Way back in 1990 Steve Penner invited one of the BIC’s newest pastors to join an MCC learning tour to El Salvador and Honduras. It deepened my love for those countries, for the MCC, and for Steve that remains to this day.

The immersion experience also proved to be full of enduring cautionary tales. Unfortunately, the prophecies I received have been fulfilled. Central America was a training ground for the militarists who are invading our streets in unmarked cars and masks right now. They are making war on their own people just like the U.S. trained and funded nationals to do in El Salvador and Honduras.

Olga Fedorova / AP, 2025

Our little delegation did not succeed in unmasking what the the U.S. government was doing in Central America and now we are having trouble unmasking ICE on our own streets [CNN].

ERP combatants in Perquín, El Salvador, by Linda Hess Miller, 199018-year-olds with machine guns

In El Salvador it was not marginally trained ICE agents rushing into the streets, fueled by the billions provided by the Big Beautiful Bill.  Instead, we were met by 18-year-olds with guns stopping our bus. We were going toward Chalatenango, the mountainous province which was a major stronghold  of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) “insurgents.” The area was the site of multiple massacres committed against civilians by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military during the civil war (1979–1992).

Our destination was the Mesa Grande refugee camp just over the border in Honduras, where we met a man who escaped El Salvador with barely any clothes on as a child and was still in the camp years later. As the young men prepared to inspect us and our documents, our handlers told us to keep quiet and keep our heads down. There was no telling what the kids might do.

Now we have similar people on our own streets breaking car windows, breaking into homes, and sending untried people to Uganda. I was on edge the whole time I was in El Salvador, now I’m wary of what will happen if we go to Home Depot.

The secrets of Soto Cano

Brunswick, GA (where I visited my relatives and alligators when I was 13) is where the U.S. has a huge center for training ICE agents. Further south in the Everglades, Governor DeSantis spent $250 million on Alligator Alcatraz, which was recently ordered closed by  U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams [NPR]. ICE now has 400 field offices in the US and a growing number of detention centers. The money always flows in the U.S. for violent solutions for relational problems.

When we were in Honduras we somehow got an audience with an officer at the Soto Cano Air Base. I’m sure if I hunted for my journal long enough, I could give you his rank. As was my custom (to the dismay of my handlers), I asked him a question I have not forgotten. The officer had just told us the new capabilities the soldiers were learning about combating insurgencies and conducting “low-intensity warfare,” meaning the enemy does not have giant air bases and cannot be distinguished from the population. (Thus Israel destroys Gaza and kills over 60,000 people to fight Hamas). I asked him, “With all this knowledge and new mobile weaponry, what are the plans for subduing future insurgencies in the U.S.?” He said, “We would never apply these tactics in the U.S.” You can see how that worked out.

Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras was a crucial staging ground for US military operations during the Salvadoran Civil War, serving as a base for intelligence, counterinsurgency, and logistical support. While not located in El Salvador, its role was central to US efforts to support its Cold War political and military interests in Central America. Because the U.S. government did not have public Congressional approval for combat missions from Honduras, it downplayed the constant involvement of the U.S. military in the area’s conflicts. This meant that service members involved often received no awards or official recognition for the dangers they faced. Their service was a secret. And most of us assume the “deep state” has plenty more secrets where those came from (as in the Jeffrey Epstein files).

The subversive cross

We also had the privilege of visiting members of Resurrection Lutheran Church in San Salvador where people told us of their subversive cross. Some of the people we met had been imprisoned, themselves, for their subversive activities — like housing battered women.  Others reported loved ones who were still lost to them in the prison system, not in Louisiana or El Salvador, but lost just the same. The squad that whisked them away was also following orders and “keeping the peace” as if they were the police.

CBN, not a bastion of wokeness, reported on what is happening to Latino Christians across the Evangelical community in the U.S. this year:

The story of the Lutheran Church is like a parable predicting today. At the end of 1989, an offensive by the FMLN resulted in a crackdown on dissenters by the government. On November 16 a death squad murdered six Jesuit priests. That same day another squad came looking for Lutheran Bishop  Gomez with orders to assassinate him. He was safely away. His church was full of victims of the offensive and the soldiers sorted them out.  They captured 12 foreigners and 3 Salvadorans, and they sunk so low as to capture and carry off a cross.

The cross is still a special symbol in the church — after all, now they have to deal with  President Bukele. One day, as a special offering to the Lord, the congregation wrote the sins committed against the people of El Salvador upon a plain, white cross.  As they identified the sins of their country and their people, they committed themselves to work toward forgiveness, and to be strengthened for liberation.  The cross also carried messages of hope and love, as a testimony to the transforming power of God.

The Bishop had found safe haven with friends in Milwaukee. Two months later, he returned accompanied by North American pastors. The U.S. Ambassador interceded and communicated with the President of El Salvador and the “pilgrim cross” made a journey from the prison to the Presidential House. There the cross completed its mission of pointing out sins.

Some time later, Bishop Gómez was again accompanied, this time by pastors from Germany.  They spoke with the President and finally “The Subversive Cross” was handed over, and returned to Resurrection Lutheran Church. The cross now rests in their building, still pointing out sins, injustices and the hard labor its members must do in social action and Christian accompaniment.

After eight months of Trump madness, subversion is growing toward Salvadoran levels all over the country and the whole world. A march to Washington is planned for September, originating in Philadelphia. Governors and attorney generals are figuring out how to creatively secede. Judges are handling cases that have finally made it through  the courts — like undoing Trump’s tariffs.

Debriefing turns to degriefing

A lot of us have been checking out for the past few months because of the Project 2025 onslaught (anti-trans people, etc.), and the tech bros onslaught (DOGE, data harvesting, etc.), the economic onslaught (tariffs now impacting everything), the grift onslaught (bitcoin, Trump family graft), and the compassion onslaught (Medicaid cuts, sneak attack on Medicare, USAID dismantling, etc.). It is all just plain overwhelming. Waiting for Trump to die is not enough hope to live on.

Likewise, in El Salvador I realized that even though I was about as woke as I could get in the 1990’s (I had lived in a commune, after all), I was still unprepared for how huge, ruthless, incompetent and unthought-through our military and political machines were. Sound familiar?

As we debriefed at the close of our trip to El Salvador and Honduras, we had just met Jon Sobrino, the priest who was not killed with his brothers in the raid on the Jesuit mission [my post]. He had just gotten back from the U.S. {Sojourners interview] [1990 commencement speech]. He told us he would never go back. He just did not have the strength to stand up to the soul-killing power of our culture. And, of course, he told us about that power snaking into his own small church and devouring its leaders.

As we sat in Tegucigalpa debriefing I was undone. I had to confess I thought I would have solutions and bring some home. But I had none and I brought home few. I admit, as I took my turn to share my feelings, I broke into tears. The past eight months have pushed me to that edge repeatedly. After all, people from El Salvador are still being brutalized in my own country while legally seeking asylum! Fortunately, I have not forgotten the subversive cross and its inevitable power to undermine the evil of the world and finally defeat it.

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