When the Poor Visit the Rich in El Salvador : A protest march takes a rare turn into the world of boutiques and mansions, but was it seen?

The Zona Rosa in San Salvador is where people with money go to enjoy themselves. It is no more than half a mile long, a boulevard lined with chic restaurants, clubs and pricey boutiques, situated in the middle of the Escalon neighborhood, the most exclusive in the city.

Over the past 10 years, I have participated in numerous marches through the streets of San Salvador, walking alongside thousands of campesinos and workers in protest of electoral fraud, military impunity and the killings of my brother Jesuits. The route of those marches usually led us past the old U.S. Embassy and the landmark statue of Christ, Savior of the World (“Salvador del Mundo”), ending up in a demonstration in the plaza of the cathedral. But two weeks ago, things radically changed when thousands of poor people, mostly campesinos and day laborers, gathered at the statue of Salvador del Mundo. This time they were going to march not toward downtown but in the opposite direction, toward Escalon.

At 3:30 p.m., the leaders of many popular organizations were in place at the front of the march, with more than normal security surrounding them. Tension was high for fear that another death-squad type assassination could take place. The march began along Roosevelt Boulevard and wound its way into Escalon. Throughout the neighborhood, servants as well as their employers peered down from mansion windows as the marchers passed. The campesinos, animated by bringing their protest to the city’s rich, began painting on the houses’ delicately decorated facades: “No more death from death squads!”

The stores in the Zona Rosa were almost empty, except for some finely dressed women who refused to acknowledge what was passing in front of them. For their part, the campesinos seemed both amazed and newly recommitted as they gazed at the stores and fancy restaurants, the likes of which most of them had never seen.

As the march continued through Escalon, one could palpably feel what the underlying issues in the coming March elections are all about. The interests of these two groups of people, the marchers and the urban upper class, are poles apart, two world views with two distinct social agendas. As the elections draw near, these two worlds will come into sharper opposition. One world, primarily interested in the construction of American fast-food chains and shining new gas stations, was represented that day by those nervous “we never have enough” women shopping for the latest fashions and pretending not to see who was marching past the windows. The marchers confronted the rich with a reminder of another world: one where most of them still do not have enough land to farm and feed their families, cannot borrow money from the bank because they have not received title to the land they do have, and are still trying to adapt and rebuild the structure of their lives after the daily crucifixion of 12 years of civil war--a war that never quite reached Escalon.

That evening, some of the marchers attended a vigil at the University of Central America. The vigil was held to remember the night four years earlier when soldiers entered the university grounds and brutally killed six priests and two women employees. In their writings and research, these Jesuits had tried to raise awareness of how the human right of survival was being denied to the poor in the countryside, and to argue for sweeping structural changes in Salvadoran society.

The March elections seem to promise that, now more than ever before, some change by peaceful means can take place in El Salvador. But as we stood at the spot where my fellow Jesuits were killed, I pondered how sad it was for this country that once again, while people are trying to resolve their problems peacefully, death squads are striking terror in those working to implement the peace accords.

There have never been truly free elections in El Salvador because there have never been conditions in which those running for office could freely move about and speak their minds without fear of reprisals. Death squad activity, and the Salvadoran military support behind it, must end once and for all if there is to be any hope for real change in El Salvador.

As I listened to testimonies by some of the poor, it seemed me that the power of the poor to use peaceful tactics to achieve peace is so much stronger than the tactics of fear and terror. The poor will be part of the political process, the assassinations of their religious and political leaders notwithstanding. The poor will continue to speak out, to remember, to walk through the streets of Escalon.