FLIGHT
Englebert, Michel J.
FLIGHT Six Salvadorans who took leave of the war INTERVIEWS BY MICHELJ. ENGLEBERT "A single death," Stalin said, "is a tragedy; a thousand deaths is a statistic." We have heard many statistics...
...My Jaimie is dead and where were they when he suffered...
...Take your hand away...
...He was fourteen years old...
...They see what is happening...
...In front of everybody...
...There was nothing I could say...
...I told him they were fine...
...The boy did...
...FLORA PAPILLA She is thirty-two years old...
...When I saw him running, I raised my hand and motioned him to stay away, to go back...
...Then I saw Marco get up, and Toby walk to the drawer where we kept the revolver...
...Seven were women and one was an old man...
...I told you, she is very strong-willed, but I worry about her safety...
...A little bit thinner and a little more gray in his hair...
...He always smelled of coffee, sweet tobacco, and cinnamon...
...And then the bastard made all the children go to their mothers, and gave the order to shoot...
...At the funeral, there were three coffins, side by side, and three holes in the ground...
...Seven women, four children, and one old man died in front of my eyes that afternoon...
...And they asked if I knew that he had been going into the hills to join the guerrillas, and I said that he never went to the hills, that it must be a mistake...
...I want to hear you shout your slogans, you bastard...
...While we were talking, I heard the army trucks pull into the village...
...Shot them right against the wall...
...I only remember for sure that part about soldiers in Christ, and the word, "fascist...
...Maybe it's better like that...
...Then I heard nothing for several minutes, not even conversation, which seemed funny...
...Tobias asked if we all wanted to go inside and watch the news on television before supper...
...So that day, I was a little nervous when I got on the bus in the morning, hoping that nothing was going to happen...
...My husband and I had gone swimming, and were taking the sun when Tobias, my brother-in-law, came for a visit...
...The soldiers would bang on the doors with the butts of their rifles, and if the person inside was too slow to answer, they would shoot the lock off and go inside...
...I couldn't get papers, so I sneaked across the border...
...He lived only a few houses away and came when he heard the shots...
...all of that is really starting to make me crazy...
...Then I said that I had heard something in my travels that I thought he would be interested in, because it had to do with how the guerrillas get their recruits...
...All this happened in about a second...
...Why does that man's death make Salvador a better place...
...but he didn't care what I said...
...She was eighty-three years old...
...He said, "Shout it again...
...Shout it again...
...Tobias was on the couch, with his feet on the coffee table and his hands behind his head...
...Don't shoot...
...That must have been Toby shooting the pistol...
...Then I went inside to look for Franco...
...One of them told us not to move...
...In her letMichel Englebert, a free-lance writer, teaches English to Latin American and Asian refugees...
...Right there...
...It all happened so fast I was not even late for work that day, but I couldn't think of anything else except that boy and what happened to him...
...I begged and begged them to let me die in his place, but they said nothing...
...I saw Octavio put his hands to his face, and his hands got covered with blood...
...Salvador is not a place where you should dream any more—not if you're young and you're strong and you love to be alive...
...Then I had to identify the bodies, and go to Ramon's house to tell their mother that all her sons were dead...
...Then he came back...
...Where were the peddlers of dreams when he died in that barn...
...I was kind of walking backwards into the bedroom, really confused and scared, and I heard Ramon yelling, "You have raised your hands against my family...
...They would watch these soldiers shooting their mothers, and when they grew up, they would be thinking only of one thing: to get revenge on those soldiers...
...And Jaimie was smart, but he was not exceptional like the teacher told him...
...I just couldn't believe it...
...I recognized him right away...
...It was very quiet and a beautiful, warm night...
...I was watching the bandana move over his mouth as he spoke, but I wasn't really hearing him because I was so frightened...
...Aurora had thrown her body over Angelica and had tried to crawl with her to the door...
...He wouldn't come home until late in the morning, and I would be up already, praying and crying because I was afraid of what had happened to him...
...And it was going to be a big, fancy wedding...
...I was pressed up against two old ladies, and at every stop two or three more people would get on and we would be pressed even tighter against each other...
...That's why I blame the teachers...
...But when a man got off the bus that looked almost exactly like Franco, we knew we had found him...
