Virginia describes life at the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras, and her challenging trip back to Arcatao.
- Chapter:
- Chapter 4: Refugee Experiences
- Interviewee:
- Virginia
Transcription
…They told me, “Go to [the refugee camp] Mesa Grande, don’t stay here in hiding with your children. Look at the state they are in, the children are anemic. “No,” I told them, “I’m not going to Mesa Grande, I like El Salvador, I’m not going to go to Mesa Grande.” But they did it so many times, I went for a year. During the year I was there, one of my children was hospitalized, he was hospitalized for exactly a year in Santa Rosa.
[In what year approximately did you go to Mesa Grande?]
You know, I don’t remember the year, I know it was right after the Guinda de Mayo that I went there. But just for a year, as soon as they gave me back the child who had been treated I came back, because I didn’t like it.
[What was it like living there?]
Ugh, no, I didn’t like it because I was alone, we were held in a camp encircled by soldiers and no one could get out of there. The little houses were all close together, like this, and there was so much smoke from the torches we used for light, and I told you how one of my children was *killed* (?) by a bus, later. He was hurt and he had come looking for me and the guerrilla had sent him to me while he healed. I said to him, “Look, I am going to go back to El Salvador.” “But the war is a bitch,” he said to me. “I don’t care,” I said, “I want to be there.” So I repatriated with my children, and he came to, and I was afraid that they would catch him because he was wounded, but thank God they asked for my information at all the military bases but they didn’t detain him. I was in Chalate, they held us near La Palma for eight days, and afterwards I came to El Paraíso, they held me and my children for another eight days.
[How did they treat you in the military bases?]
Well, the treatment, in those circumstances, I was never mistreated by the military. No. In El Paraíso they gave us food right on time, right on time, but with a condition: that we stayed there with them. So I said to them one day, “I’m not going to stay here, I’m going to Arcatao, Arcatao is where I’m from and I don’t…” “Don’t go,” they said, “Because the war is really bad there, they will kill you.” “I’m not a guerrilla, I don’t carry a rifle, I’m just taking care of my children, I’m not a guerrilla,” I said, and so we came. We had been living here for about a month near the school, in a house where there’s now a tailor’s shop on the corner. That’s where I lived. We had only been back a month when there was another invasion, and worse, during that invasion, we were right by the guerrillas’ kitchens.