God’s Fucking Country

Pray for surf? Answered.

To the man on the street, El Salvador may be best known for those murdered nuns, the prominent murderous gangs filtering north, or maybe the long civil war and accompanying death squads. But for adventurous, naïve surfers like myself, this country is also known as the home of some of the best waves on earth. The best of them is a stony headland appropriately known as Punta Roca, and it sits just a short paddle-out from one of the foulest towns in the world, a suburban ghetto with another misnomer, La Libertad. La Libertad kind of looks like Satan’s worker’s dormitories dressed down as a poor fishing town infested with crack. And though it looks pretty bad on the surface, the smell is still much worse, a searing combo of raw sewage (plumbing? What plumbing?) and discarded fish guts and trash marinating each other in the constant, humid heat of Central America. Paradise.

My welcome into La Libertad was no less inviting. As I first rolled into town, I waved a cheerful hello to some dozen children eyeing us sore-thumb gringos as we passed by. The corners of their mouths never even flinched toward a smile, and a few responded to my benevolent gesture by playing air machine guns and pretending to mow us down. Aw, precious. As if that weren’t a flashing neon achtung, we stayed in a penal colony/apartment building fortified by ten-foot cement walls topped with barbed wire, and the only spiked gate in and out was guarded by a guy in a brownish wife beater with a thousand yard stare and a pistol-grip 12-gauge at the ready.  

Los Tigres Del Norte 

A few nights later, bored of sitting in our cell block in La Libertad and passing the evenings drinking beer, reading magazines, and watching the same four reggaeton videos rotate on Latin MTV, we decided to acquire some culture and taste the nightlife of the capital city, San Salvador, and sped toward the lively Zona Rosa. Which is when things took another unforeseen turn. As we left an early dinner ready to hit the town, we found six shady-looking dudes standing around outside the restaurant’s entrance. Three government vehicles (beat-up white Nissan Sentras with badge-ish stickers on the doors) were parked on all sides of our car, blocking us in against a wall. The men approached us, flashing badges and identifying themselves as immigration agents. I’d seen traps like this several times before during my travels in Mexico and Colombia. It’s known as la mordida — the bite. Usually you just hand the Keystone cops a $20 and its all smiles and no hard feelings, maybe even a friendly beer afterward, cop’s treat. But I wasn’t sure how it worked with immigration agents.

The leader of the good squad asked for our passports. 

“We aren’t carrying them,” I replied in Spanish. Who carries their valuable passport out at night in a dangerous country?

“Then how do we know you’re not here illegally? We need to see your passport stamp.”

We were being harassed by la migra? The irony of the whole situation was not lost on me, though I did lose my wits momentarily. I began telling the immigration officials how we’d traveled thousands of miles from el Norte searching for work, following our dreams, and finally stealing across the border into God’s Country. This joke was in poor taste, I admit. It did not amuse the immigration officials, either; they threw me against the wall with a little extra oomph, and cuffed me. In retrospect, I had been drinking and it was a real asshole thing to say. But still, they were robbing us, I wasn't about to thank them.

Fortunately we’d befriended some local surfers, and one of them, Manny, was to be our guide for the night. He arrived right as I was being thrown into the back of a car and intercepted. He grabbed my arm, ripped me right from the grips of the cops. I didn’t know what the fuck to think. I was cuffed and being pulled in two directions. The agents surged forward, then suddenly Manny stepped up and began yelling at the authorities, bitching them out about their lack of manners and how corrupt officials are ruining El Salvador and killing tourism. To paraphrase, "What tourist would return after this kind of treatment?" I speak some Spanish, but I couldn’t quite follow the train of expletives he nailed them with as they retreated to their cars, unboxed our ride, and fled. 

It was a stunning display, one little guy chasing off a group of cops. And from what I hear about Salvadorian prisons, Manny might’ve saved my life. At the least he saved me some bribe money, which I gratefully donated to him.

As denouement to this dramatic climax, we scrapped the night and sped the whole way back to our preferred Salvadorian prison.

Tangentially, I don’t know why Salvadorians can cuss out the cops, but Manny told me it’s common practice over there. As another example of the disregard for the authorities, people sped up when they saw cops, as if to say, “Oh shit, there are the cops! Speed up before they have time to notice us.” People would drive 50 miles per hour down the road, then suddenly gun it to 90 if they saw a cop car parked by the side of the road. Manny told me he wanted both a head start and good head of steam in case he attracted the corrupt coppers' attention. Only a fool stops for the cops in El Salvador, Manny informed me, they’ll just rob you if they get the chance. 

A very cliche joke in Latin America goes: What's the difference between the cops and criminals? A badge.

Adios, Jesus

Despite these bitchy rants about my misadventures in Jesus country, it wasn’t all bad. My favorite fruit, mango, littered the ground everywhere, and pupusas, the Salvadorian national dish of stuffed tortillas, were dirt cheap and damn tasty. Of course it wasn’t until I was home that latent “pupusa’s revenge” set in, and my bowels began reacting like a fish out of water. But before the ultimate price became clear, the food was cheap if not free; the surf was free and perfect, if as bacterially suspect as the food; and the country is clear proof of an angry, Old Testament-style God, in spite of all of that country's dedications to Skydaddy's hippie love-child.

Pray for a lack of intestinal parasites? Hello-ooo?

Moreover, after this bad trip I came home with more respect than ever for my Salvadorian friends and neighbors in L.A. (Well, I only have one Salvadorian friend, Jon Juan, who I surf with.) Salvadorians worked their asses off to get to the States, to escape that place, and they (I mean you, Jon Juan) are some of the nicest, most generous people I know.

Should you think I’m the one being harsh on Salvadorians, do a bit of research on how they treat each other. For example, the laws restricting abortion in El Salvador are among the strictest in the world, and the very first words — Article 1 of El Salvador’s Constitution — protect life from the moment of conception. Abortion is forbidden for rape, incest, fetal malformation, and even threat to the life of the mother. Ectopic pregnancies cannot be treated until the embryo dies or the fallopian tube bursts. Women can get two to eight years for sparing their own lives and from 30 to 50 years if the fetus was viable. Thirty years in the can years for a mistimed pull-out — that's some Old Testament-style punishment.

Travel is the best teacher, but what's becoming most clear after these surf trips are my own cultural biases. Then again, if you want to read about sunshine instead of a critical analysis, read somewhere else.