by Randy Denmon
My pizza lost its flavor. We had few if any options in case something happened and we had to stop short. There was nothing past Choluteca for eighty miles, and worse, nothing before it for ninety miles. El Salvador is only about the size of Massachusetts, but we had to navigate the country’s long axis. Worse, east El Salvador is known as the “Wild East,” a guerrilla stronghold during the country’s thirteen-year civil war that ended in 1992.
• • •
In that bloody affair, seventy-five thousand people met their maker, proportionally similar to America’s losses in World War II. Some of the worst atrocities were in the northern portion of the State of San Vicente, which we’d be driving right across. The most notable of these was the 1982 El Calabozo Massacre of more than two hundred, including children. And yes, the perpetrators were the notorious Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran Army, trained and backed by the United States.
Keeping those communists at bay was dirty work for sure. Of course, the revolutionaries didn’t help their cause much. The current ruling party took its name from the guerrilla army, FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), named after one of the founders of the Communist Party of Central America. Maybe Central American leftists should take some cues from the Americans who have mastered deception and spin. You kiss and tickle the baby when stealing his lollipop, not pinch him.
El Salvador has put much of its past behind it. Its problem today is not guerrillas or government death squads, but gangs, called maras. These are more like conventional American-style outlaws, interested in everyday crimes—drugs, extortion, theft, turf wars. In fact, most were founded in big American cities after more than a million Salvadorans fled to the States during the civil war. We exported them back home, our government deciding it was cheaper to deport than imprison them. Security has become a booming business in El Salvador, with eighteen thousand security guards. The government forces that once hunted left-wing revolutionaries now hunt the maras, but with a new, sinister name: Sombra Negra, Black Shadow.
The maras are so powerful that in 2009 they shut down the country’s entire bus system. To protest proposed anti-gang laws, they put out the word—any bus driver working would “face the consequences.” The gangs agreed to a cease-fire in 2012, but the recent discovery of some mass graves might indicate the maras are still not behaving as model citizens.
Did I mention the country is rocked by perpetual earthquakes? San Salvador is destroyed about once a century. Fortunately for us, the last gigantic tremor had been only twenty-seven years earlier, when 1,500 died and more than a 100,000 lost their homes.
• • •
I studied the map for clues. Central American maps aren’t like Rand McNally maps of Florida. Red lines run all over them, but by this time I well knew that just because the map has a red line, even a bold red line, doesn’t mean a highway. It might mean a gravel washout or grass trail.
We had fewer options than at any time on the trip thus far. A misstep on the way to Choluteca had the possibility for consequences—real consequences. Our options were minimal, likely in the most rural and dangerous place we’d be in the seven countries, with no civilization for several hours’ drive in any direction.
• • •
I love maps. My house and office are full of framed atlases and maps, which is probably one of the reasons I became an engineer and surveyor. In another century, maybe I’d have been one of the intrepid men who mapped the world. I like to think so anyway. What a true adventure of discovery those must have been. Unfortunately for my generation, there are no more places left to discover, no more regions to map. Still, I’ve always enjoyed identifying canyons or mountains on a map, or the simple pleasure of finding my way across an unknown country with only a topographic chart to guide me.
But this was the real thing—1,900 miles from the nearest first-world, English-speaking country, in a car that only goes 265 miles a day. Did I already mention that Honduras is the murder capital of the world? Well, El Salvador is number two. For both countries, these murder rates are more than three times higher than Mexico, where crime draws the world’s attention. It’s best to move through these areas quickly, with a low profile. In a dashing new Tesla, you’d just as well paint a target on you.
This troubled a part of me. I thought I was born for this type of stuff, using my wits to traverse difficult places. But now, at the precipice, my plain life back in the States didn’t seem so uninviting.
My fingers moved across the keyboard. The USGS has a wonderful new site, www.earthexplorer.com. The terrain feature on it makes Google Earth seem like something for kindergarteners. The page has incredible detail, allowing the user to zoom in and read twenty-meter contours and the names of small streams and roads.
I’d be here for the next few hours, glued to the computer screen.
• • •
The next morning I took advantage of the hotel’s hospitality, having two copies made of all the car’s paperwork. I didn’t want to be hustled by another dishonest copy man. As I patiently waited for the copies, taking breakfast at the hotel, I met a woman from Indiana. Her daughter had married a Salvadoran, and though they all now lived in Indiana, he’d returned to El Salvador to work on the election. She’d tagged along to look after her granddaughter during the campaign.
Dean and I planned to depart at nine, with our batteries only 90 percent charged. This was a first for the trip, unplugging from reliable 240-volt power without being fully charged, especially in such a secure location. But we had a border to cross, and we’d learned our lesson the day before about teasing twilight. Not to mention that the Super Bowl kicked off at five-thirty.
My hand-written directions worked. We made it out of San Salvador with only a single wrong turn, and that one only minor.
