Más Bloggers, Por Favor

The weekend was mostly work, but Sunday afternoon I joined Nelson and his friend Luis on a jaunt to Suchitoto, a mellow tourist town an hour or so north of San Salvador by car. It kind of reminds me of Copán Ruinas in Honduras, relaxed with a mix of backpackers and somewhat more upscale/older travelers, but no tacky tourist traps or big five-star hotels. The tourists are clearly what makes the local economy tick, but on a reasonable scale that doesn't overwhelm the place.

The whole city is kind of a living memorial to the 1980-1992 civil war. This was one of the first places where fighting broke out. Nelson and Luis told me the city was virtually abandoned at the height of the war. It's made an amazing comeback and seems to be one of the more peaceful and prosperous places in the country now. The streets were almost devoid of the heavily armed police and private security guards you see so many of elsewhere in the country.

I caught one glimpse of what the country's reconciliation process has achieved. Nelson pointed out an older man walking across the plaza with a couple of companions. He told me this was one of the top military leaders who'd fought against the FMLN (back when it was a guerilla army, not the current president's political party). Here he was strolling unmolested through one of the country´s most adamantly progressive and pro-FMLN communities. Nelson noted that a decade ago you wouldn't have seen this guy in public anywhere without a contingent of 20 armed soldiers.

The entry to this Suchitoto restaurant is capped by a balance loaded with a bomb on one side and a stack of tortillas on the other

The ostensible reason for our trip to Suchitoto was to check out a musical event on an outdoor stage in one of the town plazas. The first artist was Texan Gina Chavez who sang along with her acoustic guitar. I learned that she´s also spending an extended period here in El Salvador, working with her friend Jody teaching English at a girls' school in Soyapango that's part of the same Salesian order of the Catholic church with which my host institution, Universidad Don Bosco, is associated. She rocked. Check out Gina Chavez's blog, MySpace and web page for more on her music and her El Salvador doings.

The other act was Terpsis, a group of older Salvadoran gents who played sentimental boleros. They had some great harmonies. I doubt they have a MySpace page, but you never know.

Today was day three of my class. We met at the university's main campus in Soyapango this time so we could have a tour of Ing. Valdizon's solar concentrator and do an exercise with constructing and testing simple DC circuits in the electricity lab. After all that I gave a one-hour lecture and we called it a day. Basilia is in Marcala, Honduras at her sister Argelia's house tonight, en route back to San Salvador. Hopefully she'll be back here by tomorrow night, though there is some uncertainty about whether the early bus from Marcala to San Miguel will run tomorrow. Fortunately our friends the Burgos family have good friends in San Miguel who will put her up if she gets there too late for a San Salvador connection. It's so good to know some people here.