Perquin and El Mozote

Throughout most of the later parts of the 20th century El Salvador found it self in one of the most brutal civil wars in modern memory. The exact rationale for its start are a little foggy, at least to me, but in general it started because some people had everything and others had less than nothing. As people began to speak out and protest for reform they were met with more and more resistance and eventually the two colliding forces took to armed conflict. The guerrillas took to the highlands and a force of us trained soldiers took to snuffing them out. The war has moments of extreme violence including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in public as he was delivering mass and the Mozote massacre.

After spending time at the beach it seemed like a good idea to check out some of the sights of the civil war and learn a little bit more about the history of the country we were staying and enjoying. We headed off for a remote village called Perquin where the rebel army had a base and recently converted some of their headquarters into a museum and walking tour through some of their camps.

The museum was interesting though a little bit scrappy, i guess would be the best adjective. Some rooms looked like they just had a bunch of pictures and tossed them up on the walls well others had authentic machine guns and destroyed parts of helicopters and plains that they shot down. They also had the sight of their radio station. The pictures though they looked just tossed on the walls were pretty interesting, showing some extremely young soldiers and you just wished you could take them out of the picture and put them in school or something.

After the museum we got a quick walking tour through a guerrilla camp. Our guide had fought and made a point to let me know that he was not a soldier, he was a guerrilla. He walked with a severe limp, having taken shrapnel in his chest and extensively in his right leg. He led us through tunnels and over rope bridges,showed us huge craters from bombings and was even nice enough to let everyone in our group know that even though the us is frequently painted as the villain there was a tremendous amount of aid and volunteers who came from the us to help the guerrillas as well as the government money that helped the soldiers.

We then took a quick hike up a mountain where every twenty feet or so tremendous craters lined the way. They were all created from bombing raids during one of the major battles of the war. It was a pretty compelling series of sights, that takes you aback a little. It is nice to see how proud all of the people are of being guerrillas and changing their country the way they did. They have incredible perspective on the situation and i learned alot just from listening.

The next day we headed off for Mozote. At best Mozote is a village of two and a half streets with a church and a school. When we headed in that morning all of the restaurants in the main square were out of breakfast food and we were walked by a tiny girl to her home which was kind of a restaurant but really just a table in their cluttered tin roofed home and we got a breakfast of basically what they had left on the shelves. In the background the family showered and got ready for their day as we ate eggs and sipped coffee, a strange breakfast in deed.

Mozote is the sight of one of the if not the biggest massacre during the war. Im not sure i have all the facts but i will do my best. The military came in looking for guerrillas and really in an effort to intimidate and set a precedent that they were done screwing around. They pulled everyone into the main square and scared the crap out of them for hours and then sent them back to their homes and told them if they step outside they would be shot.

The next day the soldiers tortured and interrogated the men and eventually executed them all over the town. When the finished they raped and executed the girls some as young as 12 years old. When the finished that they shot out the windows of the church and murdered the remaining children both in the church and other locations. After murdering everyone in the town they left the bodies out in the open, presumably to send a message to the guerrillas but no one can be certain exactly why they left the bodies out.

All in all over a thousand people were massacred some children as young as just a few days old were murdered, some of whom had never even been given names. When the army finished they went on to continue there actions in a second village though to a lesser extent. Mozote was destroyed though it served to bring international attention to the situation in El Salvador and shed a negative light on the united states who consequently started distancing themselves from El Salvador. It is widely considered the largest massacre in modern latin american history.

The town has erected two monuments to the citizens who were massacred. One is a garden dedicated to the children who were murdered. The garden is simple, it has a large mural and then a series of plaques with the names and ages of the children who were killed. The plaques are enough to make your stomach churn but they also kept many of the bricks that people were killed on and even though the massacre took place about 20 years ago you can still very much so see the blood stones, it takes you back and leaves you speechless for a good portion of time. The other is dedicated to others who died and includes a shadow figure family looking at tall of the names of the dead while they hold hands.

