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Thank You for your Generosity! On behalf of the campesino peasants we serve in the Bajo Lempa, thank you for your generosity in responding to the earthquakes that have rocked El Salvador. During the first weeks of the emergency, your donations paid for food, safe drinking water, and badly needed medicine. Your support has allowed the Coordinadora to pass through the emergency phase of this disaster and begin reconstruction. Although the earth keeps shaking, reconstruction has already begun. The Coordinadora is busy repairing homes, and reinforcing them so that they will resist future earthquakes. Shortly, they will begin raising new homes for some of the families who lost everything. We seek to raise an additional $300,000 through the end of the year to assist them in these efforts. Fortunately, providing shelter in El Salvador is much more affordable than here. For $475, what you might pay in one month's rent in the United States, you can repair and reinforce a family's home - making it safe for them to move back in. For $3,500, less than a year's mortgage payments on a modest U.S. house, you can provide a Salvadoran family with a complete home!
Three Earthquakes by Chencho Alas El Salvador has suffered through 3 earthquakes in 36 days.Approximately 1,200 have died and many more remain missing. More than 5,500 were injured. The quakes have destroyed 145,000 homes and damaged 175,000. More than a million people have lost their homes. Drinking water, and blood for the wounded, are in short supply. Infrastructure and farms located along mountainsides were hit hard, accounting for $500 million of a total of $3 billion in losses.
Examples of these explanations exist in the Bible. One of these is the Great Flood (Genesis 6-8). According to the text, "when the Lord saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved." Noah, however, was a good person so God saved him and his family. We find a similar example in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). Because of the population's evil, God chose to destroy them. Aren't these situations similar to what is happening in El Salvador? According to United Nations statistics from 1998, El Salvador held the second place in the world in violence. The 12-year civil war did very little to change the concentration of wealth in the hands of just a few people. Quite the opposite, today we have a "Golden Ring" headed by former President Cristiani which controls all of the country's wealth and dictates government policy. Corruption is a way of life at all levels of power. Under these degenerated conditions, three earthquakes have hit the country over five weeks. Every living being, rich and poor, adult and child, in the city and countryside, lives in fear of another quake or of being buried in their own home. The third earthquake, on February 17, had San Salvador as its epicenter. The best neighborhoods, the safest, just as the worst slums, felt the nearness of death. Will there be a change in the principles, values, or behavior among Salvadorans now faced with life's fragileness? Will they give life new value? Certainly, for those of us who are not there, our sisters and brothers' misfortune is a call to reflection and to demonstrate solidarity. Today, more than ever, thousands of children's hands reach out for water, bread, clothing, and medicine. More than 300,000 families shout at us: "We have no roof over our heads! What will happen to us when the rains come in May?"
EL SALVADOR EARTHQUAKE: DISASTER AND RESPONSE By Harold Baron -- FSSCA Board Chairperson A massive earthquake, one of the world's 20 largest in the past 100 years, struck El Salvador on January 13th. I know it firsthand. When it occurred, I was in a village of Ciudad Romero only 30 miles from the epicenter in a meeting with the peasant organization, the Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa.
I also saw the capacity of a peasant-governed group to respond to disaster in a well organized way. Its efficiency contrasts sharply with the Salvadoran government's bungling efforts which have brought sharp criticism from the Catholic Church, the Spanish Embassy, Mexican relief officials, and most of the country's mayors. When the earth moved and ended our meeting, the Coordinadora's disaster response system went into action within ten minutes. Pickups and cars fanned out to the communities. Only two hours latter we saw the local disaster teams taking inventory of the damage. Within 36 hours the central office had assessments from a majority of the villages, despite major communications difficulties. The Coordinadora, of course, first dealt with the immediate emergency. Unlike the government, its plans did not stop here. While communities still rigged temporary shelters and hauled in drinking water, they started on permanent reconstruction for housing and production. They worked with a strategy their organization had honed two years ago in response to the disaster of similar magnitude caused by Hurricane Mitch. These peasant communities know from experience that food aid over an extended period can undermine local agriculture and create permanent dependency. After Mitch the Coordinadora calculated just how much emergency support they needed to survive until the next harvest. They used the rest of the relief funds to build flood-proof homes and to expand their diversified agricultural program severalfold. Six weeks after the first quake, Coordinadora villages are laying the foundations for homes, restoring fields, and reconstructing shrimp ponds. They have moved from disaster response to building for the future. Salvadoran national politics remains mired in the past. Consequently, the Salvadoran people cannot depend on the government for help. Much as they did two years ago after Hurricane Mitch, they will rely on each other and international non-governmental organizations.
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