Developing countries typically have absurdly low cost of labor. For example, if a Salvadoran works eight to ten hours in the field, they earn around six dollars. Construction pays a little better at eight dollars a day. If you're an experienced construction worker, you hit the jackpot, raking in 10 dollars for a full day's work. Other jobs exist in this country, but if you are uneducated, unqualified, and just unlucky it's either the field or the construction site for you.
These jobs are by no means stable. You may be lucky enough to find work for two weeks straight and then be unemployed for months until the next job shows up. Employment is a cat and mouse game that people of all ages play.
It's no longer surprising to me to see kids ditch school for work. Sometimes they don't have a choice in the matter. It's the harvest season and mom tells him to pick up the machete instead of his backpack. End of discussion. In other instances, kids have just lost interest. Even if kids manage to make it all the way through high school, which is not common, the chances of them getting a good job are slim. It's easy to see why they shrug there shoulders like "What's the point?" when I ask them why they aren't at school.
What does surprise me is the elderly at work.
Especially coming from a country where the image of the prototypical senior citizen is a impossibly fragile relic, farting around in velcro shoes and a adult diaper, seeing an 80 year old doing manual labor is down right unbelievable. My host grandfather's name is Pedro. He's 83 and has somewhere around 20 children. While his babymaking days are behind him ("The factory is closed" he admits) he still works long hours at the milpa, or the corn field. I've gone down to his milpa before. While only about a 40 minute walk, one must traverse a cliff, making the journey part walk, part climb. Coming back up the cliff, I need to take multiple breaks and always summit drenched in sweat and mud. He on the other hand does this all the time, sometimes with a 50 pound load of corn on his back. Effortless. Now try to imagine your grandfather doing that. You can't.
But I digress.
The astoundingly low cost of labor is one of the main driving factors for Salvadoran emigration to the United States. In many US cities, a Salvadoran can make in an hour what he would make in a full day in El Salvador. It's hard to deny how appealing that must be for anyone living here.
It just comes down to the fact that there aren't many ways to make a lot of money in this country. And then people wonder why so many kids are going to the US, why so many Salvadorans become gang members and terrorize this country, why alcoholism is truly an epidemic.
Even Salvadorans that are already making money don't see the point of playing the game by the rules.
Just last year, 14 members of the Salvadoran national soccer team were banned for life after rigging international games for monetary bribes. For a country that worships soccer and those that play it, it was like having their national idols crucified on a world stage.
This year, former president Francisco Flores was indicted under corruption charges after 15 million dollars went unaccounted for under his watch.
Then I was watching the local news the other day, and a story about a traffic accident came up. In the segment, the reporter was standing with his microphone in the foreground. After a few seconds I began noticing the background. Surrounded by police tape and a crowd of people lay the lifeless body of a man, his limbs sprawled out like a rag doll. I was partly shocked because I'm used to the sterile images of American media, blurring out images that are shown graphically in any Hollywood movie. But what struck me was that this man was supposedly dead and it looks like no one had moved him or even any plans of moving him. He just lay there in the spectacle of his own death.
Later that night I went over to my host aunt's house and I brought up what I had saw. She said it's just normal for them to see things like that, especially after the civil war and the carnage that everyone went through. We discussed the details of the accident, how the driver that struck the man had fled. "You have to flee", she told me, "if the police get a hold of you, you're going to jail. But if you manage to get to the victim's family first, you can work something out". I asked her what she meant by "work something out" to which, she looked at me as if saying "come on" while holding up her hand and rubbing her thumb and index finger together.
So in El Salvador the justice system is set up with the incentive to hit and run. Not only will you not in graver trouble for running, you might not get in any trouble at all.
She told me another story of this American (why did he have to be American?) who was drunk speeding in his beast of a pick up when he when he crashed into a transportation pick up (see El Pícap). The impact sent all 20 passengers flying through the air, critically injuring many, killing one. The causality was a woman in her 50's, a mother of a large family in my community. After seeing what he had done, the American took off. Hearing the news of the woman's death, he contacted the grieving family and offered to pay them for his crime, essentially absolving himself of any wrongdoing. The family accepted. "I mean what else are you going to do, dead is dead", reasoned my host aunt. So what's the price for a life in El Salvador? $5,000 and he never saw a day in court.
I still can't wrap my head around that one.
After agreeing on how wrong all of it was, my aunt and I just sat there in silence. After awhile she just let out a sigh and matter-of-factly said "Por la plata baila el mono" or in other words "Money makes the monkey dance".
That it does.
