Rufino describes the first time he was forced to leave home with his father in order to escape from the National Guard.
- Chapter:
- Chapter 3: The Years of "Guindas"
- Interviewee:
- Rufino
- Places:
- Las Ventanas
Transcription
Yes, I remember I was very young. The first time I had to run away with my dad I was very little. I was sad, because I was very attached to him. I felt sad when he left the house because the guards were coming, because they came to our villages to kill people. I remember running after him since I didn't want to let him go. I was a little boy and ran behind him crying. He was moved when he saw me, so he waited for me and took me with him while fleeing, because guards came to our village and killed some people. Some women had to leave with their children on the same night, to spend the night somewhere else. I remember my dad and I climbed some steep hills on the other side of town. It's a hill called Las Ventanas. We were going to cross over it but I couldn't keep up, because we had been on the run for a while and I was so thirsty, I was whining and almost lost my voice. We got to a place where everyone who had fled gathered, and we met around five or seven at night. Our village had already been evacuated because the guards had come in and killed some people there, which forced people to migrate. My dad sent me to look for my mom and find out where the other children were. I was very little, only a little older than my own son now, when my dad sent me, alone. I walked down the road, terrified. Imagine, an operation had happened there and had killed people, but then I had to go see how my family was doing, to see if they had also escaped towards the mountains. That's the kind of thing you remember. Only recently my dad told me, "I remember when you ran behind me as we all ran away, and the guards were following us, shooting at us, and then soldiers also showed up where the people had gathered up there."