“Communities of Suchitoto”

Hola CRISPAZ family and friends!

What’s new with me? Well... I recently started becoming more active in the communities of Suchitoto, especially San Rafael. Two weeks ago, I gave my first workshop on the importance of organization at the communal level. The following week, I gave a workshop on “future aspirations,” and next week will give another workshop on “self-esteem and self care.” During the workshop about future aspirations, the group of 20 women talked about their desires to find a fair paying jobs, join together as a community of trust, a community that would stand behind one another, and a community that fights the violence they receive. At the beginning, it was difficult to get them to participate and speak up, but by the end of the workshop, they had a wonderful discussion on how their aspirations can be put into action to transform San Rafael into the community they desire. They also talked about the need to share this information with the many who were not in attendance to form a San Rafael rooted in trust, respect, and kindness. I will accompany this community of women, giving workshops every other week, until I finish volunteering with CRISPAZ and APDM.

San Rafael is not the only community I will be accompanying throughout my time in Suchitoto, simply the first. I have plans to start teaching reading and writing to another women’s group in a small rural community called, La Pita. I visited La Pita a couple times learning how to lead my own workshops, but was surprised to find that only 3 out of 15 could read and write. I offered to teach them and they gladly accepted! I am excited to visit La Pita every week until they can read and write sufficiently, and then will continue giving workshops, like those in San Rafael, throughout the year.

The same day that I organized visits to La Pita, a woman who works closely with APDM and the Concertacion de Mujeres asked me what I was doing with APDM. I began to tell her about everything I have just written above, when she replied, “Why don’t you come to my town and give these workshops to teenage girls? A lot of young women dropped out of school because they became pregnant and don’t receive vital information that they need to lead a healthy lifestyle. They don’t know that they deserve better because they stay in the house and don’t receive the formal education that tells them machismo is not okay. Instead they buy into social norms and don’t have the chance to learn right from wrong.” I agreed to lead workshops for the young women in her community of La Mora and am excited to start there in the coming weeks.

And, when I’m not in the communities, I am doing lesson plans, getting materials ready, joining meetings, and participating in all day conferences to learn how to properly attend to a woman in violence that needs my help. These conferences are once a week for two months and are more geared toward women leaders who will then go back to their communities to listen and help women in need. Although I am not the leader of my community, the information we learn serves me just as well because I will be leading workshops of women where we may talk about delicate subjects that evoke emotions within them. With the tools I’m provided with at the conferences, I can aid women in my small groups whenever they need it.

Thanks for reading and supporting CRISPAZ!

Con amor,

Emily (CRISPAZ Compañera LTV)

Orchestra behind bars

Jenna Knapp Crispaz long term Volunteer.

I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time about a beautiful experiment that took place several weeks ago in the young women’s detention center where I do poetry workshops.

On July 30^th there was a revolt within the Center, which nearly resulted in the violent deaths of an entire sector of girls affiliated with a certain gang. Luckily the police were able to intervene in time, but the result has been an unprecedented division between inmates. Whereas for the past 5 years the girls have studied together, gone to workshops together, and eaten together in the Center regardless of gang affiliation, they have now been divided such that they have no contact at all.

Now, slightly less than half of the population is stuck in a corner of the Center where they have no outdoor space and thus never feel the sun’s rays. The girls have expressed that they feel more incarcerated than ever before and that they cannot stand the thought of being cooped up in this tiny space for so many years.

 While the incident was certainly not one to be taken lightly, I still can’t help but see the decision to separate the girls as a huge step backwards. It seems like a cop-out of sorts, resorting to the all too familiar habit in El Salvador of creating yet another division and deeming impossible attempts at dialogue, peace-keeping circles, negotiations, and creative attempts to construct peaceful coexistence. However, since there never seem to be adequate funds, personnel, or peace building training to think outside of the box, the decision has been made and seems to be irreversible.

 It is into this quite hostile context that 3 passionate, energetic orchestra instructors from Chile and Argentina (who had no idea of the pre-existing conflict and recent division) came onto the scene. They had received a donation to purchase 30 cellos, violas, and violins to teach intensive 2-week music course in the Center. I was extremely skeptical of such a short-term initiative, but sure enough, 25 girls were reunited for the first time since the division as they took up an instrument for the first time in their lives and practiced rigorously without a single outbreak of conflict between them.

When the day came to bring the girls to an auditorium to perform together with the youth symphonic orchestra of El Salvador, the excitement in the Center was electric (literally). All of the girls were straightening their hair and dressing to impress for the big event, when the Center’s director came in to announce that not all of the girls would be allowed to participate in the concert. For “poor behavior” several of their judges had sent a last minute fax informing that 7 of the girls would not be allowed to perform.