...In Chalatenango, he was a teacher...
...She believes that her place is with Franco even more now than ever...
...I guess he must have seen Ramon and seen him looking in my direction...
...The guerrillas say they are fighting to liberate the people...
...And they made me come with them to a big barn in the middle of the country...
...But the face, the eyes, even the gestures were almost exactly the same...
...and if you don't believe me you can go there and look at the holes where the bullets went through the bodies and into the brick...
...There were about two dozen soldiers who had jumped out of the trucks, and now they were running all over the village in pairs and in threes, searching the houses...
...BERNARDO OCHOA In El Salvador he was a cobbler's apprentice...
...Then I heard the knock again, louder than before, so I thought maybe Marco and Toby had gone back outside and couldn't hear...
...But I also knew that it wouldn't do#any good to try to comfort him...
...That was all...
...Then I saw Marco raise his hands above his head and say, "Don't shoot...
...He never went on a walk in the country around the house without bringing me back some wildflowers he'd picked for me...
...I still see it a lot in my mind...
...I didn't see him fall, because there were many explosions after that, and I put my arms around my head and fell to the floor and curled by body into a ball...
...And he had a lot of energy...
...When the explosions stopped, all I could hear was the screaming...
...I tried to stand up, but I couldn't...
...I don't make politics...
...But half of the time I never arrived...
...But then I grew ashamed of myself for my cowardice, and I approached the officer in charge, and I just started to speak to him, not knowing what I was going to say, you know, but just kind of trusting God that He would put the right words in my mouth...
...I heard the sound of footsteps and voices—the neighbors were running out to see what happened...
...Another day the National Guard would stop the bus and spend hours looking at everybody's papers and searching the suspicious ones...
...It got to where I was so often late for work, or else not coming in at all, that my boss told me one more time and I would be fired...
...Octavio had gotten twenty-two bullets in his head and body...
...The teachers should know that...
...Then he got back on the bus, and he told the bus driver to continue...
...Sometimes it's difficult to figure out where to start, because everything is so connected...
...I tried to find out, talking to her, what had happened and why all the men were gone, but she was afraid to say anything...
...As soon as he saw Octavio, I knew that they thought he was Franco...
...Let me tell you about my husband...
...They made me watch when they tied his thumbs behind him with barbed wire and made the wire tighter and tighter until his thumbs turned purple...
...She told me that everybody from both families would be there...
...On some nights, he read poetry out loud to me until I fell asleep...
...Because it's not the National Guard that killed my boy...
...I knew he had seen his brother die in his place...
...And then, also, I wonder sometimes is any kind of life, no matter how degrading, no matter how exploited, better than death...
...Eat my food and be quiet...
...Of course, there was no wedding the next day, but a funeral instead...
...The shooting felt like it lasted one hour, but I know it could only have been a few seconds...
...They made me watch when they put a rope through his hands tied like that, threw the other end of the rope over the rafters, and then lifted him up and let him hang there, slowly turning, with all the weight of his body hanging from his blue thumbs...
...So I looked over to where Octavio was...
...Make a little money...
...There was like a loud drum beating in my ears...
...That is how I feel about it...
...Pretty soon there were eight people there...
...I stepped outside the bedroom and looked down from the platform, and I could see them crouching behind a window and peeking through the curtains...
...ters it sounded like he was very good to her, and she was happy with him...
...The guerrilla stepped away from the door and fired at me with his rifle without even aiming it...
...They made me watch everything...
...Just after I shut the door I heard two shots—not so loud as the others...
...The policeman took a deep breath, and laughed a little bit, and said, "Ah, yes, that's much better now...
...Then the machine guns started again, and then everything was quiet...
...I guessed he was going into town to look for a job...
...There was a lot of champagne, and a lot of hugging and laughing, and then a lot of stories about what had happened during their long separation...
...They made a half-circle around these people, and then they loaded their rifles...
...Either because the security forces had done something terrible in the village and the men were looking for revenge, or because los muchachos had come into the village themselves to recruit...
...That was the last thing Ramon had said to her before he died...
...That was impossible...
...There was about fifteen minutes before the program would start, so I went upstairs to take a shower and dress...
