“Meat? Maybe once a year”

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The children of José Ambrosio Hernández drink corn atole instead of milk and are the only ones in the household to use soap or shampoo when they wash themselves. “That’s only for the little children,” he says, flashing one of his usual smiles. Ambrosio is 46 years old and has five children: José, 17; Romel, 10; Cristian, 7; Moisés, 2; and Carlos, five months old when his parents spoke with El Faro last May. He lives with them and his wife, Rosa González, 39, in the Valle Grande canton in San Simón, Morazán, in a rectangular adobe home with sheet metal roofing. They share just three cots, a few plastic chairs, and a hammock hanging in the middle of the main room. In a smaller annex room they have a wood stove and a wooden table. On it that day were three tomatoes, a bag of oil, sugar, and a container with coffee beans.

In northeastern El Salvador, poverty is an ever-widening fissure accentuated by distance and limited access to communities like theirs. That is why it is hardly surprising when Ambrosio says they always eat the same: bean soup, refried beans, or beans with tomatoes and tortillas. On the off chance that they have eggs or any other addition, only the children eat them. Rice is permitted twice a week. “We do not eat cheese. And meat? Maybe once a year,” he estimates. San Simón is one of the poorest municipalities in El Salvador. The Social Investment Fund for Local Development and the malnutrition map of the World Food Programme place it in the category of extreme severe poverty.

 

Ambrosio is unsure how much money the family earns every month. Together they subsist on the eight dollars he makes every day working others’ land. They eat in accordance with however many days of work he obtains. Any money passing through his hands is quickly converted into potatoes on sale, tomatoes, or a pound of rice for $0.75. Any corn or beans will depend on his personal harvest, which at times succumbs to plagues or the climate crisis. To secure grains, Ambrosio must draw from the little money he has to pay for compost or fertilizer. In his canton they only sow once per year, in May. If they plant seeds in August, they are left with a feeble crop that does not produce any ears of corn.

The main problem with the purchase of grains is that the price is ever-increasing. A quintal of corn, for example, in May 2023 cost 33 dollars, up to ten more than at the end of 2022, according to the Food Sovereignty Roundtable.

For now, his family buys beans by the pound, for one dollar. This is because in 2022 Ambrosio could not seed; the government offered to deliver him beans, but he declined because they arrived too late. “I had the field ready to seed, but the beans arrived on September 25, when the delivery needed to be in August in order for there to be a harvest,” he explains. He is hardly literate —he only completed up to second grade— but, in terms of farming, he knows precisely the right time to seed.

The torrential rains of winter 2022 destroyed a good part of the crop in San Simón. On October 9, Hurricane Julia partially flooded the room where his family sleeps, eats, and keeps its seeds. That day, as the storm swept into El Salvador from the Caribbean, rivers and crops flooded and structures collapsed. Some 161 houses were affected, and at least 10 people died across the country.

 

Finding something to eat is not Ambrosio’s lone worry: José, his 17-year-old son who used to help him work and bring another eight dollars a day back to the family, was arrested on Aug. 14, 2022 under the state of exception. As of May, he was being held in the juvenile detention center in Ilobasco, Cabañas. Despite being only eight miles away, Ambrosio must take three buses to get there, traveling from San Francisco Gotera, the department seat of Morazán, to San Miguel and then to Ilobasco. If he is the only one traveling, he must bring ten dollars for the trip. But when he visits he wants to bring two witnesses, and he calculates that he will need to bring $40 in order to pay for both fare and food.

Last time he brought them, the hearing was suspended because there was no state transportation to bring his son to the courtroom. He had obtained the money for the trip from donations. Now he does not have money for his own fare. “Running up and down like this has not been easy,” he says. “I’ve run into people from Ahuachapán, Sonsonate, Santa Ana, and they often tell me, ‘Púchica [dang], this affects us, because we paid to get here from far away.”

Ambrosio has managed to see his son in a few hearings. “He has changed a bit,” he says, referring to José’s weight loss. Whenever he can, he sends him a package with underwear, a T-shirt, two rolls of toilet paper, laundry detergent, tooth paste, and a toothbrush. Nothing to eat because, they told him, in the facility they feed José. But Ambrosio has his doubts.

As days go by, Ambrosio and his family’s hunger continues to spiral. But he takes refuge in that utopic phrase often repeated in cantons like his: “God will provide.”