What El Salvador Taught A Human Rights Consultant with Marliee Marks (USA)

A 13-year-old holding her infant son in an institution is not a statistic. It is a life that forces you to rethink what “help” really means. We sit down with human rights and foreign policy consultant Marilee Marks to talk about her family’s years living and working in El Salvador during a brutal orphan crisis shaped by poverty, abandonment, addiction, and gender-based violence. The stories are tender, unsettling, and grounded in the daily reality of trying to keep children safe while systems fail around them. 

From there, we follow Marilee Mark’s shift from frontline humanitarian aid to “going upstream” and studying international relations, asking what changes when you stop only responding to harm and start challenging the policy decisions that fuel it. We dig into the long shadow of US foreign policy in Central America, the way trade pressure and external economic control can limit national choices, and why accountability still belongs to local actors even when institutions are weak. 

We also talk about education in El Salvador, from the practical barriers of uniforms and supplies to the terrifying impact of gang recruitment at schools. The conversation pushes back on easy narratives about gangs, immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, and lands on a simple discipline: stay curious, seek more context than a headline can offer, and treat people’s lives as fully human. 

If this moved you, subscribe, share the episode with someone who cares about human rights and foreign policy, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What part of Marilee Marks' story changed how you see Central America?

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Transcript

Opening And Guest Introduction

Dr Ariel R King 0:45

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have a very special guest, Miss Marley Marks. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. King.

Dr Ariel R King 0:57

Would you please give our audience an overview of you and the topic we're going to talk about today?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Sure. And thank you again for having me. It's such an honor to speak with you. The experience and work you've done around the world is incredible, and I can't believe that I get to share with you today.

Dr Ariel R King 1:16

Oh, that's that's incredibly generous. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

So I come to this conversation with you in human rights and foreign policy consulting because I had kind of a circular path into government affairs and international relations that spanned a lot of my lifetime. I'm 43 and a mother and a wife. But my journey was a bunch of puzzle pieces that came together and didn't really seem to fit for most of my life. It was like, what is going on with my life and these connections and these jobs I'm doing. But then recently I could really start to see how the picture was coming together. So that's what I'm hoping to share a little bit with you about. My journey started out in the early 2000s. I was looking at what was going on in the world. There was a huge orphan crisis around the world, millions and millions of children suffering and poverty. So I went to go do some short-term work in Central America. I was sponsored by some organizations in our church to go and go to Central America and do what I could to help alleviate the orphan crisis and help prevent children from becoming orphans, also

Seeing The Orphan Crisis Up Close

SPEAKER_00 2:46

to support their families. And it was while I was in Central America that I really started to see the effects of US foreign policy on other countries that you just don't hear about in the US media and news. So in this atmosphere of high-risk children and families and orphaned girls who were giving birth at like 12 and 13 years of age from abuse, a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu really took hold and a root in my life about, you know, when he says we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in to begin with. So that took me back to the US to finish my degrees in US foreign policy and human rights. And that's where I really started to try and develop this life work of trying to stop people from falling in the river to begin with, in other countries that were being affected by the United States.

Dr Ariel R King 3:53

That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. Can I ask? So you're saying that these teenagers were having children. Where so when you say orphan, what is an orphan a person who has a family but the family doesn't take care of them? Or are you saying an orphan is a person that has lost their parents? Or I'm just wondering what that is. And can you tell us more about that experience? And um, as someone who's been to 80 countries, and I know what you're talking about, I've been to South America and Africa, I think America is one of them. But as someone that's lived abroad and

Abandonment, Poverty, And Teen Mothers

Dr Ariel R King 4:31

seen all kinds of things, I think there are many countries that help to perpetuate this particular uh issue. So, anyway, could you tell us more about going there and the children that you worked with? I find that fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, absolutely. You know, an orphaned child can be from loss of one or both of their parents or any kinship relationship that is able to care for them, but it can also be abandonment. And in in Central America and El Salvador in particular, this was a huge issue of abandonment. And it was due to poverty, it was due to addiction, it was due to the effects of US gang policy that then affected the Central American countries. And this life of survival and desperation and addiction and abandonment all led to an orphan crisis in El Salvador. There's also a lot of, just like in this country, you know, femicide and abuse of women and children, particularly in some Central American countries, there's a lot of familial abuse. And so I began working at an orphanage that was caring in particular for teenage mothers and their babies.

Dr Ariel R King 5:53

That's fantastic. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

It was it was a painful experience to hear their stories and come to love them. And you know, you're sitting and building a relationship with a 13-year-old child that you that I wanted to mother this child myself, this 13-year-old, and she's holding her infant son at the same time, and just alone in this institution setting. So it had a huge, huge impact on me and my life.

