Hermelinda remembers being pregnant the first time people in Arcatao left their homes, around 1980, when generalized repression began against the civilian population and everyone had to leave town.
- Interviewee:
- Hermelinda
Transcription
[And in the eighties you left there?]
In 1980 we left our homes, leaving everything behind. It was hard, because you know that if you come back, things won’t be the way you left them. And that's how it was. I was pregnant with one of my children, the baby was about to be born. After a month of leaving the house, he was born. I couldn’t come back to the house to grab food or clothes that we had left behind hidden somewhere. The soldiers came and set all of our things on fire. We didn’t have one grain of food to eat. They just set everything on fire and all the grain got burnt.
[So you just fled with only a few personal items?]
Yes, only with the clothes I had on. I couldn’t take a bigger load because I was pregnant and I could barely walk. I was also carrying my other girl, so I couldn’t take things out of the house. By the time I told him to come get things at the house, they had set it on fire. The day we got ready to hide some of our things and leave, there was a wake going on, because a lady had just died. So they came to bother people who were at the wake. They came to pester us in the morning, and they went down to another village and killed two women. We got scared. They killed Rosa’s mom and Nico’s grandma. They grabbed them and took them to a secluded place on the outskirts of the village, and killed them. That frightened us a lot so we left our home.
[Do you know why they were killed?]
Well, they were organized. That’s why they killed them. They lived in Los Riveras, and they had come here because they came to harass them at their homes. So they came to El Sitio looking for help, because they couldn’t stay there. That’s why they were there when they were killed.