Well, yesterday turned out to be another quite an eventful day. My blogging yesterday morning almost made me miss my ride to the Supreme Electoral Commission HQ - in the Radisson Hotel in the trendy Escalon district of San Salvador - to (finally!) pick up my observer credential. In the rush to get on the bus I forgot my passport. At the Radisson the credentialling lady gave me a dirty look but finally agreed to give me a credential based on my NY driver's license. This I'm sure will come back to haunt me, since the death squads will almost certainly be going around looking to rub out (pushy) NY drivers. (Note to those who are behind on your Central American history: this is a JOKE; death squads THANKFULLY seem pretty much to be a thing of the past in El Salvador.) Unfortunately two of our compas (who HAD passports) could not find their names on the list, so the rest of us had to cool our heels for a while on the hotel's snazzy, sunny terrace while our handlers tried - ultimately successfully - to straighten the matter out.
After a short and very pleasant time sitting in the sun I was chosen (maybe because of my name?) for a 5-person delegation sent to San Miguel, El Salvador's second largest city and the hub of the eastern end of the country, known, oddly, as "Oriente". I at first felt a bit guilty, because I had already been to San Miguel on my previous trip to El Salvador in 2004, and I'm sure many of my fellow observers had not, but guilt soon gave way to pain as my delicate gringo tuchus was jolted unceremoniously along the roads of this great nation in the back of a tiny, Chinese-made mini-van. Actually, it wasn't all that bad, although one distinctly gets the sense - once again - that we gringos are really lucky when it comes to motorized transportation! We continued driving, across at least 1/2 of the country, the temperature steadily rising as we came down off the central plateau and onto the eastern plain, for several hours. Still, in a country the size of Massachusetts even a drive crossing half the territory cannot last forever. We pulled into San Miguel just around two and, as it turned out, just in time for lunch. An extended family of FMLN activistas who live part-time in NY had us over for a sumptuous lunch of roast chicken, rice pliaf, salad, home-made tortillas and cheese with coffee and stewed mangos for desert. There obviously are benefits to being picked as a people's delegate! and I hereby resolve never again to think twice when given chance to stuff myself in the name of the proletariat!
Group photo (taken by an obviously inferior (Chinese?) camera!) of three of our lunch hosts, our driver and three of our observer party
Lunch completed, we still had to complete the "official" part of our mission. We followed one of our hosts, a man named "Turcios", to the local FMLN HQ, where we met for about an hour with the man responsible for the party's election effort in San Miguel, Nelson Quintanilla, as well as with several lesser dignitaries, who explained to us the various vagaries of the local election effort with particular attention to the types of fraud that they expected to have to confront. These include: voting by dead people and by expatriate citizens who somehow manage to vote in El Salvador at the same time that they continue to show up at work (or at least at the day laborer's corner) in N. America, the outright buying of votes through various elaborate schemes, and voting by scores, if not hundreds or even thousands of Central Americans from neighboring countries. All of these fruads, according to Nelson, are part of the reason that the presence of International Observers is so important in this election. I don't know whether or not this comment falls into the category of propaganda, but in any case it worked: my head swelled right up!
By the time we left the (air-conditioned!) FMLN HQ in San Miguel the temperature had cooled off considerably, and our ride back to San Salvador was considerably more pleasant than the outbound leg. We also passed some spectacular scenery as we drove into the setting sun. Several of us tried to capture a piece of it as we zipped along.
View back towards the east over the valley of the Rio Lempa, El Salvador's major river, which, flowing north to south, cuts the country approximately in half.
Did I mention that Mr. Quintanilla issued us all FMLN artistic licenses valid anywhere in the country?
Nadia Marin, one of my fellow Observers, snaps a shot.
Tonantzin, the Aztec sun goddess, ducks modestly behind the ample chest of her mother, the twin-peaked volcano Chinchontepeque, the "twin-breasted mountain". (I'm not making this stuff up!)
Our FMLN escort, a very nice chap named Daniel Navas, and one of the very small minority of pure Native Americans in El Salvador, makes it clear with his finger (and ambiguous with his smile) that he doesn't want his photo taken.
