I thought you all might be interested in this article in Today's Washington Post. I hope this finds you well and still banging away at those trade agreements.
Thinking of you!
Rachel Sherman
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001684.html
Arlington Activist Pursues Quest To Lead His Salvadoran Home City
By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, January 31, 2006; Page A01
When Arlington activist Hugo Salinas announced his mayoral candidacy last year, he chose a hotel ballroom a block from the White House and !
spoke to
a crowd of supporters that included some of the area's well-known Latino leaders and businessmen.
But when he took the podium, Salinas didn't announce he was running for office in the United States, which he had called home for more than 14 years. He announced he would be moving back to El Salvador and running for mayor of Intipuca, the sun-drenched city where he was born.
| Hugo Salinas's campaign for mayor of Intipuca is likely to test the political power of Salvadoran immigrants, who sent back billions of dollars last year. (La Prensa Grafica) |
Since then, Salinas's candidacy has been the subject of intense scrutiny locally and in his home country.
s candidacy, observers say, will test the political power wielded by Salvadoran immigrants here, who sent more than $2.8 billion home last year and are demanding a greater say in their country's affairs. A hefty chunk of change went to Intipuca, which, thanks to this influx, is now a thoroughly Americanized town where the streets were paved with U.S. dollars.
"Basically, he's going to be representing us," said Andreas "Elmer" Arias, who is president of the U.S. Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce. "We send a lot of money home, and . . . we need a voice over there. We're investing in our home towns -- buying
housing, building roads and other projects -- and we'd like to see a good mayor we can trust."
Salinas, 44, calls Intipuca a "municipal icon for migration," and the town does have a special -- some say unhealthy -- bond with the United States. So many Intipuqueños have settled in the Washington region that they have formed a hometown association -- United for Intipuca Foundation -- which has raised nearly $1 million for capital projects over the years for the city, including a $400,000 soccer stadium.
Intipuca has changed from a sleepy village into a modern city of three-story colonial brick houses. A prominent sign says brightly, in English, "Welcome to Intipuca." The streets are named for U.S. presidents and Arlington's Columbia Pike. In the early days, so many residents had new televisions and other appliances that the rudimentary electrical system was often overwhelmed, and brownouts were common.
!
But as
the wealth arrived, some say, torpor grew. What industry there was shrank as residents gave up low-paying agricultural jobs to wait for their remittance checks.
"People pretty much spend the money they get. They don't invest it," said Salinas's younger brother Henry, a coach and Spanish teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria. "There's not a lot of agriculture or factories. It's a very dependent society."
Hugo Salinas, a volunteer and activist, sees it as his mission to change that. He wants to bring tourism to the town, which is just a few miles from a beach, and industry to generate jobs. He speaks of creating bilingual programs for youths and has helped produce a modern Web site for the city.
"The national press puts a lot of emphasis on my race because I'm opening up a new way, a new system for politicians in El Salvador," Salinas said. "If I win, I have an obligation to do a good job. !
I have a
sense of responsibility" not only to the residents of Intipuca, but other immigrants living in the United States who hope to follow in his footsteps and return.
The same media have been polite about not mentioning central facts of Salinas's life, that he is gay and has HIV, that could become major political liabilities in a largely conservative and Catholic country.
"People are not prepared for that. They are not as open-minded," said Miguel Alvarez, a journalist for La Prensa Grafica, one of the country's major newspapers. However, Salinas's opponents -- the mayor and two other people -- have not been shy about bringing it up, Alvarez said.
"They say, 'A gay mayor? How is this possible?' "
Salinas said he was fine with discussing his sexual orientation for this article but did not want it to become a campaign issue.
"I don't have any energ!
ies to
think about that," Salinas said. "I want to do my energies on my campaign."
He learned he has HIV in 1988, during a time when he said he was engaged in sexual affairs with both men and women. At first, he said, "I didn't accept it. I didn't consider myself gay."
He insists the pain of his diagnosis paled in comparison with suffering he endured when his parents left him, when he was 13, to come to the United States for work. They joined a vast influx of their countrymen seeking to escape the poverty and strife of El Salvador, which has been torn by civil war.
Salinas was left to raise his four younger siblings, who were 1 to 11 years old.
"I was too busy to be angry with my parents," he said. "I was very afraid. I didn't understand why they needed to move."
Although the parents sent money back from their jobs as domestic cleaners, the family
struggled, Salinas's brother Henry said. Hugo did not have shoes until he went to high school.
"He made sure we had our books, did our homework, that we were properly dressed and taught us manners. He was like a father to us," Henry Salinas said.
Salinas first came to the United States in the early 1990s and has applied for but not received his citizenship. He obtained a waiver to stay in 1993 despite his HIV status in part because he agreed to participate in clinical drug trials at the National Institutes of Health. He later counseled families on AIDS awareness for La Clinica del Pueblo in the District.
Irrepressible and handsome, Salinas has always been willing to lend a hand to a cause, friends said, whether it has been fundraising for Central American hurricane victims or creating El Salvador's float for the Cherry Blossom Parade. Salinas also paints elaborate folk art chairs that he donates to he!
lp raise
money for pet causes.
During a recent lunch with a reporter, Salinas was stopped mid-interview by supporter and friend Juan Mendez, 41, a builder, who whipped out a checkbook and wrote him a $200 campaign donation.
"He's running against some very tough people, good old boys who want to do things the way they've done for ever and ever," Mendez said. "Anybody with new ideas is going to be a threat to them."
Salinas has tried to break the traditional campaign mode, arriving in Intipuca, population 17,000, with a cargo container full of masks he bought for a Halloween parade. He goes into the villages outside Intipuca with a bedsheet and a film projector and shows movies in the plazas, a la "Cinema Paradiso."
He has not always been received well. Recently, vandals defaced one of his campaign signs with black spray paint.
But the outreach has be!
gun to
pay off. Conventional wisdom places him in second place behind Mayor Enrique Mendez, who is backed by the conservative ARENA party of President Elias Antonio Saca. No official polls have been conducted.
"You know, in the beginning, it did not look good, frankly," said Arlington County Board member Walter Tejada (D), who traveled with Salinas in Intipuca last fall.
"Things were essentially against him. . . . Since then, people have actually gotten to know the real Hugo Salinas -- the activist and human being we all know here in Arlington."
Salinas will be relying not only on donations from his local supporters but their votes as well. He expects at least 150 of his townsmen to return home for the election in March just to vote for him.
" Ojal á" -- God willing -- "they will come," he said.
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