Day 2: More History, Artisan Market, on to Berlin
Friday, July 19, 2024
I slept reasonably well and was up in plenty of time for breakfast at 7:00. I'd gone to bed at 9 and woke at 5:30. Our little delegation gradually gathered in the courtyard to have coffee (or tea), chat, journal (me) until breakfast was ready. It's Tim's first time in El Salvador so Kathy was explaining Our Sister Parish, the organization of the mission, and how all the parts work.
Breakfast was in the dining room. We had eggs scrambled with tomato, onion, and green pepper; toast, and a fruit cup of banana slices and watermelon chunks. I'd had a couple cups of tea but decided to switch to coffee. When in Rome, and all that... It was actually not bad.
Alfredo arrived with the bus a little before 8. He started talking to me and something just clicked. He said he didn't remember me from before and asked how long it had been since I was in El Salvador. I told him probably 8 years and I had been here that time with my husband. Also, that I was once in Berlín for 5 weeks teaching English. Mike tried to tell him that my husband had just gotten a kidney transplant but he didn't know how to say that so he looped Kathy in. She explained and Alfredo said it was a gift from God. We all agreed.
We got our bags loaded into the bus and had a 45 minute ride to Parque Cuscatlán. The park has a sculptural mural that depicts El Salvador's history from the indigenous groups that lived here before the Spaniards arrived, independence from Spain in 1825, revolt in the 1920s and 1930s, and the civil war (1980-1992).
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| The 3D mural and memorial wall at Parque Cuscatlán. |
It also has a memorial wall listing, by year, the names of all the civilians who were killed or disappeared during the civil war. Or, at least the 30,000 or so that have been identified. There are thousands more. There is a list of the massacres, too.
The park also has a number of art pieces, sculptures and paintings, as well as a path around the central green space that is used by walkers and joggers, and a workout station. It's a lovely park.
Then, we went to Divina Providencia, the cancer hospital where Oscar Romero was assassinated. Ruby, a Carmelite nun, was our guide. She is one of 2 sisters in permanent residence. We started with the little house where Romero lived as Archbishop for 3 years before he was killed. It's now a museum.
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| The grotto outside the Romero museum at Divina Providencia. |
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| Outside the Romero museum. |
There are 4 small rooms in the house. The first is an entry room that contains some of his effects, and a number of photos of his life and assassination. The Mass he was conducting when he was shot was for a journalist. As a result, it had been attended by many other journalists which is why there are so many photos of the aftermath.
There is a small, narrow space between that room and the room where he slept that contains a small sink. His bedroom is set up as it was when he lived there with a narrow bed, a rocking chair, and a desk space with his typewriter where he prepared his homilies. Just off the bedroom is the bathroom and a closet.
Off the other side of the entry room is what was a guest room. It now contains display cases of the clothes he was wearing when he was shot and horizontal display cases with may of his personal effects. The clothes are still blood-stained, although the stains have faded a lot in the past 40+ years. You can see the single, tiny bullet hole in the fronts. It was an exploding bullet, so the backs are riddles with shrapnel holes.
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| Nancy and Kathy in the room displaying the clothes Romero was wearing when he was assassinated. |
From there, Ruby took us to the church where he was assassinated. The car carrying the sniper drove past the church entrance, turned around and stopped with a clear line of sight to the altar. The congregants saw the bright dot of the laser and heard a pop before the car sped off. It was all over in a second before anyone knew what was going on.
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| The altar area from the front door. |
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| Looking out the front door of the Divina Providencia church. Outside this door is where the sniper's car sat. |
An addition in the church that wasn't there the last I visited was a reliquary containing a fragment of Romero's rib bone.
Ruby also took us into some of the back spaces of the church. In my 13 trips to El Salvador and Kathy's who-knows-how-many (hundreds?) of visits to Divina Providencia, we'd never gotten this part of the tour. We saw the little room where Romero lived before the house was built as well as the sacristy where the priest changes before Mass. Both were maybe a 10' x 10' room. We got the special tour because we were such a small group and the spaces aren't large.
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| The sacristy. |
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| The room where Romero stayed before the house was built. |
We asked Ruby about the Carmelite order and the hospital. The hospital was originally established in 1966. They treat cancer patients free of charge...funding comes from the order and donations. It's a learning hospital so there are students doing their practicums. The Carmelites are also heavily involved in health and education, running a number of high schools in various places around the country.
