peace sem paper

8/6/2019 Peace Sem Paper

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Ever-Present Past: Moving Forward in Post-Disaster El Salvador

Jenna Knapp

Senior Seminar Paper

Spring 2010


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For three hours we traversed downward over gutted mountainous terrain carrying onlywhat would fit on our backs. We passed entire communities sitting uneasily on church

floors, their homes reduced to rubble. They showed us where theyd dug her baby out

from beneath layers of mountainside when dawn chased away the night. They pointed to

the slope he was fumbling up to reach his mother before he, too, was buried. They

needed the water we carried yet they sent us further down the mountainside to JoyaGrande, where lines of people waited for the meager rations wed managed to provide.

Their pilas had run dry and they were no longer sweatingthere was nothing to sweat.Several chaotic hours later they dispersed, some with beans, rice, oil, and water, and

others empty-handed. Yet for once, the shocked deliverers of aid dared not merely patch

up a broken system, and before forging ahead they first looked deeply behind

Natural disasters have been affecting the world since its origin, yet they have recently

begun to occur with alarming frequency and catastrophic effects due to trends such as global

climate change, deforestation, and the advancement of a neoliberal agenda. As the natural

environment becomes increasingly decimated in todays world, it is unable to protect the life

within it, especially in times of disasters. One needs only to turn on the news to hear of the latest

flood, earthquake, or hurricane affecting communities across the globe. World-over, the effects

of global climate change and the free market agenda have begun to reach a tipping point by

combining with existing tensions and entrenched poverty causing regional conflicts and a

squabble for resources (Green 2008: 261). Moreover, by 2015 there will be an estimated fifty

percent increase in the number of people affected by disasters, as a result of global climate

change, and the poor will be disproportionately affected (Green 2009: 261). In light of this

alarming trend and its implications for the worlds poor, it is essential to understand the way in

which disasters break open the normal and expose the cracks in a society hidden beneath

layers of structural violence and inequality. Thus, post-disaster reconstruction and prevention

efforts must be approached through the lens of strategic peacebuilding rather than through

reactionary effort to patch up existing inequalities and reconstruct the status quo. Strategic

peacebuilding demands a shift in common conceptions oftime insomuch as the past and the


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potential of a shared future are inextricably linked in the present moment. A careful examination

of the effects of the November 8, 2009 Hurricane Ida in the municipality of Santiago

Texacuangos, El Salvador, through the lens of this timeframe will serve to illuminate the present

situation in light of the past, as well as the pathway forward throughFundacin CEIBA towards

ajustpeace in the wake of disaster.

Hurricane Ida: Highlighter of Hidden Inequality

On November 8, 2009, El Salvador experienced heavy rains and mudslides due to a low

pressure system in the Pacific that was indirectly linked to Hurricane Ida, which had passed the

country three days prior (BBC 2009). President Mauricio Funes claimed that the damage from

the flooding was incalculable (BBC 2009). In the days following the landslides, rescue

workers rushed to pull survivors out of collapsed homes, but impassible bridges and

infrastructure in 7 of the countrys 14 municipalities hindered rescue efforts. As a result of the

disaster, 194 Salvadorans were reported dead, and 15,000 people were left homeless. This

estimate does not take into account those whose homes were severely damaged outside of the

storms epicenter. One such municipality, Santiago Texacuangos, sustained considerable damage

yet was largely left off of the map for aid because it was not located at the epicenter of the storm.

In the weeks following the disaster, UN aid was mobilized for the districts of San Vicente and

Verapaz, where the storm had wreaked the most destruction, but the people of Santiago

Texacuangos were left to deal with the post-disaster reality largely on their own.

As liberation theologian and Salvadoran resident Jon Sobrino predicts, the media

portrayed this disaster largely as a natural catastrophe, which caused overwhelming physical,

personal, and psychological damage that must be met with international aid. However, as

Sobrino points out, this conventional view is reductive and places the cause of the destruction


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and misfortune in the natural, involving no historical-social responsibilities (2006: 14). In reality,

while tragedies like hurricanes have natural causes, Their unequal impact stems from the things

people do with each other, to each other, and against each other. The tragedy is largely the work

of our own hands. We shape the planet with massive, cruel, and lasting injustice (Sobrino 2006:

3). Without acknowledging the injustice that creates the preexisting conditions for vulnerability

to disaster, the magnitude of the everyday suffering of the poor is concealed, as if this were not

essential to the reality of the hurricane.

