Traveling to Suchitoto and Finding Hope a Few Days Later
By Mark Monchek − April 28, 2010
Take a close look at the photograph in this blog post and you will see 3 men from very different backgrounds visiting a sacred place-Suchitoto, in El Salvador, where over thousands of years, a civilization thrived by developing astounding breakthroughs in urban planning, architecture and farming. The three men include Mr. E. Rex, a technology executive from HSBC in Hong Kong bringing a sophisticated computer network to this country, Alfonso Casares, an Ecuadorian born apparel entrepreneur who built a manufacturing plant in the free zone here, and Mac Bernal, by now, the well know tour guide extraordinaire, who gets up at 4:30 every morning to pursue the dream of giving young people a chance to have a good life in the country of his birth.
As you drive from San Salvador to Suchitoto, you pass gnarled trees twisted into startling shapes, burnt swatches of field, bunkers set into the hillside, and entire churches blown apart save for the arched entrance, leaving a path of sky where the congregants once sat in prayer. But you will also pass high groves of fruit trees and untouched fields of lush grass swept sideways by the wind. Once again, the stark contrast between beauty and the ravages left by a brutal civil war is in evidence everywhere.
Back home in New York, I was waiting for a friend of mine at a local restaurant. Out of the blue, a woman sitting alone, nursing a tropical drink in a shade of blue I’ve never before seen in liquid form, struck up a conversation with me. She spoke of a renowned scientist who has built a renewable energy plant in Nicaragua and wants to do the same in… guess where? El Salvador. She asked me if I could help her find the right people to talk to. I said- Yes, yes, yes. A quiet thrill rose up in my spine and sent a smile into my face.
