The Individual v Collective Society

“We are alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone.”
- Ayn Rand, Anthem

The necessity of a collective society is one that we have all been taught in school. Placing myself back in my Sociology/Anthropology lectures, the value of collectivisms serves to allow the individual to endure. But that word has many applications. One can apply Maslow’s hierarchy of need to this example, where, at the base, collectivism offers a society to produce and consume goods and serves. From these interactions roles are formed, and, for the most part, have remained in place today.

I speak of collectivism because for two weeks now I lived in a society which has, in some aspects maintained tribal traditions on family and social structure, From my middle class family from which I reside, to my recent weekend experience into the bipolar (of which I will explain), the social norms of this society in some cases are not too far from my own, but some cases use every faculty in my being to understand.

This past weekend, I was sent on an Immersion Day excursion to the tourist city of Suchitoto. The idea of Immersion Day is to depart to another city in another state, (or departamento) alone. The city of “Suchi” is prosperous, a truly tranquil gem that will no doubt be part of the El Salvadorian tour I will give to those that visit me. The city has one the best restaurants I’ve eaten at thus far, although the name escapes me. La Posada de Suchitlán is an elegant Spanish style hotel that has a remarkable view of Suchitoto looking far into dense green hills and the cities reservoir. The city also has a trendy internet café, a multitude of fine restaurants, and one of my favorite activities I partook, a bike ride to a nearby waterfall.

For the first two nights as part of my immersion experience I was to stay with a host family is a nearby town of La Mora. The town is an unofficial historical landmark, where the nearby mountains holds bomb shelters, bomb indentations and devastated houses and a church ravaged by the war. We climbed up those mountains armed with our machetes clearing the travel path for an upcoming tourist project. I hacked away with my right-handed “cuma“, since, as a surdo (left hander) I’m a bit of rarity and did not have a standard machete at my disposal. We past a few gravesites where I learned the bodies of children lay as a result of the bombings that leveled the mountain city.

With all of the history this city had, the level of poverty was unlike anything I had seen since my time here. Since my arrival, I have been fortune to be placed in a good home with a family well off my Salvadorian standards. This home I stayed in La Mora was something out of Kirosawa movie, where animals roamed free, and the floor was litter with feces, feed and leaves. The adolescents reeked of a smell I could only now understand as a result of humidity and lack of a proper hygiene regiment. One youth have his fingernails in his left hand grown at least an inch. The youth of this town spoke what you have often heard me talk of as, “campo Spanish*”. Unlike the high piched sign-waved nature of Mexican campo Spanish I was been accustomed to hearing, this one was low and I interpreted more of a hum in long and short intonations. I didn’t understand a word they spoke.

The two older woman I understood perfectly, as with the three younger children. You will see later some pictures I took of the city, along with some movie shorts. The two youngest children were indeed a gem, and I played with them all weekend long. For time, both lying in a hammock within the trees, reading my book and playing futbol with the children on the patio, the conditions didn’t seem so bad. But there is a reality to the situation that is without humor, and I experienced it first hand.

Sunday I left La Mora and returned to Suchitoto, the difference in the cities was no match for the layout in which the volunteer lived. Known as the exception to rule, I was told not to excpect similar conditions to what I was to encounter with the volunteer. He lived with Salvadorian roommates and hand a big screen TV with cable, a stereo system, a huge common area, liquor bottles emptied from a previous weekend, and with this home his own room twice the size the one I live. We ate well in Suchitoto, I even had glass of wine and a few beers, But such polarized difference between the two I still cannot fully wrap my head around it.

It leaves here thinking about Individuals and Collective Society. I don’t really have any conclusions other than experiences and notably results of the two. I am not favoring one for the other, but noting with restlessness that have been on my mind since I left the city.

• When I asked my family about the dialect differences between city and Cantón they have a very interesting answer: I understood the woman because they are “talk” a lot among themselves. They are a social group, not as in vogue homemakers, but at a groups of woman who communicate on a daily basis. The men, on the other hand, work very early on in age and very often do not communicate with other men while working the fields. Their jobs are solitary ones where communication is vastly limited.

I found this to be a very interesting idea.