Élida describes the beginnings of social organization and protest, and relates an episode of violence that took place in her hamlet.
- Interviewee:
- Élida
Transcription
The first demonstration I participated in happened after the student massacre of July 30. I went to it around October. Fernando also went to that march, and my husband, and many others. I liked being there because it allowed us to express repudiation for the university student massacre that I think happened in 1975. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do remember that we went to this protest and that began to lead us step by step to become more aware of how important our effort and struggle are here in El Salvador, because of all we were going through: the exploitation in the coffee fields, the fact that we had no lands to work on, and the repressive guard we had at the time. All of that led us to organize, to begin to fight, and carry out demonstrations in different places. We would go to Cancasque, and people would come to Arcatao from all over. Those of us from the Los Rivera hamlet were the first to leave. After a demonstration that happened there after the 1969 war, there was some army presence left over in Patamera and they were located very close to our hamlet. So when they heard about it they showed up at our houses and persecuted us, mostly the men. They began to persecute the men but then the women came next. They took us out of the houses at night, and then, well, after that they raped a woman who had had a baby only a month ago. That was Lieutenant Gallegos. Then, that same night, he gathered all the women in the hamlet in one house and… he threatened my mom and Rosa’s mom. They are the ones being exhumed now. They also threatened Rosa’s sister, and kept them all there, while telling me, “go look after that boy.” So I went to watch him at another house where Tomasita lived. She had recently aborted two twins. They sent me to watch over her and the lieutenant stayed there with other soldiers and with the other women. He grabbed one of them, my uncle’s wife, by the hair and dragged her face across the floor. He put cigarettes on her face and said to her, “I want to hear you yell ‘long live ORDEN.” And she would say “long live ORDEN” in a very low voice. “Yell louder!” Then she would yell louder, because he exerted all that violence on her.