On Wednesday, March 1, ten men gathered at a house in Reparto Las Cañas to make a plan. It was a complicated plan. So complicated, in fact, that one year ago —one year— it would have been impossible. So impossible that the mere act of getting together to discuss it would have meant risking death. It was that serious, that delicate. And yet, at 7:30 that night, the men were all there, agreeing on rules, fleshing out ideas, discarding others, giving each other a hard time… In short, planning a neighborhood soccer match.
But this last part, as should be clear from the outset, is only a half-truth.
* * *
Las Cañas is a town in the municipality of Ilopango, on the eastern outskirts of San Salvador, that for years has had a painful scar on its face. The community was founded in 1984, during the bloodiest period of the Salvadoran civil war, and has always been home to working-class families, informal workers, teachers, nurses…
Today, there are some 10,000 people living in the town’s roughly 2,000 houses.
At the turn of the century, gangs began to take root in Las Cañas, recruiting the children of the families into their ranks. By 2009, the Sureños faction of 18th Street had gained a solid foothold in one part of the community, and in the other, the Mara Salvatrucha-13 had done the same. Both gangs were strong enough to claim the streets and alleys as their own, and to fight to the death for every corner.
Living under gang rule was an agony endured by most working-class and campesino communities in El Salvador: a nightmare, a life of anguish. But to live in disputed territory involved an added level of horror. The community was split in two: upper Las Cañas was controlled by MS-13, lower Las Cañas by the Sureños. This meant that, in addition to living at the whims of the gangs, residents were on the front lines of an urban war, and had no choice but to pick sides —or at least pretend to— in nearly every aspect of their daily lives. They were obliged to assume the enemy of their captors, their jailers, their executioners, as their own, or else be condemned as spies and traitors. In 2011, gang control was consolidated in Las Cañas, and what was once one town became two. The halves grew distant from each other — existing, despite their physical proximity, separated by an immeasurable distance.
One of the main problems posed by this division was that the only public school in the community was in the area controlled by MS-13, and the majority of students lived in the area controlled by 18th Street. By 2012, teachers at the school were forced to cancel several classes and integrate different grades due to the lack of students. Parents in lower Las Cañas couldn’t cross the M and N passageways —narrow pedestrian paths that marked the invisible border between gang territories— to take their kids to school. So a group of teachers and parents decided to rent a small house on a street in the lower part of town, and began offering night classes for secondary students — after asking permission from Barrio 18, of course. And then, the teachers became some of the few —the very few— people in the community granted a kind of unspoken safe passage by the gangs, which allowed them to travel between territories to teach.
“When there were shootouts, the kids all knew to crouch down and get close to the walls, under the classroom windows,” says Sandra, a teacher at the school. Another elementary school teacher remembers one boy, small but always tough with his classmates, who came to her trembling and in tears, telling her, in the words a child has to describe terror, how the day before he had witnessed his uncle’s murder.
In 2012, during the gang truce brokered by the government of President Mauricio Funes, the teachers organized a meeting with parents and invited the leaders of the gangs to attend. At the meeting, speaking at a podium, representatives from MS-13 and the Sureños gave permission to the residents of lower Las Cañas to take their children to school in the upper half of town, and promised they would not… well, that they would not kill them if they did, as long as —and this point, they emphasized, was key— the families went directly to and from school, following one specific route. That night, the parents of Las Cañas accepted this offering from the gangs with something akin to gratitude.
But in the end, most parents decided not to leave their children’s lives hanging on the promise of a gang member, and the number of students continued to decline.
This was life in Las Cañas, its streets filled with traps and policed by terror. Life with its children as walking trauma and with and a school that stayed off-limits to most.
* * *
It’s January 2023. Five young men are sitting on the bleachers outside the school, sharing a giant two-liter bottle of Coke that they’ve emptied into plastic bags and are drinking down with straws. They’re talking about the new circumstances in their community.
“This morning, I was walking home from work and some soldiers stopped me. One of them told me, ‘If I find anything on you, I’m gonna beat your ass.’ But all I had in my pack was some tools. There’s a lot of abuse, I think,” one of the men tells me. This is another legacy of living under gang control: not only does the rival gang equate you with your captors, but the state, in the form of a policeman or soldier, eyes you with suspicion as well, and at the slightest doubt, will treat you like a criminal.
