Dispatch From My Last Day in El Salvador
A thousand Dollar Phone on a Six Dollar Day. Plus, Going Through Customs in Dallas.
SAN SALVADOR — The morning sun nudged me awake at 7 a.m. in my San Benito hostel. After a refreshing shower and a bowl of sugary cereal, I set out to find a hotel with a proper bed.
Wandering up Boulevard Sergio Viera de Mello, I passed a fortress-like hotel, its guards’ stares too intense. Then I found a modest place, its bored clerk quoting $85 for a single room.
With just one night left in El Salvador, I took it—a likely boon for the empty hotel, maybe equaling six bookings. The crisp air conditioning, fast WiFi, and plush bed were a stark upgrade from the hostel’s humid fans.
At my self-proclaimed “work cafeteria”—Denny’s—I met a young guy sipping a Modelo, his English so American it floored me. Let’s call him Modelo, his name lost in our chat.
“American movies,” he grinned when I asked him how his English was so good. Over burgers, we roamed San Benito, drifting toward the hospital. I confessed Americans view El Salvador as a violent, impoverished “third world” wasteland. Modelo laughed, pointing at the traffic. “Third world? Look at all these cars—everyone’s got one!”
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The conversation shifted to the news: Garcia, CECOT prison, Bukele’s iron grip. Modelo’s voice hushed.
“You know, crazy story”, he began, lowering his voice, “My father was a gang member. He’s in CECOT now. That’s partly why my mom and I fled to Belize. We were afraid we were going to be associated with the gang. Everyone in my family is delulu, saying that my father was not violent and was a good man. Personally, I don’t care. I don’t know. I have a weird relationship with him. I don’t think he’ll ever get out of prison. Things are safe, and if he was in a gang, he should be there.”
I politely nodded.
“I hate El Salvador,” he continued, “but the people are great. It’s my culture. But the government, I don’t know. I have so many things to say. I don’t think Bukele is right about a lot of things. People cannot live here. We make like maybe $10 a day, maybe less, like $6. I cannot afford school and the stuff at home. It’s impossible. I make like $200 a month. I can’t wait to go back to Belize.”
Modelo had to go to class then, taking the bus as he hugged me goodbye. “Please, let me take you home to my grandparents. They have many stories. If you need anything, please let me know.” And he jumped on the bus and was gone.
Hunting for an El Salvadoran book in English, I trekked to a mall near Beethoven’s Fountains, crossing a grittier city slice. An antique store tempted me, but I pressed on. At the mall, no English translations existed, though the young staff’s warmth was disarming.
On my return, I stopped at the antique store, run by Tomás, a kind elderly man with broken but clear English. He had no books I sought but let me browse his dusty trove of relics. I found a sticky, half-used notebook, ideal for notes.
For $5—over his $1 ask—he tore it from another book, wincing at my overpayment. He promised a similar one tomorrow and showed me a pristine silver penny. I couldn’t resist, doubling back to buy it for $10.
Over coffee and dry bread at his weathered but lived-in home, Tomás opened up. His vibrant paintings, stacked in a humid room, hinted at his past as a painter before he turned to collecting antiques. I asked about El Salvador’s transformation. Here’s what he said, complete and unabridged:
Look at us. We are outside, sitting here, drinking coffee, eating bread. Several years ago, this was not possible. The violence was so bad. There were gangs everywhere. You knew if someone asked you for a lighter to light a cigarette, you couldn’t do it. Someone could pull out a gun and shoot you. If we were sitting outside like this, someone would come and shoot you. It happened all the time. It is better now. There is peace. You can walk everywhere now safely.
Now, for me it is one thing. But for young people, no. They don’t know violence. These people, like my son, they have it very hard. Their future is not great. Young people cannot afford a house. In 1980, I bought my own house for $6,000. Today, this house is almost $600,000, maybe more. It is impossible to make this kind of money to afford a home. And homes here, it is important. Land and homes. And if you cannot afford a home or have any land, then where is your future?
My son has a degree. He applied in a big mall for a job. I was so impressed by this mall. It looked so big and modern and beautiful. I thought all the young people got good wages. But when I asked how much they got paid, one young person said they barely make minimum wage. I had just got done eating a good meal, and I felt good inside. But when I heard this from the young man tell me this, my heart felt so empty. These young people, where is their hope? I do not think they have a future. The government may have saved us from violence, but the economy, it has gotten worse. I am okay, but the youth, I cannot say.
It costs me $800 to rent my shop. It used to cost $650. If I don’t make sales, I cannot afford my shop. Every month is like I have a noose around my neck. But I am okay. I am old, I will be fine. I have family and I have a nice home to go to when everything doesn’t work out. I own my home. But young people, they make maximum $400 a month, if they are lucky. What can you afford with maximum $400 a month? What home can you return to when you are lost? Look, even my son, he told me he was lucky to get a job at the nice mall. He said that it helped that he had a degree, but he makes minimum wage. But the owners, they are like slave masters, and they are clever. They called my son and told him he can work, but for half the time. So, he can barely get any money because they cut his hours. It’s a cruel world. The government said that they will raise minimum wage to $600 a month, and that would be much better for young people but it may not be enough. I don’t know.
