Hermelinda remembers losing her children and three other close relatives during the “May Guinda.”
- Chapter:
- Chapter 3: The Years of "Guindas"
- Interviewee:
- Hermelinda
Transcription
[You were telling me you were in the Guinda de Mayo.]
That night they warned us that military operations were coming. There was a person in charge, so when something was about to happen, they would notify everyone to get ready to leave. That’s how it happened that night. In the afternoon, they let us know we had to leave, because the operation was coming. So we hid some things and others we took with us. The most important things we carried with us: clothes, some blankets for the children, thread. We left and walked from Patamera to Los Albertos, through a bunch of hamlets and villages. We spent one night in Los Albertos. We only walked at night, because during the day we’d hide under the trees or in some place where they wouldn’t spot us moving from one place to another. Otherwise, ORDEN would show up, and they could see us, or some airplane could see us, or a helicopter, which they called the “little wasp”. That’s how we got to Los Amates, traveling on foot the entire night. We reached Los Amates almost at dawn, we crossed the river. It was still shallow because it hadn't rained. On our way back it had more water. The next day, the people, or comrades, as we called them, slaughtered a cow to feed everyone there. People hadn’t eaten. There was nothing to eat. People stopped and grilled their pieces of meat. After about an hour, they said we had to start walking again. That’s when we heard some gunshots, which meant the army was coming, and it was looking for people. It was chaos. Some went in one direction, others in another direction, and we lost everything we carried. Some just dropped the food they were carrying in the bags they used as backpacks, with some bit of sugar and flour. Those of us who spent days in the guinda up on the mountains didn’t have anything to eat, just water and nothing else. Every night, we would walk and walk, they wanted to go from place to place. But sometimes there were checkpoints on the reoad and we couldn’t get by, so we’d end up going back to the same place. That night they brought us back to a place in El Rincón, we spent the whole day there. At nighttime, the people started walking again, and we went up a place called Los Alvarenga. We stayed there during the morning, and some people were so hungry, they gathered carao fruit. There were farms where we found pineapples and sugarcane, so everybody started peeling and eating. Some people saw us and then the helicopter came, buzzing above all the people. We left there at around 10 in the morning, so we could cross the road that leads to Chalatenango. There were soldiers on all the hills. We started walking at around two, or one, we’d hear gunshots and we had to pass through all that gunfire. When we passed, the girls died. That’s where they were wounded. [Which girls?] Mine. My mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and a brother-in-law all fell on that hill, the hill where we were shot at. And you, you just saw them fall, but how could you go back to get them? With all the gunfire you just had to keep moving forward. That was a sad moment. Some people lost most of their family.