Alberta, August/agosto 2008
18
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
The Remittance Industry:
The 12 year civil war in El Salvador,
officially from 1980-1992, facilitated an
exodus from the country. As part of its cold-
war foreign policy, the US played a key role
in prolonging the war by supporting the
Salvadoran military throughout the 1980s
during widespread persecution and execution
of peasants, leftists, and anyone agitating for
social change (or even being suspected of
it). A rampant culture of impunity, combined
with poverty and desperation after the war
has led to constistantly high levels of
migration. Strict immigration laws have
punished those looking for livelihood
improvements and deportation has spawned
El Salvador's serious gang problem, further
trapping the country in a cycle of violence,
poverty, and... more immigration. An
important lynch-pin in this cycle is
remittances or remesas as they are known in
Spanish: money sent home by working
immigrants abroad.
El Salvador's Civil War Legacy
Leonora Hernandez squints through the fog bank
to keep us on the winding trail over the mountains in
Morazán Department, located in the far northeast
corner of El Salvador. A guide with Prodetour, a
community-based tourism association, Leonora is
leading us on a hike through El Salvador`s civil war
history and at the same time, giving us her
assessment of its future. We make our way from a
former FMLN (or Frente Farabundo Martí para la
Liberación Nacional, the resistance group and now
opposition political party) encampment to the village of
El Mozote, a remote village where more than 800
people were massacred by the US-supported El
Salvadoran Ejercito Nacional, or National Army in
1981 for being suspected FMLN sympathizers; a
touching memorial now marks the spot. Leonora, born
in 1972, grew up in a nearby village, and shares her
own story.
"I left school after 6th grade, at age 15, to join
the FMLN. I didn't know what else to do, people were
hungry, I was hungry. I hugged my mom before I
headed deep into the mountains and said, `see you
soon.' I didn't see her again for five years." Leonora
trained in communications with the FMLN, learned to
make radio broadcasts, and eventually worked with
Radio Venceremos, the clandestine radio program
that kept civilians in touch with guerrilla actions and
intentions. She believed that the revolution could
make things better, but is now confronted with a
global economic crisis out of her control. As the cost
of oil rises, the cost of El Salvador's `canasta basica,'
or basic basket of necessities, rises too. Leonora
just got electricity in her home last year, fifteen years
after the Peace Accords were signed in 1992, and
decades since the guerrillas rose up in protest of the
living conditions of the poor. Despite a reasonably
paying job as a guide where she gets to share her
experience with curious internationals, the benefits of
the revolution have not reached people like Leonora
the way they were promised.
Where Revolution Failed,
Remittances Succeed
Remittances from Salvadorans have stepped in
to fill the gap in meeting daily needs that neither the
government, nor the international community have
managed to fulfill in the post war reconstruction
process. In 2006, $2.5 billion, or roughly 17% of GDP,
was sent by immigrants back to El Salvador in the
form of remittances, and three quarters of this money
was spent on direct consumer spending. Just a year
later, El Salvador received more than $3.6 billion in
remittances. In addition to supplementing basic
household expenses such as food, electricity and
water bills, much of the remittance money is going to
consumer spending on imports. As the most densely
populated country with the smallest slice of land in
Central America, El Salvador is nowhere near self
sufficient in food, and increased food imports from
Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica have eaten into
some of the remittance money, but imports from the
US also gobble up a substantial portion. In fact, El
Salvador spent more than a quarter of its $7.6 billion
of imports on products from the US. Meanwhile, El
Salvador only exports $4 billion of goods, which
highlights the troubling nature of relying on imports. In
light of the fact that more than 2.5 million Salvadorans
currently live in the US in search of greater earning
power, the cyclical nature of their hard earned
remittances flowing back out of the country through
import purchases is problematic.
El Salvador's Post-War Struggle
While some families do set aside
remittance money for home construction
or small business ventures, the majority do not. As
Leonora told us, `A lot of families get $500 from their
family in the US on a Thursday, and on Friday they
are at Pizza Hut. By the end of the weekend, there is
no more money.` All of this spending on imported
goods and going to international companies translates
into remittance money quickly leaving El Salvador, and
not circulating within the local economy. Its not just
the success of marketing campaigns making those in
the Global South feel they should purchase Northern
goods to demonstrate their affluence and gain social
status. Common in post war countries is a lack of
saving culture - when people have seen everything
they've worked for destroyed through war, sometimes
repeatedly, it becomes easier to use resources for
short term, or immediate gratification that brings
status rather than planning for long term security. The
near future, not to mention five years from now, can
appear too uncertain for those who have had previous
long term plans undermined.
Yet the use of remittances for consumer
spending also indicates that poverty is just around the
corner, and thus there is increased motivation for
additional family members to immigrate to keep the
remittance money flowing. Though the numbers are
difficult to know for sure, people we spoke to said that
anywhere from 400 to 750 Salvadorans leave the
country each day (with or without proper
documentation) in search of greater economic
security.
