Learning from the war....or not?

Ruth Baum de Feldman discusses the impact of the Salvadoran Civil War and how it affects contemporary US and Salvadoran society.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(Now, when you came back after living in the States and working in the area of social services and—I haven’t asked you too much about your career, did you feel more sensitized to the fact that poverty is such a problem here, or is that something you always grew up with?)

That was always something I grew up with, but I never, ever have felt that poverty as a liability. The poverty in the states is more of a liability. The poverty here at the time was not one of welfare that it is the hopelessness one. The poor here had hope for a better life and were very hard workers. Poverty people with an umph behind have great hope and they will make a good life. You see many examples of that. It depends if the poverty, they feel is one of feeling like a victim or if they believe, “I’m going to rise and get out of this and make something.” It’s the frame of mind that will allow for that person to move ahead. You can have somebody that has some amount of money and always feel that they are in poverty and feel very, very unhappy and not being able to move. True, there is poverty that is incredible. That is very hard to move out if you don’t have people helping and mentoring you. That’s the big thing with poverty. That’s what I do in the States. I always say, poverty, first of all, it is a reality, but it is also a frame of mind. You cannot get out of poverty if you don’t have mentors showing you the road. That is what we need, mentors showing the road to getting out of it.

(Now, when you’re in Dallas, I assume that you’re very aware of the fact that there are many of your countrymen and -women in Dallas with you. How has that changed your home? How has that changed your home there, your home here?)

Oh, it has changed it dramatically. Over there, it’s exciting to see them growing. Because they are growing. They’re developing their own businesses, and businesses that are amazing how they are creating them. Amazing what they have done to both countries. El Salvador has turned into a consumer state and welfare state at the same time. They don’t know what it is to work any more. This people here were the hard workers. We were famous for being hard workers. Those that have gone are very, very hard workers. They are sending their money here. Can you imagine anybody in the States who’s earning less than minimum wage sending at least one-fourth or one-third of their money every month to their family members? They will look at you and say you’re crazy. “I cannot live from paycheck to paycheck.” But our people do. Not the middle class that goes, or the upper class. They don’t send the money to their poor relatives. It’s the poor that are keeping this country afloat.

(Why is that, why do you think?)

It’s a very interesting thing. The poor are going to better their life, they think. The others are, too. But they have never felt that their family needs their help. These ones do. They know that if they leave their grandmother, their mother, their parents, they’ll sink if they don’t send help. And many of them leave their children. So this is a different thing. The middle class, they all get up and they go. So it’s very different. They might send a little bit to help their parents if they need it, or a brother or a sister, but not helping what the poor families do. And they’re the ones that are keeping this country afloat.

(Do you see a lot of changes here from before the war, like when you came back, did you see a lot of things change?)

I might be really stepping out and saying, we haven’t learned a thing. The war did not teach us anything. We’re pretty much back in the same road.

(What is the same road?)

The same road is that there is a group—instead of being families, now the same groups are getting bigger and wealthier, and the other ones are leaving, leaving, leaving, until something explodes. But the danger here is that these groups—the people that are staying now are stuck and the middle class is growing slower. And that is tragic for a country. The middle class needs to grow. So we’re in a tough position. But as far as, did we learn anything during the war? I don’t think so. I really don’t.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.