I told him I learned just yesterday that the gang problem actually originated in California and those that were deported to El Salvador brought over the understanding of how gangs operated. It had gone from 6,000 gang members to over 40,000 in a couple of decades. He nodded as if I had hit jackpot.
“You are right,” he said. “I have never seen violence like this. And every area had different gangs. They were very efficient. If you shop did not have a guard, it is impossible to exist. Only rich people can afford security, and only they can grow a business. This is the sad thing. Rich become richer, poor lose everything because they cannot afford security. And the rich know how to invest. It’s a great idea because it means people have more money to spend, but no one here can really afford to invest. When I was young, I left because of the war, but today, people leave because of how bad the economy is. This is not a good place for young people. And it is not just El Salvador, it is everywhere the same, all over the world.”
A taxi pulled up—his friend of 40 years, selling bananas from his trunk.
“He has a small farm,” Tomás told me. “Sometimes he sells his food to us. It helps him afford things.” It occurred to me that the taxi driver could depend on his farm for food. Another reason why land was so valuable.I continued to talk with the man but he looked like he probably had things to do, so I took my leave and thanked him heartedly.
At Wendy’s that night—my last—I saw new faces, never repeating. The staff, like a young woman at the counter, wore a strained boredom, sparking only for customers. Passion was absent, their eyes dim. A local on my flight in had called them “simple people” bound to land and life, their hearts—not minds—driving them. Latin America’s soul wove body and earth, emotion and action, into a vivid tapestry.
El Salvadorans’ eyes held oceans of love, terror, and everything between, defying words. Bukele’s war on gangs, ripping families apart, was a violent necessity for safety, one reporter had said. “To do the right thing, you must be violent.” Yet violence stifled art. Unlike Colombia or Mexico, El Salvador’s rural, personal culture lived in shared moments, not books. Who writes when you’re living it?
At the hotel, I met Alberto, a Cuban-American from Miami, paranoid about immigration. “They’ll search your phone. They’ll accuse you of something,” he warned, frantically deleting files from his smartphone.
“Man, these people, they don’t care. They’ll screw you if they can get away with it, and right now, there’s a guy in office who will screw you so hard…so hard, man, that you will go to prison and you just disappear. Bro, not to me,” he said in a stream of anxiety. Despite his U.S. passport, Alberto was unhinged.
“Oh man,” he said, shaking his head, breathing heavier. “I got so many things on here that they screw me over with.” Suddenly, a loud shatter hit the floor. Alberto had stood up and, with all his might, he had thrown his phone into the ground. The cover glass had shattered into a million pieces, and the phone opened in two. I looked on the ground in disbelief.
“Bro, what are you doing?” I asked, shocked at his action.
“Bro, I got so much shit,” Alberto said, extremely irritated.
He looked at the ground and pulled out a cigarette.
“Bro, you gotta clean this up,” I said, looking under the table and seeing bits of glass gleaming in the sunlight. “Somebody could get hurt.”
Alberto shrugged.
“There’s cleaning ladies here, dude” he said smoking nervously. “It’s their job. Anyway, I can just buy a new phone.”
The irony, I thought as I got a piece of paper and slowly started to scrape the floor for broken glass pieces. Alberto, a Cuban American, was going to let an El Salvadoran clean his mess up. The guy was so unreasonable. He could have just sold his phone or even gifted it to a person. That thousand dollar phone could have changed a person’s life. But Alberto didn’t care. He had a moment of passion. The deed was done.
Later that day, we went to the airport, checked in effortlessly, and flew out to Dallas. El Salvadorans made signs of the cross as we took off, the fear of crashing very high in Latin America after news reports of plane malfunctions everywhere in the US.
As we waited to go through customs, Alberto pulled out a burner phone with a copy of his ticket. When the customs officer had him scan the ticket, the reader didn’t register. The officer looked at Alberto and the passport.
“Could you step aside?” He asked Alberto.
“Bro, I’m American,” Alberto iterated.
“I can see that, but your picture on your phone doesn’t register. So, we need to figure this out. Could you step to the side?”
“Bro, I’m American, I have rights,” Alberto continued.
“Find a ticket that works or step aside, it’s very simple,” the officer responded back, unmoved.
Alberto looked at me like I should plead for him. But I could only look at him helplessly. He shattered his phone, after all. It probably had the ticket he needed.
I went on to my flight with no hassle with la migra. On the plane, I met a guy from Phoenix who was El Salvadoran. We had a conversation about my trip where he reiterated much of what others said. The only difference was that El Salvador was now getting very expensive, and this was making young people unable to go there and afford living there even though it’s their own country.
“Why is it so expensive?” I asked. “Because when a country is safe, prices rise,” was the response. The man put his baseball cap down and promptly fell asleep.
Thank you for this honest and raw take. I loved reading it!✨✨✨
Vividly written. I loved the bit about the guy smashing his phone. I could feel the glass.