Promoter Profile: Ramiro Cortez-Argueta By Audrey Lenhart and Diana Bowser

Ramiro Cortez-Argueta is a dynamic, hard-working 23-year-old with a particularly strong sense of solidarity with his community. He has been working as a General Health Promoter for MDM since 1993. As a Health Promoter, he helps organize his community, practices preventative medicine and delivers health care to areas of El Salvador where there is minimal access to hospitals, clinics or medical personnel. When asked what motivates him to continue the hard work of a Health Promoter, Ramiro simply states, "One reason I do it is for the need that exists. The other reason is that by being a Health Promoter I learn a lot. And, once you learn something, you need to teach it to others, to share what you know, to really help the community."

Prior to being a Health Promoter, Ramiro worked mostly on his family's small plot of land and tended their corn crops in the rural, mountainous province of Morazán, in northeastern El Salvador.

“Once you learn something, you need to teach it to others, to share what you know, to really help the community.”

The Salvadoran civil war began in 1980 when he was only five years old, and did not end until 1992. One of the regions most brutally affected by the war was the area in which Ramiro lives. He spent his childhood surrounded by massacres, bombings and brute violence. He continued his work on the family’s plot of land until he was fourteen-years old, at which point he joined the popular insurgents and fought primarily in his home province. Ramiro explains that as a young person living in the war zone of Morazán, he was obligated to join the insurgents; he really had no choice.

During his time with the guerrillas, he began to learn to read and write for the first time. When the peace accords were signed in 1992, still more educational opportunities arose for ex-guerrillas and Ramiro continued his education. Soon after the signing of the peace accords, a project entitled Building Health Where the Peace is New was initiated through the French humanitarian organization MDM.

Ramiro (left), one of the first ten General Health Promoters trained by MDM/MDS, giving a water purification presentation to his community with Abraham Martinez (right), his partner in the project.

Several communities in Morazán invited MDM to begin the project, part of which included the training of ten General Health Promoters from various communities in Morazán. Ramiro's village, El Rodeo, was one of the communities involved in the project. His community chose him to attend the MDM Health Promoter training because of his strong leadership skills and his overriding personal interest in studying. Ramiro remembers, "I enjoyed studying and I saw the needs of my community." He felt that being a Health Promoter was his best opportunity to help meet those needs. So, along with nine other young people around his age from nearby communities, Ramiro began studying to be a Health Promoter in the spring of 1993, under the supervision and training of the MDM team. After an intensive initial three months of training, Ramiro and his classmates began their community work.

Ramiro’s first project involved drawing a risk map and conducting a diagnosis of his whole community. This consisted of first visiting each house in his community, assessing their standards of living, taking a general census, investigating the illnesses found in each, and evaluating the conditions of the roads and any other structures, such as churches, soccer fields and stores. This was just the first of many projects Ramiro has accomplished with his community. Since then, he has helped open a clinic in El Tablón, began taking classes to finish high school and, this past year, helped start vegetable gardens in six surrounding communities. This upcoming year he plans to focus on the need for latrines in a nearby village.

Throughout all this haze of activity, Ramiro and the other Promoters have to continue their training, which consists of a one-week course every six weeks. As one of the original Promoters, Ramiro also has the mentoring of newer Promoters on his plate. He has also been recently elected to the Board of Directors of MDS. Yet Ramiro has still found time to court and marry a young woman named Sylvia, who works in the same community as he does as a health promoter for a women’s organization. They are the proud parents of a delightful toddler named Javier.

Ramiro is so dedicated to helping his community that he has worked as a full-time MDM/MDS Health Promoter since the beginning of the project, despite the fact that he was unpaid for the first three years. Even today, because project resources are limited, he does not earn a large salary. As Ramiro sees it, though, his job as a Health Promoter fulfills a genuine need in his community. "The health centers are far away and hard to reach," he observes. He feels that the most important things he knows as a Health Promoter are how to use different medications correctly and how to stitch up wounds. However, his love for his people shines through as he admits that his favorite part of the job is making house visits. "It allows me to really talk with the people," explains Ramiro, expounding on how important it is to know as many different aspects of the community as possible in order to truly understand the health situation of its members.

Contents:
• President's Letter
• In Loving Memory of Dr. Jonathan Mann
• DGH Locally: Talking to Children
• Promoter Profile: Ramiro Cortez-Argueta
• Volunteer Update: Jennifer Kasper
• A Day’s Life... Julie Taw
• Human Rights Around the World
  • Burma
  • East Timor
  • Nicaragua
  • United States
• Creative Fundraising
• A Day’s Life... Matthew Belcher
• DGH Announcements