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El Salvador
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2023-04-29
Post COVID in El Salvador
I recently went on a trip with my dad to his home of El Salvador. I wasn’t too surprised that most COVID restrictions had been lifted three years later. I was more surprised that some people were still wearing masks. I leaned that people who work hospitality are still required (or strongly suggested) to still wear masks. There are hardly any remnants left from all the COVID mandates but I found these signs at one of the restaurants we went to reminding people to social distance. It’s interesting to see people now still wearing masks and sanitizing their hands in excess. I wonder if this is the “new norm” we were all talking about two years ago. -
2020-06-22
Milestone Year
To get to this story, I have to go back a few years first. I'm an immigrant from El Salvador. I came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1994, and never went back. I was in my 30s when I decided it was finally time to visit the grandmother I'd been missing for so long. I started to save and plan. Then she died. It took several years before I finally took my first trip back in November of 2019. I spent the time vacationing on the coast. I avoided my grandmother's house, my friends, and my family. I wasn't ready. But I decided that for my 40th birthday, in 2020, I'd return for a longer stay and visit my childhood home and all the friends and family left behind. Then there was a pandemic. The trip was cancelled, but it was the least of that year's problems. I lost my job and went back to school to start a new career. Our dog got cancer and died. My partner had a friend in El Salvador who died of COVID. I can never reschedule that same trip. Too much has changed. I'm planning to return this summer. This time with a firmer grasp on life's impermanence. I want to visit the white sand beaches at Playa Mango before it gets turned into a "surf city" tourist trap. I want to visit all the important cultural landmarks, especially those from which I can learn about my ancestors. More importantly, I will not avoid friends and family. On the contrary, I want to cherish the time I will have with them as if the next day isn't guaranteed. I plan to take dozens of photographs, portraits of everyone I see, I want to write down their stories in my journal, I want to record every visit, every meal, every experience possible in my journal. I plan to say "see you later," but not leave anything unsaid. Just in case. -
2020-05-21
“Savior or strongman? El Salvador's millennial president defies courts and Congress on coronavirus response”
Aside from being the death of hundreds of thousands, COVID-19 may also be the impetus for the decline of democracy in El Salvador, one of the smallest countries in Latin America. In an article for CNN, journalist Patrick Oppmann provides a brief summary of how El Salvador’s populist president, Nayib Bukele, is taking advantage of the pandemic to attack the nation’s political institutions and consolidate personal power. Ever since he was elected as a political outsider in 2019, President Nayib Bukele has utilized social media to attack his political opponents and journalists, who he believes are obstacles to his personal agenda. He also marched soldiers into the National Assembly to intimidate lawmakers into signing a bill to increase police and military funding, arousing the fear of those who remembered El Salvador’s history of military dictatorships. The emergence of COVID-19 has given Bukele the opportunity to further attack the nation’s institutions and to consolidate his own power. He placed stringent quarantine measures and deployed military policemen on the streets to catch violators, who would then be sent to quarantine centers. Bukele also used the pandemic to go after gangs such as MS-13, whose members were rounded up and taken to densely packed prisons and stripped naked. This particular measure not only violated human rights, it also harmed efforts to reintegrate gang members, according to a former gang member interviewed by Oppmann. Despite these heavy handed measures, Bukele and his administration maintain high approval ratings. Bukele has leveraged this high approval rating to ignore El Salvador’s Supreme Court and National Assembly. The former ruled that he had no authority to extend lockdown orders, while the former proposed a bill to reopen the nation’s economy ahead of the reopening date scheduled by Bukele. Rather than acceding to their demands, Bukele had instead taken to social media, castigating both of these institutions as unrepresentative and illegitimate. Oppmann ends his article by noting that, as the pandemic continues, there will most likely be more clashes between El Salvador’s young, populist president and the nation’s other institutions. -
2020-06-01
El Salvador: COVID-19 & Tropical Storm Amanda
The photograph is one of many of the aftermath of Tropical Storm Amanda in Central America, specifically El Salvador. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the country's president has enforced strict quarantine measures. The smallest country in Central America has recently been hit with a tropical storm resulting in many landslides and destruction of homes. Many have been displaced and are having a hard time finding food.