El Salvador, a Deeper Dive

If you like fruit . . . I mean sweet, juicy fruit like pineapple and papaya this is the place to be.  El Salvadorian fruit is indescribably good!  The central market is the best place to find a bounty of gorgeous, colorful produce.   Although I can never buy much, the fresh fruits and vegetables are a delight to see and vendors are welcoming. In urban neighborhoods where frequent visits to the market are not convenient, trucks loaded with fresh produce park in their usual spots on busy streets  Locals know where to find them.  Outside the city, it is not unusual to see primitive stands selling fresh fruit and vegetables along the road.  Sometimes, a road’s section seems dedicated to a particular fruit.  For example, if one stand is selling coconuts, pineapples, or bananas, there might be eight other stands next to it that all sell the same thing   I would love to get a fresh coco as they are called, but we do not have a machete that is needed to remove the husk and open it.  I was happy to find lichas here. Called lychee or rambutan in other parts of the world, this is a favorite tropical fruit. Just zip off the strange peel and find what looks like a peeled grape inside. We are learning about new fruits too, like jocote, a delicious red-green plum size fruit that tastes like a crisp apple but has a big solid pit inside. I would like to try them all, but there are far too many unusual fruits for us to have time to try on this trip.

Called People of Corn because of their Mayan corn-based culture, most Salvies eat corn or masa in some form, like tortillas, those luscious pupusas, or tamales with every meal.  Tortillas here and in Guatemala are thicker than the thin ones from Mexico but just as tasty. Hands down though, the food in El Salvadore is fantastic! 

With last week’s resort life done, we are spending time in the city and learning. El Salvador is a Central American country bordered by Honduras on the northwest and Guatemala on the South.  Its southern border is the Pacific Ocean; its capital is San Salvador. Surprisingly, the country is very Americanized.  The US dollar became their nation’s currency in 2021, but Bitcoin is also legal tender here.  The metric system is not used here so it is easy to buy a gallon of gasoline or a pound of tomatoes and know how much we are getting and how much it costs.  Gas is about $3 a gallon for regular.  Fast food chains like Mister Donut, Quiznos, Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, and more are here en masse in newer areas of town.  Some stores long gone in the USA are here too, like Denny’s where you can still get a Grand Slam breakfast and Sears which surprisingly is a large and glamorous mall anchor store here.  Modern glamorous shopping malls are situated all around the city.  

The country has a total population of 6.6 million, of which 2.3 million live in the San Salvador metro area.  People in San Salvador earn about $44K per year which is low for the cost of living. 

With all its remarkable change and progress, El Salvador is still a developing country that only in the last five years has become a safe or a good place to live.  Imagine that!   

For over 150 years after becoming a sovereign state, El Salvador has suffered political and economic instability and a string of authoritarian rulers one of whom massacred 30,000 indigenous people and expelled people of African descent.  More recently the 13-year-long Salvadorian Civil War occurred in the late 70’s to early 90s.  The US was involved in that conflict supporting the Salvadoran military in eliminating the communistic insurgency.  This war had many casualties but in addition to the deaths, 3 million of the country’s 9 million people fled the war to the US, Canada, and Italy. It was a very dark time in El Salvador’s history.  An 85-meter-long wall carved in black marble in Pardue Cuscatlán contains the names of thousands of people who disappeared and of the 75,000 civilians killed in massacres during the civil war.

A peace agreement brokered by the United Nations brought an end to the conflict, but the country became overrun by gangs who wrought terror on Salvies for the next thirty years.  Children could not walk to school without fearing being snatched or robbed.  Even as late as 2020, gang members with guns used to board public buses and demand everyone’s backpacks, purses, and cell phones.  When Nayib Bukele became president of El Salvador for the second time in 2019, he led the creation of the Territorial Control Plan and almost immediately cleaned house!  Seventy-five thousand suspected gang members were arrested and incarcerated at the Terrorism Confinement Center, CECOT, Central America’s largest prison for gang members.  The 2015 the homicide rate of 107 per 100,000 people was reduced to a rate of 2.4 homicides per 100,000 in 2023.  Criticized for his autocratic governance, Bukele seems to have accomplished more good than bad and has a high approval rating in San Salvador and the rest of the country.  Today, police carrying automatic weapons are visible throughout the country’s public spaces. They have the right to question anyone they deem questionable or dangerous looking and are authorized to knock on house doors and demand proof of occupancy in places where there are suspected squatters.  This sounds like an attack on human rights, but the people know the law and believe this keeps them safe.  Ordinary citizens and children no longer worry about being snatched, killed, or robbed.  Whew! 

Today growth is busily happening.  New shopping centers, hotels, and office buildings are going up.  The historic center of town is very attractive due to recent renovations to parks and the city’s plazas.  Streets, roads, highways, and sidewalks are modern and well-tended but traffic in the city is horrendous. The city bus system is limited, and surrounding mountains and volcanoes coupled with frequent earthquakes, make a subway system infeasible. Soon though construction will start on a 22-km above-ground metro system that will change the face of the city.  In April, Google opened its gleaming 28-story building in San Salvador creating new good jobs in San Salvador. Google is also helping the government digitize education and government operations and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.  As a point of interest, El Salvador became the world’s first country to embrace Bitcoin making it legal tender here in 2021.    Manned kiosks are scattered throughout the city where Bitcoin is explained to interested investors, and ATMs positioned at key locations around the city are used to make Bitcoin purchases and withdrawals.   In just 5-6 recent years since the clean-up of gangs and violence, the city has a new positive outlook, is progressive, and is rapidly developing new prosperity.

In our GuruWalk walking tour of the city, we met at Parque Cuscatlán where we paid homage to the solemn 85-meter-long Monument to Memory and Truth wall on which the names of victims murdered or disappeared in the Salvadorian Civil War are engraved in memory.  The park also has a long mural that depicts the history and life in El Salvador since Mayan times.  Other city highlights were the Church of Sagrado Corazon, getting to taste a delicious drink served in a bag called horchata in the Central market, the National Palace, the Theater, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the radically designed arch-shaped Rosario Church made only of concrete and iron.  This nontraditional Catholic church features French stained-glass windows that send a rainbow of natural light throughout the church.  The main wall of stained-glass windows features a section of clear glass, called the Eye of God. At certain times the sun shines through that window and casts a beam of light directly on the altar. 

The star of the show is the city’s brand new Binaes El Salvador, the National Library of El Salvador.  Themed a “cathedral of knowledge and learning.”  Like the terrorist prison, it too is the largest in Central America.   Constructed in under two years time, this eye-catching and inviting $54 Million, 260,000 square-foot public facility opened in November 2023. It was built and donated to El Salvador by China. People here fondly call it the Chinese Library—even some of the messages on utility signs in the building are written in Chinese.  This library is open 24 hours a day, is fully staffed with trained personnel, and is accessible to all disabilities including the blind. There are digital and robotic areas, a meeting and presentation auditorium, and special floors and areas for each age and interest level.  Look it up yourself, the Binaes Library.  It is an inspiration and a wonder. 

That’s enough for today but I want to add that Stan and I are eating this place up like a piece of delicious peach pie and there is so much more to show and tell!