Montgomery sister city agreement strengthens ties to Salvadoran city

The significance of the region during the war and the existing links to county residents were factors in the decision to make Morazan its first sister city, Montgomery officials said.

Nearly 20 years after the peace treaty, the region remains among the poorest in El Salvador. One-third of its 180,980 residents live in poverty, and one in four is illiterate, according to Salvadoran census figures.

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“Morazan has been the most forgotten area of El Salvador,” said Evelyn Gonzalez-Mills, a counselor at Montgomery College who came to Washington in 1981 from Morazan’s capital city, San Francisco Gotera.

Like many Salvadorans in the Washington area, Gonzalez-Mills came here fleeing the conflict. Now, she said, all they want is to move the country forward.

“We want to build a new El Salvador,” said Gonzalez-Mills, a lead advocate for the Montgomery-Morazan sisterhood. That’s why she founded the Association for Educational Development, a nonprofit based in Montgomery that promotes educational opportunities in El Salvador.

“We haven’t forgotten where we come from and the conditions back home,” she said.

Francisco Altschul, El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States, said his government welcomes Montgomery’s engagement in his country to improve life there and to stop the exodus of people, which has continued since the war.

“One of the objectives in this government is to find the means for Salvadorans in the United States to support their home communities to help improve quality of life,” Altschul said. “This government acknowledges that the Salvadorans who have left the country have done so because they haven’t found in their places of origin the adequate means of life in reference to work, education, health care. . . . In a way, they have been forced to leave the country.”

‘Not a one-way street’

Since the official agreement was signed, more nonprofits and county residents have joined their Salvadoran neighbors’ efforts.

The Washington Area Wheelchair Society in Silver Spring, for example, recently donated medical supplies — including 20 hospital beds, wheelchairs, crutches and bedside commodes — for a Morazan hospital and clinics. Habitat for Humanity has made a commitment to build 38 homes for people living in dangerous structures there. Students at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring collected sporting goods for a Morazan school, and the Anthropology Club at Montgomery College collected books for a school library.

A county delegation visiting Morazan for the official sisterhood accord in July helped with community projects. Some built a garden at a school, and others volunteered at a maternity center. Officials exchanged ideas about how to improve recreational activities and economic-development projects and start parent-teacher associations.

“It is not a one-way street,” said Rebecca Kahlenberg, executive director of the nonprofit MoverMoms.

“I just love the way it bridges cultures,” said Kahlenberg, who traveled to Morazan with her 9-year-old daughter. “It is an opportunity for them to learn about us and for us to learn about them.”