There were roughly 30,000 civilian deaths during the Salvadoran civil war. 30,000 is a lot of brothers and sisters, moms and dads, friends and neighbors, but it's still just a number. What does it really mean? In a country of 6 million, how big a deal was this? What does it compare to? I wanted to find a point of reference that would make this number seem real. Since a lot of us are familiar with the history of the Jewish holocaust during WWII, I decided to use this event for comparison. And then if that doesn't make it clear enough, I also compared it to the devastation of 9/11 in the U.S.
El Salvador is a very small country. As I mentioned above, in the 1980's, it had a population of about 6 million. A conservative estimate of civilian casualties in El Salvador is 30,000. In comparison, at the start of WWII Germany had a population of 80 million. We all know that an unbearable number of Jews were killed during this war- nearly 6 million in all of Europe. In Germany alone about 192,000 German Jews were murdered according to About.com, published by the New York Times. Another source, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, says up to 180,000 German Jews were murdered. We know that this genocide was enormous, that huge numbers of people were murdered. That huge number amounts to .24% of the total German population. One out of every 400.
So keeping in mind the enormity of the impact of the Jewish holocaust, let's look again at El Salvador. Compared to 192,000 Jews killed in Germany, 30,000 deaths doesn't sound like a big number. But this number amounts to .5% of the total Salvadoran population. This is twice the number of German Jews killed in the holocaust, in relative terms. Or, one in every 200 people murdered- bombed, shot, burned, beheaded, tortured to death, disappeared. The United Nations Truth Commission puts the blame for the vast majority of these deaths squarely on the shoulders of the Salvadoran government.
OK, if this hasn't made the situation clear, let's think about 9/11. If you're a U.S. citizen, you know the number of people killed on the 9/11; nearly 3000 in a country of 285 million (in 2001). 9/11 was a pivotal moment in our history, there's no denying it. Now consider this- 47.5 times as many Salvadorans died, percentage wise, during their civil war.
Can we imagine if 9/11 happened 47.5, ok let's just say 48 times over the course of 12 years? 48 times. 48 9/11's.
What would the United States be like right now if we had endured 48 attacks the magnitude of 9/11? Here's the next staggering thing to consider- my government funded most of this war, this death, destruction, and lasting trauma.
What can we do about this now? When I was feeling helpless in the face of the atrocities and impunity committed in El Salvador, a friend there told me to just be an ant. Each little ant carries a few grains of sand, a few morsels of food. No one ant builds a whole colony, but look at the marvelous intricacies of their homes. Just do my part, whether that's small or large. So I'm helping Co-Madres tell their story, so their testimony is not lost from Salvadoran memory. I also have a profound wish for the U.S. government to get out of the business of war. What ever our goals were, all these lives, all this trauma on a whole society cannot justify the means. There are many good resources available about ending war. Try starting with Friends Committee on National Legislation. Be an ant. Take a small action. See what happens, in your life and others' lives.
