It's 5:15 AM in Papaturro, and already
one of my neighbors is blasting reggaetón
and norteño tunes
through the early morning twighlight. I suppose it's about this time
that the day starts for most people in Papaturro—this time or
earlier—the first bus has already left para allî
arriba, up
towards the main road, and campesinos are busy taking their
cows out to pasture or heading up to the milpa to tend to the
maturing bean stalks. At the casa comunal one of the local
women is milling corn. Myself, I'll be meeting with my friends Lolo
and Esperanza at around 6:30 to eat some breakfast and start walking
up the hill.
It's been another week of stark
contrasts. Wednesday found me at the Radisson Hotel in San Salvador
attending a presentation by the Organization of American States—a
short time ago the OAS undertook an audit of El Salvador's Electoral
Register, the list of people eligible to vote—and Thursday found me
in Cabañas, meeting
with the Junta Electoral Departmental (JED) and with representatives
of the Asociación
de Desarrollo Económico
y Social (ADES). As always, there is a disconnect between
what the people at the top of the social structure have to say and
that expressed by people closer to the ground. According to the OAS
audit, the Electoral Register is more than 95% accurate; according to
a lot of government officials and other politically aware people
further down the totem pole, it is a regular occurrence that people
long dead turn out to vote and that people change their
addresses in order to influence the outcome of the election in key
locations far away from their homes. According to the JED of
Cabañas, the
measures in place make it impossible that Hondurans be brought
accross the border to vote in favor of one party or another;
according to the people at ADES, Hondurans trucked in on election day
have official Salvadoran identity cards and cannot be turned away
from the voting tables. The truth, naturally, lies somewhere in the
middle, and my job is to mantain myself relentlessly critical in the
face of anybody presuming to speak “for the people.”