At a red light, American gangsta-rap music spilled out on the street from the car beside us. Over the F-bombs and other adjectives, I wondered if the passengers understood the words, or just enjoyed the thumping, rhythmic beat. Was this the real gangster paradise?
The roads were good, four-lane until we got about thirty miles outside the capital. There, they tapered back to two-lane. Though crowded, the roads were relatively straight, and for the most part had some type of shoulder. But the Salvadoran drivers seem to have the same desire for quick death as their Guatemalan neighbors.
The potholes were abundant, but not as bad as before, most only a few inches in depth instead of feet. I highly advise investing in a new set of tires before driving in Latin America.
This was election day. Like the day before, trucks and cars of every type rolled up and down the roads, adorned with colorful flags. El Salvador is a world away from Guatemala. Less than one percent indigenous, physically its citizens display more European traits than most Central American countries. Even with income levels considerably higher than its neighbors, the country, like most in the developing world, has a highly polarized right and left. As with the rest of Central America, remittances from expatriates, mostly in the United States, still constitute a sizable portion of its GDP.
The country is still slowly emerging from its long civil war. Even the election today pitted the incumbent party’s candidate, FMLN’s Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla commander and current vice president, against the country’s establishment. Somewhere along the way, the FMLN had transitioned from an armed revolutionary movement into a political party. As we motored across their former stronghold, we were glad the natives had decided to settle their differences with the ballot box instead of with guns.
Maybe the politicians here actually wanted to solve some problems. And the voters could actually choose one side or the other. Back home, we never knew what we were voting for or getting. The Democrats want to regulate everything and have the government take care of us, but they want social freedom. The Republicans want no government, but they want to tell us who we can sleep with or what we could smoke or drink. Hypocrisy is the common ground.
Anyway, while the Salvador
ans decided their fate, we passed through Llopango, Cojutepeque, and San Vicente, all four hundred or five hundred years old with shady plazas, lively markets, and outlandishly colorful houses. Then over the Rio Lempa, the third-longest river in Central America. More sugarcane and rolling hills spiked with volcanoes. The fiery mountains were all starting to look the same, but one was puffing steam pretty good, which I thought was neat.
I later learned the volcano, named San Miguel, only fifteen miles outside of the city by the same name, had erupted only a month earlier, spewing ash and smoke that forced the evacuation of thousands. I guess the smoking time bomb is only neat if you’re some type of fruity American scooting by as you run from your first-world midlife doldrums because your existence has gotten too cushy and mundane.
We drove on and on, through San Miguel, population about two hundred thousand, just before noon. There are no bypasses when traveling in Latin America. We puttered down Main Street after Main Street on our traverse of the eastern branch of the Pacific Ring of Fire, bumping along at 5 or 10 mph, dodging everything imaginable. San Miguel was no different. Horns honked. Citizens and cars jockeyed for the road, swearing or gesturing rudely at each other. As we paused for a herd of goats, we saw a gentleman with the worst job in Central America—the pedestrian traffic cop trying to sort it all out.
Outside of town, we entered a complicated traffic circle. The GPS didn’t know what to do, but lo and behold, three signs led me through with simple arrows pointing out how to stay on CA-1!
A shortcut appeared just outside San Miguel that knocked fifteen miles off our trip. The road looked good, but the street sign read “Ruta Militar.” We decided to play it safe and stay on CA-1.
From here, it was forty miles to the Honduran border. The road again got lonely—nothing. We did get our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, at the Bay of Unión, while passing through a few small, dirty towns.
The biggest eyesore on Central American roads is the abundant trash, piled up or blowing in the wind like autumn leaves. Outside of the exclusive residential, tourist, or business districts, it’s almost as abundant as grass. Possibly, this is seen by the citizens as some type of year-round accent, like holiday lighting back home. In the States, we may have an abundance of hooligans and homeless, but at least they have clean sidewalks to sleep on or ply their trades.
I didn’t know how fast to drive as there were only three or four speed-limit signs in El Salvador. Somehow, we hadn’t been stopped by any cops or military checkpoints. In fact, we hadn’t seen many police. Maybe it was the election.
Ten miles from the border, we passed a shack with a dozen shifty-looking characters hanging around. As we passed, four or five got in a black SUV and pulled onto the road behind us.
“You see that?” I asked Dean.
“Yeah.”
Constantly watching the road and my mirror, I contemplated my options. “Think I ought to step on it? There’s nothing in this country that has a chance of catching this Tesla.”
“Don’t know.” Dean turned around to get a better look.
The SUV rushed up behind us. My palms got wet, my breath short. As we wavered, the SUV raced past us. I half expected it to slow down and block the road, but they topped a hill and drove out of sight.
I lit a cigarette, scanning my mirrors and the road ahead. “That border station can’t get here fast enough for me.”
Fleeced or Robbed?
We rounded a curve. The solitary road transitioned into a line of 18-wheelers, parked on the shoulder and stretching as far as the eye could see. I slammed on the brakes as the hawkers and handlers again ambushed us, madly pointing and screaming for us to pull in behind the trucks. These ruffians were more organized than the ones at the Guatemala-El Salvador border.