When viewed through the lens of strategic peacebuilding, however, it becomes clear that

the hurricane serves to highlight the way in which El Salvador, and Santiago Texacuangos in

particular, lack a sustainablejustpeace. In their book, Strategies of Peace, Daniel Philpott and

Gerald Powers describejustpeace as the dynamic state of affairs in which the reduction and

management of violence and the achievement of social and economic justice are undertaken as

mutual, reinforcing dimensions of constructive change (2010: 23). Efforts to achieve such a

peace in the present and the future will inevitably fail without a careful analysis that explores

why ajustpeace has proved to be elusive in El Salvador for centuries. As was the case following

Hurricane Ida, however, the NGO rhetoric surrounded the dilemma between doing prevention

work for future generations and providing physical aid to those immediately affected by the

disaster. The predicament, posed in this way, largely ignores the past. Rather than seeking to

locate and understand a communitys narrative, aid workers rushed to begin projects with strict

timelines through which to funnel donations under the assumption that the problem to be

addressed began with the current crisis. Such projects reduce time to its narrowest configurations

and fail to recognize and embrace its multidimensionality (Lederach 2005: 148). Contrary to the

common tendency of relief agencies to use the disaster as a starting point from which to proceed


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towards results-driven reconstruction, strategic peacebuilding demands a dramatically different

notion of time in the rebuilding of a ruptured society. As John Paul Lederach points out, We

have the capacity to remember but not to change the past, and the capacity to imagine a different

future but not to fully control it. The web of life is juxtaposed between these two realities of

time, between memory and potentiality herein lies the place of narrative (2005: 148).

Following any disaster, it is essential to uncover this narrative so as to take part in reconstruction,

or better put, the art of restorying (Lederach 2005: 148).

Ever-present Past

In Santiago Texacuangos, it quickly became apparent that the present was in fact

pregnant with the events of the past. According to African philosopher John Mbiti, The past is

not dead. It is alive and present (Lederach 2005: 136). This manifested itself in the days and

months following the disaster as historical fears and divisions played out in the politics of aid

and organization in the region, revealing the extent to which the past is both visible from and

acting on the present situation. A careful examination of the role of narrative, remembered

history, lived history and recent events in shaping the present reality in the community of

Santiago Texacuangos will serve to illuminate the way in which the present crisis should be

approached through a peacebuilding framework. This process will shed light on the way in

which disasters reveal layers of structural violence in need of strategic solutions. The following

explorations will by no means exhaust the historical structures and events that shape the present

reality in the region, but they will provide a sketch of the background necessary for the

beginnings of strategic peacebuilding post Hurricane Ida.


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Narrative: Land Stripped of Voice and Voices Stripped of Land

According to peacebuilder John Paul Lederach, a peoples narrative is the deepest

history, stretching back to time immemorial that creates the formative story of who we are as

people and place (2005: 143). Narrative lenses explore the interpretation and understanding of

meaning in an expanded view of time and the development of group identity over generations

tracing to the stories of origin. As is typically the case in post-colonial settings, much of the

Salvadoran narrative is marked by exploitation and repressed resistance. Since the Spanish

colonization of El Salvador, the narrative of the Salvadoran people has largely been one of

artificially imposed human hunger, land shortage, and environmental degradation due to

centuries of exploitation. The collective identity of Salvadoran indigenous heritage was largely

and intentionally destroyed in 1881, when Salvadoran President Zaldivar expropriated the

communal land used for coffee production so that a small group of elite coffee producers could

expand their holdings (Wisner 2001: 253). Ever since this seizure of indigenous land, Salvadoran

farmers have been working on tiny plots of land and selling their work to large landowners.