For more info;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

El Salvador

So we headed off for El Salvador the day after christmas. Christmas in Antigua was pretty interesting, at midnight on New Years Eve the entire country goes out in the streets and lights off as many firecrackers as they can physically get their hands on and then everyone goes out in the street and hugs everyone they see. I did my fair share of kneeling hugs and received a wicked headbutt in the process. We ate tamales and exchanged gifts with our family, no one really seemed to understand the jokes that i was trying to convey with my gifts which i guess i shouldnt have been surprised at. It was a fun christmas but as i returned home from calling my family the mood was a little more somber in our house and I was told that the father of our homestay mom had passed away. She was really broken up and on top of losing her father she was going to have to travel 6 hours to get to her home in the middle of the night on christmas, just an awful awful thing to happen. Saying goodbye was already sad enough but it was just that little bit sadder with this hanging over everyones heads.

We headed off for El Salvador at 4 in the morning with a little bit of an awkward feeling in the air but arrived in our new country after a surprisingly quick and easy bus trip.

Our hostel was one of the nicest places that i have ever stayed period. It is run by a borderline alcoholic named Javier who is a painter who doesnt paint, a man who loves his fiestas and a man who believes America is a terrible place because we have school shootings every other day. During our stay we had a few political conversations with an Australian hippy named Zen, Javier and then two remarkably interesting and well informed Danish people. Not sure what makes that remarkable maybe it was just the juxtaposition at the table where Zen and Javier liked to come off as supereducated and well informed people but really appeared to just generalize and oversimplify very complex subjects like global politics and religion and the danish couple would break out facts and figures and used that silly little thing called reason. Long story short America is a terrible terrible place with too many guns, fat people, and we need to vote more, so work on that will you.

While we stayed in Santa Ana we took two day trips one to volcan santa ana and another to the lake(i dont remember the name). The volcano was about as anticlimactic as a volcano could be. We climbed up to the top, not a particularly challenging climb(im an expert on challenging volcano climbs and not afraid to brag about it suckers) and when we reached the top the wind was ridiculous. It was treadmill wind where you try to walk but you are stuck in place. I may or may not have fallen down while trying to gracefully sit and losing my footing on some loose rocks. All in all i got a ton of sand and dirt in my mouth and eyes and never was allowed to get to the top of the volcano. The lake was actually pretty nice and we had the capability to swim in it which was different from Atitlan in Guatemala.

The beach, specifically Playa Tunco, was our main reason for heading to El Salvador in the first place and after our brief stay in Santa Ana we caught a series of buses and stood in the back of one pickup at 80mph and arrived at our destination.

Let me preface all of this beach talk with a little background. I am not nor have I ever been a big fan of the beach. I burn to ridiculous life threatening degrees, I cant swim, i sweat to a disgusting degree, Im not that comfortable taking off my shirt in public and im easily annoyed by sand.Ive only been once in the last 5 years and only really enjoyed it because i was with a fantastic person who loves the beach so much you are almost compelled to like it by peer pressure. So one good beach moment in 5 years and now i was headed to a beach for 4 days, doesnt seem like the smartest plan of all time but i said at the beginning of this trip that i would try new things so there you have it.

Well to my surprise i have actually enjoyed the beach. I had some fantasy about surfing but i think that was just a dream based on too many viewings of point break, airborne and riding giants. The second i got in the ocean i realized that i was terrified of it. I mean completely frightened of the water, im not arbitrarily scared of sharks the way some people are(dont get me wrong if there is a shark in the water im not going to go pet him, well maybe if i had one of those sick shark suits) just really petrified of drowning. The second i got in the ocean i realized my dream of surfing was just not going to happen, i dont even like diving under waves and i make a full bodied protective contortion when a wave is too big and comes near me. So surfing not my thing. I mean i am not even joking when i tell you that i am pretty darn proud of myself for going out as deep as i went out. There are times i realize that i am just a little boy and its generally when i realize how proud i get of myself for extremely minor life accomplishments.

Andy on the other hand decided to ride the waves and though he had limited success you have to admire his gusto. Thats one big thing i keep learning more and more about andy, he really is a pretty fearless person when it comes to trying new things. He may do do it all in his own way but he is very willing to try things out of his comfort zone(though not trivia damn it) and you have to admire that. Lindsey as well is quite the adventurer and pretty fearless in general especially when it comes to travel, where i am admittedly a wimp. I know that i would not have experienced half of what i have if not for the two of them and i appreciate them letting me tag along, though im sure they are just about done with me at this point in the trip.

