The Face of El Salvador's Charm Offensive
Consul General Uses Personal Touch to Woo Expatriate Community

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Like much of Washington's diplomatic corps, El Salvador's consul general, Ana Margarita Chavez, spends her days conferring with U.S. officials and her nights cruising to parties in a black sport-utility vehicle with diplomatic plates.

That is where the similarity ends.

While her counterparts from other nations stick to such traditional consular services as renewing passports and helping their countrymen sort out immigration problems, Chavez, a petite 49-year-old with long black curls and a bubbly laugh, is more like a social worker on steroids.

During weekly appearances on the area's main Spanish radio shows, Chavez regularly gives out her cellphone number so that immigrants in need of help can reach her directly.

The phone's constant trill is a testament to how many listeners take her up on the offer. During one recent week, Chavez dropped by the Silver Spring home of a Salvadoran construction worker injured in a car accident last year to check on his progress; lined up a job for an out-of-work landscaper in Woodbridge and then personally drove him to the interview; and convinced a young father fighting a bitter custody battle with his estranged wife that their daughter is better off staying with her grandparents in El Salvador.

As for her evening social schedule, Chavez usually skips high-powered bashes in Washington's downtown restaurants or Embassy Row manses in favor of pupusa and wine mixers hosted in suburban churches and community centers by immigrant Salvadoran nurses, restaurant owners and construction contractors seeking to raise money for the impoverished villages they left behind.

Her approach dovetails with a wider charm offensive recently launched by Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca, of the pro-business ARENA party, to cement his support among Salvadoran expatriates.

The stakes are high. The Salvadoran government estimates that more than a fourth of the country's citizens live in the United States. The expatriates have been lobbying hard for the right to vote from abroad, and it is generally considered a matter of just a few years before they will get it. Even now, they are believed to exercise enormous sway over voters back home thanks to the estimated $3 billion they send their relatives annually.

During the presidential election in 2004, Saca and his opponent campaigned personally in the Washington area. And shortly after taking office, Saca expanded the foreign ministry to include a vice ministry exclusively dedicated to overseas Salvadorans.

The 16 consulates in the United States are the vice ministry's principal vehicle of operations. The Washington area is among its most important targets. The U.S. Census estimates there are 130,000 foreign-born Salvadorans in the Washington region. The embassy estimates the size of the local Salvadoran community -- including those born here of Salvadoran parents -- at half a million.

At first glance, Chavez might not seem the most obvious choice to win them over. The daughter of a former chief supreme court justice, she hails from the upper crust of a society still highly stratified between rich and poor 14 years after peace accords ended its bloody civil war. Originally an architect, Chavez said that friends in El Salvador's military encouraged her to pursue national security studies and later a career as head of El Salvador's anti-drug commission before she was tapped for the consul general position.

Although she still encounters cynics, Chavez's effervescent, informal style has clearly captivated many local Salvadorans, who quickly fall into addressing her with the familiar "tú" rather than the formal "usted" in Spanish. A year and a half into the job, Chavez has emerged as one of the most recognizable figures within the Salvadoran community -- even as she remains almost completely unknown outside of it.

"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."