This piece of the Salvadoran narrative is extremely visible in the structuring of land usage

in Santiago Texacuangos today, as farmers continue to work on miniscule plots of land owned by

large landowners. Moreover, they are forced to rotate plots every year, thus providing no

economic incentive to invest in the land by creating water drainage irrigation systems or using

organic agricultural techniques (Tellman: 2010). Thus, the land has been stripped of its once

fertile and reverenced voice and has descended into notoriety as the most degraded and

deforested land in all of Central America (Wisner 2001: 253). In addition to environmental

destruction due to colonial forces, however, the Central American isthmus is one of the most

disaster prone areas in the world, which has led to repeated natural disasters in the region.


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According to Carlos Guerrero, Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources of El

Salvador, there have been over 4000 natural events such as landslides and earthquakes that have

impacted the population negatively in the past 110 years (2008: 1). Thus, disasters and the race

to recovery are age-old concepts in the Salvadoran narrative. However, disaster recovery has

traditionally signaled merely the permanence of supposedly temporary housing and

reconstruction of the status quo, at best, as the examination of recent events in Salvadoran

history will reveal.

Remembered History: Chosen Trauma Reproduces Fear

While narrative shapes a people through stories of origin, a communitys remembered

history is kept alive and present by what is remembered from a groups topographic map of

time (Lederach 2005: 142). In the groups view of history, certain events stand out, that is, they

rise to a level of heightened recognition. These events shape and form the collective social

identity by highlighting moments in history when the story of peoples self understanding, was

transformed in unexpected ways, disrupted, or even destroyed. Such remembered incidents are

commonly referred to in conflict literature as chosen trauma (Lederach 2005: 142). In Santiago

Texacuangos, natives of the area carry the memory of the devastating massacre in 1932 that

ensued in the municipality when Augustin Farabundo Marti led an uprising against the regions

oppressive landowners and military outposts. This peasant uprising followed the dramatically

decreased wages in light of the collapse of coffee prices during the great depression. In an effort

to quell this manifestation of discontent, the Salvadoran military, National Guard, and vigilante

groups killed 30,000 Salvadoran peasants in the course of six days (Keogh 1982: 7). This

massacre was fueled by racial hatred and turned into ethnocide in which Indians were seen as

dispensable, sub-human, plentiful, and thus replaceable (Keogh 1982: 14). The memories of this


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brutal massacre remain etched in the minds of the eldest members of the community of Santiago

Texacuangos and have been transported into the collective psyche of the community identity and

passed down through generations. This chosen trauma now forms the concept of memory in this

community and manifests itself in a deep-seeded fear of organized resistance to oppression, even

if organization is non-violent (Tellman 2010). Thus, in the wake of Hurricane Ida, many

community members carry an unconscious fear of organization to demand the communitys

rights from the municipal government because of this embedded trauma in the communitys

remembered history. As the next section will explore, there are further layers of even more

recent violence that keep the community from organizing to demand justice from the Salvadoran

state.

Lived History: Resistance Broken and Relocated

While native inhabitants of Santiago Texacuangos carry the chosen trauma of the 1932

massacre in their collective memory, many of the regions middle aged and elderly residents are

internally displaced persons who still nurse more recent traumatic wounds from the countrys 12-

year civil war. These memories comprise much of the communitys lived history. According to

Lederach, lived experiences create, recreate, and reinforce the story of our collective life, which

is embedded in the patterns that accompany our community. These stories have flesh and blood

attached to them and they are often repeated into the next generation (2005: 141). For those who

came as refugees from Chalatenango1, the predominant stories which fill their lived histories are

those of flight in the midst of death, brutality, mistrust, and fear which dominated their rural

communities throughout the war that lasted from 1980-1992, though violence began much earlier

and continued far beyond these official dates. In short, the civil war began over similar

1Mountainous region on the countrys northern border with Hondurs where the majority of the war was fought.

Refugees from this area ended up resettling temporarily in Santiago Texacuangos 18 years ago.


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This was precisely the case following Hurricane Ida, as organizations like the World Food

Program and Catholic Relief Services distributed aid through conservative Church and

government channels that was then distributed solely to ARENA supporters, many of whom

were not affected by the hurricane (Tellman 2010). Without strategic knowledge of the

underlying biases and socio-historical factors at play in affected communities, millions of dollars

of aid are poured into a political game while the poor majority remains without basic necessities.

