Valle Nuevo, Part I

**This is the first in a series of blogs about my trips to Valle Nuevo, a rural community of people in El Salvador who suffered greatly during the country's civil war and who have been rebuilding their lives ever since.***

The directiva of Valle Nuevo met on Tomasa's covered patio. The men wore cotton slacks or jeans, a collar shirt unbuttoned at the top, and a straw hat. Tomasa, the only woman, wore a brown dress with a dirty white apron. She was petite. Her whispy hair was pulled back in a bun; she had dark rings around her eyes, and a kind face. Below her feet, a kitten was breastfeeeding on a cat not much bigger than it. The directiva talked for awhile about tabacco and plastic and potatoes, which they had heard were the tortillas of Bolivia. Then the lawyer came. He wore slacks with a shirt unbottoned at the top and a gold cross around his neck, no hat. After he sat down by the others in a plastic lawn chair, a chicken pooped one inch from his shoe.

They were meeting about the land. Eight years ago, with the help of Shalom Missional Communities, the directiva had bought El Piyachu (the mountain that the people farm), and for eight years they had been trying to divide it legally into family plots. Family plots would mean that they could develop the land in long term ways--grow fruit trees, enrich the soil. It meant they could more easily obtain visas to visit the US. It meant a sense of security--no one could legally kick them off. They were stalled because the engineer who had divided up the plots was witholding the family names that went with each one. He wanted more money up front. It would be difficult to assign plots themselves, since some would necessarily be better than others. They began to talk through it together.

I am learning from the people of Valle Nuevo that the struggle continues always. The night before, Pastor and Rosita talked to Nancy, Gabriela and I over pupusas. They ripped off a piece of the tortilla; steam rose from an exposed edge of the beans inside. They told us about las minas. Two years ago a local journalist had been marytred for opposing Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company that is polluting water sources in the area. "He was disappeared?" we asked. "No, they found his body five days later. His wife was killed too." They rubbed the piece of pupusa in a thin salsa. Then Rosita added, "Es otra guerra, las minas." Another war.

On Tomasa's porch, the rain started. At first I could not see it, only hear plinks on the tin above us. Four scraggly white pullets ran for cover. The rain got louder. Mical and Tomasa moved their lawn chairs closer in. Tomasa waved the chickens away from the kitchen with a cross between a hiss and a tsk.


The struggle continues, and the people of Valle Nuevo face it with the patience they have learned from long suffering. Maybe it was that patience, or maybe only the rain and the lazy meander of the animals, but I felt a sense of peace on that porch in Valle Nuevo. I felt as if I too could continue to struggle, and that the struggle, if not the suffering itself, could enrich my life.

The rain got louder. The meeting became a movie with the sound turned off. They gestured in the air and wrote things down and moved their lips, but I heard nothing. Streams poured down from the edge of the tin roof. The yard filled with brown puddles pocked by craters, the ephemeral imprint of each drop.