Faustina narrates her experience during the 1986 invasion, during which people were intimidated, tortured, and killed by the military.
Transcription
It was about 6 a.m. when we heard the buzzing of the helicopter right in front of the hill we were on, really close. I saw a few of them walking down the street. I lived really close to the street that goes to Teosinte. Quickly, they came to point their guns at us and I thought to myself, “my day has come.” But they didn’t just say, “go, go ahead”, “go uphill”. They said, “go towards the square, go towards the square because we want you all there.” We didn’t even get a chance to get ready, to get some water, or anything else. Tito was very young and I couldn’t even grab his bottle. I’ve given all of them a bottle. So I couldn’t even grab his bottle when we all started walking. They didn’t kill us, they just pointed their guns at us, and when we got up there, they had all the younger men together. For example, Tito’s dad, who was young, was there with Reina’s dad. I would just watch them all, but they were really—you could just see tremendous sadness in them. They were really sad. There were a bunch of people everywhere, and we realized they were torturing people in various other rooms. They wouldn’t let us out so that we wouldn’t see anything. They told us to all go inside the church. Some people had to stay outside and others had to go inside. Women and children inside the church, inside the temple. But there were some who went outside and noticed they were torturing people in other rooms. There were a lot of houses around the square that were empty, and so they used those rooms. They say one of my brothers-in-law was hung up and they drew a cross on his chest with a sword. The say they murdered five people during that desembarco. They made us all march around the church first—women, men, everyone. They made us all march around the church. But why? Because there were people inside rooms pointing other people out as they marched by. Then they’d take them out, that’s how they killed those people. So whoever got pointed out would be taken out of the column they were in. And us, well, we didn’t know they were trying to identify people. We only came to realize that later. They kept us there until noon, while somewhere else they stole candy to give the children so that they’d see them favorably. The children were set aside and the women were set aside. The younger men were also set aside. Since some of the soldiers were known to people here in Arcatao, they say people would tell them, “oh don’t do anything to these people, don’t you see we know them?” There were some soldiers we knew, and we also knew some of the people who were singling others out. But still they took one--actually they took several. But one of them who was in the back, his wife went after him and they didn’t kill him because of that. She rescued him because she went after they pointed him out. But the others they took away to kill them in the surrounding areas of Arcatao.