent



Jeff drove at a much more leisurely pace than my Moscow host Maxim had, but he was just as enthusiastic about relating the story of his city. He parked in Bath Circus, a perfect circle of private apartments designed by John Wood the Younger. “It’s like Upstairs, Downstairs, you see. The servants would live in the attic and the basement, while the owners stayed on the main floors.”



The Ha Ha


But another John Wood the Younger creation, the Royal Crescent, was more impressive. The opulent Georgian apartments there form a wide arc above a sloping lawn, with a public park below. The view extends across the valley to gentle hills on the other side. A visually subtle but effective wall called a “ha ha” embedded into the landscape separates the private land from the public.

Most of the apartments are private, but if you want to live like the privileged for a night or two, the Royal Crescent hotel occupies the center of the complex. Rooms start at a mere £445 ($690) per night for a “garden” view (e.g., looking out the back window). If you want to look out the front, rooms are £935 ($1450) and up.

Jeff pointed out the door of unit 22, which was yellow instead of white. The owner caused a stir when she painted it in the ‘70s, breaking 200 years of tradition. Eventually she won a court case to keep it that way.



Rolled Newspaper Holder



Having dispatched the most famous sights, Jeff took me further up the hill to two other residential crescents. Lansdown Crescent is his favorite, because it still has its original wrought iron fences and archways. Sheep still graze in the lawn below at times. To the right of each doorway, there’s a black metal cone that angles out from the wall. “They’re for newspapers,” Jeff explained, “The delivery men roll up the papers and stuff them inside.”



View from Landsdown Crescent



The view was even more spectacular from this crescent. I spied what looked like a Greek temple on the opposite side of the valley. “That’s Prior Park College; I’ll take you there,” he said. But first he wanted to show me “one of the oldest churches in England.”



Shops on Pulteney Bridge



On the way, we crossed Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon. It was, Jeff claimed, one of only two bridges in Europe that’s lined with stores on either side. (I visited the other – the Ponte Vecchia in Florence – in February.) Most cars aren’t allowed on the bridge, but taxis can still pass.



St Thomas a Becket Church



Jeff took full advantage of his taxi markings as we approached our next destination. The road was marked “residents only,” but of course, taxis have special dispensation. At the end was the small St Thomas à Becket Church, built in 1498. OK, so Jeff was 900 years off when he claimed it was one of the oldest churches in England – it was still a pretty building.



Prior Park College



Finally we headed up the hill to Prior Park College. With plush grounds and formal buildings, it wouldn’t surprise me if this private school had a Quidditch field. Once again, our taxi was able to drive past the student dormitories to the center mansion for me to get a good photo.

I still had plenty of time to catch the next train to Bristol. However, I didn’t feel the same satisfaction that I felt after my one-hour tour of Moscow. While I’m glad that I got to peek at a few buildings, I decided that Bath is the kind of place where you need to go inside – to eat at the Pump Room, visit the Roman Baths Museum, or walk through the restored Georgian apartment at the Royal Crescent. I never set foot in the Bath Abbey or the Holburne Art Museum, either. My tour was more of a tease; I hope I get a chance to come back for more someday.

[1] See the previous blog post on this adventure.

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First days in Suchitoto, El Salvador

The Main Square in Suchitoto

Clothes being sold on the sidewalk, in the square

The first couple of days were a flood of new sights and impressions. Leaving Dolores´s, we pass two women in aprons chatting in a doorway, an old guy in the next one with a cup of coffee and no shirt. The walls of the houses are right up to the sidewalk. All the windows are covered with metal grills but, with no air-conditioning,  during the day, many windows and doors are open.

We walk by a dark room with lots of boys and young men in front of computers, one of many little shops in the town where people can get on the internet. The next shop has a prominent sign:

Funerales
La Resurreccion
Servicio 24 horas

Maggie, Currin, Adele, Claire and Iris, eating chocobananas
on those crazy sidewalks

A funeral home with 24 hour service and it is called the Resurrection. Inside are stacks of gaudy caskets, some red, blue or even pink, with gold filigree. I am imagining the possibility of burying and resurrecting the same customers over and over when I nearly trip .

The streets are very roughly cobbled in stones of varying sizes. Yet the sidewalks are not always a good alternative, as they are capricious affairs varying greatly in height, suddenly broken up by steps, crossed by a gutter to direct the water during the many flash floods, or ending unexpectedly as much as two feet above the street.

