Life Long Activism
by Justin Becker

Introduction
The following excerpt comes from an oral history interview that took place at the Center for Cultural Solidarity and Exchange (CIS), a social justice organization based in San Salvador, El Salvador during the winter quarter of 2003. This particular interview was the first of four that took place throughout the time I spent in El Salvador. In speaking with Leslie Schuld, the current director of CIS, I found that this method of collecting narratives about the past is both necessary and fun - essential in that such stories give the reader a historical supplement, and fun in that the process is interactive. In a narrative there are more chances for laughter, or sadness, or curiosity, to enter the conversation, reminding us that history is subjective, and that each testimony will tell a different tale.

The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) was founded in 1980 in solidarity with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN is currently a "leftist" political party in El Salvador , although the party's participation in formal Salvadoran politics is barely 10 years old.

CIS's solidarity takes a variety of forms: the Melida Anaya Montes Language School (for both English and Spanish), the Elections Observer Program (which happened in mid-March of 2003), a shop selling local crafts for living wages, the coordination of medical delegations, and the training of community organizers.

Each facet of the organization is "independent, but very much complementary" to the rest, which, according to Leslie, serves to broaden the pool of potential volunteers that the CIS relies on.

Interview

Leslie Schuld (LS) : Well, I graduated from high school in 1980, which was when the war was breaking out in El Salvador . I started university in the fall of 1980, and in January of 1981, which was when the war was really coming to a head there was the so-called "final offensive," some priests brought a film to our campus on El Salvador , and I went to this just by accident.

I was very active right from the beginning, because CISPES was founded in October of 1980, and I got involved in January of 1981, just a couple of months later. I got very involved in CISPES as a local volunteer activist on campus. When I graduated from the university in 1984,

I went to study Spanish in Nicaragua , and when I returned, at that time I was, for all intents and purposes, a full-time activist. I was raising money to be a full-time staff person for the local committee in Dayton .

At the time CISPES offered me a job in Chicago to work in the mid-west regional office of CISPES, so I accepted and was in charge of coordinating work in 13 states in the mid-west, and in bringing Salvadorans to speak, to talk about the realities, organizing protests, raising funds for material aid, for health care, for emergencies. At one point we started raising money for health care for the FMLN, which was controversial because the US , you know, at that time the FMLN was labeled as "terrorist."

From Chicago , in a nutshell, I got elected to be the national program coordinator of CISPES. I was elected in 1991, and that's when the peace negotiations were coming, you know. That's when we began talking about what needed to come next because we knew if it was hard to keep El Salvador solidarity going when it wasn't in the news, now that the war was over we knew that it would be even harder.

And the Salvadorans, even though they signed the peace accords, knew that many of the root causes of the war had not been resolved and that in their struggle in the political arena they would still need international solidarity and accompaniment. So they asked CISPES to be part of a group to look at forming a center to promote ongoing solidarity after the war. That's how the CIS came to be and that's how I came down with that project, to help found it in 1993.

JB : How has the US media influenced the work of CISPES and the CIS?

LS : [After 1984].the civil war was continuing to go on but the US media was projecting practically that the war had ended. So it was very hard to organize at that time and what [the US media] did project was that the FMLN was a small band of terrorists, so in the US at the time it was very taboo even, people were afraid to mention the FMLN. There was a period then where even activists that were working against US military aid were afraid, they were afraid because.you know, you were way out there, leftist, terrorist if you supported the FMLN.

But in CISPES we had a big debate and said, well look, the FMLN is really the one, they're the poor people that had to take up arms because they had no way to defend themselves, and they're the ones working for change and alternative. We started talking about it in human terms, who was the FMLN, what their goals were and why they were fighting, and so we brought that back into the solidarity and it had a strong impact in educating people about the reality.

Even a few years ago, for instance, I was in Chicago , and there was protest against the US intervention in Colombia . I was visiting friends so I just got pulled into it, but somebody came by and said, well, we're just fighting drugs here, and then he started telling me he was a member of CISPES. How easily we believe what the media says without really investigating what's going on. To justify US policy, you know, I think the US is very slick in how it develops media strategy to get the US public behind things because I think most of the US population does not support human rights abuses.

They did that very effectively when the El Mozote massacre took place in 1981-there was an article about it in the NY Times and the Washington Post-that was a village where largely women and children were massacred, unarmed-and the reporters actually covered the story, which was rare, in an honest form. A day later, the Post reporter was fired and the Times reporter was moved to the business section and a completely different history was written, that it was a guerilla confrontation and the only people that died were guerrilla combatants. I think we need to really be careful of the US media, the power that it has over us and in how we investigate things.

Summary:
My interest in this project came from a wish to reciprocate within the relationship I had with the CIS. I also lacked any previous experience in facilitating any sort of formal interview, let alone recording, transcribing, and combing through such a conversation, and wanted to give it a go. By the end, it seemed that each had taken me further through an understanding of what history means to people, of how certain events, people, or experiences are remembered and re-told.

Justin Becker completed a concentration in Applied Social Ecology and graduated this spring. He might go to Brazil soon and is committed to telemark skiing this winter or next.