New years was not dramatically different than any other new years i have been to except that it was 80 degrees and there was an impressive impromptu dance contest that involved some serious flips including one off a 15 foot set of speakers. Other than that they lit off firecrackers and everyone drank and either walked on the beach or danced in the open air bars.

There are a couple of things that i have learned from my short time here in el salvador. One would be that el salvadorans are an incredibly nice people in general, sure there are aholes but for the most part they go out of their way to help you. I learned this on the buses where they went out of their way to help me with directions or with my gigantic backpack and on the streets where they would yell anything they knew in english at us, including at one point a very direct i love you from a guy on a bike. The other thing ive learned is that i can enjoy the beach so in the future as long as i am prepared with plenty of incredibly strong sunscreen i am up for trips to the beach.

Well take care everyone i hope you all had a great new years and are busy working on your first new years resolutions. In a day or two we are off for nicaragua and ill write again when something else happens.

And were Off

Hey just wanted to give everyone an update that tomorrow morning around 4 am we are off and headed for El Salvador. We have a tentative plan to stay through the new year, hopefully celebrating on the beach while looking at the full blue moon(its really rare for the moon to be full on new years so you should check it out) and then off to Nicaragua. I should be in Costa Rica on the 10th for three months of teaching in the rainforest. Hope everyone enjoyed their christmas and hopefully you all have a good time on new years!

Meditation Camp: Prying Open My third eye

Twenty minutes in my foot falls asleep. This is the pattern, I have a clear understanding of the time based on when my foot falls asleep. I know that at twenty minutes we are nearing the end and if I can just readjust my legs and get some blood flowing that foot Ill be fine for the homestretch. At this point Ive given up on my focus and Im into survival mode, Im not sure how long your foot can stay asleep but at some point in needs blood, right. I mean what happens if you dont get blood, how long do you have until you lose a toe, all your toes, the whole foot. I need that foot, I use it daily. So i dont mind cheating and sending some blood there in place of positive thoughts. Im not sure this is how the great gurus of history have envisioned their students meditating but it is the reality for me.

Once Ive gotten some blood back to my foot, my mind is lost and my meditation is all but done. I will hold out for the rest of the time repeating over and over "hit that gong" in my head, praying that our teacher realizes we have been in this position for far too long and it is time to give this up. I send my vibes to her trying to beg her to end this session as quickly as possible. I doubt this is how you reach spiritual enlightenment but im sure that ive heard somewhere at somepoint that we all take our own paths and mine just involves some inner complaining.

For some of you, you must be wondering how I got here. How did I get 40 minutes into an hour long meditation inside a pyramid shaped temple with twelve other soul searchers. Well long story short Lindsey and Andy met a couple on one of their travels who told them all about Los Pyramides and they thought it seemed like an interesting place to spend a week, and i having decided to try just about anything people suggest tagged along for the week.

So on sunday we packed up our stuff and headed off for San Marcos, a tiny little laguna town on Lake Atitlan. After a pretty standard shuttle bus trip and a choppy boat ride we ended up in san marcos. We arrived at los pyramides and it was what you could best describe as a ghost town. Everyone was in a silent meditation and the only people that we encountered were people who were in part of a month long silence, and came across as jerks. I would learn that there is a nice way do your silence and the jerkway.

The pyramides looks like your a pretty typical summer camp except that all of the cabins are shaped like pyramids. Other than that you have your communal bathroom and kitchen(vegetarian only) and your cabin is full of spiders, mean disgusting spiders who played extras in Arachnophobia. After an interesting night of sleep we were off to start our week.

Yoga in the morning
Every morning began with Yoga. We were up early and with a pretty solid bedhead going ready to stretch it out with some intense yoga. It was pretty fast that i realized i might be out of place with my basketball shorts and sweatshirt, when the teacher was clad in an all white yoga suit that i thought only existed in movies where they mock yoga teachers. Right off the bat i knew i was in trouble, i have never been able to touch my toes not ever, in the presidential physical fitness test the toe touching was my nightmare and yoga seemed like it would continue. Our first teacher was a relaxed british guy(ithink) who ran you through some intense yoga drills and rolled his eyes at those of us who struggle like the goofy goofy tall bastards we are. The other teacher was great though, super encouraging and positive. She would come over and tell me that i was doing perfect except that you need to fix these 5 things. Im not sure she understands the definition of perfect. Her positive encouragement did help me get through some pretty ridiculous sessions of yoga. One of our final yoga sessions also finished with andy and I giving each other back massages, where andy critiqued my massage style the entire time.