...He was crying in his hands...
...You're stealing all my oxygen up there...
...So I know something about what she is saying, but it's not true that we are always running away...
...Aurora told me that there had been some bad feelings between them, but now this marriage was repairing the old wounds...
...One day the campesinos would hijack the bus and use it for a roadblock, or else they'd make everybody get out and they'd throw a bomb inside the bus—just to destroy it and disrupt the transportation...
...He 40/ MARCH 1983 was the most gentle man in the world...
...The next month I was on a train to Mexico with my mother, hoping to get a visa to come into the United States...
...Today, in Salvador, it's too dangerous to have friends...
...We sat around for a few hours, sipping rum drinks and just talking...
...He didn't come back for two days, and I was going crazy...
...The women, the children, everyone...
...He was beautiful and had a very beautiful soul, too...
...We have heard many statistics about El Salvador—numbing statistics, contested statistics, statistics the mind cannot absorb...
...She told me that she had begged Ramon not to go when they heard the shots, but that he had said, "I must go because he is my brother...
...It was amazing how much the two of them looked alike, really...
...Marco was always saying how much his brother liked to complain, so when he looked up and saw that I was watching them, he made a funny little motion with his head in Toby's direction and rolled his eyes...
...Where was that teacher then...
...I was changing into a dress when I heard somebody knocking very loudly at the door...
...Well, what I was afraid of happened...
...Really, that's the truth...
...The women knew what was happening, of course, and some of them were crying and pleading with the soldiers to spare them, and others were cursing at the soldiers, and one was even, you know, making promises that she would give herself to them if they didn't shoot her...
...The boy did...
...There was nothing I could do for him, nothing—not even dying would havehelped...
...At night, when I couldn't stop him...
...So when we found out that Aurora was getting married, we thought, "Boy...
...But today, nobody trusts nobody...
...After they did their work those sons of bitches just got back on the trucks and drove off...
...It was almost dark when we ran out of champagne and started drinking whiskey and sodas...
...It almost made me sick when I saw him...
...She heard them too, because she stood up and pushed the little boy into the other room...
...I looked down the street to see if there were any police coming to help us, but I saw no one...
...I love him...
...Everything was really quiet, because the brothers weren't talking so much any more—just happy knowing that the other was there—but were having a little time of quiet thinking...
...He was thirty-nine when they murdered him...
...She was a housewife in El Salvador, and today works as a hotel maid in Santa Monica...
...Shot him twice in the head...
...I guess it really starts when I got the invitation to Aurora's wedding...
...He was making comments about the weather and how hot it was...
...It's better if you just keep to yourself and mind your own business and to hell with your friends...
...Then the sound was in the bushes, very near to us...
...Angelica called out for her Papa, but one of the boys raised his gun at her and yelled at her to shut up...
...He started to spend a lot of time in school after classes were over, just talking with that teacher...
...I was in H. village, to see some very old customers of mine, and when I drove in I noticed that there were almost no men around...
...I wanted to do something, but I was afraid...
...It was Ramon, my husband's other brother...
...I don't know why I did that, but I did...
...If she didn't like something, she'd say so, and she didn't care who was around...
...A salesman in El Salvador, he is now a part-time laborer for a landscaping firm in Los Angeles...
...And I thought that there was nothing I could do...
...Always their little faces come back to me, and I am being torn apart by it...
...I went to the house of one of my clients and there was only his wife there and her little child—a boy, four years old...
...I think he is going to fire me if I do it again...
...I mean, they actually pumped them to put a bullet in the chamber...
...He was twelve years old...
...That school, that teacher had stolen my son from me...
...I was living in Chalatenango, but I got a week's leave and promised I'd be at the wedding...
...There was a lot of blood everywhere and you could see pieces of his flesh and pieces of his bones on the porch...
...I don't know anymore...
...He was really tall, that's why I noticed him so much...
...Because it was too dangerous to ride the bus any more...
...But how can I help it...
...What does it mean to be told 32,000 human beings have died in a few years of political violence...
...Like it was something so common, all this suffering and screaming...
...I'm going to tell you this story, and then I want to ask you a question, OK...
...What can you do when you just can't live with yourself any more...
