Knowing Rufina

In an earlier post I mentioned a book I read about the massacre at El Mozote. I was fortunate enough to be invited by the woman from the Presbyterian delegation to join her new group this week in their activities, which included a trip to the Mozote massacre site. This week’s group of volunteers was made up mostly of students from Austin College in Texas, which is interestingly located in Sherman, not Austin. Each group member had worked to identify an unmet demand in various communities and agencies, and had secured grants and/or donations to support various projects addressing those demands.

So, I left Chinamequita early Monday morning for San Salvador, met up with the group, and we headed out towards Mozote. On the way, we stopped by a radio station called Radio Victoria, which was started in 1994 after the signing of the Peace Accords, and has been built and run almost entirely by teenagers and young adults. Most of them seemed to either currently have or have had responsibilities in multiple areas of the radio’s functioning, including broadcasting, preparing on-air material, budgeting, management, etc. One of the radio’s active members joined us for the rest of the trip in order to obtain various interviews for the radio. I became friends with him, and he was kind enough to share some of his experiences as a child during the war and the story of when his parents had fled to Honduras as refugees.

This story is of note as it provides further insight into what the soldiers were willing to do to the people, so I will recount a short summary as it was told to me by my friend. I cannot remember the year off the top of my head, but it was somewhere around 1980. The refugees were of course mostly unarmed families who were fleeing the murderous wrath of El Salvadoran soldiers, who fired their automatic weapons at them as they fled. When the men, women, and children reached the river dividing El Salvador and Honduras, the soldiers released the damn causing a stronger current, in order to prevent the refugees from swimming across. Most individuals that I have met here do not know how to swim, probably because most do not have access to swimming pools and are understandably afraid to learn in the ocean or lakes with severe drop offs. My friend mentioned that most of the people did not know how to swim either, and many were drowned in the river. Still, many people miraculously made it across, only to be met by fire from the Honduran soldiers as well. The people who made it across the border alive were then sometimes dragged back across the official border line so that they could be executed “legally” on the Salvadoran side.

The US government felt that the best solution to this atrocity was to continually increase economic and military aid to the Salvadoran soldiers, which of course they used to keep murdering unarmed men, women, children, and babies every day for a decade. Certainly, the government was not only executing unarmed people, they were also killing the people who were fighting for their freedom from a tyrannical and terrorist government. We, of course, supported the terrorists because it was in our best economic and political interests to do so (e.g., avoiding any possibility that El Salvador might form a new system of government such as communism or socialism that, although not dangerous in and of themselves, could potentially threaten how much power and profit our companies could have within El Salvador). This may sound cynical, but upon reading more about US foreign policy there is a Salvadoran mountain of information supporting it.

In any case, back to the present reality, which takes us to the town of Mozote in the state of Morazan, about a 3 hour ride north of San Salvador and close to the Honduran border. We first arrived in Perquin, just outside of Mozote, to lay our things in a hotel with log cabin bedrooms. It was here that I was able to take my first warm shower in the last two months, which was very nice. Of course, I have gotten quite used to the bucket showers, and I realize how little water we actually need to wash ourselves despite how much we waste on a daily basis in the US.

The next day we headed to Rufina Amaya’s house to talk to this miraculous woman, who managed to survive the Mozote massacre of almost 800 people 26 years ago. Had she not ducked into the brush while they were executing the other women, it is quite possible that no one, outside of the army, would have ever known what happened there. This of course would have served the interests of both the Salvadoran and US governments, as it is particularly difficult to support the side of the war when the rest of the world finds out about such massacres. In any case, we saw the spot where she had ducked beneath the trees, now behind a seemingly new barbed-wire fence. It was there that she buried her face in the dirt to muffle her sobs as she heard her children’s last words, screams for their life as the soldiers put US bought bullets into their little heads. She then crawled among the feet of a heard of cattle into a brush of cactus-like bushes. She continued to crawl, gradually losing the clothes that were shredded by the thorns. She was alone for 8 days in the wilderness, bloody and hysteric after losing her 4 youngest children, one of whom had been ripped from her nursing breast. A woman finally encountered her and took her in, cleaning her wounds. Rufina would have to live with her decision for the rest of her life. Should she have ran back and stood with her children to die together? Or did she make the right decision, to flee and be the voice of remembrance and truth so all was not forgotten?

