The Face of El Salvador's Charm Offensive

"Previous consuls have tried to get close to our community, of course. But no one has shown her enthusiasm," said Luis Felipe Romero, president of Salvadorans Associated of Maryland, as he watched Chavez lead a conga line around the dance floor at the charity's annual fundraising party in Northwest Washington on a recent evening. "She comes to every event. She is always insisting that we call her Ana Margarita, not Señora Consul. She really identifies with the working-class Salvadoran overseas."

Much of Chavez's work is conducted without fanfare -- including her periodic visits to Roger Menendez, the construction worker recovering from his car accident in Silver Spring.

"Hello, Roger! How's my sweetheart?" Chavez cooed as she stepped into his darkened bedroom on a recent evening.

Menendez, 28, who lay on a hospital bed and had a feeding tube protruding from his stomach, could only manage a loud, "Mmmmmm."

Chavez, a divorced mother of three grown children, beamed. "You should have seen him when he came out of the coma a couple months ago," she said. "He could only move his eyes. . . . This is great progress."

Chavez maintains that such extracurricular activities are a natural outgrowth of her job as consul.

"You're supposed to be your people's representative over here. So that means you're going to be called on to be everything from mayor, to priest, to psychologist," she said.

During a recent interview in her office in an ultra-modern, government complex in San Salvador, Margarita Escobar, head of the vice ministry for overseas Salvadorans, confirmed that strategy and ticked off an array of other outreach initiatives she and her staff have undertaken so far -- including inviting several hundred expatriate Salvadorans to a forum with Saca late last year, developing pension and health insurance plans for Salvadorans who want to retire in El Salvador and opening a satellite consulate in Woodbridge so that area Salvadoran immigrants don't have to travel as far or wait as long for services.

The unifying theme, Escobar said, is that, "we're trying to make our Salvadorans overseas understand that this government truly cares about them."

Whether the expatriates are receptive to the message is another story.

At the Salvadorans Associated of Maryland fundraiser, Hugo Carballo, a union organizer who has lived in Fairfax for nearly 20 years, said he appreciated Chavez's presence at the event, as well as her help coordinating local immigrant relief efforts after Hurricane Stan launched mudslides across El Salvador and other Central American nations in 2005.

"But what I really want from this government is for them to give us the right to vote, and it just seems like there's no political will to make it happen quickly," he said. "God knows we Salvadorans in the United States do so much for our country. They need to take us into account, to recognize our contribution -- maybe even give us our own representative in the National Assembly."

Emily Castro, a special education teacher living in Northern Virginia, was even more indignant.

"As a representative of the Salvadoran government, she should be ashamed to be here," Castro muttered, glancing over at Chavez after Romero made a presentation highlighting the desperate poverty of the Salvadoran children for whom the association buys school supplies and bemoaning the fact that the association could not help more of them.

"The government should be solving these problems, not asking this community that is working so hard over here and that has so little of our own to take care of it," she said.

About an hour later, Castro confronted Chavez directly -- telling her that three Salvadoran girls at her school were pregnant and asking bluntly, "What the hell do you guys ever do for us?"

Chavez's smile wavered slightly. But she quickly regained her composure and began peppering Castro with questions about the case and assuring her that the consulate would be eager to form a partnership to combat teen pregnancy.

"She doesn't believe me now. But she'll see when I call her next week to follow up," Chavez whispered to a colleague as Castro strode off. "I bet you I win her over."