The men talk about the strange and distant land of lower Las Cañas, which is only four blocks away, and about a mysterious soccer field, of unknown quality and size.
“Is it small?” one of them asks.
“No, man, it’s huge,” says the only one in the group who has dared cross the border so far. His name is Álex. He is serious and in his thirties, with a permanent expression of doubt or shock on his face, a bricklayer by profession, and the father of a son who looks just like him.
A few days earlier, Álex had a crazy idea. So crazy it was perfect. It was an idea that would test just how deep the scar in Las Cañas really was. He envisioned a soccer tournament, where the boys from the lower and upper sides would come together to compete, and in so doing, would build a small bridge —a temporary one perhaps, but a bridge nonetheless— over the abyss of fear that had divided the town for decades.
But there were a few problems: some small, like the lack of soccer balls, and others more complicated, like the fact that Álex didn’t know anyone on the other side of that abyss to whom he might propose his bold idea. Actually, he realized on second thought, there was one man: a principal at a small private school that operated out of a house in upper Las Cañas. The man is a rare bird who worked every day in upper Las Cañas but lived in the lower part of town. He was one of the few residents who enjoyed a special, if tenuous, permission from both gangs to travel between territories. His name is Pedro Rojas.
* * *
Next to the school is a soccer field, dry and dusty as a salt flat, sparsely shaded, with two goals made from metal pipes at both ends, ringed by a border of old car tires half-buried in the dirt. This is “la canchita de arriba”: the “little field” in upper Las Cañas.
A few yards from the field, there is a metal kiosk marking the entrance, with a sign that leaves little doubt about what happens there and to whom the place belongs: “Cocos Don Francisco” — Don Fransisco’s Coconuts. As decoration, the kiosk is spattered with a constellation of bullet holes from the years of gang warfare: showers of gunshots that perforated its tin walls, which the owner, like some tropical Sisyphus, would patch over and over again with putty. The kiosk is at the end of the dirt street that leads to the field. For years, it was an epicenter of shootouts and battles over gang territory. The street is wide, with plenty of spaces marked for parking, but no one would ever leave their vehicle there overnight, for fear that it might end up like Cocos Don Fransisco: riddled with bullet holes.
Don Francisco is 65 years old and has lived in Las Cañas half of his life. Years ago, he started a small soccer school, where he would teach kids from upper Las Cañas the basic positions and plays. Due to conditions in the community, he also had to incorporate another lesson into practice: teaching players how to throw themselves to the ground whenever 18th Street gunmen would climb the hill nearby and rain lead on the children below because, well, the players were from the upper part of town.
“When that would happen, everyone had their eyes wide open. When we’d hear gunshots, they knew to get down on the ground, and then that would be the end of practice for the day,” Don Francisco tells me, standing on the field where he used to coach and pointing toward the once menacing hill. He persisted with the program as long as he could, but eventually, and understandably, parents stopped letting their children attend practice. Five years ago the program shut down.
“This is where it all ended,” Don Francisco says, speaking to me in February, 2023, his head bowing under the weight of the memory. He looks up, his voice breaking, and in the face of an old man is the pout of a crying child. “It all ended here. Everything.”
* * *
Don Pedro Rojas —a good-natured, 60-year-old teacher with a mustache like Groucho Marx— listened to Álex’s proposal and loved the idea. He loved it so much, in fact, that he didn’t keep it to himself, but decided to share it with a few of his neighbors — among them, Don Marvin, a 58-year-old garage-door installer, tough as nails, not much for laughs, and a veteran soccer coach, who jumped on board immediately.
To not drag things out unnecessarily, and to seize the momentum before it died down, they started planning the first match and working on a clever name, one that, on the one hand, would make it clear that the tournament was a friendly event, that it was a “charamusca,” or pick-up game, but on the other hand, that behind the game was something much bigger. So they called it a “charamuscón” — “la gran charamuscón,” to be precise — and announced that it would take place at the little field in upper Las Cañas. Now all that was left to be seen was whether anyone from lower Las Cañas would dare show up, because fear is not so much learned as absorbed, and it gets into the body and becomes part of it. Fear is what gave the people of Las Cañas the power to survive, and it became an instinct that kept them from casually crossing the border that had been hammered into their souls.