Dr Ariel R King 6:26

I'm sure. I mean, just the way you describe it um sounds like that. May I ask how long did you stay? And are there any lessons that you've learned from that before you came back to go to get your university degrees in in policy?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, thank you for asking. Oh, it there's so many things that I took away and I live with, you know, watching these girls struggle to survive and deal with this trauma that they have to endure for the rest of their lives with very little support was really, really hard. I was going to and from El Salvador from Ohio for about four years before I lived there full-time. My husband and I lived there with our kids for almost three years and did full-time work. And then, you know, the the process of leaving El Salvador was also really painful. We we didn't want to necessarily leave, but that was kind of the start of when humanitarian dollars started to recede and people were not giving as much money to humanitarian causes. So the

Living There, Funding Loss, Leaving

SPEAKER_00 7:40

ultimate outcome for me was, you know, we are running out of money to operate these programs. So let's go back to the US and see what we can do about it from there.

Dr Ariel R King 7:50

That's fantastic. Thank you. So were you able to actually get funding from various countries in order to continue these houses for teen mothers?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Unfortunately, no. Our donors from the U.S. that we had, we're doing some child sponsorship programs for children that were still in their families in the community. So that was, we still have a sponsorship program going on there for families, but we were not able to continue the support for the work we were doing at the orphanage in particular.

Dr Ariel R King 8:27

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sorry to hear that. But thank you for all of the work that you have done. Remember, one petal or one pebble can actually make a ripple. So it might seem like perhaps you couldn't do enough, but you would be so surprised about all of the years that you were there, how much you were able to accomplish, not just in terms of what you can see, but how people felt about themselves and how they felt about their future.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

My hope is that there's a there's a couple of girls that I really, if the laws of adoption had been different in El Salvador at the time, we for sure would have tried to bring them into our home and raise them in a safe environment. I it's a grieving process to leave when you are stationed overseas and you can't continue being in relationship, direct relationship with those individuals. So that was a very hard thing to go through. But I really just try and hold on to maybe in their life, whatever's going on with them right now. My hope is that they will remember that they were truly loved and wanted at one point. And even if I couldn't be with them forever, I really hope they felt that.

Dr Ariel R King 9:45

When you're loved and when you're cared about, and when you know that there's somebody that cares for you and truly loves you, that will never leave you. They will remember. And just one other question: how did it affect your children and your husband? Um, was there any effect for them, or was the main effect for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I would say it was our entire family worldview changed. My kids were really young at the time, and we were only there for about three years full-time. So my kids were when we moved there, they were five, seven, nine, and eleven. And every single one of them will tell you that that was the most impactful period of time in their lives. And it was that way for my husband as well. He's a wonderful individual who really helped develop the child nutrition center program that is still operating today. And we are in relationship with them, and we've continued to be in relationship with the people that came to be family, still, you know, speak to them regularly, check in on them. We've had some families that have had to come to the US for asylum applications, and we are very, very close with them. So our lives were forever changed by this period of time.

Dr Ariel R King 11:02

That's fantastic. I'm just smiling. I mean, I just have a huge smile on my face. I know there's so much to talk about, but this is so good. May I ask, did you speak Spanish with them? Was that the main language that you used?

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yes, we did. I learned Spanish in in high school and college, and then we learned the Salvadoran dialect while we were there. And so our kids grew up learning Spanish and speaking it, hearing it. And my husband would tell you that he didn't really pay attention in Spanish class because he was in class with me. So he he learned Spanish on the on the fly in El Salvador.

Dr Ariel R King 11:40

I love that. You two are in class together. So you learned it and he did, and then he learned it there. That's fabulous. Thank you. Did you write a book about this experience? And if not, are you going to write a book about this experience?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

I I love that you asked this question because that's been a dream in my heart for a long time. And I just started looking at research grants to be able to tell the story of El Salvador and Central America because we're coming upon the 40th anniversary of the peace accords in Nicaragua. And I thought, what a better time to go back and look at whether or not that peace actually happened and where are we now in relationship with

Writing The Story Without Saviourism

SPEAKER_00 12:25

them. So I do hope to write a book, but I need to get some research grants for it.

Dr Ariel R King 12:30

Great. You might think about the personal book, how you your and your entire family touch lives and how the others touch your family's life, because that in itself is an extraordinary book. So I'm hoping that you'll think of that too, because I think that you and your family have made such an incredible impact on the lives of not just the teenage girls with the children, but the people around them who saw and who heard and who felt the effect of what you were doing. As I said, you know, one pebble makes a ripple. So you think that you, you know, you're working with loving and caring for teenage girls with babies, and all around you, people see, they hear, they learn. Sometimes they take up some of the same, I won't say behaviors, but some uh some of the same possibilities. And sometimes when people see that people are loved and cared for, they actually in turn love and care for the same young people. So I think that your family has an incredible effect in El Salvador and continue to have that effect, a positive, uh life-changing effect.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

I'd love your opinion on something, actually, as somebody who has so much experience around the world and doing this kind of work. I've thought about writing our story, our family's story in Central America. But my hesitation is that I don't I don't want it to be about a white American family in Central America. I want the story to be about the struggle to survive in these beautiful human beings in this incredible culture. And I just I sometimes hesitate and think we don't need another story about a white woman from the US in these circumstances.