Given their past as refugees, when provided with trauma therapy in the wake of

Hurricane Ida, many community residents began sharing stories of the war, which they have

never had the space to heal. Throughout the war they shared the narrative of resistance and a

renewed sense of hope in the future based largely on the empowerment found in Christian base

communities throughout the countryside. Additionally, their narrative of resistance and popular

power gained the support of figures like Archbishop Oscar Romero who called for an end to the

violent repression of El Salvadors poor and the beginnings of an age of justice and equity.

However, for many people of Chalatenango, this narrative of resistance was broken when they

were forced to leave behind their homes and lives to move to the temporary housing on the

steep mountainous ridges of Santiago Texacuangos. As John Paul Lederach emphasizes, When

deep narrative is broken, the journey towards the past that lies before us is marginalized,

truncated. We lose more than just the thoughts of a few old people. We lose our bearings. We

lose the capacity to find our place in this world. And we lose the capacity to find our way back to

humanity (2005: 147). Thus, when it comes to restorying the narrative of the lives of the people

in Santiago Texacuangos following Hurricane Ida, it is essential to keep in mind that for many of

these residents, their meaning, identity, and place in history was profoundly altered, if not lost,

when they moved to the region 18 years ago. The nature of the protracted conflict, designed by


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the US government as low-intensity warfare so that neither side would prevail, but the rebels

would be kept at bay, carved deep scars of loss and insecurity into many of Santiago

Texacuangos current residents. These wounds must be addressed in conjunction with scars from

the disaster in order for community organization and unity to become a reality without the lived

history of violence replicating itself in the next generation (as has already begun to occur). Given

the fact that much of the communitys lived history is filled with violence, it is not surprising that

the youngest generation is now turning to gang violence in the absence of viable income

generating alternatives. Without taking this complexity into account, short-sited efforts at post-

disaster reconstruction will overlook historical trauma and community divisions that beg for

attention if communities are to organize and move forward towards a sustainable, shared future.

Recent Trends and Events: Free Market Failure from Mitch to Ida

The timeframe closest to the present moment, in Lederachs explanation, is described by

recent trends and events to which people from a given setting often refer as they explain why a

given situation is so explosive. This circle of recent events lifts out the most visible expressions

of political, military, social, and economic conflicts (2005: 141). For the sake of this study,

recent events will date back as far as Hurricane Mitch in 1998, since this storm and its

aftermath are commonly referred to in reference to the current failures of El Salvadors

infrastructure to absorb the shock of disasters. While there are a plethora of recent events that

affect the current situation of vulnerability in El Salvador, the most important issues to this study

are the aftermath of 1998 Hurricane Mitch and the 2001 earthquake, the neoliberal development

agenda in El Salvador, and global climate change.

Hurricane Mitch hit El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize in 1998

wreaking destruction and havoc in each of these countries. However, the recovery plan following


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this hurricane took a top-down approach based on empty rhetoric of mitigation and prevention

that had little to do with addressing the root causes of the disaster such as political and economic

marginality. The Post-Mitch declaration signed in Stockholm in 1999 called for partnership to

1) Reduce social and ecological vulnerability of the region

2) Consolidate democracy and good governance

3) Promote respect for human rights4) Coordinate donor efforts

5) Intensify efforts to reduce external debt (G16 1: 1999).

While these ambitious goals look appealing on paper, they remained largely empty

rhetoric of the top-level actors in El Salvador and little effort was made to strengthen the

municipal government and community capacity throughout the country. A strategic

peacebuilding approach would demand that in light of these recent events, multiple actors should

leverage their support and various capabilities in order to overhaul the dysfunctional disaster

prevention and response system in El Salvador. However, in a country inextricably tied to the

gods of the free market, such an approach is certainly not welcome, as it challenges the economic

power of those who benefit from the free market system while the countrys laborers are forced

to struggle forward to cultivate the small plots of land on which they tenuously exist. Due to its

adherence to an extreme form of neoliberal, free market ideology, which deepened with the

signing of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005, the Salvadoran

government has continuously failed to implement mitigation and preventative actions. Despite

the rhetoric surrounding sustainable livelihood security following Hurricane Mitch, government

policy only allocated two percent of agricultural credit to those who were growing food (Wisner

2001: 257). In order to avoid the historically volatile subject of land tenure, the government

focused on constructing new dams, levies2, and blocked a law in the national assembly that

would have established a modern national system for prevention and immediate response to

2Produced largely by international contractors in the spirit of neoliberalism.