But on the last Sunday in January, at 3:30 in the afternoon, one team from each side of town appeared on the field, joined by a handful of family members. It had been a long time since the space had seen so many people, had been so shared by everyone. Still, the teams’ supporters kept their distance from each other, standing on either end of the field, shouting instructions to their players, cheering for goals, yelling in exasperation at mistakes. Don Marvin acted as the sporting director for the lower team, and Álex for the upper team. A neighbor who knew how to referee had pulled his old uniform out of the closet and was running up and down the field, whistle in hand, chasing the play. I don’t know who won. I don’t remember, or I don’t care.
“No, I don’t know them, I don’t know any of them,” Álex tells me when I ask about the players from the lower team. “It’s just that… look, it was forbidden to talk to anyone from the other side. If they saw you, they’d yell at you and make threats. They’d say, ‘Hey, you know what’ll happen next time,” or they’d ask if you had been going around spreading information, that’s why no one had relationships with people from the other side.”
Álex explains to me that before, if you knew anyone from the other side, you could talk to them, but only if you knew for sure that no one was watching. “In the colonia, if you saw someone you knew, you might nod,” he says, reenacting the almost imperceptible gesture, “and they’d know you were greeting them, but that was it, and then you’d go your separate ways home.”
The next weekend, it was the other side’s turn to host, at the mysterious field in lower Las Cañas known as “la canchona” (“the big field”), for its almost regulation-sized dimensions and larger goals — an expanse of dust professional enough to host games with 11 players per side. By then, word about the first match at la canchita had spread, and two teams from each side of town showed up to compete.
For the third round, the girls demanded to play, too, and registered formidable teams from both sides — though the team from lower Las Cañas knew they had the upper hand: among their starters was none other than La Messi, a small, young brunette unstoppable at running and dribbling, who struck fear in the hearts of defenders and goalkeepers. And then teams of children appeared as well, signing up to join the next meet. So it was back to la canchita de arriba for another round.
But a few days before the third match, organizers discovered that someone had removed the goalposts from the field in upper Las Cañas.
As it turned out, a neighbor employed by the city of Ilopango, had decided that now —in the dead of summer— was the perfect moment to sod the field, and so the charamuscas, it seemed, would have to be postponed for the three months it would take the grass to grow and repopulate the dusty plot. The man fenced off half of the field with yellow flagging to sow his first rows of stunted grass, which had about the same chance of thriving as a penguin in the Caribbean. Just like that, with no advanced notice, no permission from anyone, no agreements, no nothing.
But Pedro, Marvin and Álex are not the sort to be easily discouraged, and took matters into their own hands. They installed the goal posts width-wise on what were once the sidelines, and the third charamuscón was played with teams of seven on the open half of the field.
As La Messi wreaked havoc on the defense, Don Pedro told me his hypothesis: In the run up to the 2021 mayoral and congressional elections, he had decided to register with Nuevas Ideas, the political party founded by President Nayib Bukele, and put his name in the hat to run for a seat on Ilopango’s municipal council. His lineup lost the primaries, and Nuevas Ideas selected a list of other candidates to run in the generals. Then, a representative from GANA, an allied party, approached Don Pedro and offered him a place on their list of candidates, and he accepted. GANA lost the election, and Nuevas Ideas took the Ilopango council.
“In retrospect, I think it was a bad idea, because now everything I do, every little thing, is political. If I move a stone, it’s political,” Don Pedro tells me.
“Who says that?”
“They do.”
“They” are a group of people who sit on two municipal boards created by the Ilopango council to govern the divided community: one for the upper part of town, and one for the lower. The group that organized the soccer tournament dislikes the arrangement. They feel it only perpetuates the division created by the gangs, and is counterproductive to their efforts to bridge the abyss of violence that has cleaved their community in two for so many years.
I found “them” meeting under the shade of a tree on a street in town: a group of about 15 people, deep in conversation on a topic I was almost starting to make out when a woman, who introduced herself as Eunice, came over to intercept the photographer and me:
“What do you want?”
“We’re journalists and we’ve in town a few weeks to try and understand how the community is adjusting to the new situation, now that the government has cleared the gangs out of Las Cañas.”
—All of us here agree with everything President Bukele is doing. We’re very happy.
—I can imagine. I knew this place when it was controlled by gangs. I bet you must be enjoying a new reality now.