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| Ruby, one of the Carmelite nuns at Divina Providencia and our guide. |
At 9:55, we went onto our next stop, the University of Central America (UCA "oo-cah"). It's a Jesuit university that was originally established so that the children of the wealthy and elite families of El Salvador could have a better, more liberal education. Ironic, considering why we were there.
The UCA, Laura greeted us, we introduced ourselves and started the tour. She is a marketing major in her second year of 5. As a student, she is required to conduct tours and guide people through their visit to the UCA as part of her program. Her English was excellent and she was very familiar with the history and exhibits.
We started in the Hall of the Martyrs. It's a climate-controlled room containing some artifacts and displays of Oscar Romero and Rutillio Grande, a friend on fellow priest. Rutillio was ambushed and assassinated about a month after Oscar was made archbishop. It was a 'conversion moment' for Oscar, when he started to believe the things Rutillio had been telling him about assassinations, disappearances, and murders.
The major part of the Hall is dedicated to the 6 Jesuit priests who were killed in 1989. The university was considered a hotbed of subversive liberals by the government (the irony...). An elite battalion of the Salvadoran military (trained and formed at the US Army's School of the Americas) stormed the university and executed the 6 priests, their housekeeper and the housekeeper's daughter. The 2 women were killed in the mother's quarters. Several of the men were taken out back, forced to lay face down, and shot. They later found another priest, who was shot in his quarters. A rose garden memorializes the spot where the priests were shot.
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| The rose garden, planted to commemorate the Jesuit priests killed there. |
We also went to the chapel on campus where the priests are entombed.
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| Outside of the chapel |
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| The tombs of the priests killed on campus |
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| The chapel altar |
After we left the UCA, we went to an artisans' market to have lunch and shop for souvenirs. I had a relleno, rice, and a tomato/cucumber/onion salad and a bottle of water for lunch. We all agreed we'd meet at 1:30 to head to Berlín, unless everyone was there sooner.
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| Lunch at the artisans' market |
I was looking for a pair of sandals. I had a pair I'd purchased probably 15 years ago and I loved them but they were falling apart. I found a pair that wasn't exactly what I was looking for but I had trouble finding my size that were comfy. I did finally find a pair for $12 and went to the meeting point, where Mike and Tim were waiting.
Unfortunately, there was a bus parked right behind them that was running and I couldn't take the exhaust fumes for very long so I left to wander the market again. The problem with that was I found more things to buy. I repeated the meeting point, exhaust, shopping cycle a few times before I just had to find somewhere else to wait. Eventually, everyone had gathered and we got in the bus for the 2-hour drive to Berlín.
My final purchase was at one of the booths that had wines made from various fruits and things...nances, jocotes, hibiscus flowers, ginger, coffee, etc. I was intrigued and had a tiny sample of all of them. Then, the vendor pulled out what she called "Salvadoran moonshine." She actually said "moonshine" in English. I asked her if they actually used the English word for it. She said it was either that or the same phrase in Spanish, luz de luna. I bought a bottle of the ginger wine. It was a bit sweeter than I like in wine but I do love ginger.
I opened the wine after I got home and
shared it with Al while I told him about the trip
It took a while to get out of San Salvador but then we were on the Pan American highway...an almost 19,000 mile road that stretches between Alaska and the southern point of South America. There is about a 60-mile gap around the Panama-Colombia border. We stayed on the PanAm for all but the final 20 minutes or so where we left the highway to head up the mountain to Berlín.
A good chunk of the highway closer to San Salvador was a divided 4-lane. But then it went down to a windy 2-lane that was often slower as trucks had to slow down going up mountains. All along the route, there would be people selling things...bottles of honey, bags of beans (white, red, or black in color-coordinated stacks), bananas, coconuts, onions, watermelon, other types of fruits...whatever was produced in that area. The shoulders of the highway are also used to dry corn, beans, or coffee. People will spread out the seeds on the pavement to dry in the sun before sweeping it up at the end of the day to take home...repeating as needed until it's dry enough.
In the lower country, we saw sugar cane fields. They won't be ready for harvest until the end of the year so it wouldn't flower for another month or so. During harvest season, big trucks carrying the cut cane flood the highway as they haul it to processing plants.
We stopped along the way to take pictures of the San Vicente volcano (Chichontepec). The peak was covered in clouds and it was kind of hazy so it wasn't the best view of it but it was the one we got. It's one of about 20 volcanoes in El Salvador. A handful of them are still active. There were vultures (sopelotes) riding thermals, one geothermal vent, and storm clouds coming in.
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| Tim, Mike, Nancy, and Kathy |
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| The San Vincente volcano in a cap of clouds |
Shower, then bed, to round out another full day.