...Jaimie started to go into the hills that summer...
...They are educated...
...And those who filled his brain with dreams are responsible for his death...
...He was the mayor, and pretty well off, too...
...She just started to cry...
...And all I can remember beside that is that beautiful old woman just crying and crying...
...So, hell, I don't care who wins the war or the election or anything...
...I looked in that direction, and I saw Angelica and Aurora on the floor...
...You want to know why I left Salvador...
...I heard Toby tell Marco to get his gun and hide behind the couch, and Marco answer him that no, he would see what they wanted...
...Except I think Octavio was even a little bit more distinguished looking than Franco...
...Franco's brother's name was Octavio...
...I didn't shout because I didn't want the guerrilla downstairs to hear me, but it was no good...
...When he got on, he was pressed by the crowd up against the policeman...
...I don't know, maybe if I try to explain it I can chase it away...
...Then, if they found anything like a weapon, or a pamphlet, or if the people inside gave them any trouble or seemed suspicious, they would arrest them and make them stand against the wall of this one house at the edge of the village...
...Well, I had told him all that, and he hadn't interrupted me so I thought maybe my idea had worked...
...And the officer buried the blade just a little bit deeper still...
...ANTONIO CONTRERAS He is forty-six years old...
...That teacher was only getting ready to put ideas in my little one's head, and it was really cruel to do it like that...
...In a military jeep...
...But for me, my life is over now...
...This all happened last year, during the summer...
...We walked outside together...
...Today, he is a dishwasher in a Mexican restaurant in Sacramento...
...You know, I actually once saw a dog with a human hand in his mouth walking through a village near mine...
...Something like that...
...And the boy gave him a look that had fire inside it, and he said, "Viva la FPU" And the officer put the tip of the blade against the boy's bare chest, just under the heart, and he said, "Now, shout it again...
...He is twenty-three...
...On the top of the stairs there is a little platform where you can look down into the living room, and I could see Marco, my husband, in his white bathrobe, lying on the hammock and smoking a cigarette...
...The blood was really flowing, and I think the top of the machete must have touched the boy's heart before he died, because no matter how deep that blade was, he just kept shouting the slogan...
...So maybe the best thing would be not to shoot these women, but to warn them that the village was being watched closely from now on, and not to break the law, and to tell their men to come back to the village and work their land and not risk their lives in the hills with the campesinos because they were putting their families in danger...
...I hope maybe to return some day, but you don't know how bad it is over there...
...Are they real...
...I told him please, please not to go into the hills any more, that he would be caught and it was too dangerous...
...And there were soldiers on both sides of him...
...You know how long it took my Jaimie to die...
...They were crying in the arms of a fat neighbor woman...
...I almost died walking across the desert...
...Franco was about ten years older than Aurora, but that was OK...
...He killed them all...
...I don't remember exactly...
...I felt terrible because I knew these people...
...I remember hearing Franco make a noise in the kitchen, and I remember thinking, "My God, don't let him come out, because these people are here to murder him...
...He said, 'They were here for me, Antonio...
...He wiped his tears with the back of his hand, then seemed a little surprised when he saw the blood there...
...I couldn't think how to move my feet...
...I didn't understand a lot of the things he was saying, but I recognized the words and they made me afraid to hear them in his mouth...
...I sent my little Jaimie to school because I thought it would be better for him when he becomes an adult, and he will know how to read well and how to write well and maybe get a good job...
...Even Franco's brother...
...Then one day he came back from school all happy, because the teacher had told him he was a very intelligent boy...
...He must have heard me coming in, because he raised his head and I saw several cuts on his forehead and under his right eye...
...I knew that it was difficult for him in school, but I was proud: He worked hard at it...
...If I had not said anything, not tried to be everybody's friend, those little ones would still be alive and playing under the sun...
...and every time the officer would bury the blade just a little bit deeper...
...The guerrillas never came upstairs for me...
...He kept doves in the backyard and he loved to read next to their coop in the evening: He said the sound was soothing, like being in heaven...
...Little Angelica was screaming and screaming, and I could hear Aurora screaming too, but I did not look up...
...Sixteen hours I was there and my son was so close...
...We were friends...
...Then my memory comes in very short pieces...
