By Michael O. Garvey '74
El Salvador received its unique name when a 16th century conquistador -- whether piously or
ironically -- associated a remote and disappointing Spanish colony with the Savior, the Light
that comes into the world whose darkness cannot overcome It.
Not that the darkness hasn't tried. Dictatorships and death squads have governed the
country for most of its history, and 80,000 people were killed there in ghastly fighting between a
U.S.-sponsored army and leftist rebels in the 1980s. Since peace accords were reached 10 years
ago, the disbanded belligerents have eyed each other warily as political parties -- ARENA on the
right and the FMLN on the left. In the wake of the war, a hurricane in 1998, and a couple of
earthquakes last year, El Salvador, already the smallest and most densely populated country of
Latin America, has also become the poorest and most violent. A third of the people who live
there want to leave, and no one blames them.
Eyes that opened on a wet and overcast Northern Indiana morning adjust reluctantly to
the glare of a tropical afternoon, and on the road to San Salvador from the airport, human figures
are at first indistinguishable from the landscape they later seem to overwhelm. Then auburn faces
and vigilant glances begin to flash along the roadside. A young woman in a cobalt blue dress
gracefully balances a plastic bag of mangoes on her left shoulder and with her right hand proffers
a sample to the oncoming traffic. A grotesquely foreshortened man, whose legs have been neatly
sheared off at the knees (undoubtedly by a land mine) and fitted with prosthetic leather caps,
looks up to speak with a pot-bellied little boy standing on a crate. On a hammock in front of a
ramshackle shelter, a little girl braids an old woman's white hair as both of them laugh at
something being said by another woman who leans out from the dark interior into the sunlight.
Beyond the shanties flanking the road, the corrugated roofs of recently constructed
maquilas, or factories, are visible. These foreign-owned businesses began to proliferate soon after
the war, providing thousands of low-wage jobs to desperate Salvadorans and millions of
low-priced garments to bargain hunters in wealthy countries. El Salvador is itself a bargain for
foreign manufacturers. Pitifully few jobs are available in this country, and a famished workforce
cannot be an overly discriminating one. Despite the all-but-immeasurable unemployment rate,
nearly everyone along the road is keeping busy. When they are not vending something -- fruit,
sweets, flowers or small appliances -- men of all ages stoop beneath or push along massive loads
of firewood. Women young and old balance voluminous plastic urns of water or bundles of
laundry on their heads. Running water and electricity are scarce; firewood must be gathered and
hauled to wherever meals are cooked; and water must be carried to wherever people slake their
thirst and try to keep clean. It is time-consuming to be poor.
In early April, during the first week after Easter, it seemed that any commercial operation
substantial enough to require a lock and key was also guarded by a well-armed sentry. On the
outskirts of the posh Escalon neighborhood of San Salvador, the door of the Novo Apart Hotel
was opened for entering guests by a polite man with a shotgun slung on his shoulder. Grocery
shoppers at the Super Selecto market entered its bright, air-conditioned and lavishly stocked
interior through a narrow doorway attended by a man holding an assault rifle. In Mr. Donut, a
cashier casually removed a holstered revolver from atop a stack of newspapers when a customer
asked to buy one. In the yellow pages of the phone book, 120 private security firms were listed,
nearly all of them offering the services of professional gunmen.
One such firm has been retained by the Club Campestre, a golf course-wrapped retreat on
an Escalon hilltop, where Jorge Zablah '59 gave a dinner party the Wednesday after Easter.
Guests were discreetly, but carefully, scrutinized and identified before entering the grounds, and
the precautionary security brought to mind the two kidnappings -- fortunately resolved without
harm to the victims -- the Zablah family has endured in recent years. The prepossessing Zablah,
a gentle bear of a man, avoided discussion of such things. Among his guests, most of them fellow
Notre Dame graduates, he preferred to talk about his affectionate memories of college days.
While no less hardworking than the poorest campesino, Zablah enjoys a degree of
material success that has eluded most of his countrymen: He is the chief executive officer of Bon
Apetit S.A., a manufacturer of fruit beverages; of Tasasa, the Salvadoran distributor of Philip
Morris, Kraft, General Food and Nabisco products; and of Compana Mundial de Seguros, an
insurance company. He also is founder and chairman of the board of FUSADES (the Salvadoran
Foundation for Economic and Social Development), a Salvadoran nongovernmental agency
headquartered in a gleaming white high-rise that he proudly pointed out from the club verandah.
Zablah seemed reluctant to engage in the genial table chat about contemporary
Salvadoran politics. While his reticence was undoubtedly due to a naturally private disposition, it
also reflected his conviction that ideology is a luxury his country can ill afford. Zablah
summarized his own ideology, if that is the proper word for an ingenuous worldview, during a
presentation to undergraduate students in the Mendoza College of Business last fall. "As
Catholics, we believe that all things were made by God and entrusted to human beings," he said,
"and we have a fiduciary obligation to use them responsibly and ethically." Accordingly, the
conscientious practice of business requires an attentiveness to justice, human rights and the
common good. "It is clear in the Gospels," he concluded, "that God will ultimately ask each one
of us, what did we do with all the things He gave us -- how did we use them?"
