Tag: el salvador

Live Inspired: 7 reasons why I feel safer in El Salvador than anywhere

Categories El Salvador, Solo travel thoughts8 Comments on Live Inspired: 7 reasons why I feel safer in El Salvador than anywhere

• In partnership with John Reamer and Associates •

Before moving (temporarily) to El Salvador, there was one phrase I heard over and over, from strangers and friends alike:

Be careful.

El Salvador, after all, has a gritty, dangerous reputation, especially in the U.S. where you can hardly Google the country without breaking out in hives. Sample headlines describe it as “murder capital of the world,” and lament “life under gang rule.” The majority of U.S. media coverage of El Salvador centers on migration and thus focuses on the country as a place of poverty, crime and desperation.

Several people, this summer, actually urged me not to come — for my safety.

Now, after living here more than three months, I still hear that phrase from people back home all the time, despite trying to show so many wonderful aspects of the country.

Usually, I just shrug.

I know they mean well. But besides not especially caring for the remark, it almost just feels silly.

And that’s because, believe it or not, I feel safer here than I have …maybe anywhere.

Continue reading ➞ Live Inspired: 7 reasons why I feel safer in El Salvador than anywhere

Live Inspired mailbag: how I get around, meet people, decide where to go

Categories all posts, Live Inspired, Solo travel thoughts4 Comments on Live Inspired mailbag: how I get around, meet people, decide where to go

• In partnership with John Reamer and Associates •

Buenos días!

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that my name is Amelia, that I am a solo nomad and that I have been exploring Central America for more than a year.

What you might *not* know are some of the specifics — the behind-the-scenes details that make this whole thing go. I started a mailbag series precisely to answer those questions.

In my last mailbag, I touched on the basics: my background, what I do now, why I’m doing it and how I make money.

For this mailbag, I asked you to send questions about logistics: getting from a to b and functioning in every place, almost as soon as I hit the ground.

If you have a question for a future mailbag, you can leave it in the comments or reach out to me through my website email or on my social channels.

Continue reading ➞ Live Inspired mailbag: how I get around, meet people, decide where to go

Visiting El Mozote: behind the scenes of my reporting

Categories El Salvador2 Comments on Visiting El Mozote: behind the scenes of my reporting

I had read a lot about El Mozote, about this horrible chapter of Salvadoran history and U.S. complicity. Then, I went — and felt the bullet holes, smelled the earth, saw the tears. Here’s what it felt like.

I glared the at the Google map as we got closer.

I stretched and shrunk my screen, checking the estimated arrival time again. I tapped my notebook and looked out the window. The surrounding pueblos faded to pastures and morro groves. The mountains of Morazán looked gray in the distance.

I was anxious.

I was high up in the hills of El Salvador, but I was heading toward a piece of my history. Well, both of our histories. My companion Luis and I were nearing the site of the greatest civilian massacre in modern Latin American history — a three-day horror in which his people were killed … and my government helped.

Continue reading ➞ Visiting El Mozote: behind the scenes of my reporting

Live Inspired: first impressions in El Salvador

Categories all posts, El Salvador, Live Inspired1 Comment on Live Inspired: first impressions in El Salvador

• In partnership with John Reamer and Associates •

The shrill, happy notes reverberated through Plaza Libertad, drawing a crowd of a couple dozen, and me — invited by the music and the gleaming red upright bass.

A woman, wearing a bright pink apron and holding a matching ladle, spooned atol — a sweet corn drink — into styrofoam cups to serve. Two other women had staked out territory in front of the little five-piece band and were dancing as though it was their jobs (it might have been; they later worked the crowd for tips). 

I whipped out my iPhone, as I always do, with a wave of reluctance. The nature of my job, these days, is to record what’s around me, but documenting other people in other places, especially as a white person, isn’t always popular. I’ve often stopped photographing because I absorb the glares around me. In more than a handful of cases, I’ve actually gotten visceral rebukes.

But on this glorious Friday afternoon, as I eyed the assembly, all I caught were smiles.

Continue reading ➞ Live Inspired: first impressions in El Salvador

Live Inspired: the hours before takeoff

Categories all posts, Live Inspired, Solo travel thoughts3 Comments on Live Inspired: the hours before takeoff

• In partnership with John Reamer and Associates •

Every time, it’s the same.

On the night before I make a new, big move, I don’t sleep.

Before that point, I think about my plans ahead very differently. Now, over a year into this wild, nomadic existence, there is an element of normalcy in what I do — plunging myself into the unknown, alone — even though at times it feels totally insane.

I know I’ll fall into my flow. I know I’ll fall in love. The constant move, more than anything else now, is the new order.

But in those hours before the next leg begins, a particular feeling takes over — some blend of excitement, anticipation and anxiety — and my pulse raises, my stomach turns.

Continue reading ➞ Live Inspired: the hours before takeoff

Why El Salvador

Categories El Salvador5 Comments on Why El Salvador

After three months in the U.S., I’m continuing my travels in Central America. The next long-term destination? El Salvador. Here’s why I wanted to go.

On April 12, somewhere in between my cold brew and lunch, I found myself in an odd position: crying in a bathroom at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. 

A year earlier, I would have never been able to imagine myself here because, well, I didn’t even have the groundwork for the tears. And yet here I was, wedged between a couple of industrial-sized toilet paper rolls and a hand dryer, slobbering into my clay-caked jacket sleeve.

I had just participated in an exhibit meant to challenge the collective U.S. consciousness about our history in El Salvador, as part of a performing arts festival I had stumbled into. 

First, there was a short film on El Mozote, a sleepy village near the Honduras border and the site of the horrific 1981 massacre by U.S.-trained-and-funded Salvadoran troops during the country’s civil war. When the film was over, I was instructed to walk into an adjacent room. 

There, strewn across the floor, were tubs of red clay and ripe orange-and-yellow mangoes, culminating in a tumbling mass in the middle of the room, where a young woman sat on an upside-down crate armed with a tall stack of paper. 

Each sheet bore a single name.

Taking my hand, she sliced a knife through a bit of the mango she held and gave it to me to eat. She pressed red clay into my wrist. Then she handed me a piece of paper from the stack. 

Maria Santos Claros Marquez, it read.

Continue reading ➞ Why El Salvador