Political Violence

Just a quick post, because I'm feeling a bit stressed with work I have to do.

Last Wednesday the mayor of Alegria (a very pretty pueblo up the mountain from me) was shot and killed along with a female collegue of his. It is pretty much assumed that his murder was political. He is part of FMLN, the leftist party. There's a ton of political activity going on right now for the elections at the begginning of 2009. Because of the eletion cycle, a number of municipalities will be voting on mayors and the entire country will be voting on the president, making these the biggest elections since the peace accords were signed in the early nineties.

It is feared that because there is so much at stake, the elections could turn violent. Ironically, I was at a meeting on how to prevent any political violence in our municipality when I found out that the mayor was murdered. Living in a canton, I am thankfully isolated from a lot of the most fervent political activity, and Peace Corps volunteers are prohibited from partaking in any sort of political activity, so there is no need to worry about me. It will all be very interesting I'm sure.

The real violence I have to worry about is on the soccer field (I know you can't hear it, but my voice just transitioned into a more optimistic, joking tone). In my most recent game, I was fouled a number of times and have a nice scrape on my arm to prove it. Also, the referee ended the game early because the opposing fans were on his case. They, of course, were not happy about this, so there was a bit of tension about what they were going to do. Guys from my community came out to stand next to the ref, just in case, but nothing happened...the other team and their fans piled into their pick-ups and went home. One of the men from our community then scolded us that you never leave a ref by himself if he might be in trouble--although there really wasn't any trouble. Also, I was told that I play too cleanly, and I need to push people around more in Salvadoran soccer than I might be used to. I'll let you know how that goes this week.