EL SALVADOR 2011 - Trouble at the Border

San Pedro Al Barado, El Salvador
Sunday, November 13, 2011
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Trouble at the Border

From time to time on this blog I try to include some practical information that would in the future help other fellow missionaries or travelers. I consider this blog post to be one of those times. Yesterday as we entered El Salvador from Guatemala at San Pedro Al Barado we had a little glitch with one of our team member's passports. We had already heard that this would be one of the worst and most dangerous borders that we would cross. We also had prophecies that new angels would be meeting us and joining our team at every border that we crossed so at the end of one year and many borders, the angelic army would be huge. So I wasn't really worried about anything. It all seemed safe enough.

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El Salvador along with Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua is considered to be a CA-4 country. Upon entering Guatemala from Belize, our entire team was given stamps where the border official wrote in 90 days for the allowable time to be in these four Central American countries. The problem is that when we first started getting our passports stamped in Guatemala they tried to collect a fee of 24 Quetzals (about $3 U.S.) each. It wasn't until a few people in that we realized we didn't need to pay anything and those team members asked for their money back. The rest of the team didn't pay anything. This must have made the official upset as he was quickly losing his extra income. We thought that everyone had been given the normal 90 day stay in the CA-4 countries. Unfortunately that same official wrote in 01 days on the stamp of this one individual and didn't scan his passport into their system as entering the country. This is what gave us such difficulty at the El Salvador border.

 

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When the El Salvador officials noticed the stamp on this team member's passport, we had heard that they detained him and took him into an office on the El Salvador side. We went looking for him and when I found him in some obscure office, he was being reprimeanded in Spanish for something. When I realized what was happening, I tried to reason with them. They would budge and tried to keep his passport. I told them that this error was not our fault, but the fault of the border official in Guatemala. They then told me that we either needed to go back to Guatemala City to figure it out or pay them a fee of $140 U.S. to fix it (they use American currency in El Salvador). I grabbed the team members passport from their hands, left the office on the El Salvador side and walked quickly with him to the Guatemala side to see if we couldn't get them to figure it out. The El Salvador official was very upset (because he was losing his extra income I'm sure) and ran after us for a bit.

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Once we got to immigration on the Guatemala side, we made our case. They were at least more pleasant. They couldn't fix the stamp or tamper with their computer system, but could only give us an extension and a receipt number for 140 Quetzals (under $20 U.S.) that would allow this team member to enter El Salvador, but would enable him to stay in the CA-4 region for another five days. Of course our team will be in this area for another few weeks. So now we have to go into San Salvador on Monday and pay for an extension that will allow this team member to continue on with us for the rest of our time in these Central American countries. Why? Corruption. The love of money. This is why we are here. To carry God's character into countries that lack integrity. I'm not finger pointing at any one country in particular here as our family has experienced this sort of corruption on many continents. So my suggestion would be that whenever you cross a border into another country, inspect the stamp you are given in your passport carefully to save yourself the drama later. It would've been easy to correct this at the border in Belize if we would've caught it then.

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Christian Young