As I watched tears roll down the faces of the girls who were forced to stay behind, I couldn’t help but think that this is the exact opposite of what a “rehabilitation center” should do. This would likely be the only chance these girls will get to perform on a stage in their lives, so to take this away from them at the last minute after their dedicated commitment for two weeks seemed ridiculous at best.

One of the girls who was most devastated by the news burst into sobs because she had worked so hard for two weeks in vain, and her friends had promised to go see her perform. Her prison sentence ends in November of this year, and I can’t help but think that it was simply the judge’s last chance to screw her over while she is still under his control. The punitive system is so focused on punishment while personal/emotional development, trauma therapy, and affirmations are rarely part of the picture. Given that

Disappointments aside, the concert was absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t help but cry as I watched the girls stand up on stage and play the few songs they had learned with such pride. I have loved these girls so deeply for the past two years, and their stories and secrets have moved and shaped me in a thousand ways.

 It was overwhelmingly beautiful to see them standing gracefully on stage, outside of the detention center walls, even if just for a fleeting moment. I feel so blessed to be able to share in some small way in their lives.

To know and love them for who they are becoming and who they have been.

To know them as human beings with deep scars, dark secrets, and softly spoken dreams.

To have the chance to know with certainty that despite popular consent, each one of them is so much more than just another delinquent youth who deserves what she gets.

As I scanned their faces I thought of all of the tremendous situations they have been forced to live in their short lives and was startled by their resilience and beauty, though they (we) have certainly caused their fair share of harm.

As they were handcuffed and lead off of stage, I run up to hug them and gift them each a rose. It wasn’t until later that I realized that one of the only parents that had made it to the event (it was late at night in an inaccessible part of the city by public transportation) was told he was not allowed to hug his daughter for security reasons. Good thing I didn’t ask questions.

The government’s cultural department did of course fail to contract music teachers to carry on the course beyond the 2-week initiative, so my friend is working her contacts to try to ensure some sort of follow up. However, in spite of its shortcomings, this program thoroughly impressed me. It goes to show what can happen when passionate teachers who pay more attention to the magic of music than to stereotypes and fear are united with girls whose desire to learn and to succeed far overrides their conflictive tendencies.

A tiny glimpse into the place I’ve come back to..

Hello Crispaz supporters! First, I’d like to thank all of you for your continued support and prayers. Below is a tiny glimpse into the place I’ve come back to, based on many conversations I’ve had with loved ones in this short time I’ve been back.

 

I’ve been back for two weeks now and in just two weeks have managed to be floored again and again by the lives of the youth I work with in prisons.

 

It has been a sobering and heartwarming homecoming to return to the prisons here. I have reencountered the same youth that I left two months ago, exactly where I left them, with yet more of their young lives swallowed away by the same 4 walls, the same faces, the same mindless routine.   

 

They’ve welcomed me back into their cells and their hearts and have given me an even closer look at the fury, fear, resentment, and longing for love that reside there and struggle for power each long day locked up.

 

The more I work with these young people, especially with incarcerated males (who have much grimmer prospects of “making it” based on the politics of repression and elimination that are practiced by “anti-gang” squads here), the more I am enraged and saddened by the fact that most of them will simply not make it.

 

The youth who manage to get out of jail whom I’ve kept up with and who have genuine interest in turning their lives around end up simply running for their lives each day. Ironically enough, this is not primarily because rival gang members will kill them (thought that is a very real threat), but because the police force will do so first.

 

If the police do not manage to “disappear” these youth coming out of detention centers, they will detain them upon spotting them in the street (or drag them from their homes in the middle of the night) and pin them with any crime that has happened within a credible radius. These youth will then be sent off (likely without fair trial) to spend 30+ years in the hellholes that are the overflowing adult prisons here.

 

I wish I were exaggerating, yet this has been the story of even the most studious and driven young gang members that I have met in this ministry thus far.

 

Loving and working with these youth means answering their startled phone calls telling me that the police opened fired on them for no reason at all, and that they barely escaped the bullet-spray. It means listening to their whispered fears that as soon as they get out of jail to finally live with their young wives and infants they are terrified that the police will pull them out of their beds at night and take them far away from the children they’ve so longed to love in a way they were never, ever loved. It means watching them grimace, lost for words, while describing the way they’ve witnessed slow deaths, wishing I could erase it all and rewrite the whole script. It means giving them constant affirmation, because it just might be the first time they’ve ever heard anything of the sort.

 

Blog entries are probably supposed to end on some upbeat quote like Disney movies, but many of these young lives end on no such note. I just ask that you find them and love them in cities near you and listen to their lessons and longings.

Jenna Knapp
CRISPAZ Long Term volunteer.