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disasters (GOES 1: 1999).

In the spirit of neoliberal reforms, the Salvadoran government has failed to adopt UN

recommendations such as land acquisition for the resettlement of former combatants and

survivors of disasters alike. Instead, they have pushed forward towards the privatization of

government functions, openness to foreign investment while their local government branches

govern communities with no zoning laws nor access to affordable healthcare. Thus, when an

earthquake rocked the country in 2001 it did not come as a shock that the temporary housing

from the hurricane was the first to crumble. In Santiago Texacuangos, mudslides plagued the

region surrounding Lake Ilopango during this earthquake, as a precursor of what was to come in

2009. Throughout each of these subsequent disasters the government has had access to risk

maps, which clearly demarcate areas that are at high risk for landslides, yet this information is

not disseminated at the local level.3 Efforts geared towards disaster prevention at the national

level have also proven largely unsuccessful. This is evidenced by the Salvadoran governments

presentation in Madrid following the 2001 Hurricane Mitch that 1.46 billion dollars would go

towards its reconstruction projects, which had little to do with reducing social and economic

vulnerability by providing better access to healthcare, water, sanitation and sustainable

livelihoods. Additionally, only three percent of this funding was allocated towards

environmental sustainability projects (Wisner 2001: 258-260). Even if funding were to be

allocated to such projects, the municipal government lacks the professional training and

personnel to carry out these tasks.

In El Salvador, as in much of the world, development has been conflated with

westernization and its champions have succeeded over the years in imposing western models

3See Appendix A for risk map of Santiago Texacuangos produced by a Swiss NGO in 2005, discovered after

Hurricane Ida. NGOs have paid to relocate up to 500 families in the most vulnerable areas and local governments

have consistently pocketed this money without relocating families (Tellman 2010).


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of healthcare, education, agriculture, and economics, under the false assumption that such

models are inherently superior to the existing backwardness of preexisting systems and

practices in El Salvador. Free trade agreements have opened up markets that have undermined

effective states ability to protect their own land. In the region of Santiago Texacuangos

bordering lake Ilopango, large developers are already planning to build resorts capable of

withstanding flooding in the spaces evacuated by environmental refugees (Tellman 2010). Such

plans will only increase the vulnerability of the land for those who remain in the region.

Development strategies like monocropping have also threatened slope stability in vast

expanses of land throughout region. In the mean time, carbon emissions have been rising as

western technology and factory production techniques are spread around the world at an

alarming speed. This has led to an increase in the level of carbon emissions in the atmosphere

that has further disrupted the climate and the age-old seasonal patterns that farmers depend on.

The flooding that occurred in Santiago Texacuangos, for example, was an extreme climate

abnormality, as it did not take place in the rainy season. As poorly designed development

strategies (modeled on the premise that increased production and consumer capital will lead to

increased happiness) disrupt seasonal patters by raising carbon emissions, the free market

approach to development simultaneously disrupts the lands productivity. This cruel intersection

leads to a rise in the global food crisis and an increased incidence of natural disasters.

Pregnant Present

While the above overview of the complexity of the past leading up to the post-hurricane

Ida reality in El Salvador might seem daunting at best and depressing at worst, it is essential to

understand the complexity of the past in order to begin to restory the present without falling

into the same pitfalls. In the paraphrased words of Hannah Arendt, We have the capacity to


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remember the past, but not to change it and we have the capacity to imagine a different future,

but not to fully control it. The web of life is juxtaposed between these realities of time, between

memory and potentiality. This is the place of narrative, the art of restorying (Lederach 2005:

148). A deep understanding of the past and its effect on the present moment is essential towards

determining the way in which to move forward in an attempt to restory the present situation.

Humans have been given the gift of reflective consciousness and as such have the capacity and

responsibility to live more intentionally and creatively than other species (Korten 2006: 281).

