La Palma

La Palma, Chalatenango, El Salvador

About five weeks ago, I went up to the town of La Palma in the northern part of El Salvador to do an interview with the artisans in the Semilla de Dios Cooperative. If you have ever bought any wood carvings from 10,000 Villages that comes from El Salvador then it most likely was made at Semilla de Dios. The Cooperative was started in the late seventies by famous Salvadoran artisan Fernando Llort. Llort is credited for creating the style of art that has made La Palma famous. It is characterized by brightly colored paintings of nature, people and homes to represent Salvadoran campesino culture. He began to train people from La Palma in this style of painting. Now, over half the population of La Palma are artisans and travellers often pass through the town to buy the art. A few years ago, the European Union helped finance the painting of walls, houses and phone poles in the La Palma style to promote tourism. The people who don´t create art, run businesses fueled by tourism.

Though there are a number of artisan workshops in La Palma, Semilla de Dios is the most famous one and it has been run for years successfully as a cooperative by all the people who work there. I took a number of pictures of the people at work in the Cooperative. It especially interests me because I have seen these wooden crosses and other painted woodwork sold in Cincinnati, St. Louis and other parts of the Unites States. It was pretty cool to see where all this art was coming from.

Here is the link to see the pictures that I took in La Palma and at la Semilla de Dios:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098096&l=dfd39&id=33307557

An article about the environment in El Salvador

This is an article from La Prensa Latina about Deforestation in Central America.

Forests Disappearing in Central America

San Salvador, May 13 (Prensa Latina) The absence of combined Central American policies to protect forests is alarming some governments there.

The vice presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras met in the Montecristo Park, a forest reserve shared by the three countries to boost a joint conservation plan.

In Honduras, for example, in spite of government measures implemented by President Manuel Zelaya, such as the presence of troops in the forests for protection, forest fires and wood trafficking continue.

Such a situation endangers flora and fauna in affected areas, particularly in the north, but also reduces drinking water reserves that supply dozens of communities.

In addition, the soils have been degraded, provoking a reduction of food crops. To date there have been 580 forest fires that have consumed 18,000 hectares of Honduran forests, according to the country's State Forests Administration.

Guatemala has suffered 2,500 forest files that destroyed about 100,000 hectares of forests. Estimates show that 95 percent of those fires were caused by arson.

Illegal felling of trees is another factor that jeopardizes forest diversity, according to institutions such as the Olanch Environment Movement.

El Salvador is considered the nation with most deforestation problems in the Latin American continent. Official studies indicate a 90 percent loss of vegetation and barely two percent of the original forest vegetation.

Open air mining, expansion of agriculture, and use of forest mass for fire and indiscriminate felling are among the lists that is leading this country to desertification.

Now there is a new problem with the destination of huge crop areas to produce biofuels.

Guatemala isn't far behind. Every year it loses 73,148 hectares of forests for different reasons but particularly through human activity.

According to statistics revealed by the environmental profile of that country, 11 percent of natural resources have been lost in the past 10 years, nationwide.

The United Nations Environment Program has repeatedly warned that the region is facing disaster through the increased rhythm of deforestation. It also warned of the need to interrelate conservation, economy and trade to improve the quality of life of their people and the sustainability of natural resources.

The S.O.S. is beginning to be heard. The Monday meeting marks the beginning of joint action of the governments in favor of actions for conservation at least in the region shared by the three that has a population of 750,000 inhabitants in 45 municipalities.

Roque Dalton

Besides being Mothers Day on May 10th, it was also the 33rd anniversay of the death of Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton. I went to a concert in the Centro to commemorate the day and listened to music ranging from Hip Hop to Reggae to Heavy Metal. Not surprisingly, my favorite by far was the Reggae Groups. While sitting there in the park, a street kid came up to us and asked for money to buy food. I bought him a sandwich instead and he sat with us and ate it. A bee started to attack him and he freaked out and started thrashing and ducking from it. A number of people close by started laughing and pointing it made me sad. A few weeks ago I was at a home for street kids who are recovering from drug addictions as most kids who live on the street are addicted to sniffing glue. The kids at this house seemed like normal little boys! I think the kid who ate his sandwich with us had some addictions and he was really dirty and didn´t wear shoes. Its amazing how easy it is to look at a kid differently who is dirty and begging than a kid who is clean and playing soccer with you. When he got up and left he shook our hands and said "Gracias." Ironically, one of the later reggae groups sang a song they had written about street kids and it talked about how easy it is to ignore them and refuse to give them money because you don´t know if it will go to buy drugs.

Relating this back to Roque Dalton...all the groups had pretty cool social messages like this one and it was inspiring to think about how art is used in so many different ways to express beliefs and inspire societies. I will close with my favorite poem by Dalton called "Como tu" or "Like You"

Como Tú (1975)
Por Roque Dalton

Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.


Like You
By Roque Dalton
(Translated by Jack Hirschman)

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-
blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.