Month: February 2011

I have long recommended, “If you want a meaningful trip to Latin America, consider Managua over Mazatlán.” But I come home thinking that Nicaragua and El Salvador are actually not enjoyable places to visit. I don’t like the dirt, the fear, the pervasive sentiment that poor people should just shut up and make do. I visited the two most popular idyllic countryside towns: Granada in Nicaragua and Suchitoto in El Salvador. Both have a charming, laid-back zone where backpackers can nurse a latte and get online, where rich adventurers can luxuriate in wistful 19th-century colonial elegance, where shops don’t have armed guards, where massages are cheap, and where meek artisans outnumber the beggars. And I visited the major natural wonders (beaches, volcanoes, lake resorts) in each country. Frankly, compared to other options in the region (including Costa Rica and parts of Mexico), there’s not much there.

I spent three days each in Managua (Christmas), San Salvador, and Mexico City (New Year’s). I went first class by hiring local guides with cars for two days in each stop over my nine-day adventure at $250 per day. This enabled me to experience and learn triple what I would have on my own. I stayed in comfortable hotels averaging $80 a night per double: Hotel Europeo in Managua (cozy, with motel-style rooms around a palm-tree garden, pool, and thatched restaurant in a residential neighborhood); Sheraton Presidente Hotel in San Salvador (top-end, where big-shot politicians stay); and Hotel Catedral in Mexico City (beautifully located behind the cathedral near the Zócalo in the colonial center). I’d recommend each one. They each had a wonderful staff and a line on good and fairly priced taxis, and offered a convenient refuge from the intensity on the streets. The guides and hotels were arranged through Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education (which has been my tour organizer for all four of my educational visits to the region).

If you don’t speak Spanish, the language barrier can be more of a challenge than you’ll find in Europe. The fact that you’ll rarely see an English-language newspaper or magazine is evidence that there are so few English-speaking tourists these days. Because things are changing so fast and there’s such a small market, guidebooks struggle to cover your needs accurately.

The food is simple. The service is friendly. The prices are low ‘ even if you’re paying five times the local rate to get things to your standards of safety, comfort, and cleanliness. The souvenirs are rustic and pretty much the same. I scoured the main artisan markets and found crude variations on the same themes. The museums and galleries are humble. And the coffee ‘ even in lands famous for producing coffee beans ‘ makes me homesick. (When relaxing here, my drink of choice is a rum-and-Coke ‘ which is called a Nica-libre rather than a Cuba-libre ‘ in part, I think, because it’s fun to order.)

But the people are endearing. The lessons are inspiring. It’s a land of rapid change. I found myself saying “back in the old days” a lot, referring to experiences gained in the 1990s. There’s something about visiting Central America that stirs a certain traveling soul. As some expats I’ve gotten to know here say about El Salvador in particular, “It’s like a low-grade herpes virus. It gets in you, and you can’t get rid of it.”

While my first visit, in 1988, was to witness and understand an actual war between societal groups, today that struggle has become a political one (strikingly, with the same left-versus-right dynamics as in the USA). The gap between rich and poor, which fueled the revolutions and civil wars of the recent past, now fills the docket in each country’s parliaments. And today, both headlines and peoples’ minds are filled with the struggles caused by that persistent gap ‘ petty crime, the drug war, and gang violence.

In this age of globalization, it seems even when national movements of liberation (like El Salvador’s FMLN and Nicaragua’s Sandinistas…and, some would say, even America’s Obama) gain power, they are not allowed to address issues of structural poverty. I’m wondering if future peoples’ struggles must be transnational. (I find people in Europe and the developing world know more about the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle than Seattleites do.)

Today, forces for economic justice may win their battles. But they face an infinitely more powerful foe than their local elites: a globalized economy. Through corporation-led globalization, there’s been a leap in the power of the developed world over the developing one, and of corporations over nations. And that’s a war no guerilla movement (and perhaps no election campaign) will win.

My nine-day crash course in Latin America issues came with great teachers and the ultimate classroom. In talking with so many local experts, it occurred to me that Americans coming here in search of understanding (like me) want things in black-and-white clarity. And it is way more complex ‘ and therefore frustrating ‘ to people like us. I come home not with the clean answers I sought. But I do come home with a sense of optimism. Pluralistic societies are working things out without war. And, while peace-loving pragmatism can win out over bloody idealism when it comes to economic and social justice issues, the societies of Nicaragua and El Salvador are moving fitfully but steadily forward. You can’t help but fly home from Central America rooting for its beautiful people…and wanting to do more.