Did Snow White consent? Salvadoran youths rewrite tales – and their future.

At 5 p.m. on a Saturday in late November, a group of jittery kids and teens crowd the pavilion in the central square of this small town in northeastern El Salvador. They’re staging an entirely new version of the story of Tarzan – rewritten and adapted by the young actors to reflect the way they’d like to see themes of equality and opportunity play out in their own lives.

In this version of the classic tale, which is graced with the natural sound and set design of squawking grackles and Cinquera’s colorful sunset, the years have passed. The time has come for the retirement of Tarzan, the protector of the jungle. In front of the animal council, he proposes that his child replace him.

“Tradition dictates that your son should succeed you,” a gorilla scolds him. “But you only have a daughter.”

Tarzan, played by Erick, a gangling boy with a quiet voice, responds: “And what’s wrong with her? Can’t Tarzana do what I do?”

But it’s not just the man of the house doing the talking. Tarzana, played by a spirited 10-year-old named Monica, pushes back, too: “Why am I being put to the test when I have lived here all my life?”

It’s a question most of the youths on stage have asked themselves at one point in a town – and nation – where gender stereotypes, machismo, and gender-based violence run rampant. Questioning norms around what a girl or boy “can” do based on their gender, whether it’s playing with baby dolls or pursuing one’s studies, is a key part of the Comprehensive Childhood Development Project. The group has been running storytelling workshops in small towns across northeastern El Salvador over the past year to address sensitive issues for young people, like violence.

El Salvador has sky-high rates of femicides (the killing of a woman due to her gender) and worrying school dropout numbers. In 2021, an estimated 16 girls between the ages of 10 and 17 became pregnant each day, according to the Observatory of Girlhood and Adolescence. It was statistics like these, and a lived culture of old-fashioned gender ideals, that drove a group of community leaders and local librarians, in partnership with international nongovernmental organizations, to introduce the storytelling program to Cinquera and surrounding towns. Rewriting a traditional fairy tale is far from a silver bullet solution to El Salvador’s towering challenges, but empowering the next generation of citizens and leaders to imagine and build a more just and equal world can make lasting waves, participants and organizers say.

Storytelling workshops and creative play focused on shifting gender stereotypes can “sow a little seed, so that when [participants] are adults they can start to break those patterns,” says Heydi Gómez, part of the local Association for Municipal Development and Reconstruction.

A new perspective?

In El Salvador, discrimination against girls often begins early. “Because society is machista and patriarchal, if a man has only daughters, they say, ‘Oh, you’re not a man,’” says Jaime Lovo, a councilman in charge of the youth committee in the municipality of Cinquera and a proud father of two girls.

These stereotypes go beyond schoolyard jabs. “In our community, the top [leadership] positions are assigned almost exclusively to men,” says Iris Escobar, an assistant at the San Francisco Echeverría library who in 2017 lost a community board election for president by just a handful of votes. She’s currently serving as deputy. “If a woman is elected, men criticize her; they tell her that she is not qualified to carry out that position because it has always been held by a man,” she says.

Mr. Lovo is hopeful these dynamics will change with younger generations. It’s part of why he put his eldest daughter in the community’s first ever storytelling workshop this year.

“These processes allow young people to have a broader vision of the world,” he says. “The more empowered a girl or boy is, the better society develops. When they’re adults, they will have better leadership potential: They can lead … a municipal council, even be part of the government,” Mr. Lovo says.

The use of fairy tales and local Salvadoran stories like El Cipitío takes something commonly known and accepted and looks at it from a new perspective. In El Cipitío, a story about a smart-aleck boy who ceaselessly teases girls, the lead character was rewritten during the workshop to befriend and support his peers. Or, take Snow White, a story commonly used in workshops run by the Salvadoran NGO Leer Para Soñar (Read to Dream). “We questioned participants: ‘Would you allow a person you just met to kiss you while you were asleep?’” says Marilin Cabezas, president of Read to Dream. For most, the answer is no, and it leads to important conversations around consent and impunity.

Storytelling and performance are increasingly used as tools for social change, with programs like Read to Dream, established in El Salvador in 2016, and Mulheres Inspiradoras (Inspiring Women), a Brazilian storytelling project that recently became a public policy of the State Secretariat of Education of the Federal District, aimed at confronting machismo and structural racism.

The kids “get into the characters by playing, and so they grasp things more easily,” says Carolina Cartagena, a librarian at San Francisco Echeverría, referring to difficult themes like bullying, violence, and the expression of emotions. The dramatization of classic stories is a gateway to questioning traditional patterns of discrimination, she says. “As the boys rehearsed, they seemed less likely to arrogantly utter those words and phrases that make girls [feel] lesser,” says Ms. Cartagena.

She recalls watching the young boy who plays the gorilla in the Tarzan story. When he first started participating in the project, he talked about the fictional daughter of Tarzan harshly, passionately rebuking her through his character’s lines. As time went on, however, Ms. Cartagena says his tone softened as she watched his views shift on what girls can achieve and the treatment they deserve. 

But these programs can only go so far.

“Change in the individual can’t take place if there aren’t changes in the environment,” Ms. Cabezas says. El Salvador had the third highest rate of femicides in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020, according to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Observatory, and the government has not included gender equality in its approach to public policy design. Despite Latin America having some of the most comprehensive legislation on violence against women, its implementation has been incomplete. The U.N. committee dedicated to eliminating gender discrimination in 2017 expressed concern around the presence of patriarchal stereotypes in the judicial system and law enforcement in El Salvador, specifically.

“I’m afraid”

The San Nicolás community center is buzzing with youthful shouts and laughter. The group attending a workshop on gender equality on this late November afternoon is varied in age and gender. There are little boys who snicker when they are told there is nothing wrong if they want to play with dolls, sitting alongside teenage girls who speak freely about macho behavior and how male peers raise walls of rejection when homosexuality is discussed.

During a break, two 16-year-old participants, Jaqueline and Daniela, say machismo is nothing new here. It’s “something ugly,” says Jaqueline. They see it daily, she says, in the gendered difference of household chores or in how certain men discriminate against others for helping around the house.

When asked what they think is most needed so that there is less gender inequality in their small town, Jaqueline widens her eyes and answers at lightning speed: “Respect, above all.” She discusses the reaction girls her age get when they dress in something short. Men will automatically say they are conceited, foolish, or that they just want attention. “I sometimes dress like this, but it’s not because I want to show off. It’s just that I feel comfortable,” Jaqueline says, adding that she believes learning respect needs to start in the home.

A few minutes before curtain call at the Tarzan play, Erick sits in a corner of Cinquera’s central square, away from the other children. He looks anxious. Monica, his co-star, approaches. Dressed in synthetic leopard-print Tarzan and Tarzana costumes, they agree the blazing sun is terrible. “I’m afraid I’ll forget my lines,” Erick tells her, dropping his guard and ignoring, even if momentarily, the societal lesson that most boys here have been taught all their lives: to come off as tough. I’m afraid I’ll “make a fool of myself,” he continues.

“Me too,” Monica replies in solidarity. “Me too.”