Lorena Cuerno Clavel

Lorena Cuerno has designed a model to engage youngsters in the fight against street crime and social violence in El Salvador, building on their own forms of social organization and expression to explore more hopeful alternatives.

Lorena Cuerno is determined to reach out to the legions of disaffected youth who are growing up in an environment of economic and social insecurity, and who increasingly turn to drugs, crime and gang involvement in the absence of supportive alternatives. She knows there are no easy or immediate solutions, but Lorena has established a means for engaging young people on their own terms, through their own media, building on positive associations to create options for work and study, instead of violence. She performs, manages, organizes and provides follow-up to rock concerts and youth encounters, directed not only to adolescents already mired in illegal and anti-social behavior, but also to a wider audience which can be sensitized to the risks and costs of violence. With determination and courage, she ventures into marginal neighborhoods and public plazas to hold concerts, youth festivals and street performances which bring together hundreds, and sometimes thousands of adolescents. Musical performances are supplemented by workshops and the formation of youth groups where adolescents learn to explore, develop and articulate constructive ways of living. In El Salvador, a country plagued by social problems related to violence in the aftermath of a civil war, many organizations have tried to work with youngsters in the promotion of non-violence. However, few have been successful, mostly because they lack the skills to deal in an integral way with the psycho-social, emotional and economic dimensions that lead youth to involve themselves with street gangs. Lorena focuses on one of the most critical aspects which can lead to the successful interaction of youngsters with society at large: verbal and written communication skills. She has realized that the best way to engage the youth is by framing her outreach in the musical genre they have embraced as their own. Lorena not only validates rock as a form of communication and expression for the recognition, acceptance and creation of new opportunities for these youngsters. She also uses it as means to reach otherwise-isolated adolescents who have lost all hope of finding alternatives to crime and unemployment.

During the war in El Salvador, and in the years that followed, a fluid migration of youngsters has taken place between the United States and El Salvador. Many of them speak some English but are not able to communicate effectively in Spanish because they had to start working before finishing school in order to help their families. To complicate the situation, family breakdown and lack of employment opportunities fuel the social isolation of these adolescents, who tend to find the maras (gangs) to be the only groups that give them a sense of belonging. Crime and street gangs thus come to constitute a modus vivendi for adolescents. Other young people in less precarious economic situations are also drawn to the camaraderie and thrill of gang activity and culture, swelling the ranks or form rival groups, contributing to a veritable explosion of street violence and insecurity in cities and towns across the country. Becoming part of a group allows the youngsters to develop a limited but quite original language of their own, as well as clothing and tattoos which distinguish them from other bands. Peer pressure and economic stagnation, as well as social disdain within a Salvadoran culture that demands strict conformity, drive more young people into the embrace of the gangs.

El Salvador currently has the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, according to recent World Bank statistics. The number of Salvadoran youth in maras, or in groups which have been identified by the police as delinquents, may be as high as 200,000 -- in a country of six million inhabitants. Similar problems are already emerging in Nicaragua and Guatemala, other post-war societies in the region struggling to rebuild and find ways to integrate their young people into productive economic activity. But as in El Salvador, it is difficult to bring disaffected youth into job programs or training initiatives without first engaging them on their own terms.

Lorena has generated two important initiatives to draw young people into programs that she then links to broader municipal and community activities: "Rock de la Calle" (Street Rock) and the "Festivales de Artes en los Parques" (Art Festivals in the Parks). Her concerts have important turn-outs and receive excellent press reviews. The concerts become a venue for discussing social problems, usually related to the day-to-day problems that youngsters face in their families, schools, emotional lives, group relations, or their work. The workshops serve as the space where youth slowly and gradually begin to address their problems, and learn different communication skills.

A key outcome of these "after-concert" meetings, and the workshops, is the formation of groups that do not have a traditional structure of leadership based in one director, but encourage key people to share the responsibility. The purpose of constituting these groups is in part to provide the tools for youngsters to transform the "mission" of the maras, without necessarily seeking their dissolution. Lorena believes that these existing social nuclei can eventually be drawn into job and educational activity, building on their internal loyalty and cohesion. She is working on local and regional projection in the most populated municipalities of El Salvador. During the three years since she began, many adolescents come regularly to her writing workshops. At first, she promoted her work alone, but now community members seek out her performances and workshops. Lorena has managed to form a core group of twenty adolescents in a permanent and on-going collaboration with the workshops. These youngsters have engaged in a social commitment to the common good, reversing their previous engagement in self-destructive and violent activities and recruiting their peers. Lorena will now reach out to many more through the creation of a network of "Rock Committees."

More importantly, Lorena has engaged government agencies and NGOs in providing financial, human, and material resources to help these groups of adolescents move beyond crime. Realizing that systemic solutions will be required, she has insisted that municipal councils become involved in the planning and follow-up to her events. Lorena is drafting proposals for municipal-level policies for youth involvement in educational and vocational activities, using their own forms of cultural expression to engage them. She already has the support of the municipal government of San Salvador and of the neighboring city of Soyapango, the Ministry of Culture, CONCULTURA, and international foundations such as HIVOS.

Lorena has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to stand above social prejudices against female autonomy or women singers, particularly rock singers, in a country highly influenced by conservative social attitudes towards women. Although her gifted voice would allow her to excel as an artist, she has chosen to blend her talents with social responsibility to become a public entrepreneur. To better understand Lorena it is important to note that she was always an independent and daring person, who traveled by herself to Mexico at the age of fifteen to seek her vocation in life. There she was considered a "political exile," due to her support for opposition movements in her country of origin. Lorena studied anthropology and music in Mexico. For many years she was torn between her public recognition as an artist and her commitment to a social mission. This conflict was resolved when she established her concerts as the main venue for her social work, while using her anthropology degree to better understand the needs, problems, and social realities of the youth she entertained.

Her gifted artistic talents have generated highly positive public reaction, as well as invitations to tour within her country, and Europe -- in 1997 she visited Holland, attracting much-needed attention and funds to carry on with her mission. At the same time, her work has been much praised by local authorities, social organizations and international critics. Her return to El Salvador two years after the war, together with the fact that she is the mother of an adolescent, were critical in inspiring her to put her artistic career at the service of youth. In less than three years she has become a leading social force.