While this task may seem daunting, humans can learn from the study of healthy living systems

and structures of violence to turn from relations of domination to those of partnership. In doing

so humans can create locally rooted, self-organizing, compact communities (Korten 2006: 295).

In the face of such daunting destruction of the earth and its people, it is helpful to keep in

mind that one does not have to reinvent the wheel in order to figure out how to live in

harmonious union with the earth. Indigenous people across the globe have been doing so for

centuries. Take, for instance, the Guaran people of Paraguay and Brazil. They have managed to

interact with the international commodity market while still producing their own subsistence

food in gardens and collecting it from the forest. Their agroforestry model has protected the

forest and earned a profit for producers for over 400 years. However, they are increasingly being

forced onto reservations as monocropping industries buy their land and fell their trees. Economic

development policy makers could use to examine ancient models like the Guaran economic

model for managing fragile ecosystems in order to incorporate successful ancient techniques

such as agroforestry into the international development model (Reed 2009: 2-11).

Towards an Equitable Shared Future

While it is essential to keep the past and the potentiality of the present in mind when


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seeking to create ajustpeace in the wake of disasters, it goes without saying that careful attention

must also be paid to the future. According to Michael Glanz and Dale Jamieson co-authors of a

case study on disaster relief following Hurricane Mitch:

Time, too, is a boundary that leads people to discount the interests of others. Just as

individuals or societies value more highly the interests of those who are close in space

and culture than those who are remote, so the interests of those who are ourcontemporaries are considered more heavily than those who are far away in time. Thus,

society tends to externalize harm into the future that could not be externalized on to its

contemporaries (2000: 897).

Ultimately, however, the idea of sustainable development must entail a community that is

extended both in time and in space. As Glanz and Jamieson describe, there is a tendency in post-

disaster settings to want a society as it was, even though ones position in that society may not

have been an advantageous one. There is a sense that the devil we know is better than the devil

we dont know and that if people merely puts things back as they were, they will not risk their

future well-being against the difficult odds of improving ones station in life (2000: 897). As the

exploration of the past has revealed, this tendency is loaded with historical wisdom, yet it

incapacitates communities from seeking social change in the present.

In El Salvador, there is a need not only to focus on inter-class equity, but also to take into

account the necessity of intergenerational inequity. However, when people live from day to day

trying to seek enough resources to feed their families there is a lack of will by the people and the

government to seriously consider future generations. It is presumed to be better to accommodate

the known needs of today than the unknown needs of tomorrow (Glanz and Jamieson 881:

2000). In order for intergenerational equity to become a reality, a safety net of resources would

be necessary for the present generation whose livelihood might be adversely affected by attempts

to assure the wellbeing of future generations. Such a movement would require the involvement

of actors across multiple levels, for if foreign investors are not willing to protect Salvadoran land


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with the future generation in mind, small farmers will have no choice but to work within the

existing system of land degradation in order to survive. Given the predominance of the existing

free market system and its historically negative impacts in El Salvador, however, it is likely true

that a top down approach to intergenerational equity will never come into existence without

significant pressure from the grassroots. With the past, pregnant present, and shared future in

mind and at heart,Fundacin CEIBA aims to be this grassroots catalyst towards structural

change in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

Fundacin CEIBA (Crear Espacios Integrales Para el Bienestar Ambiental-Creating IntegratedSpaces for Environmental Wellbeing)

Having explored the layers of structural violence that exacerbate the effects of disasters

in El Salvador as well as the shortcomings of previous aid efforts to address these root causes, let

us turn to a young organization that seeks to reverse these harmful trends. Fundacin CEIBA

grew out of the chaos of the opening vignette following Hurricane Ida on November 8th 2009. It

consists of a team of Salvadorans and one north American who are committed to creating spaces

for the restorying of Santiago Texacuangos based on the narrative of community organization,

participatory democracy, collective trauma therapy, and popular education rather than on that of

repression and relocation. Fundacin CEIBA partners with community members, fellow NGOs,

state actors, and an international solidarity network to create lasting community settlements safe

from the pending effects of climate change, deforestation, and large-scale development projects.