...I don't know how many of my students died, and I don't want to think about it because what good would it do for anybody...
...Now I know my children, and I am as proud as any mother...
...It would have been better for us if I hadn't sent him...
...All I want to do is fix shoes...
...Between the guerrillas and the security forces...
...I knew there was nothing he could have done about it...
...We were all standing up, with our hands in the air, and I saw the leader of the muchachos look over the group, like he was looking for someone...
...There were pieces of broken glass and splinters of wood falling all over me...
...I wanted to get away from there, because I was afraid that the guerrillas would come upstairs and kill me too...
...Now let me tell you about Marco...
...I had to turn my head away quick...
...She just shook her head all the time and wiped her forehead with her handkerchief...
...he didn't even know that Franco had become th6 mayor...
...He actually thought that the policeman was being funny...
...I tried to convince my sister to come with me, but she would not...
...You could see his head above everybody else's...
...And then—I swear it, this happened in front of me—he shot him...
...That afternoon the weather was very hot...
...I arrived in the village a couple of hours before Octavio, and a few of us went down to the bus stop to meet him...
...Who are these people...
...Franco P., my future brother-in-law, was a real important man in the village...
...Left, Right, I don't know, whatever...
...I felt really helpless...
...When the soldiers had finished searching every house, they came back to the prisoners, and then they did something I couldn't believe when I saw it...
...Marco opened the door, and then suddenly it was like somebody had broken the door down...
...We said OK and went inside...
...Tomorrow, I thought, it could happen to me...
...LEON CASTILLO He is thirty-five years old and now works as a part-time clerk for a charitable organization in Sacramento...
...But I didn't see any blood around them, and they didn't look like they had been hit...
...The soldiers asked if I was his mother, and I said I was...
...You wouldn't believe what a beautiful country Salvador was just a couple of years ago...
...I want to tell you about it...
...Here's what happened to me...
...And the policeman, in his uniform, looked really uncomfortable...
...The police came to get him out of my class one morning...
...Angelica was already in love with her uncle, because he showed her how to make hats, boats, and airplanes out of newspaper...
...He seemed interested, and he wasn't giving the order to shoot, so I just went on talking, praying my idea would work...
...More than the National Guard...
...The same guy, the leader, walked forward a few steps and said, "We are soldiers in Christ against tyranny, and have come to free the people from the fascists...
...The young man looked down at the policeman and he laughed like it had been a joke and he was being polite...
...I laughed and turned into the bedroom to take my shower...
...Then he nodded and he said only that maybe I was right about the little ones...
...He said the teacher had explained these things to him very well...
...It was starting to get hot, too...
...The six exiles from El Salvador presented here are real...
...Then I heard the policeman say, "Hey...
...We didn't just talk about sales when I went to see them, but I knew their families, and something about their lives, and we often would sit down and drink a cup of coffee together...
...I still had my arm raised, and the bullet went right through the skin between my thumb and forefinger...
...They were going to kill these people right there, in the daylight, against a wall in the street, without a trial, without questioning, just like that...
...In Salvador, we had to make important decisions and choices...
...Pretty soon, we had all finished our drinks...
...It didn't hurt, but I saw the blood, and heard the bullet hit the side of the house behind me, and thought how close my hand had been to my head...
...That must be one strong man she has found...
...So they would join the guerrillas, not because they agreed with their politics, but because they wanted revenge...
...And the next morning I have to call my boss and tell him that I can't work because I am sick that day...
...I tell you, some nights it's so bad that I think I have to end my life...
...You are dead men...
...and how in history there were first tribes, then kings and slavery, then democracy, and then, in the future, it would be socialism...
...I couldn't make a sound, and I guess that is what saved my life, because a second after that I heard the machine guns explode, and I covered my ears and ran back into the bedroom...
...That is how strong his heart was...
...He had one little girl, seven years old, from that marriage: Angelica...
...That's when I decided to leave Salvador and come here...
...They didn't even pick up the bodies...
...Suddenly, there were five boys in front of us, wearing bandanas over their noses, and carrying automatic rifles...
...He made the boy get down from the bus...
...They said that they would show me what kind of a son I had...
...The deaths they witnessed and recall are real tragedies...
