Comunidad Nueva Esperanza, El Salvador

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Our History:

• 1979 - 1980: In our villages we suffered great repression from the army. Many families were detained, persecuted, had their possessions destroyed, and family members killed. We fled to other places.
• 1980 - 1982: We spent two years in refuge in the cellar of the San Roque Church in San Salvador. We endured overcrowded subhuman conditions and were constantly surrounded by the army so that we could not even go outside to see the sun. We felt very united.
• 1982 - 1991: International solidarity facilitated our exit to Nicaragua. We worked in various cooperatives and suffered the economic consequences of a country affected by the Contra war, however many of us had the opportunity to advance in our studies.
• 1991: We returned to El Salvador on the 20th of March 1991, protected by the UNHCR. We repopulated land for the Nancuchiname Cooperative on the coastal zone of Usulutan in what was still a conflicted war zone. Here we founded the Nueva Esperanza community on the Christian principals of unity, solidarity, participation, and self sufficiency with the ideal of achieving an integral development.

We faced many problems such as threats from the army who detained us and held up the arrival of food aid. The Institute of Agrarian Reform (ISTA) impeded our settling in the zone. We had hygiene problems and lacked drinking water, latrines, food, and medicines.

We began to build wells, latrines, a wooden bridge, and various communal locals. Each family lived in a plastic tent and we began to work on health, education, and human rights. United with the neighbouring cooperatives and communities, we began the process to defend our land.

Gradually our work at both social and productive levels have amplified and improved, and little by little our initial conditions have been transformed. Today we have dignified housing of concrete block, a school with classes from Kinder to Eighth Grade, small health and dental clinics, and a centre for pastoral training; all of which offer their services to families from our community and neighbouring communities too. We have two artisan projects: a sewing and embroidery workshop and also a small chicken farm which employ various women.

All of this has been possible because of our organisation and the support of international solidarity groups. In exile we organised a "Committee of the Return" which worked for eleven months, and was later restructured to form the Community Directive, democratically elected and composed of representatives of different work areas and committees.

In 1993, conscious of the need to develop agriculture and use the land more efficiently, we formed a new agricultural cooperative "Nuevo Model de Esperanza" with the objective of legally defending the land, and promoting sustainable agricultural and cattle production. To achieve this we formed two directives: the Community Directive which is responsible for social development, and that of the cooperative, responsible for production, but both directives coordinate to make general decisions.

The peace accords which ended twelve years of war in our country were signed in Chapultepec Mexico on the 16th of January 1992. These included the land transfer to peasants by ISTA with the time limit of October 1994. The reality is that our community has not yet received a transfer of land.

Nueva Esperanza: New Hope

Nuevo Modelo de Esperanza: New Model of Hope