Carlota remembers a grenade explosion in her home during the 1986 invasion and the threats to the civilian population inside the town church.
Transcription
Well that day... when the invasion happened I remember I used to live with a woman in a house over there. One day at about 5 a.m. I heard a loud noise from the sound of airplanes. I got up, went outside, and saw the airplanes circling around in the sky. I also saw some helicopters so I told the woman,
“Get up! The airplanes are coming!”
She quickly got out of bed. She had two kids and I had three. So I told them all,
“Come on, get up because the airplanes are coming!”
The kids were just getting out bed, when, I felt the grenade that landed on the children’s bed. The soldiers had already landed. Immediately soldiers showed up in a tank, and were at the house there. I felt a big explosion inside the house. I had just woken the children up when the grenade was thrown. If I hadn’t made the children get out of bed they would have died. And that was when... They took us out of the houses and they sent us to the church. They gathered us all there. They threatened to massacre us. They said they were going to kill everybody. But there were some international people, who knows where they were from. They had caught them that morning, and took them away in a helicopter, so they wouldn’t see the horrible things they were going to do. That’s when a bunch of people died. They took them out of the church... a lot of men. They didn’t let them get away. Some of them were killed nearby. They killed Marta’s husband. That’s what it was like at the time. A lot of people died. When all of us were inside the church, that man said “P ray to God before you die.” That’s what he said, and the people prayed.