An education specialist we spoke with who was
active in the FMLN and served time as a prisoner of
the National Army, told us that "if it weren't for
remittances, people would pick up arms again. In real
terms people are worse off than they were before the
war." The minimum wage in El Salvador has
decreased in real terms over the last 10 years from
$96.70 per month in 1997 to $93.36 in 2007.
Meanwhile, the price of the basic basket of staple
foods to feed a family has risen sharply. In the last
year alone, the urban canasta basica, which consists
of rice, beans, coffee, milk, meat, eggs and cooking
oil, rose more than 12% to $159.77, while in rural
areas, it rose more than 22% to $122.78 per month.
This increase reflects an international trend in food
prices and is in part a function of the unprecedented
jump in the price of oil. (The same rise in oil and
gasoline sparked a recent nationwide transportation
strike in Nicaragua. It does not take long to see that
the price of food is higher than the local minimum
wage, which helps explain why the almost one quarter
of Salvadorans that receive remittances spend so
much on consumer goods. In short, many cannot
afford to meet even basic needs without remittances.
Low salaries at home and the myth of money flowing
easily from the US also helps explain why so many
people attempt to leave El Salvador for the higher
wages in the US.
A pick-up heading north at a
Central American border
crossing.
The Perils of Going
This is not an easy time for Central Americans
trying to get to the US. Visa applications cost a non-
refundable $131, close to the price of the monthly
canasta basica, and the vast majority of people that
apply for a visa are denied. Those attempting to enter
the US without documents face a range of challenges:
from abuse by coyotes (or immigration `facilitators'
that charge thousands of dollars to get to the US), to
dehydration and starvation on the Mexico/US
border, to deportation if caught. There has
been an overall increase in the militarization
of the US Mexico border over the last 10
years, and the US government now
considers being on US soil without proper
documentation a federal offense, at times
mandating several months of jail time before
deportation. In 2006, more than 250,000
Central Americans were deported from
Mexico and another 50,000 from the US;
more than 20,000 of these were Salvadoran.
During the same year a staggering 514,000
Mexicans were deported from the US. Once
a person reaches the US, their safety is
hardly guaranteed, as the US Citizen and
Immigration Services (managed by the
Department of Homeland Security), raids
border towns and work places. These raids
have increased substantially over the last
several months, recently demonstrated in the
case of 300 undocumented workers being
arrested in an Iowa factory early in May
2008.
There is no one profile of the kind of person who
decides to try their luck jumping the border - the lure
of remittances gets to many. We were surprised
when a 34 year old El Salvadorian police officer we
were speaking with, told us about his own attempt to
go north. Unsatisfied with his ability to provide for his
wife and three kids on his $450 per month salary, he
paid a coyote to get into the US without a visa last
June. A man charged with upholding the law in his
own country, and accustomed to the power and
prestige that comes with the job, it was not an easy
transition to make himself vulnerable and be
considered `illegal.' He was quickly arrested by US
immigration officials in San Antonio, Texas and was
appalled at the human rights violations of immigrants
in detention. ´When I saw the immigration guards
beating other people in custody, I spoke up. I said
that I am a police officer in my country and that this is
not humane treatment.´ Unfortunately, the immigration
officials did not appreciate his comments, and he was
deliberately held for four months in custody to punish
him for speaking out.
The Perils of Staying
Because of the incidence of child soldiering
during El Salvador's civil war, families that could sent
their young children (boys especially) to live abroad.
In Los Angeles, California, these children underwent
adolescence far from the protection of family and after
being terrorized by Mexican gangs (itself a
continuation of gang violence as survival technique),
they formed the only community they could to afford
themselves protection: las maras, or gangs. With
more than 300 gangs operating in El Salvador, the two
largest, "18th Street" and "Mara Salvatrucha," are
based in Los Angeles. But since the US government
started deporting green-card holders with criminal
records, many convicted gang members were sent
back to El Salvador. Unaccustomed to life in El
Salvador after years abroad, and used to the level of
power and revenue gang activities has brought them in
the US, it did not take long for these gangs to wreak
havoc in El Salvador. The gang problems have gifted
the capital, San Salvador, one of the highest murder
rates in the world - roughly 10 murders per day in
2006 - and have not made average Salvadorans feel
more secure in an already rough post war transition.
Of course, not all of El Salvador reels from gang
violence and not everyone wants to leave. People we
spoke with were adept at analyzing their country's
complex situation, and some Salvadorans are joining
the ranks of the middle and upper class. Evident in
San Salvador's wealth is the fact that some are doing
quite well under `free' trade and international business
policies of the past 15 years, though the shantytowns
tell the other side of the story. While the draw to
immigrate is painted by some as the only answer to
their problems, the remittance industry, and the
historic and ongoing dependence on the US,
translates into complex relationships for Salvadorans
today.
Now back at his job as a police officer after
being deported from the US, Enrique just shrugged
when asked if he would try to cross the border again.
Though the risks of immigrating are great, the benefits
of working in the US and sending remittances back to
one's family have not disappeared, and he may try his
luck again.
Mneesha Gellman and Josh
Dankoff (upsidedownworld.org)