New El Salvador Coordinator Shares His Vision for CRISPAZ 

Antonio Cañas, a native of El Salvador, sees his country as a privileged place to confront the reality of our world, to meet and be moved by a crucified people suffering the sins of global egoism and greed. He shares his thoughts about El Salvador and the role of CRISPAZ—and asks for your support.  

Dear friends, 

About 25 years ago, when I was director of the UCA’s Center of Information and Documentation, I often gave talks to CRISPAZ delegations. It was wartime, a time of bombardments and violent incursions by the army into communities and refugee camps for people displaced by the war. Already, and at great risk to their own lives, young CRISPAZ volunteers had come to El Salvador to be with those who had been hardest hit by the war, living as they lived, eating what they ate, and sharing their tragedy and their hope.

Last November I received a great privilege: I was named CRISPAZ’s coordinator for El Salvador. This means being able to share fully in the mission and experience of CRISPAZ.  As in the past, I now speak with delegations that come here in pilgrimage, seeking to learn the truth about this world, and to be in solidarity with a Salvadoran reality that continues to be tragic, unjust and painful. Again, I meet volunteers from the north living amongst us in our humble communities. Tom and Melissa, for example, will soon celebrate their first anniversary in a rural community. It was founded 16 years ago, after the war had ended, by the war-wounded and their families. Tom and Melissa live like the other families, experiencing the same limitations and helping out in the school and clinic.

In the short time since I was named director, I have often asked myself about the value, the meaning and the efficacy of this way of living Christian faith and practicing solidarity in today’s world, a world globalized according to the wishes of those who hold power.  The powerful are haughty about their accomplishments and arrogant in interpreting the world’s problems. They present a so-called “economic order” which, they say, is a sure means to end the suffering and misery of three quarters of the world’s population. Yet the development reports of the United Nations show that what this “economic order” actually does is increase inequality and concentrate the world’s riches in the hands of a few.

In the philosophy classes I took with him, scholar, priest and martyr Ignacio Ellacuria used to say that it’s not easy to get at the truth of things or figure out what we should do to bring more justice to the world.  In Christian terms, it’s a question of knowing how to interpret the signs of the times and how to respond faithfully to the gospel’s mandate. In the face of so much misery and anguish, which continue crying out to heaven, I believe El Salvador continues to be a privileged place for coming face to face with the reality of this world.

Thanks to free trade agreements and the powerful oil and pharmaceutical transnationals, full-blown globalization has turned up in El Salvador in the postwar period. The biggest banks of the world manage our finances; maquila factories come and go, not paying taxes and disrespecting the rights of thousands of workers. Neoliberalism’s most fundamentalist structural adjustment policies—promoted and even demanded by the World Bank and the IMF—have  been applied cruelly and dogmatically.

Here the growing poverty and the quest for food have led to flight—on the scale of an exodus—of Salvadorans to other countries, destroying hundreds of families every day and increasing violence and social decomposition. In all of this, as Ellacuria explained, Salvadorans continue to be a crucified people, a propitiatory victim that suffers and bears the sins produced by global egoism and greed.

But there is something else, something more. In El Salvador, people continue reflecting on the words of the martyrs, words which have helped them humanize and understand this world.  Almost 25 years ago, CRISPAZ was born in the midst of this Salvadoran reality. Since then, it has been volunteers like Tom and Melissa—living in the midst of this suffering people and sharing their grief and their hope—who have best been able to testify to what globalization has really meant in the world of the poor, the lame, the blind and the crippled. It has been these young missionaries, not the ambassadors and diplomats and business executives, who have had eyes to see and heart to be moved by these crucified people. 

The volunteers have not been the only ones who come here to confront the truth of this world.  Parish and community and university delegations come in pilgrimage, year after year, from the United States and other parts of the developed world.  They come for reasons of faith and solidarity. 

To really understand things, to test the correction of theories and preachings and texts, it is first necessary to let ourselves be moved by a concern for that which goes beyond us in the midst of all this pain and suffering. It is a matter of becoming captives of the mystery and love of the Transcendent.

It is important that CRISPAZ continue to exist, to provide a home for this will to know the truth, and to give testimony about these experiences in which a new humanity is trying to be born. And so I ask for a generous contribution to ensure that the work of CRISPAZ does continue. Please consider making a donation online today!

Many of you probably know much more about CRISPAZ than I have been able to learn in my few months on the job. But I am asking for your support out of the context of my own life in which I have shared the hopes of the Salvadoran people and have felt strengthened by the teaching of the martyrs. From this vantage point, I cannot stress enough the importance of your continued accompaniment, thru CRISPAZ, of the Salvadoran people.

La paz sea con ustedes,

Antonio Cañas

El Salvador Coordinator