Metaphysics Class
After breakfast of cornflakes, or in my case choco zucaritas(choco frosted flakes, which would also be my dinner several times) we heaeded off to metaphysics class. Coming in the middle of a session(the run a weekly schedule on the moon, wed-wed) we were headfirst into classes on lucid dreaming and astral travel. We spent the week learning techniques on controlling your dreams and using your mind to change your dreams and the locations of your body, in order to have out of body experiences. We learned about traveling outside of your body to other countries or down to the bottom of the lake where you can find a temple and you are more than welcome to come down and pray late at night. Overall the classes were interesting and a little kooky but in the best possible way.
***A special note to those of you who indulge in illegal substances. They are apparently destroying your aura causing rifts and holes to develop that will make you tired and more run down. There is a remedy though, and I will be kind enough to help you all out at this point. You will need to run a hot bath and create a mixture of several natural plants and herbs. You will need rosemary, mint, basil, chamomile, lavender, sage and red roses. If they are fresh and natural you are better off but if you dont have the option you can use any form. The mixture should make up the size of a fist and for god sakes you need to check to see if you have allergies to any of these, you dont want to jump into a tub of aura purifying substances only to learn that you break out from lavender, thats bad news. If it doesnt work the first time, well you are probably a big pothead(you know if im talking to you), and need to do this for a consistent 7 day period every month until you feel invigorated again. Good luck my friends, and youre welcome!***

Meditation
After metaphysics we were given several hours to hang out and do whatever we want. So I spent the week reading way too many books ranging from the motorcycle diaries and tom sawyer to books on coping with death and a guidebook on lucid dreaming. At 5 though we headed back to the temple for our meditation class.

*quick note on the temple here. The temple is a giant pyramid that is actually really awesome once you are inside. You need to crawl down a staircase and tunnel before you can enter the temple. In the hall of the tunnel there are pictures of different religious figures from ancient pharaohs to buddah and jesus. Andy felt like the jesus picture looked like a dad who knew his son had done something wrong but was letting the son explain himself and weave a tail of lies even though daddy jesus knew the truth, so in reality jesus was wearing one of those give me a break, oh really faces. My view was that jesus was a tv or radio talk show host listening to a particular messed up story, and he was making front of being concerned when really he was thinking "good lord thats awful, good luck with all that," face. The debate rages on. The temple inside has a giant pyramid in the center with a crystal globe that represents the world and they put a silk sheet over it when we are not meditating or focusing on it. other than that we all sit on mats or wooden blocks for our meditation or classes.*

Most of the meditations were painful exercises. I already described the process of pain a little but let me tell you it flat out killed. When we finished and had to change positions i had to manually move my legs with my hands and struggle through the pain to get them straight.

Guided meditation had to be my favorite part of the week though. The first night we worked on an exercise where we visualized a garden, a pond, a house, animals a boat and other things. All were metaphoric and represented something in your house. The garden was how complicated your life is the pond represented how you approach new situations(i only dipped my toes and sat on the edge so reading into that its pretty accurate, im a toe dipper in social situations), the animals represented my fears and though i saw giraffes, polar bears and dogs i totally approached them and tried to pet them all. My biggest issues came with the house and the boat. My house was the lake house from the bodyguard with kevin costner, the house represents my soul so i have no idea what that says about me. I was afraid to get on the boat because i am afraid of boats in general, the boat represented my future so i guess either im going to die or im really afraid of my future, great.
Other exercises involved thanking our loved ones and friends, so thank you if you didnt get the message on tuesday, visualizing points in our past and focusing on our life mission. If youd like to know more about my life mission feel free to ask, its long detailed and still a little cloudy.

Closing thoughts
I went into the week with a precaution but interest. Many people were skeptical of me going to meditation camp, not taking my interest in the spiritual world seriously, they didnt realize that i once made my mom buy me incense and a tape on Gregorian chants to practice relaxation and meditation(the outcome being that i realized i was allergic to incense and just sneezed alot), and my interest in spiritual matters has always been deep. This week solidified that i have an interest but im not willing to fully commit to any one belief and need to keep working on making my perfect spiritual practices.