I talk to my girlfriend about once a week. She lives on a boat in Alaska, I live in a corn field in Central America, which slightly complicates communication.With so many days passing without us sharing a word, one would expect that I would have so much to share. However, many times when she asks me what's new, what I've been up to, my first response is a long "Ummmm". After a critical analysis I am able to declare with all certainty that our cat just gave birth. Yeah, that totally happened.
The days are long. The minutes lengthen into endless intervals as the sun drearily burns a path across the sky. But for whatever reason the weeks just kind of bleed together. I lift my head and it's August. How did that happen?
Routine is a universal characteristic of humanity. Eat, sleep, work, repeat. Like the genre of Country each individual unit is virtually indistinguishable from the last. If this is the universal rule, Salvadorans excel at the observance of it. Especially in rural El Salvador, people have been doing the same things since the beginning of time. Salvadoran farmers continue planting corn, year after year with little to no consideration of cultivating anything else. No need for a cost or market analysis, we'll go with the corn again this year.
Corn cultivation turns into corn consumption. Salvadorans have formulated millions of different ways to ingest corn. Plain corn on the cob, elotes locos, tortillas, pupusas, chilaquilas, atol, nouegados, tamales, riguas, quesadillas, the list goes on. Beans, rice, and cheese only play a supporting role to the corn's complete domination of the Salvadoran diet. Many days, my breakfast, lunch, and dinner plates are identical.
The homogeneity extends to the people. Unlike their Guatemalan neighbors El Salvador has virtually little to no indigenous populations. This is thanks to the 1930's fascist dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, who ordered the slaughter of between 10 and 40 thousands Salvadoran peasants, many of whom where of indigenous origins. Mad Max had a fondness for Hitler and tried to replicate Nazi eugenics in El Salvador, banning all non-anglo ethnicities from residing in the territory. The indigenous peoples not murdered learned to hide in plain sight, quickly shedding themselves of their indigenous garments and adopting western-styled dresses, slacks, and button-ups. Native tongues fell silent as Spanish filled the void.
This cultural uniformity can seem very monotonous and even depressing (and sometimes it is) but I believe there is an unintentional byproduct: happiness.
According to a Gallup poll, El Salvador is ranked higher than many other countries (including the US) in terms of overall happiness. I'm guessing that you're as surprised as I am. How could one of the most violent countries in the world also be one of the happiest? People aren't necessarily frolicking through their corn fields here on a daily basis, life is rough and economic opportunities are sparse. Yet somehow people are happy despite all of the woes. I didn't understand it at all until i heard an interesting theory from a fellow volunteer.
We were talking about the poll and how strange it was that El Salvador would score so highly. He then mentioned that there's a similar phenomenon in his home state of Louisiana. Mississippi and Louisiana have a long standing rivalry in terms of poverty, but as of 2014 Louisiana fell short of taking the gold and was ranked as the 2nd poorest state in the US. So how is it that it also happens to be a state with some of the happiest towns in America?
"Everyone I know is just crazy poor and white", my friend explained. Obviously, the history of racial segregation has left a visible mark on many towns and communities, especially in the South, where communities look relatively the same today as they did during Jim Crow. My friend explained that in his community everybody was just like everybody else. No one was richer than their neighbor. Sound familiar?
The theory goes that people are equally content in Louisiana as they are in El Salvador because they don't know any different. How can you be discontent with your life different to compare it to? Ignorance is quite literally bliss.
This is not to say that diversity is the root of unhappiness. Like any young liberal, I believe diversity should be promoted and appreciated. However, it is interesting to see the effects of homogeneity in the pockets where it rules supreme.