It is currently engaged in a number of projects aimed at the creation of a narrative that is not

marked by marginalization and disjointed relief. For instance, CEIBA founders are organizing a

Central American conference for NGO leaders to come together to collaborate on ideas

surrounding how to make structural changes in post-disaster settings. Additionally, CEIBA is

working to form a paralegal clinic in Santiago Texacuangos in an effort to alleviate the injustices


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surrounding land ownership that have plagued the region for centuries. CEIBA is also leading

various art therapy workshops so as to address deep-seeded trauma in the community on a

collective level that often reaches back far beyond the hurricane. Only by addressing the

collective chosen trauma of the community will they be capable of organizing and moving

forward with the hopes of a better future.

Fundacin CEIBA does not seek to merely address post-disaster reconstruction, which

would imply that what is needed is to simply re-construct what existed pre-disaster. Rather,

Fundacin CEIBA is committed to creating self-sustaining spaces for community organization

and environmental protection through proactive processes that are capable of

regenerating themselves over time. Ideally, these efforts will create spiral of

peace and development instead of a spiral of violence and destruction

(Lederach 1997: 75). CEIBA recognizes the way in which disasters expose the suffering

beneath structural violence that is otherwise silenced and begs for a dramatic restructuring of

society into a place with a higher level of resilience to cope with and prevent destruction from

natural hazards. While it may appear to be micro-oriented in application, the impetus that drives

CEIBAs approach is not one that awaits the policy and decision from the highest level, nor does

it assume that its particular action provides a comprehensive response to system-wide problems.

Rather its efforts paint a different canvas of social change, which depends on the practices of

accessibility, reconnecting people in actual relationships, and local responsibility (Lederach

2005: 144).

Fundacin CEIBA operates on the principles of strategic peacebuilding, which not only

demand that the present moment be understood in the context of the past that lies before us and

the imagined, shared future, but also call for a longer time-frame into the future for


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peacebuilding projects. In his book,Building Peace, John Paul Lederach proposes a circular

timeline with horizons for the journey towards ajustpeace (1997: 77). In this model he

designates immediate crisis intervention as a 2-6 month process, short-range preparation as 1-2

years, the design of social change from 5 to 10 years, and the generational vision at 20 or more

years.Fundacin CEIBA is one of the few organizations in the disaster assistance committee

with this type of longevity in their planned outcomes. According to Michael Glantz and Dale

Jamieson, Because the disaster assistance community is primarily concerned about human

needs in the present, as opposed to policies representing the concerns of future generations, their

activities are frequently in conflict with those of the long-term development community (2000:

871). While disasters evoke a sympathetic response from the humanitarian community, this only

lasts until the next disaster diverts attention from the previous one.4 This costly venture of

humanitarian aid in the short term generally only covers a fraction of the need, as the need for

assistance in the post-disaster recovery phase is many times greater than for the emergency phase

itself (2000: 871). For this reason,Fundacin CEIBA aims to operate long-term in the post-

disaster recovery phase, although it is difficult to find donors for sustainable reconstruction long

after a disaster has left the media spotlight.

The founders ofFundacin CEIBA recognize that it is at times of disaster, when

countrys infrastructure and economy are in disarray, that some radical thinking is warranted

(Glanz and Jamieson 2000: 876). While international agencies also recognize post-disaster

settings as a chance for opportunity, they too often miss crucial relational pieces along the way

and end up throwing billions of dollars towards failed projects. For instance, following Hurricane

Mitch, the International Development Banks consultative groups Summary Report stated, The

Central American leaders once again emphasize that the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch provides a

44. Following the 2010 Haitian earthquake, UN aid was retrieved prematurely from El Salvador and shipped to Haiti.


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unique opportunity to rebuild not the same, but a better Central America (Glanz and Jamieson

200: 876). Nine billion dollars later, the region is more unstable now than it was at this time.

Such costly failures often occur when there is a desire to leapfrog development so that poor

countries can skip over certain stages. This flies in the face of strategic peacebuilding, which

demands the time and space to invest in relationships with each party involved at the

psychological, spiritual, social, economic, political, and military levels (Lederach 1997: 75).

