Trinidad explains why historical memory is so important to avoiding the repetition of history.
- Chapter:
- Chapter 7: Peace Accords & Post-War
- Interviewee:
- Trinidad
Transcription
[For you, Trinidad, why is it important that these things not be forgotten? Why is it important to share them?]
First, we have a younger generation coming, and we’re all going to die whether we want to or not. We are getting older, we are not teenagers anymore. If this history is forgotten, it will repeat itself and we don’t want that to happen. Because someone who did not lose a child during the war doesn’t know what war is. Someone who didn't walk during the war doesn’t know what war is. Someone who didn’t endure hunger for fourteen days, for fifteen days, for seven days, eight days, doesn’t know about war. That’s why I get angry and my blood boils when other people say: “There’s going to be a war.” Why? They haven’t lived it themselves. Firsthand. If they had, they wouldn’t talk about war. I say to myself: if another war is coming, I’m not going to wait for it. I’m going to Guatemala or to another country, but I’m not going to wait for it here in El Salvador. I have already lived through it. I already endured hunger for fourteen days in the Guinda de Mayo. And why more war? How many martyrs were there, that we found...and the wounded. I didn’t mention that sooner, about the war, because I didn’t remember, but today it’s coming back. The comrades broke their backs carrying the wounded, leaving them by a bundle of branches or a bundle of bamboo sticks. They died. They died of hunger or were captured by the enemy, No one knows, because they were abandoned. It was painful when you walking down the road holding on to your comrade’s belt. In the twelve years of war I didn’t live in a skirt, I lived in pants and slept with my shoes and slept like this, waiting for the enemy. We weren't sleeping with our feet up and snoring, no! We knew that we were... that we had an enemy facing us.