Last thought: Pope Francis I

Last night, by sheer coincidence, I ended up reading two articles about Pope Francis that made me consider my own feelings toward the new Pope and my relationship with the Catholic Church during the past four years.

In the Salvadoran paper El Faro the writer Ricardo Ribera gives a moving, at times funny, personal account of his strained relationship with the Catholic Church. He muses on the fact that one of his middle names is Francisco and considers the implications of sharing his name with the Pope. Ribera writes that after years of distance from the Catholic Church the Pope's humble ways, his critique of unbridled capitalism, his solidarity with the poor, his message of inclusivity, is slowly working in him to consider the Church in a different light. It is not so bad, even if insignificant in the scope of things, Ribera concludes, to share his middle name with the new Pope.

Writing in the The New Yorker John Carroll's article is not as personal or as humorous as Ribera's, but it gives an in-depth account of Francis' papacy thus far. Carroll describes the subtle and not so subtle ways in which Pope Francis is challenging the ways of the Vatican. On the subtle: shunning the luxury of the Vatican for more practical, and every day, ways of being like wearing regular black shoes instead of the red handmade slip ons Popes have worn or driving a Ford Focus instead of a Mercedes. On the not so subtle: appointing a group of cardinals from all continents to an advisory group instead of relying on the advise of the insular Vatican Curia.

I am not a church going person and struggle with the positions of the Catholic Church with respect to women, abortion and contraceptive use.  I became a full catholic as an adult and for a while I attended mass regularly, despite my concerns with the issues mentioned.  When it became clear that the Church actively supported the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 initiative in California I stopped going altogether. That things have changed in California and gays can now marry is beside the point. The sour taste has lingered in my mouth.

Yet, since Pope Francis took office, I like Mr. Ribera, have felt the stirrings of the faith. When Pope Francis responded to Antonio Spadaro, on a question about gays with, "Who am I to judge?" I started to pay attention, maybe even to soften my stance vis a vis the Church.

I was taught 30 plus years ago, in the parochial school I attended in El Salvador, that the church is the people. A church without a congregation, no matter how beautiful, is just a building. An empty hull. It is people with their hearts and their spirits that make up the Church. That moment during mass when we open up our hands to say the Lord's Prayer, that sublime moment, when I can feel spirit dancing on my open palms; the energy of the congregation, that is the Church. And because the Church is people - of all backgrounds and sexual orientations - the obligation of the Church must be with its congregants not with itself. I believe Pope Francis is getting at this fact when he exhorts everyone to remember the poor, to honor the plight of immigrants, to remember incarcerated youth and when he says, "Who am I to judge?"

As ambivalent as I am about the Catholic Church, the fact is that it is part of my cultural identity and a vessel of personal memory. Both of my grandmothers were deeply spiritual and religious women. When I enter a Catholic church and kneel in prayer, I kneel alongside my grandmothers. With every bit of a tamal pisque I eat during Holy Week I remember my childhood, my parents, my country. When I enter the church at five in the morning on the Feast Day of the Virgen de Guadalupe with hundreds of others I am bigger than myself; I am filled with deep sympathy and love.

The way is long for the Church to be a truly inclusive body and to tend to the needs of the weakest among us. But it is refreshing to see that finally there is someone at the helm who might understand this. What Pope Francis is doing and saying is hugely important even when imperfect. For me it means that instead of focusing on all the ways in which the Church has wronged and exploited and repressed, I can contemplate the possibility of coming together with others, on seeking common ground, on being close to my departed, and in a way, on being closer to myself.

Hot off the Press: Riverbabble Summer Issue


Two of my poems are in this issue: Wounded City and the Tanka, San Pablo Boulevard

Pupusas, Resistance, War and Immigration

We eat war. Everytime anyone goes into a Salvadoran restaurant and fills up on the delicious filled masa pockets known as Pupusas, they are eating war. When I arrived in the US over thirty years ago it was difficult to find tortillas de maiz, let alone a Pupusa. Even making them ourselves posed difficulties because some of the ingredients such as loroco, the fragrant flower that is mixed with the cheese, was found only in the confines of our memory. 

Over the years my longing for Salvadoran food has been amply satisfied. Pupuserias are everywhere now. So common are Pupusas  that in some places they can be found as an item in the supermarket frozen food section. Salvadoran restaurants serve Pupusas and many other dishes that ground me generously in a gastronomic sense, but also spiritually and historically. Pupusas are to Salvadorans what the baguette is to the French. It is more than food. It is identity.

I have collected newspaper restaurant reviews, usually in the cheap eats section, for years now. Once in D.C. I found the entire Sunday food section dedicated to mapping and ranking Salvadoran restaurants in the area. Another time I found an advertisement for an appartment in LA that listed a Salvadoran restaurant around the corner as an amenity. My last finding was an article in the travel section of the New York Times on how to spend a week-end in Boston on a limited budget. There were four photographs accompanying the article, the Paul Revere statue in the North End was one of them and right below it a plate with two pupusas, curtido y salsa roja. 30 years has made a huge difference indeed.

Yet for all the raving about the cheap, delicious and even "seductive" (as an article called Pupusas) Salvadoran food, few bother to think, and even fewer know, that the new addition to the list of American "ethnic" foods comes with a high price tag. Pupuserias in the US are the offspring of the millions of dollars this country spent to repress the demands that the people of El Salvador made of their own government for social and economic justice. 

It is a fact that thousands were killed, maimed and dissappeared during the Salvadoran Civil War. It is a fact that children were taken and sold in the international adoption market and a fact that thousands emigrated trying to escape the violence and persecution in El Salvador. That experience of war is filtered through each day to the thousands of Pupusas made all over the US. 

Pupusas are delicious and they are also places of resistance. We say Presente! in school when our name is mentioned in the roll call. We say Presente! in a rally to say we represent; we are here, alive and focused. Each Pupusa is a Presente! A tribute to the resilience of being alive in a new, and all too often inhospitable place, and to the memory of those who did not make it. 

Cuentos de Cipotes

I am not talking here of the famous, and in El Salvador revered, Salarue's Cuentos de Cipotes.  I am writing about cuentos or stories penned by cipotes, kids, who for innumerable circumstances have been dragged into La Vida Loca or life in the infamous Salvadoran gangs. As such these stories and poems are as valuable as Salarue's stories in capturing life, raw, as is, on the streets of El Salvador.

I discovered the work of the Cuentame Project from New America Media. The project describes their work as, "an initiative focused on improving the emotional health of incarcerated girl in the youth detention center in Ilopango, San Salvador, El Salvador." The writers come from the "Rosa Viginia" Juvenile detention center in Chalatenango for young women and El Centro Espino in Ahuachapan for young men.

"Cuentame con quien andas y te dire quien eres," goes the popular saying. In English that is something like, "Tell me who you hang out with and I'll tell you who you are." The cipotes on the pages of the Cuentame blog tell us exactly who they are and who they hang out with and why.

They write about their lives surviving the streets, trying to find love and respect in gangs. These youth might otherwise be called a "lost generation." But they are not lost, they are very much part of every day life in El Salvador. This is the first time I read about them not as a number, a statistic on some report about the debilitating gang issue in El Salvador, instead here I read their own powerful voices full of longing and truth. 

I am including a link for the article in New America Media and a link for the Proyecto Cuentame blog.

New America Media. Voices of El Salvador's incarcerated youth

Blog del Proyecto Cuentame/ The Cuentame Project

A review of our compatriota Horacio Castellanos Moya's last book, Tirana Memoria (Tyrant Memory) from the New York Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/books/review/book-review-tyrant-memory-by-horacio-castellanos-moya.html?pagewanted=all