Rather than throwing exorbitant amounts of money at creative ventures post-disaster,

Fundacin CEIBA currently aims to capitalize on this space for creativity following disasters by

acting as the catalysts for desired social change. They operate based on a theory of change very

similar to that which John Paul Lederach outlines with his critical yeast analogy in The Moral

Imagination. Whereas many post-disaster reconstruction efforts and social movements in general

focus on gathering a critical mass based on expansive numbers of supporters,Fundacin

CEIBA focuses instead on locating the leaders who act as critical yeast by working against

gravity with the hopes that the surrounding mass will also rise. In this case, they are working

against the gravity of the desire to reconstruct normal post-disaster. Additionally, they are

working against the often-overwhelming gravitational pulls of consumerism and individualism in

a neoliberal market economy as they work to establish a collective foundation in devastated

communities. They are simultaneously working against the pull of immigration and entry into

gangs as they try to engage youth in their various projects. SinceFundacin CEIBAs leaders

have an acute understanding of the pasts influence on the present circumstances in Santiago

Texacuangos, they are better equipped to address and combat these various pull-factors that

retract from their vision of a shared future.

Fundacin CEIBA functions based on a theory called social cultural animation, which


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promotes creativity at the grassroots level through avenues such as the arts in an effort to

facilitate organic community development (Socio 1: 1978).Fundacin CEIBA works with a

diverse, dynamic group ranging from engineers to psychologists to university students to create

programs in sustainable agricultural, trauma therapy, and community organizing in three small

communities, with the belief that focusing on the quality of the catalysts rather than the number

of participants will yield social change. As Lederach puts it, smallness has nothing to do with

the size of potential change (2005: 92). By bringing together those who would not typically be

brought together with a keen attention to social spaces,Fundacin CEIBA is constructing a

strong platform on which to create sustainable change. By locating strategic persons from

multiple levels of society (nearly all of whom are Salvadoran)Fundacin CEIBA has become a

movement that will potentially serve as a model for larger, structural change. This coming July

Fundacin CEIBAs progress will be presented at a UN conference on climate change mitigation

in Germany as the first step towards reaching a wider audience with the creative work taking

place in Santiago Texacuangos. Most important to the movement, as Lederach states, is the

desire to sustain the movement with the existing resources, not with the introduction of artificial

influence. While catalysts and support can come from the outside, the sustenance of change is

built by keen observation of available and existing resources, space, and connections (2005:

94). With the help ofFundacin CEIBAs miniscule budget, this has been the guiding principal

throughout the work thus far, and will continue to be the guiding model in the future so that

Fundacin CEIBAs relation-based disaster prevention model can be replicated at a low-cost.

Conclusion


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In the wake of disasters, a strategic peacebuilding approach is crucial towards ensuring

that the protection of future generations and the healing of past divisions are placed at the

forefront of designing immediate and long-term disaster relief. So-called natural disasters can

provide painfully clear insight into the structural violence that plagues the lives of the poor every

day. In the words of Jon Sobrino, disasters in El Salvador serve to tear off the cosmetic mask of

the system causing promises of sustainable development to collapse beneath the countrys

unsustainable economic infrastructure. Thus, the siren songs of democracy become a cacophony

because the majorities are so absolutely unequal before the law, and especially before life

(Sobrino 2006: 68). Such tragedies must build awareness and efforts to root out our other

national tragedies: violence, political ineptitude, corruption, and the abandonment of social

leadership (Sobrino 2006: 68). This will require a careful examination of the past as it pertains to

the pregnant present and outlines the way towardsjustpeace. It will demand that the concept of

development makes a radical shift from the notion of the imposition of western ideals of progress

towards the creation of sustainable systems. It will call for the capacity to imagine relationships

that necessarily see the past as alive, as part and parcel of how people, communities, and their

futures evolve and will beg the deep questions of narrative often hidden from the eyes of

pragmatic politics (Lederach 2005: 149). Finally, it will demand the committed participation of

numerous actors across the thresholds of space, class, and time. It has already begun through the

processes of constructive expression and interaction taking place throughFundacin CEIBA and

only time will tell whether the seeds of constructive change will grow into a new narrative for

the people of Santiago Texacuangos.

Works Cited


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Sobrino, Jon. 2006. Where Is God: Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope. Maryknoll,New York: Orbis Books.

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