—What outlet are you with?
—We’re with El Faro.
—Ah. That outlet has a really bad reputation.
—No, the truth is it has a really good reputation. I understand we might not have the best reputation among President Bukele’s followers…
— Yeah, because the old parties were corrupt and instead of persecuting the gangs they negotiated with the gangs.
—Right, you know, we revealed those negotiations. If you heard about them, it’s because we published it… The agreements between the gangs and ARENA, and the FMLN... and also the current government.
—Hmm… What’s your name?
She wrote my name in her notebook, next to my phone number. And to my surprise, she offered me her cell number. A few days later I called to ask if she and anyone else from the group would to talk to me and explain their perspective on the current situation. She agreed, on the condition that they could record the conversation, to which, of course, I agreed, and we set a date for three days later. That was the last time Eunice answered my calls or messages.
* * *
On Wednesday, March 1, ten men gathered at a house to make a plan. Among them were Álex, Don Pedro, Don Marvin, and seven others who had jumped on the idea of going beyond mere pick-up games to organize a full-fledged community soccer tournament, with registered teams, player IDs, penalty cards, trophies, and a lightning match on opening day. The real deal.
Of course, one of the most urgent topics of discussion was the question of the goals at la canchita de arriba. There were some who proposed putting the posts back in their original place using the same method by which they were removed, which is to say, without permission, and by force. Then there were those who suggested they first find out if the decision to sod the field had actually been made by the municipal council. But someone else said he knew the field belonged to the school, not the municipality... and then there was the problem of the referees, who out of a pure instinct for survival, were afraid to go to the other side of town, and so the group had to arrange for escorts. And then some of the teams from upper Las Cañas heard a rumor that there were still gang members on the other side of town, and were also afraid, and so teams from lower Las Cañas agreed to escort them as well… and the issue of fouls and penalty cards had to be addressed in earnest, because if a fight broke out on the pitch, the tournament would fail at its goal of uniting the community, and would instead accomplish the exact opposite, so everyone had to agree to support the referees in immediately expelling any players who came looking for a fight… and then there was the issue of the other field, la canchona, where balls go flying down an adjacent ravine and, although the municipal government promised to put up a mesh backstop, when they went to install it and were welding the posts, they accidentally set fire to the hillside and a wildfire broke out and, well, they never ended up installing the mesh... and they also needed to reach out to the girls to see if they wanted to register any teams... and to the children, they would have to do something for the children... Don Marvin facilitated the meeting, wrapping things up with a reminder to keep politics out of the game.
In the days that followed, the group obtained a letter from the school that authorized them to return the goals to their original place. They invited the local police department to observe a meeting they had planned with Eunice’s group, but the town leaders never showed up.
On Sunday, March 19, at an auspicious 12:30 in the afternoon, the Las Cañas soccer tournament officially opened, with a total of eight registered teams: Inter, Ajax, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham, Valencia, Juventus and Tres Puntos Fáciles. The latter, perhaps in keeping with its name —Three Easy Points— was the winner of the lightning match.
That day, the field was a giant party, with residents from both sides of town all mixing together, listening to Don Pedro announce over a loudspeaker that the purpose of the tournament was to bring the community together, in between promotions for the vendor stalls that were set up for the event. Don Francisco, the owner of the bullet-riddled kiosk, was in charge of announcing the teams and leading them, hands on hearts, in the national anthem. The sports committee was also recognized, with Don Marvin, who said he didn’t want the limelight, politely declining to be named president. The star forward for one of the teams from lower Las Cañas was a player from upper Las Cañas, Eduardo Orellana. The team didn’t know the boy, but they welcomed him anyways. “The important thing is that we come together as a community, that we put an end to the division,” Orellana told me at the end of one of the matches.
As the days pass, the residents of Las Cañas are beginning to bridge the deadly borders that divided their lives — nervously, little by little — and the dark nights are getting brighter: one neighbor opened a new store, another a pupesería. The school is slowly regaining students — this year, enrollment was up 15% — and is taking advantage of the improved soccer field to hold intramural practices and games, without having to turn their heads to the hill that once rained lead on the children below. And perhaps in the future, if the shadows that lived there never return, future generations will tell the story of the men who made a plan: a ceremony of soccer, to heal the scar that Las Cañas still has on its face.
*Translated by Max Granger