They had a truck that quickly pulled up, blocking us from going ahead. Red flags rushed into my head as I rolled up the windows. A police car of some type rolled down the road, forcing the villains to move the truck. I quickly pulled in behind the official car and drove forward, four or five of the hawkers jumping in the truck and following us to the El Salvador immigration office.
We managed to fight them off and get stamped out of El Salvador in only twenty minutes. Going back to the car, we were again ambushed. One of the pests who spoke a little English kept mumbling that he could help. Dean nodded something to him, and he must have interpreted this as a yes. As I opened the car door, Hector quickly hopped in the back seat.
Not sure what to do, I cautiously motored forward, over a bridge and the Río Goascorán. As we landed back on terra firma, a guard, in standard camos and armed with a M-16, stopped us.
Hector jumped out, and soon Dean and I were presenting our papers. Not drawing any positive response, I tried to show the guard the car. He was neither amused nor fascinated, never changing the iron expression on his dark face.
The guard growled several times through clenched teeth, asking us a few questions. Where were we from and why were we driving?
Fifteen minutes passed. What to do? A friend of Hector arrived, a short, thick fellow named William who spoke much better English. He started to explain. The traffic was backed up, something about the election in El Salvador, but he could fix it.
I looked around, analyzing the situation. We were the only car around. Nothing was moving. The border guard made no attempt to do anything. He had handed me my paperwork fifteen minutes earlier, and now paid us no mind, other than making it known we could not proceed.
William spoke to the guard, and then instructed us to pull forward a couple of hundred yards and wait. There, I saw no government buildings, and we got out of the car to wait in the utterly shoddy little border town. The Tesla’s thermometer read 98 degrees on February 1. We took a picture with the car beside a brick structure with a big sign that said: “Welcome to Honduras.”
With nothing else to do, I sat on the sidewalk, eyeing the dismal dump, one of the most unsavory places I’ve ever laid eyes on. We looked to be the only vehicle crossing the border, all the trucks parked and not moving. A dozen ramshackle and abandoned buildings, wood or cinder block, abutted the road around piles of discarded trash. The heat amplified the stench. Several nasty prostitutes and drug addicts solicited us for money.
Twenty or thirty minutes later William arrived, wagging his finger and explaining all kinds of problems: Election Day, there was no paperwork for an electric car, we needed to pay the officials. He said it would cost 350 dollars, and he needed 150 dollars now. I sensed fraud in his heart, but out of options, gave him 100 dollars.
He disappeared, arriving back ten minutes later. “It’s 350 dollars,” William said, “The permit is 50 dollars, and you have pay three officials 100 dollars each. Or you’re going nowhere today. That’s it. Take it or leave it.”
I looked around for a government official. I saw no one, not even a building except the fumigation station a hundred yards further up the road. Dean and I complained. I finally saw someone in a uniform across the street. I tried to get his attention, but he avoided me, disappearing behind a building.
It was afternoon, and it appeared we were out of options. If 300 dollars would get us out of this situation, I was prepared to pay it. I pulled out my wallet. It had 250 dollars in it. I gave it all to William, showing him I had no more. He disappeared again.
Dean and I discussed the situation, our concern growing. We had nowhere to go. It was fifty miles back to any civilization in El Salvador, if we could even get back into the country.
“We’re being robbed.” I said. “The bad news is … It looks like these thieves are in bed with the guys with guns. We better step easy, real easy. You still got that 200 bucks hidden?”
Dean nodded.
“Give it to me.” I smoked a few cigarettes, worrying.
The minutes passed. William and one of his shady sidekicks finally showed up with our paperwork, but now wanted two hundred dollars more before handing over the documents required for departure.
Conc
erned, Dean and I both got in the car. I didn’t know what to do. Wanting to find a government official, I thought I’d ride ahead. There had to be a guard somewhere before we departed the border zone, but as I got in the car, William and his cohort jumped in the back seat, instructing us to go forward.
Alarm bells went off in my mind. My pulse quickened. Why were these hoodlums so insistent on getting in our car? Did they just want 200 more dollars for our paperwork? Clearly, they and the guards worked together. What else did they want? I don’t know anybody that feels comfortable with two strangers hopping in the backseat of their car, especially in the world’s most murderous country—especially if those two strangers have already fleeced you for 350 dollars. If we were asked to get out of the car and go inside somewhere, we’d be forced to the leave the car with them.
I sucked in a very deep breath and drove forward until I saw a guard at the fumigation station. I stopped, but before I had a chance to say anything, William handed the guard some money and pointed for me to drive on.
I looked at the guard, my eyes inquiring. “What do I do?” I asked in Spanish.
The guard said nothing, no expression at all, only motioning me forward and then turned around and walked off.
William pointed forward. I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to just haul ass, but they were in the car, and the authorities didn’t seem too interested in lending a hand. Ahead, lay open road and fifty miles of unpopulated country. Confusion besieged me as I brought the car to a stop.