There are many other details, but they are available on her video-taped testimony, so we did not selfishly ask her to recount her story in full. Rather, the above details came up in conversation or were provided by a woman who has heard her testimony countless times. We thus talked with her about her present life, and were able to see it in context. It was an amazing experience to see her with her grandchildren (at the time of the massacre one or two of her children had been living outside of Mozote, and then had children themselves later on). We took Rufina to her dad’s house while we went to Mozote to see the town as it is now: moderately stirring with life that has since been brought back to a mass grave. The monument with the plaques of the dead are attached to a wall, but interestingly, one plaque has been stolen, the one with the names of Rufina’s family on it. We saw some charred houses, with the bullet holes still visible. We saw a small burial ground away from the church, where most of the bodies were found. On a previous trip, a young child had told our delegation leader that these were the ashes of the devil’s angels. Someone is apparently teaching the children that the dead deserved what they got. Such education is another attempt to rationalize something that should never be rationalized.

We returned and picked up Rufina and her grand-daughter, and they accompanied us to a nearby town where we saw a local art and mural project. One of the murals included a number of martyrs and war heroes, including Rufina, who was painted sitting in between Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, Jr. After parting with Rufina, we headed back to the hotel to rest for the next day, when we would meet up with a cultural association and be treated to a progressive rock concert and dinner, making a small effort to bridge a chasm-like divide that our two governments have created between us. I think, for one night, the friendships made and stories shared represented a bit of progress. As if to build on this, the next day I accompanied one of the delegation’s representatives, a freshman Austin college student, to meet her Salvadoran pen pal of 10 years for the first time. Neither one spoke the other’s language, and so the day was facilitated through a translator provided by an organization in the Salvadoran girl’s town. To add to her experience, this was her first time going to the capital city, as she lives about 2 hours outside of it. And to add to my experience, I performed my first ever formal oral translation for a 5 minute interview that will be broadcast on Radio Victoria. Upon reviewing it, I can honestly say I did well, capturing almost all intended meaning and clearing up 2 mistakes upon review.

There were certainly other events, people, and thoughts worthy of mentioning, but it would be too much to write here. Suffice it to say that I never would have had the experiences without the delegation’s kind invitation. The kindness they showed me throughout the week was unexpected and wonderful. I have made some new friends who I hope to see again someday, in some part of the world. I was also given some exciting new reading material, which I hope to get through during my late-night reading sessions.

Before parting, there is one thing worthy of noting to show how these past events are connected to current ones. I will recount it as second-hand information, as reported to me by an individual who saw the news that I did not see. A few days ago, the Salvadoran government was mandated by the Inter-American Court to formally apologize for various atrocities that occurred during the war. Instead of going himself, the president, Tony Saca, sent a lower delegate, who did not apologize for anything. This is very relevant to how the US example of not giving any credence to international court decisions, at least when they are not in our favor (e.g., the World Court decision in favor of Nicaragua, which the Reagan Administration dismissed, Bush's campaign remarks to disempower the World Court, the US's repeated vetoes in the UN to prevent democratic efforts for change in the Israel Palestine conflict, etc.). Basically, the US feels that we should be able to do what we want without having any court of international body be able to hold us accountable when we're wrong. Bush has tried, with no small measure of success, to scare the US public into thinking that the World Court would take away our freedoms. This of course is false. Respecting World Court decisions would only hold us accountable for things that we do against international law, which we unfortunately break quite frequently. This would effectively pressure us into doing the right thing. Instead, Bush and many of his supporters argue that the US alone should decide when it is right and wrong. This would be nice, if we actually held ourselves accountable for our war crimes, acts of terrorism (e.g., against Cuba), harboring of terrorists (I forget a few of the names off the top of my head, but do an internet search and it will probably come up), and breaking of human, labor, and environmental rights (e.g., many US foreign policies and interventions).

In any case, the same day, President Saca did something else disgustingly low. Upon describing the government’s effort to locate “disappeared” children (esaparecidos), that is, children who had been taken from their families and perhaps killed, he described the children as having “wandered away” (extraviados) This subtle change in vocabulary effectively took the responsibility away from the captors (usually the government’s soldiers and paramilitaries), and put the fault on the children. This is like saying if your 8 year old daughter was kidnapped, raped, and killed and then never found, the police described her as having wandered away instead of kidnapped. It represents the struggles that the Salvadoran people are facing from their ultra right wing government, who of course are good friends with our own ultra right wing administration, in small part because El Salvador’s government, against popular opinion, mandated that their soldiers would go to Iraq, where they still remain. It is interesting to note that no other Latin American countries have sent soldiers to Iraq, most probably because they have seen first-hand what US military efforts do to people and their rights to freedom, self-chosen government, justice, and truth.

In any case, for now I head back to the local cultural association to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Romero’s death. Yesterday there was a huge march in the capital, and tonight there will be an all night vigil.