Art in the countryside

The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about residents of the San Francisco area who have been bringing art classes and opportunities to rural areas of El Salvador where the civil war once waged fiercely. Here is an excerpt:

[Events of the war] still color life in El Salvador, presenting the Bay Area artists with a challenge on how to engage students with their own history, and let art help them transcend it.

"People have never been given any means to express what happened here," said Eicher. "Every once in awhile there is a little explosion of warfare in their drawings. Not withstanding what happened here, we brought techniques and materials to kids and teachers, and that's what we are here for. But I'm much more interested in rooting it, in getting a little bit deeper."

"Politics is the reducing of something that is far more complex," added Bernardi. "There are certain things that art can get that politics cannot."

Another example of people-to-people relationships which can transcend the politics of free trade agreements or the coalitions of the willing.