Esperanza describes the 1986 invasion in Arcatao, and relates how children were interrogated by the military.
- Interviewee:
- Esperanza
Transcription
They began to select young men. They took young men out from inside the church and they put them in empty houses. In the center of town it was uncommon for there to be people living in the houses. They put them in houses to torture them and then they held the young men there. I remember that the commander of that operation was Colonel Cáceres Cabrera. He said, "All the mothers need to go outside and leave the children here, because we need to ask the children some questions. Let's see their ability to answer questions," he said.
He spoke to the children and showed them bags of candy. Before taking the young men outside, he also told them no one would get killed, that they weren't coming to take anyone away or to kill anyone, that we were already going through the peace process and that it wasn't allowed. See how they lied? "We only want to recover the weapons," is what they said.
They had a list that said how much a G3 was worth, how much for an M16, how much for a machine gun. All the guns had a price. He said, "Turn in anything, a grenade, any harnesses, belts that you may have, turn them in! That way you will all rest easy."
And they told them those lies and tortured them, so some of them admitted that they had hidden rifles on the outskirts of town. They had just come into town to rest for a while. After they turned in their guns, they were killed. They were killed! Today some of those bodies are being exhumed, they're part of the process. Cáceres Cabrera said, right there in the church that the children were all going to stay there while the mothers went out. Since I carried my child in my arms, I said, "Oh no, I'm not leaving mine."
Then, he showed the children the bag of candy and said, "Look, we'll hand out candy here."
He told the combatants, "We just want you to turn in your weapons, and here is the money that we'll use to pay you back." And he waved some red bills in the air like this. "Look, this is the money we've been given to pay for your weapons." This is how he waved the roll of money in the air. They told those lies to the poor young boys and the children. "We'll give a coin to the kid who answers our question the quickest."
He grabbed the children and started, "Did the guerrilla fighters pass by here?"
"Yes," answered the kids.
"What were they carrying?"
"Pots, grinders, containers."
"Were they carrying wounded people on a hammock?"
"Yes."
"Where did they treat them?"
"At Francisco's house."
"Who took care of them?"
So the little kids began to report everything they had seen, everything they had seen. Afterwards, he went to the women and said, "Well, I want you all to confirm that, because children never lie. They say what they hear and what they see."
"Yesterday," he said, "So and so happened here." He said, "At four in the morning we got the last call saying that the guerrilla was here. There are women who were here the other day but they aren't here today."
During an operation they had an assembly with people here, God knows why, I wasn't here, I was nearby. He said, "I see different faces here now."
I noticed a few young people who hadn't been able to leave, who had to stay. So he said, "All you have to do is say yes."
No one answered.
"The women who were here that day, raise your hand," he said.
At that time, we had an understanding, solidarity that we all had the same truth, we bet on the same objective. None of the women said, "I was here that day," or raised her hand. No one! They knew there were female comrades who hadn't been there that day and knew that if they said anything, we would get into trouble. He insisted, "Raise your hand, those of you who were here." Nobody raised their hand!
"Raise your hand those of you who weren't here."
Nobody raised their hand then either!
"Well, then," he said, "Do you remember what we said that day? We said your only task was to watch your children just like hens do. To feed them and keep them warm. That is a woman's only task! But you don't want to collaborate with us. Although there are some people who do want to collaborate. At four in the morning, we received the last call saying there were guerrilla here and look, that's why we're here. For us it's easy to move around from one place to another, and if you tell us the guerrilla will be here tomorrow, we'll be here tomorrow."
"Look," he said, "The birds are available to move us around. You make things hard for us, and the guerrilla—what do they guarantee for you? What do they guarantee for you? So you'd better collaborate with us. Otherwise…" And he made a gesture indicating we were going to get killed if we didn't collaborate with them. We were sick and tired of being there. It was about 1 or 1:30 p.m., and they let us go between 1:30 and 2 p.m.
"Leave," he told us, "Go feed your whiny kids."
What Cáceres Cabrera was waiting for was to be told to machine-gun us, because they had the machine guns at the church door, and that is the order he was expecting.