Dr Ariel R King 14:17

But you're not. I don't mean to be rude, but your your cultural heritage or your heritage of wherever your family came from has nothing to do with your experience. I I just want to say we've also just very briefly, because this interview is for you. We've done some work in El Salvador. I was only there for two weeks and it affected my life, and I still remember today, it was 15 years ago. 15 years ago, just two weeks. Still have the photos, still remember, still remember the people, still remember the stories about war, and I remember all of that. So I think the story, I don't think the story is any less or any less important because of your heritage and where you happen to be born, which country. I don't think that was your choice. I think your parents had something to do with that. So what I've also learned is that we're quite international as people, which means that we grieve, we love, we have goals, we connect in the same way. We connect with culture, we connect with eyes, we connect with playing, we connect with support, we connect with smiles, we connect with music, we connect with food, we connect. So of course your story is important. And you know, I understand that specifically sometimes in the culture that you live in within, and many of us live in, there are constraints that tell you that your story is not important or that your story is no different, but that's just not true. And that story is not just for you, it's for those people that you loved and cared about. So, in short, you and your family and your husband are amazing people, and you should see yourself as that first, and see yourself as someone that was also loved and integrated into society and cared for because they accepted you. And I think that that story should be told if it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Thank you. I appreciate that very much.

Dr Ariel R King 16:15

Thank you for what you've done. You're amazing, you're absolutely amazing. So, may I ask, so you're saying that this experience when you went back to America led you to go into policy? Let's talk a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah, I, you know, while we were in El Salvador, we had the pleasure of working with some US Navy individuals who were stationed in El Salvador. And they would spend some of their free time volunteering in the community. So I really got to know them. And we did some quality projects for the local

From Fieldwork To Foreign Policy

SPEAKER_00 16:52

community. And at the same time, I'm learning about everything that happened to Salvadorans that were a direct result of U.S. foreign policy, you know, decisions made thousands of miles away by individuals who had never even been to the country, but their decisions in Washington, D.C. had decades-long repercussions. So I was watching these two very separate perspectives going on. And I was like, how can this be? How can it, how is it fair that decisions made in Washington, D.C. are preventing this country from developing, preventing them from being safe and having good education and getting out of poverty. So that was a really big catalyst for me to go back and finish my degree in foreign policy and international relations. And to try and figure out if there was a way for me, a path that was not just helping the hundred kids in front of me every single day, which was really important to me and they needed to be fed and loved and cared for. But what about the other 50,000 kids that I wasn't able to help? So I thought if I can go and try, just try to have any kind of impact on US policy at the federal level, then I was going to try it. And that became a huge dream for me. And I was able to work in a couple of different capacities in the US that have, I've been able to speak into US foreign policy a little bit. And I I recently finished my master's degree in international relations from American University. So I have hope for the future to continue that work and speak into those spaces.

Dr Ariel R King 18:55

Bravo. May I ask, you know, and and I understand what you're saying. I've had the privilege also of living internationally. So in Europe and in Africa, and I spend a lot of time outside of America, although I have a US passport and have lived outside. So I understand a lot of what you're saying. Can I ask at one point, at what point, where does the government of the country come into play? And also some of the factions, as you know, specifically it, I mean, it's very difficult for me, also. I understand you to talk about a country when I'm not El Salvadorian, but with with the gangs and with the violence that is actually El Salvadorian on El Salvadorian. So, in in your opinion, where is the responsibility, or where does that lie, of the government and also of the people within El Salvador, including those that are committing violence against the children and the women and so on and so forth? Do they have responsibility? And if so, can we ask them to be accountable?

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yes, absolutely. They are responsible for their own decisions and their own actions. And, you know, every people group is responsible for the corruption in their systems. But a lot of countries do not have as many institutions that help them to create a way to facilitate this justice system. And then you add on top of that the economic pressures from the United States and other countries. You add in trade relations and you add in foreign control of land and agriculture and prices being set on coffee and sugar that they don't have any control over. So, yes, 100% they are responsible for whether or not they are going to have gang influence or they're going to have corruption within their government structures or the police or the national security forces. Everyone is responsible and accountable for their own actions. But I think what is not as understood is that there are so there are so many influences apart from individual choice that affect how a person can operate and how they feel about themselves and what they feel is possible for themselves.

