Walter remembers being a guerrilla during the 1982 “May Guinda” and surviving alongside his comrades.
- Chapter:
- Chapter 5: Guerrilla Experiences
- Interviewee:
- Walter
Transcription
Well, during that operation, the May invasion, they brought troops into Portillo, up above here. We were on another high point. We were armed, right, and we stayed there for eight days. Then they got closer, and although we were weak; there were just a few of us, but they couldn’t pass through. We left there after eight days. We were on high ground at Gualcimaca for eight days. Then we retreated little by little until we got to Patamera. From there we went down to Junquillo. Then to los Albertos. Because there were more of our people there, we made up fifteen with them. They mainly came to introduce the “90” rifle, which we hadn’t seen before. When the ones using it were nearby, it was scary. From there we went down to Los Albertos, and from there we walked all night to the Manaquíl River. We spent the rest of the day there in Manaquíl, in a place called “El Rincón.” We left there at 6pm, and to make things worse, by that point we were out of ammunition. So a commander with the RN said he would go to the F…that he would go to the RN to get ammunition. So they gave us ammunition and we left, right, we came to Los Alvarenga, the place they call Los Alvarenga, near Nueva, on this side. From there we went to Cerro Grande and Nueva Trinidad, that’s where we broke through the enemy line, because they had set up a siege. The army was there, and they knew the codes we used while on missions. When you were going into a ravine you would fire a shot, that was the code to enter. So they gave us the code and we were caught in crossfire, we were stuck in a blind alley. There were troops on this side and troops on that side, on both sides. You couldn't hear anything…All you could hear was gunfire. We were on a knife’s edge, we couldn’t go forward or back, we couldn’t move, because they were shooting at us from a high point on one side. So I said to one of the comrades, “The ones on the high side are the ones who are screwing us, put your rifles on automatic and shoot!” The situation as that we didn’t know what the other side of the ravine was like, when we shot them with our two machine guns we hit them hard, man, but the other side was a ravine so we had to go into the ravine in order to get down to a place called "Bajillo", which is where... But we were able to break the siege, a group of soldiers ran by, army soldiers, and then we were able to get through. Look, there were a lot of people, all the people from the area of the Sumpul river to here, all the people from Cabañas who were passing through here…