...But I also know what my own children are not...
...There were only very old men and very young children, but it looked like almost everybody from ten to forty years old had disappeared...
...We had a little balcony outside the bedroom, so I went there and I was going to jump, but I saw that there was a guerrilla in front of the door downstairs...
...The young man apologized a couple of times, but I could tell that the policeman was getting irritated...
...But they laughed and they said no, it was no mistake, and that a mother is always the last to know her own children...
...When you hear that your colleagues are dying, that also is a source of pain...
...He earned an administrative position with the government and everybody liked him, everybody who knew him...
...Then he tried to compose himself...
...And there is risk for us too: Hundreds of teachers are killed every month...
...I hope I can stay here until the war is over, if the immigration people here don't catch me...
...Satan himself had entered my boy at that school, and Satan wanted to see him dead...
...If you do not care about him as your son, at least let me care about him as my brother...
...And that night they probably went home and had dinner with their own families, and played with their own children...
...He had gone to live in Guatemala about fifteen years ago, and he and Franco hadn't seen each other since then...
...Don't you think the courage, of that boy is a great inspiration for me...
...Dangerous things like politics and the campesinos and history and things like that...
...Now I want to ask you the question: Why do you kill a man like that...
...The only thing I can try to do in my classroom is to tell the truth...
...Bastard...
...At one stop a young man came on the bus, about eighteen...
...He loved black coffee and orange marmalade...
...I said to the officer that I was a salesman, and that I was very grateful for the way the army and the security forces were bringing order back to the country and making the roads safe...
...She'd gotten halfway through before the shooting stopped, and now they were just lying there, in the doorway, crying and screaming...
...The dreams I have, the time that I spend going over and over what happened to see if maybe I could have done something better, could have prevented it...
...I just felt a pair of hands under my arms helping me up...
...It was beginning to be evening, but still the weather was hot, so we decided to celebrate on the front porch...
...Maybe once in a while have a drink of rum...
...I will tell you: It's because they don't care what happens to him, as long as they can feel like big shots when they see the eyes of their students get bigger and bigger while they are talking about revolution and dreams...
...He supported the land reforms...
...You know who I blame is the teachers...
...Now I am safe...
...And God help me, it was my fault that those little babies were killed...
...And when los muchachos come to recruit, well, you better go with them, that's all...
...Then there was an explosion...
...I used to take the bus into town from my village every day...
...When I managed to stand, my legs were shaking so much that a man had to hold me...
...She said it would be really something, because Octavio knew nothing at all about Franco...
...Ihear things like Flora says and, you can believe me, it really hurts, and very deep in my soul...
...They were like men who were bored by all of this...
...He kept saying that, the boy kept shouting, "Viva la FPL...
...A lot of parents kept their children at home and didn't send them to school, because it was better for the family if everybody worked...
...There was a group of guerrillas who poured into the living room—five or six of them— and they all had automatic rifles or machine guns...
...I guess the muchachos will win eventually, but really I don't care who wins...
...But it is difficult to be a man, and even more difficult to be a teacher...
...Not like a movie, but like a bunch of photographs...
...And angry...
...I even remember a little smell of coffee that was coming from the kitchen...
...He could swim all the way from one end of the swimming pool to the other and back again, underwater...
...There was a strange sound that came from the left side of the house, then the same sound from the right side...
...Then I get very drunk and I cry in front of the television set...
...Now everything is different...
...I found him kneeling under the window...
...ANGEL VILLANUEVA He is fifty-one years old...
...He was very intelligent...
...I am just as responsible for their deaths as if I had pulled the trigger myself...
...Her husband makes a modest living working in the fields, but it is seasonal work...
...His eyes were open, but you couldn't really see his face, because there was too much blood...
...As we drove away, I looked out the window and saw the boy's body, his clean clothes all splattered with blood, just lying on the side of the road...
...I didn't like that, because it meant that if the muchachos tried to set up a roadblock or something, there would be fighting and shooting for sure...
...I stayed in the bedroom until the police came...
...She was very strong-willed...
...That should have been him hanging by his thumbs, not my Jaimie...
...what killed him was his dreams...
...One of them had entered just below the jaw and the top of his head had exploded...