Dr Ariel R King 21:23

That's a great point. You know, I mean that's so insightful. I I think there's there's something to that. And that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? And I and I think that we have this unfortunately in in all countries in the world, but the only ones we can talk about, you and I, is the one that we've experienced. So I'm really grateful for your experiences. They make a very, very big difference. May I ask, when you were in El Salvador, can you tell me anything about the educational system for children and these teens and any any chance to take up a profession to learn a profession or I won't even say to go to university or college, but to finish like a high school level?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

So it's a state public, they have public education for children, but they have also expensive uniform requirements and school supplies that a lot that's beyond the ability of a lot of families to provide. And then you also

Accountability, Trade Pressure, Weak Institutions

SPEAKER_00 22:24

have private instruction. There's a lot of Catholic schools in the more urban centers that are a little bit better in education. There are some universities that. That you can get good scholarships too in San Salvador, and then some private ones as well, if you have the means to pay for that. What I have noticed is that then there's not a lot of job opportunity once you get those degrees. And it may be just in the larger cities where there are job opportunities. But even if you can, if you have the ability to dream, which a lot of kids don't grow up with that being taught to them, they don't, they have to survive today. They're not going to dream and think about tomorrow or even next week or a future. And then it really, if you live in a more rural area, there's simply no opportunities for you. In El Salvador, in particular, you know, tourism and surf and beaching is a lot in some areas, but in the rest of the country, you don't have those opportunities.

Dr Ariel R King 23:38

Yeah, I I think I saw some of the same. That's quite interesting. And I guess is life different than when in education for girls, especially when we're talking about girls and teenage girls, and especially if not that, even teenage girls with babies, is is education different for them, or do they have a possibility to continue education in one way or another?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

I don't I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, but there is at least what I was living in there in the mid-2000s, a lot of girls left school early.

Education Barriers And Gang Coercion

SPEAKER_00 24:15

And either it wasn't safe to continue in school at the time for them. There was a lot of gang recruitment at schools. And you know, you were pressured to join, you could be threatened physically, your family could be threatened. So the safest thing to do would be to leave school where you weren't being threatened to join the gang. That was because your life was also being threatened if you didn't recruit. So when people think about gangs in Central America, what they they often just villainize it so much across the board without realizing a lot of it was if you don't go, if you if your child doesn't join this gang, then we are gonna threaten the rest of the family and take action against the rest of the family if you don't give us this child. And then what do you do as a parent? What do you do as a child if your life is being threatened? Or somebody's saying, I'm gonna hurt your mother if you don't get me three friends from your school to join the gang. So it's very complicated. It's it's really, really complex and that sometimes it's not your choice. Sometimes you're in it, and it was not your path in life.

Dr Ariel R King 25:37

It's it's heart-wrenching, isn't it? It's heart-wrenching. And what I like about what you're talking about is not just your experience, but you can actually apply this to many other countries where where this type of thing is happening. And I think it's so important to recognize at times that it's not the path that you choose, it's the path that it's the it's the least harmful path that you have to try to choose in order to survive and stay alive. It makes such a big difference. I'd like to invite you again so we can talk about policy. We have several minutes left. So, would you like to tell our audience how to get in touch with you? And also any last thoughts on El Salvador and in the amazing, the amazing work that you did with your entire family in El Salvador to give young people a chance for understanding what it is to be loved and cared for and to have hope for the future.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yes, thank you so much. I would love to leave your listeners with the thought that there is always more to a story. What I went down to El Salvador thinking that I knew about the world, about Central America, about immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, that was not the full story. And so I would really encourage anyone listening to think about your mind and how open it is to hearing other perspectives and other sides of a story. What you get in blips in headlines in the US,

More Than Headlines And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 27:12

in the news, you know, whatever social media platform you use, that is not the whole story. There are wonderful, beautiful human beings who are the most welcoming, incredible, surviving individuals who will welcome you into their home and their lives and their hearts. And they deserve every single bit of human rights and life and ability to have a joyful, peaceful existence that we deserve where we are born and we live. And it doesn't matter where you're from, you deserve this. So to I would just say please listen to other stories. Go travel and meet those people before you form a judgment.

Dr Ariel R King 27:57

Thank you so much. And I think that that's for people all over the world. That that's that is such a good statement. Would you please tell the audience how to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

I am Marilee Marks on LinkedIn. You can find me there. And I will happily answer any messages on LinkedIn and connect more through the organizations that I work for. I work for a wonderful organization called Humanite Peace Collective. We do work in the Middle East helping war survivors. So I would love to share with anyone more about that work.

Dr Ariel R King 28:33

Thank you. Thank you so much, and thank you for joining us. And for our audience, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? That's by the great philosopher Hillel. And I've added, if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us.