more than a statistic

El Salvador can be a very dangerous place, so they say. When people give overviews of the country to foreigners, they usually quote some statistic saying its the second most or third most dangerous country in the world with the most homicides per capita in Latin America. When I was a student here I was always so blown away with these facts and in every encounter I had with Salvadorans I would be thinking about how they have been affected by the war or poverty or violence. But since moving here and starting a life in El Salvador, the shock statistics have slipped to the back of my mind and my attention has gone more daily concerns like what to teach in English class, or how out of control the kids in certain groups are or even where I am going to buy the vegetables and cat food. Sometimes when reading the paper or talking to people in the communities, the topic of violence will come up by I find that I am less shocked by these accounts partly because as I did not see it nor know the person, they seem so far away, even if they happened within a five minute walk from my house. But, in a place with a homicide rate as high as El Salvador, it is inevitable that eventually you will know someone who is killed in a very violent manner.

Two weeks ago tonight, on October 3rd, in the community Sierra Alta, two guys from our group in that community were shot and killed while playing cards on the steps in front of the park. At 6:30 at night in this community it was not at all uncommon for young people to hang out on the main corner in front of the little park where all of our group meetings are held. This night it had just started to rain as it so often does at nighttime in October, so most of the kids had headed back to their homes and only two stayed to finish their card game. They were doing exactly that when five young men with guns walked up from around the corner and shot them to death. Maico, his mother's only son, had just turned fifteen and died right there two blocks from his home. Noe, a twenty-one year old with a wife and a three year old son, was rushed to the hospital with nineteen bullets in his body and he died on the operating table. When I visited the following day with my coworkers to visit the stunned, grieving and terrified kids and families of Sierra Alta, there were bullet holes in the wall and blood still on the concrete. On the ground there were a few remaining bloodstained playing cards scattered on the ground.

That night I attended the "vela" along with a number of others from CFO. Traditionally, a vela is held in the homes of the deceased on the night before their burial. Friends and people from the community come to the house to sit with the family and the body all night until the funeral. There is usually coffee, food and praying. This vela was night held in the community due to the fear that the people who killed the boys would take advantage of everyone being in the same place and return. After all, no one knows why it was these specific boys in this specific community on that specific day, they don't know if there was a reason behind the killings or if it was just to instill fear, if it was gang related or not. Some even mentioned that they thought it could be political since these guys were more into the FMLN and soccer than anything else. But, as it was, not many of the young people showed up to the vela anyone due to that fear. The vela, held in a funeral home close to the Center of Mejicanos, was mostly attended by family members and older people. The bodies were laid out in coffins covered with flowers and the jerseys of the guy's newly formed soccer team. Looking into the coffin was a surreal experience as I don't think I have ever seen a dead body before, all the other funerals I have been to have been cremations. I could hardly recognize either of them. It was almost impossible to connect my memories of these two guys joking in meetings, playing soccer and talking about work or girls with the vision of these two lifeless bodies soon to be buried into the earth. impossible.

I didn't know Maico or Noe as well as I know some of the kids in our other groups but I did know them. Maico was quieter but always came to the meetings, he loved to play soccer and my last memory of him is at a soccer tournament they played at about a month ago. He was freaked out to leave to community and his mom was really protective. Noe was really outgoing and was always making jokes, but he was also opinionated and always participated in meetings. He was good a drawing and creative, the other guys looked up to him and it helped in getting them involved in meetings.

When I found out that they were killed I felt nauseous and my head hurt, I cried and couldn't cry. I couldn't stop thinking about their mothers, and family members, or about their friends, the other guys in the community. I couldn't stop thinking about what the last minutes of their life must have been like. I played through all of my memories of Sierra Alta and tried to make sense of the whole thing. As I babbled on to Cesar, half crying, half dazed, I asked him if he knew people who died violently. Of course he did, he grew up in El Salvador. What would it be like to grow up with some one, go to school with them, watch them have kids and then hear that they were stabbed, shot and yes, even decapitated, two blocks from your home? Or to have grown up with kids who became gang members? Or to lose a family member and know that their murderers were still alive and living in your same community? What kind of country is this that people have to get used to hearing about these kind of things. What kind of place is this that the death of these two boys didn't make the press because it is so common? That it most likely will not get investigated by the police. That Maico and Noe will just become another number in the statistics of violent deaths in El Salvador.

Life goes on. Though it will never be the same for those families and for those kids in that community. But it still goes on. For me, this tragedy brings the statistics closer to home. And I now see more clearly how fragil life is. Sierra Alta was a small community on top of a hill overlooking the Salvadoran countryside north of the city. On windy nights, young kids would fly kites. There is a family that sells empanadas, yuca frita and papas cooked over a wood stove. Who knows when it will be that again, right now they are too afraid to leave their homes. But, who knows when life will be snatched from any community in Mejicanos, in El Salvador, anywhere. In El Salvador, you just continue with the violence hanging over your head, never knowing when it will manifest. As I visit communities, and get to know more young people I try to stay conscious of the reality of the injust situations that exist in places like this while at the same time taking in the life and energy that young people can offer. As they would say here: seguimos luchando adelante. we continue to fight on.