...I pray that was the first shot...
...I had a job where I traveled all over the country to visit my customers, and I loved to drive up and down...
...I can remember every detail of that moment perfectly...
...If those teachers are not there to see him when he dies, what right do they have to fill Jaimie's mind up with death like that...
...Then around the corner came a man, running...
...I'm not sure...
...And they made me watch when they tore his clothes off and tied a bucket to his genitals, and every half an hour they'd come back and into the bucket they would put one more small stone...
...They dragged him to the main square...
...And the officer buried the tip of the blade about a half an inch into his flesh...
...And the people were very good, too...
...On the other side of that window was the body of his brother, and I was certain that he had seen everything...
...He was wearing a clean shirt and clean trousers, but you could tell by his shoes and his skin that he was pretty poor...
...Franco went inside to make new ones...
...Sixteen hours...
...But then, my customers were also my friends...
...Their stories are real...
...Nobody was sure what he looked like...
...The government thinks the teachers are training guerrillas, the guerrillas think the teachers are informing on their students, and both sides kill teachers every day...
...Then I heard the machine guns again...
...I hadn't been to this village for quite a long time, but I suspected what had happened: Most of the men had joined up with the campesinos in the hills...
...But not me...
...But they care about nothing but themselves, and that's why they are never around when their poison takes effect...
...He was almost choking on his tears, but he managed to ask me about Angelica and Aurora, and were they all right...
...EVAARGUETA She is thirty-two years old...
...I didn't see anybody, though...
...She must, therefore, often leave her infant daughter with neighbors, so she can work part-time as a janitor in San Diego...
...Today, he is a busboy in a Mexican restaurant in Sacramento...
...He had worked in the post office when he was young to earn enough money to go to the university...
...Then silence...
...He told the bus driver to stop...
...I cannot stop thinking about those little children...
...It would mean he felt nothing...
...The bus was pretty crowded as usual, and one of the passengers was a short policeman with an automatic rifle...
...There was so much broken glass on my head and my shoulders that when I tried to brush it off I cut my palm pretty deep...
...The officer took a machete and he said to the boy, "So you think FPL [the National Liberation Front] is so good...
...How can I help it when I carry those little children with me twenty-four hours a day...
...Then the policeman yelled again, and said that the guy was laughing at him...
...Nothing...
...God, that boy was so strong...
...Why didn't they just teach him to read and to write, like their job says, and let him come up with his ideas by himself...
...Aurora is my sister, but you've really got to know her to understand how surprised we all were to find out she was getting married...
...And his face and arms were all cut...
...She is strong, and wise, and good, and devoted all her life to her sons...
...Idon't know why I am talking about this again, because I want most of all to forget all about it...
...Where did he go with all his big ideas...
...He started to come home and talk about things he never talked about before...
...Angelica and Aurora stood up too...
...Let me tell you what happened to me...
...After that, he started to talk badly about the National Guard and about the government...
...Well, Marco's mother is one of the people...
...I had heard these kinds of raids were pretty common in villages that the security forces suspected of being guerrilla strongholds, but I had never actually seen one taking place like this...
...Even when I touched her shoulder, Aurora didn't look up...
...I punished him when he talked like that, and told him I wouldn't let him go back to school if that was all they could teach him there...
...It was true...
...I told him that many villagers had told me before that when the soldiers come into a village and arrest people, especially women, and then shoot them, what they didn't realize was that the little children who were watching them would never forget it...
...He had been married before, but his wife died of cancer...
...I was right to be afraid...
...But my prayers meant nothing to him...
...Because your best friend maybe is also your worst enemy...
...Maybe he would never get over it...
...I was there, I saw it...
...You can't afford it...
...In El Salvador, he was a teacher...
...that that is the only way I will ever escape from my terrible guilt...
...Then he would be alive today, and we would be a family that carries joy with it instead of the sadness which is all we have left today...
...I thdught I was paralyzed...
...I do remember one of my boys who got killed...
...She didn't like many men, and the men that sometimes she was attracted to didn't really like her character very much, because I think she was too strong for them...
...If I stopped telling the truth, what kind of a teacher would I be...
...They know what can happen...
Vol. 47 • March 1983 • No. 3
