San Salvador’s Mayor Discusses L.A.’s Importance

Ask Hector Silva, the Boston-born gynecologist who is the mayor of San Salvador, about politics in his country, and he is likely, as he did with a Los Angeles audience Saturday, to describe the current situation with a slogan from an American cigarette ad: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Silva, whose gray-speckled beard evokes a slight resemblance to Fidel Castro, claims to embody a new kind of leader in a country that was once a focal point of the U.S.-Soviet superpower standoff.

After decades of U.S.-backed authoritarian rule in El Salvador, Silva, 51, a member of the leftist FMLN party, is now mayor of the capital city. The former public health official sounds much like a U.S. local official as he talks about the need to create jobs and fight crime in his hometown.

With the Cold War and El Salvador’s bloody civil war now over, Silva said that ideological conflicts and power plays between nations are of less concern to leaders than common battles against poverty, crime and poor infrastructure.

“More and more the problems we face are the work of cities, not countries,” Silva said.

And Silva’s two-day visit to Los Angeles underscored the common view that Los Angeles is in some ways as important to El Salvador’s future as San Salvador.

About 500,000 Salvadorans have settled in Los Angeles, a population about equal to that of the Salvadoran capital. The money those immigrants send to relatives in El Salvador comprises a large share of the $1.2 billion in annual remittances to the country from Salvadoran Americans.

Those checks and wired money transfers are El Salvador’s largest source of hard currency--double the amount brought in from coffee exports, the country’s next largest source of foreign exchange.

With peace in El Salvador, Silva said he hopes the individual payments Salvadoran Americans send to their families will evolve into investments in businesses.

Now that the Salvadoran government can devote more funds to public works instead of military spending, Silva said, American firms may be able to win contracts in El Salvador. “There are unique opportunities in El Salvador. There are things we will need, like parking meters, that could be supplied by American companies,” he said, adding that a Canadian company was recently hired to build a landfill.

Because El Salvador’s economy is propped up by money from Salvadorans in the United States, the well-being of Salvadorans here is crucial to El Salvador’s future. Silva said it is important that Salvadoran refugees in the United States receive the same opportunity to attain legal permanent resident status as those from Nicaragua and Cuba.

A 1997 law granted amnesty to illegal immigrants from Cuba and Nicaragua, enabling them to apply for so-called green cards. Silva said the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act should be expanded to include Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Salvadorans and Guatemalans who fled U.S.-backed regimes have faced greater scrutiny when seeking refugee status than those from Communist countries.

Roberto Lovato, a Salvadoran activist in Los Angeles, said that legal residency would help to protect Salvadoran immigrants from workplace exploitation and would promote stronger business ties between the countries by allowing more Salvadorans to travel freely between the nations.

In addition to seeking more U.S. capital, Silva asked for help in controlling a common problem: gang violence. Silva said the increase in gang crimes in San Salvador is mainly the result of dire poverty and the massive migration of impoverished youths from rural areas to the cities.

But youths in El Salvador have adopted the names, organizational structure and style of gangs based here, and gang members from Los Angeles are active in San Salvador. “All over San Salvador you see the graffiti [of L.A. gangs],” he said.

Silva said he would like to start youth programs in San Salvador modeled on Los Angeles programs aimed at keeping teenagers out of gangs. He cited sports and arts programs as possible ways to give Salvadoran youths an alternative to gangs.

“If you wake up at 6 a.m. in a slum with rain coming through your roof, you need something to look forward to, a place where you can go for football or theater, where you can be welcome,” he said.