 They do make nice places to sit, often being at about the height of a chair. And this is a very good thing, as sitting on the sidewalk and watching people pass by is a common pastime in Suchitoto. Wish I could show you a photo of that, but I have not mastered the art of photographing people without fear of insult.

As we approach the center of town the sidewalks are crowded with locals selling food, clothes and trinkets by the sidewalk, or just sitting about chatting and staring at passers-by. A woman sits nursing a baby, quite unconcerned. Four men in cowboy hats are playing cards. There is a line of 6 people and two dogs at the Carniceria where two men hack at chunks of meat.

I am struck by how unguarded people´s stares are. I don´t think I have been anywhere where it was so acceptable to simply stare at people. It is a whole new stare from other places I have been where I have been a foreigner, or of a different race or socio-economic strata. It is not, for example, like being in a town overrun by tourists where you get the oh-christ-not-another-one sort of stare. Nor is it the look I would get in Morocco, the daughter-of-satan-do-not-consider-lifting-that-foul-camera-in-my-presence sort of stare, and it is not what I am prepared to receive in some neighborhoods of Boston, the white-bitch-get-your-ass-outa-my-hood sort of stare. Nor is it the typical Spanish stare where they quickly glance away with a look of- What you thought I was staring at you? Of course not, I care nothing about you.

Here, they just plain stare. And if you look back, they will often smile and say Buenos Dias. Now, this is coming from a woman just over 50. For the girls it is not so simple. As we walk along, I am usually behind them, so I see how the men´s stares follow their long white legs in American standard shorts, which show a lot more leg skin than local attire. This is definitely not Miami. I thought the girls were being less hassled than usual because I had not heard any catcalls. Turns out the men are just quieter about the way they go about it. Many make kissing sounds at them, or quiet whistles, the sort that you would make to call a dog, or tch-tch sounds like when you tell a cat to get off a table. Surely this does not win the hearts of the women of El Salvador! 

You know those ads encouraging you to donate your old car to charity for a tax deduction? When I see them, I think, that can´t make sense to give your car to someone if it is not worth more than the tax deduction. That can´t be a favor. Only a burden. Not so! Those cars are alive and kicking in Suchitoto. Here you often see a site I vaguely remember from my childhood, or maybe it is just movies from the 50´s, or is it my brother Bill, who is such an anachronism, anyway, you see this site which seems so nostalgic- guys standing around the open hood of a car, passing the time, and maybe fixing the car.

I am pretty sure the maple leaf, which does not grow much south of Connecticut,
was put on the car before it traveled south to El Salvador. But probably not the sticker on the rear window, "Jesùs vive"

There is not a lot of traffic in Suchitoto. Much of it is old pick ups with the family, or groups of friends, sometimes with a cow, standing and sitting in the back, and old school buses that have been converted to city buses. Each one is painted differently. Our street is the main road out of town. The buses pass by with doors permenantly open. Often 2 or 3 men are hanging out of them as they roar by with clouds of black smoke billowing behind. On the back they typically have a painting of a religious theme – Jesùs es me Salvador, or hands clasped in prayer. Better than seat belts. I guess.

Stay tuned. More to come!

Arriving in El Salvador

The first sign that the country we were headed to was going to be different than the European cities we have been visiting was the nearly complete absence of tourists or business people. Much of the flight was comprised of three teams of athletes, mostly young semi-giants of African heritage, on their way to a Central American and Caribbean track and field competition. There was a group who appeared to be of European descent and less athletic. They turned out to be chiropractic students there to assist the athletes. The rest of the flight were families who, to one degree or another, resembled the characters from pre-Columbian art.

Coming off the dry cold plane, the hot wet air of central El Salvador seemed even more extreme than Miami. And this is what they consider their winter! The airport was small, and a bit run-down but was well run, and the staff was incredibly friendly. After the hustle and bustle of Miami, where everyone, and everything seemed to be trying to appear as young, new, fancy and expensive as possible, the girls and I enjoyed the informality and lack of pretension.

As we stepped out of security with our massive quantity of luggage, we saw a mass of eager faces holding signs, Bienvenida!, Feliz Cumpleaños!, Te Queremos!, and towards the end of the line a man holding a small sign: Margoth Kimball. Pretty sure that would be me. He was friendly, but with very different Spanish accents we found it hard to communicate.