Pickup truck carrying bodies of individuals assisinated by right-wing death squads. (Please see note above about death squads.)
Chinchontepeque just before her daughter Tonantzin's bed time
In case anyone doubted the "twin-breasted" part please have a look at this photo (snapped discreetly through a veil of trees to preserve the family-friendly nature of this blog)
After a short and very pleasant time sitting in the sun I was chosen (maybe because of my name?) for a 5-person delegation sent to San Miguel, El Salvador's second largest city and the hub of the eastern end of the country, known, oddly, as "Oriente". I at first felt a bit guilty, because I had already been to San Miguel on my previous trip to El Salvador in 2004, and I'm sure many of my fellow observers had not, but guilt soon gave way to pain as my delicate gringo tuchus was jolted unceremoniously along the roads of this great nation in the back of a tiny, Chinese-made mini-van. Actually, it wasn't all that bad, although one distinctly gets the sense - once again - that we gringos are really lucky when it comes to motorized transportation! We continued driving, across at least 1/2 of the country, the temperature steadily rising as we came down off the central plateau and onto the eastern plain, for several hours. Still, in a country the size of Massachusetts even a drive crossing half the territory cannot last forever. We pulled into San Miguel just around two and, as it turned out, just in time for lunch. An extended family of FMLN activistas who live part-time in NY had us over for a sumptuous lunch of roast chicken, rice pliaf, salad, home-made tortillas and cheese with coffee and stewed mangos for desert. There obviously are benefits to being picked as a people's delegate! and I hereby resolve never again to think twice when given chance to stuff myself in the name of the proletariat!
Group photo (taken by an obviously inferior (Chinese?) camera!) of three of our lunch hosts, our driver and three of our observer partyLunch completed, we still had to complete the "official" part of our mission. We followed one of our hosts, a man named "Turcios", to the local FMLN HQ, where we met for about an hour with the man responsible for the party's election effort in San Miguel, Nelson Quintanilla, as well as with several lesser dignitaries, who explained to us the various vagaries of the local election effort with particular attention to the types of fraud that they expected to have to confront. These include: voting by dead people and by expatriate citizens who somehow manage to vote in El Salvador at the same time that they continue to show up at work (or at least at the day laborer's corner) in N. America, the outright buying of votes through various elaborate schemes, and voting by scores, if not hundreds or even thousands of Central Americans from neighboring countries. All of these fruads, according to Nelson, are part of the reason that the presence of International Observers is so important in this election. I don't know whether or not this comment falls into the category of propaganda, but in any case it worked: my head swelled right up!
By the time we left the (air-conditioned!) FMLN HQ in San Miguel the temperature had cooled off considerably, and our ride back to San Salvador was considerably more pleasant than the outbound leg. We also passed some spectacular scenery as we drove into the setting sun. Several of us tried to capture a piece of it as we zipped along.
View back towards the east over the valley of the Rio Lempa, El Salvador's major river, which, flowing north to south, cuts the country approximately in half.
Did I mention that Mr. Quintanilla issued us all FMLN artistic licenses valid anywhere in the country?
Nadia Marin, one of my fellow Observers, snaps a shot.
Tonantzin, the Aztec sun goddess, ducks modestly behind the ample chest of her mother, the twin-peaked volcano Chinchontepeque, the "twin-breasted mountain". (I'm not making this stuff up!)
Our FMLN escort, a very nice chap named Daniel Navas, and one of the very small minority of pure Native Americans in El Salvador, makes it clear with his finger (and ambiguous with his smile) that he doesn't want his photo taken.
Pickup truck carrying bodies of individuals assisinated by right-wing death squads. (Please see note above about death squads.)
Chinchontepeque just before her daughter Tonantzin's bed time
In case anyone doubted the "twin-breasted" part please have a look at this photo (snapped discreetly through a veil of trees to preserve the family-friendly nature of this blog)
posted by Michael Crowell at 12:28 AM
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