El Salvador has been hit by hurricane Ida. More than 130 people have been killed, thousands of bridges and roads have been destroyed, houses must be built again and 10.000 people would need an emergency food supply… Experts evaluate the cost of reconstruction about 80 million dollars. It could seem not so much if we compare to other natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. But for El Salvador, it is a big invest. It is about 2% of the State budget. And international aid has not run. Yet only Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, Panama and the neighbors Nicaragua and Guatemala have sent help.
Well, 80 million dollars… It remains far from the cost of football player Cristiano Ronaldo. Real Madrid paid 94 million euros (131 million dollars) to Manchester United last summer to get the Portuguese star. What if we sent him to El Salvador to give a hand? At such a price, this man must be able to perform miracles. And no problem: he does not even play right now as he is injured. He can even keep the 50 million dollars left to buy houses, cars or hair gel, whatever he wants (or reinvest it in schools or health in El Salvador, for example, as the country has the 106th rank for HDI in the world)
But, well, football is not the only sector we could blame in such a case. Let’s take politicians, for example. French presidency has a 166 million dollars budget for next year. If Nicolas Sarkozy’s guests would just eat ham and cheese sandwiches, we could save enough money to build part of the infrastructure of the country. 80 million dollars, it is also what the Presidential Election Campaign Fund gave to John McCain for his campaign in the USA last year. We know what the result was.
Some sites where you can help El Salvador :
The Red Cross
ACAP de El Salvador
El Salvador Sister Cities
Barrio latino 