Waiting for the van at the airport in El Salvador

His companion, Lupe, drove up with a 10 seater van. It had the flimsy, under-sized look that cars had before they started adding safety devices, and could it be that we were actually a lot smaller? Air-conditioning was out of the question as were seat belts. All windows remained open. The van had accumulated enough years and experience that it had acquired a personality, with creaking joints but  easy-going and eager to go.

On the way to Suchitoto

The two men who had been sent to pick us up kept up a steady conversation in the front while listening to CD´s. One asked me politely if we minded the music. I smiled and shook my head. As if we would have been able to hear it over the noise and rattle of the van, and the wind rushing in, as we sped down the highway. Most of the cars and trucks are these old beaten up affairs. Now and again I see a shiny new model car. It looks as if it had been pumped up with air, or steroids.

So much green! Anywhere that there is a bit of ground, a crack in a rock or pavement, green has sprung up. Very little of it orderly, Just masses of leaves, bushes, trees and vines hither thither up against the highway and covering the low steep valleys to either side. We can make out neighborhoods of concrete bungalows with tin roofs, but all hidden in the mass of green.

The highway is narrow and with so much life to either side. Near the airport there are little stands, simple lean tos of sticks and fronds, with high stacks of coconuts in front. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a woman with a baby in a hammock, or a toddler running off with his mother chasing him. Especially around the outskirts of San Salvador the density of life taking place just by the side of the highway, as the cars and trucks sped past, seems impossible. Now and again I see someone, an old man, a woman holding a baby, two men carrying tires, dart across in a chink in the steady flow of traffic.

Chickens must be a lot smarter than I had thought, because I saw many, but none dead. Also, cows, goats and horses, tied up on the little strip of lush grass by the side of the road to graze. And long rows of stone and concrete dwellings with people going about their lives, spitting in the dirt, and carrying bundles on their heads, playing cards and fixing cars. And then the traffic slows and there are crowds of people milling about dozens and hundreds of ramshackle stalls selling food and clothes and chickens in crates. Beyond them are buildings with real stores, many guarded by men cradling machine guns.

The old van chugged up the hills with an effort, but the driver made up for it by letting her tear along on the down hill. The speed had me a bit nervous and I wondered what the limit was. No signs. Lots of billboards, and the occasional sign to tell you where you were going, but nothing to instruct or warn or threaten concerning the rules of the road. I glanced around the driver at the speedometer. The needle was stuck at 0.

Suchitoto

Once past San Salvador, the most common signs were ones with words of encouragement to “touristicos” going to Suchitoto, the town that we were headed to. As we got further from the city there was less going on by the side of the road, more fields, trees. The town of Suchitoto, seemed relatively prosperous. There were well built houses with doors that hide courtyards. Lots of people sitting and chatting on stoops and low walls by the street, and not because they had no where else to go, but because it was pleasant in the shade with their friends.

The van let us off at a door on a tree-lined sidewalk. We thought we would be staying at El Centro, so we were surprised. There was a very nice woman to meet us. We did our best to communicate in Spanish. It seemed that her name was Dolores, we would be living in her complex, and the Center was not far. 

Ours are the first two rooms in a long building of 6 guestrooms that leads to the garden. I could never have guessed what lay behind the door facing the street:






a long guest house and a big house of the host family that has its own inner courtyard. Behind the buildings is a wonderful tropical garden with a path winding through a great variety of plants and trees, cocoa, banana, mango, and many with nuts and fruits that I had never heard of. She encouraged us to use the hammocks hanging in a portico.

The rooms have no closets or bureaus. Nothing but beds. But, by local standards, they are quite nice, because they each have a bathroom with shower. We soon discovered that there was no hot water. Not worth mentioning, I guess, when in a tropical climate. And, certainly for teenagers, closets and bureaus have little bearing on happiness. The girls took to El Salvador right away, to the relaxed and friendly attitude of the people, to the lush greeness, and the many chickens and mangy, but gentle dogs wandering about.

I asked Dolores if there was a kitchen that we could use. She hesitated but showed me to a little stove on a porch behind her house. Spiders had built nests on it, and a family of geckos fled from us, racing across the wall to hide behind a shelf with a hodge podge of pots and pans. I asked if we could use them. She picked one up doubtfully and something, an insect, dropped out and scurried off. I told her I thought that really there are plenty of places to find food in town. She smiled with relief.

And, in fact, there are many inviting places to eat, and, at the cost of a scoop of Hagaan Daz ice cream in Madrid, you can have a full dinner.

But more on that later…..