El Salvador
June 6 2001
The Reformed Calvinist Church of El Salvador is busy - busy rebuilding communities after the devastating earthquakes in January and February this year. "This small member church is giving people back their dignity by listening and working with them in the task of reconstruction," says Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, who has just returned from a visit to El Salvador.
Over 1,000 people died and more than 130,000 homes were destroyed in the earthquakes. Nearly one-and-a-half million people - 22% of the inhabitants of this small but densely populated Central American state - were affected.
"As we visited the sites of destruction we saw how the church has helped people to rebuild their homes, involving them in each step of the process," Nyomi says. "It has also provided micro-credit facilities to help them rebuild their lives through small-scale businesses."
This contrasts sharply with the government reaction, Nyomi observes.
"We saw shelters with galvanized roofing sheets, put up as a temporary response by the government," he reports. "However good the intention, it was clear that they were constructed without consulting the people. Given El Salvador's temperatures, they were like microwaves."
Floods, earthquakes and volcanoes have claimed more than 100,000 lives in 30 years and cost more than $20bn in damage in the seven disaster-prone countries of Central America, which have a total GDP of $55bn. Hurricane Mitch, which ripped through Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in 1998, caused $6bn of damage.
Experts say that while much of the devastation caused by the earthquakes in El Salvador was unavoidable, deforestation, poor planning and shoddy housing - as with Hurricane Mitch - made things much worse.
In a report published last year, the Inter-American Development Bank included among the principal causes of regional vulnerability "rapid and uncontrolled urbanization, the persistence of widespread urban and rural poverty, the degradation of the region's environment resulting from the mismanagement of natural resources, inefficient public policies, and lagging and misguided investments in infrastructure."
The natural disasters of recent years come not long after an eleven-year civil war (1981-1992), in which the people of El Salvador were systematically terrorized by the army, the police and their associated death squads. Archbishop Oscar Romero is the best-known victim of this state terrorism, shot on the orders of Major Roberto d'Aubisson, then head of the ultra-right party ARENA.
The UN brokered a peace deal in 1992, but the work of the international Truth Commission was undermined by the approval of a General Amnesty Law just days after it published its report in 1993.
Setri Nyomi says that the small Reformed Calvinist Church of El Salvador is able to be effective in responding to the earthquake crisis because of its long experience of standing with the community.
"The church has a strong women's organisation which is engaged effectively in empowering women in the communities," Nyomi says. "It offers micro-credits and provides health services and helps young people to use their artistic talents in addressing injustice in their communities. It has for many years sought to expose economic evils, most recently in relation to the dollarization of the economy."
(In December 2000, in a decision that provoked large-scale protests, El Salvador agreed to ditch its national currency in favour of the US dollar. The irony of a country that has suffered so much at the hands of US-backed governments allowing its economic policy to be dictated by Alan Greenspan has not been lost on observers.)
Santiago Alfredo Flores Amaya, general secretary of the church, speaks of how it was strengthened by the covenanting process on economic injustice and environmental destruction launched at Warc's 23 general council (Debrecen, 1997).
"Good news cannot be announced without challenging political powers and unsustainable economic arrangements," he says. "We hear the cry of our people every day. We have a responsibility to bring hope to them."
Dinora Aldana, who served as an interpreter for Setri Nyomi's visit, was a concerned and active law student in El Salvador in the 1970s. When the civil war broke out in 1981, she fled to Canada, where she continued to be an activist. Recently she has returned to work alongside her people in reconstruction.
"I am not religious," she told Nyomi at the end of his visit. "But the day we spent together seeing what the church has been doing and some of the things I have heard of the church before give me a sense of hope."
"I lost hope when Monsignor Romero was killed. I see in this church the actions for which Monsignor Romero lived and died."
For the international media, an earthquake is a story that lasts a few days. For aid agencies, it may mean a programme of three to six months. For Salvadorans, it is a national disaster that will take years to recover from.
While the leadership of the Reformed Calvinist Church in El Salvador understand that the work of rebuilding is primarily their task, it is clear that help from other parts of the world will strengthen their ability to impact their communities.
"This is the time for the Reformed family to rally in support of one of its members," says Setri Nyomi. "Warc will welcome any donations for this church and its effective reconstruction programme. The needs are enormous."
Contributions to assist the Reformed Calvinist Church of El Salvador in its work of reconstruction may be sent to: Dr Setri Nyomi, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, PO Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, clearly indicating their purpose.
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