What is el salvadoran daily life like?

Question

What is el salvadoran daily life like?

Answer 1

It really depends on how much money you have, I lived in El Salvador for 4 years I am Irish American, my step mother is from El Salvador so I lived thier with her family my uncle owns an equestrian school and my aunt is a proffesor is a collage so we lived very well and went to aa private school but when you go out of the city life is compleatly different, when I came back to the states it makes you appreciate everything we have cause I lot of people are very poor its very sad...

Answer 2

Bendog gave a great answer.  I got to see a little of both lifestyles, the rich and the poor.  Mostly I lived outside the city and got to know people who made a living any way they could; selling candy on the street, making pupusas, manual labor.   Some of my students' families couldn't afford the $10 textbooks for my class.  Crime is an issue too; the town I lived in was under an 8pm curfew for half time during the year I was there because of gang activity.  The police were bribed to stay out of an issue we had with someone threatening the heads of the institution I worked for.  Muggings were common for my students.  The government's trying to work on it, but it's a big thing to clean up.  Families seemed very important and lots of kids worked to help their families or took care of siblings.

I went to church with the upper class some Sundays.  Their lives seemed very different; nice gated communities with townhouses, malls, American food.  I can't say much else for the way they lived because I didn't spend a lot of time with them.

Answer 3

Well it depends on your level of economic status.  The classes of society are very separated and live completely different lifestyles.

The poor comprise about 85 to 90 percent of the population and live in varying  degrees of poverty. From no running water or electricity and huts made from scrap wood and corrugated metal roofs with dirt floors to small cinder block houses.  Crime is a big problem in poor neighborhoods. El Salvador has a huge gang problem. Many poor areas are completely controlled by gangs and young teenagers are actively recruited  or face violence and death if they don't join up.  Employment opportunities for these people are scarce and much of the money they live on comes from family members living in the States who send them money. There are Western Union wire transfer places in every town and village.

The top 5 percent of the country, economic wise, live about the same as upper middle to very wealthy people in the USA.  The only difference is they have a lot more security, big walls, barbwire and private police.  They have nice malls and many of the food and stores available to them that people in the USA have.  The crime is beginning to bother them more, but they blame the poor and just protect themselves more.

There is a lot of corruption in the government that effects everybody, and people just accept that as part of how the country works.

Rich kids all go to private schools and poor kids go to very poorly funded public schools.  

Hope that gives you an idea of life here in El Salvador!