Compañeros by Gatlin Gatlin

Author:Gatlin, Gatlin [Gatlin, Gatlin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, Central America, Religion, Christianity, General
ISBN: 9781532619816
Google: XYZCDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2017-11-17T22:19:59+00:00

By that Monday morning the visitation had been underway for almost a week. Tomasa, Salomé, and Margarita had spent time prior to the weekend reunion getting to know the Waco area and other parts of the extended SMC family. Nancy had taken them to the World Hunger Relief, Inc., (WHRI) farm just outside of town where they spent an afternoon visiting with Neil Miller, the executive director who was also a Hope Fellowship member. Neil explained the farm’s training programs and demonstration efforts and heard from the directiva members, particularly Salomé, about the challenges campesinos were facing in producing cash crops.

On Wednesday evening Hope Fellowship had hosted a conversation in its meeting house between the Salvadoran guests and Baylor University students studying economics as well as early SMC arrivals. Margarita opened the session with a reading of some of her poetry. Tomasa spoke next, telling their story of the flight across the Lempa, the years of exile in Honduras, and their return in 1989 when peace and the resolution of the civil war were being negotiated. Many of them had carried salvaged lumber from the refugee camp and with no tools built homes, piecing together ill-fitting boards and filling the cracks with mud. Since those earliest days, she explained, there had been many development efforts in their community.

Someone asked about Habitat for Humanity. A Habitat representative had been to the community in recent months, Tomasa responded, but the Habitat model, which requires repayment, did not seem feasible due to the absence of any cash economy in Valle Nuevo.

Salomé then took the floor to share about their economic situation and how the free trade agreement with the United States (in English known as the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA) and government-subsidized imports had driven down the local price of corn. What had worked for generations would no longer produce income. The outlay to grow a bushel of corn had become greater than the revenue it produced.

Some university students from the economics department had a number of questions. Salomé carefully walked through all of his costs ending with a clear conclusion: it was impossible to make a living by growing corn. One student made the point that markets change and producers have to adjust and change, or . . . or. . . . The speaker did not want to finish his sentence when he realized he was about to repudiate Salomé’s life. How was a campesino to adapt? The impossibility of the situation hung in silence before everyone in the room. A local economy had been destroyed. There were no easy answers.

Salomé cocked his head, smiled, extended his arms to either side, and held his hands open as though giving a blessing. He then said, simply and softly, without bitterness or rancor, “Somos el cristo en la cruz del tratado de libre comercio—We are the christ on the cross of free trade.” The SMC members in the room could not help but recall Christ’s command, to “take up the cross and follow me (Matt 10:38).

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