Emeteria remembers the process of resettlement in Guarjila after returning from the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras.
Transcription
We were the first to resettle Guarjila. People would tell us,
“What are you going to do? They’re going to kill you over there, don’t go.”
We thought, “Well, we’ve been born to die. We have to die because we’re not eternal.”
Since there were a bunch of us, we thought,
“In any case, if it’s our time to die, we’re going to die.”
But we didn’t. We spent four more years in war. Yes. Planes would pass over and drop bombs on the hills. When the comrades—that's what we called them—fought, they stayed in the hills. Some of the comrades would announce that soldiers were coming, while the others waited in the hills for them to come on the road. We heard so many gunshots. We even heard bullets falling on our roof. Juanita, my daughter, freed herself from death only because God didn’t want her to die. She was sleeping with her daughter right next to her. Her bed was here, and six bullets came through the wall right next to her. If they had come a little closer they would have both died. But the Lord wanted them alive and they didn’t die. She’s a little bit deaf but when she heard the bullets, she jumped out of bed and crawled underneath it. She thought that would keep her safe. I wasn’t there that day, and my husband called out to her,
“Juana, Juana!”
But my daughter didn’t hear him. Then he came out and told her,
“Get out of there. Come to the other room!”
So she came to the other room. We had built a wall of rocks so we could stay away from the bullets. We would duck right next to the rock wall. But sometimes when the bullets fall like that, when God wants, they can still hit you. Luckily my daughter got out of that one safely.