KWRU Travels to El Salvador to Build Relationships with Poor

[March 13, 2000] Day 4:

On Tuesday, representatives of the KWRU met with Isabel from CRIPDES, the Christian Commitee of the Displaced of El Salvador. We shared photographs and stories of poverty and homelessness and talked about our struggle to organize the poor in the United States. Isabel shared with us the history of thousands of Salvadorans who organized together to return to their villages from refugee camps after being forced out by the government during the war because they organized for their rights to the basic neccesities of life. She talked about how the only way they won the right to stay on their land and guarantee minimal housing, health care and other needs is because they are organized and because they are connected to the FMLN. Isabel talked about how even though the war is over, the Salvadoran people are still fighting to ensure their basic economic human rights in a world economy that only represents the interests of the rich. The existance and success of the FMLN has provided them with a way to organize the people in their own interests. We left the meeting in agreement that the only thing that would end poverty anywhere in the world is if the poor are organized everywhere, and that we need to continue to link up as we keep building the movements in each of our own countries.

Later that afternoon we visited the University of Central America, where we visited the site where six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were killed in 1989 because they were teaching and organizing students to unite with the poor in a movement to end poverty.