US-El Salvador Sister Cities Solidarity Model

"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. 

Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to 

learn from other people."

- Eduardo Galeano

Solidarity is the most beautiful act that embraces the struggles from people to people 

to reach human dignity, and with it sovereignty of the people around the world. The 

Salvadoran communities have gone through brutal realities since the very beginning 

of so-called “Discovery of America”, and recently with the economy models, such as 

neoliberalism (In the same way, this cruel barbarity has prevailed in every country 

throughout America. It´s important to point out that there are some countries that 

have already started to break that chain of oppression). We know that the current 

economy model are affecting the vast majority of the dispossessed. It doesn’t matter 

your location in this world, but if you are not one of the owners of the multinational 

businesses, in some way you are affected negatively by this economy model.

It is in this way that U.S-El Salvador Sister Cities has been joining efforts for more 

than 30 years as alternative to work in partnership with small rural communities in El 

Salvador. Through these partnerships, which began in 1986 as a citizen-based 

response to the U.S. intervention in El Salvador’s civil war, Sister Cities members 

work to develop economic and social justice throughout El Salvador and in their own 

communities in the U.S. 

Nowadays, the U.S. committees and their sister communities share political and moral 

solidarity, and strategy and advocacy for common struggles for peace and justice.  We 

each have much to share and much to learn.

These are some ways of showing solidarity from people to people in Sister Cities:

 Phone calls/Video calls

Send letters /banners     

 

Advocacy work in US cities/Visiting communities in ES