Celso describes how he was captured and tortured by the military and National Guard.
- Interviewee:
- Celso
Transcription
My case occurred when the army captured me. I was butchering a hog that day, and maybe the problem was that I could never catch the hog at the house across the street. I brought my little 22 pistol, and I shot it. Then, after it died, I picked it up and brought it home to slaughter it. Yes. A while after I had slaughtered it they came and, well, “What are you doing?” “We came to bring you with us, there’s nothing you can do about it.” So they tied me up and started searching everything, and then they took me with them. They took everything away from me. They brought me to the base in Patamera, because that’s where I was living. So there I was and they had me in their headquarters, they tied me up and scrubbed me, they even shaved my face, maybe so that the people there wouldn’t recognize me. From there they took me to Nombre de Jesús, as we went down it was getting dark. At the edge of the Lempa River they said, “Why don’t we just throw this sonofabitch in the river?” Then another one said, “No man, bring him to the base.” They got in a vehicle and took me to the base of the guardsmen, the soldiers who were stationed in Sensunte. They held me there two days, in a cell. They threw a bucket of water on my every day. One of the sergeants, a corporal told me, “one of the sergeants is coming, he’s a mean one, he gives all the prisoners baths every day,” he said, “to keep them from sleeping.” Well, but after a few days they let me out. The guards from San Salvador came to take me and they held me for a few more days, but now I was chained by the feet and hands, like I was crucified, I was all alone, blindfolded, you couldn’t go out, you couldn’t do anything, you couldn’t see, all you could hear were the groans of the people who were dying. After a while a big vehicle would come to take them away, and well, you couldn’t see anything but you could hear the sound of the chains of the people who were next to you, and one day I asked one of them, “Where are you from, where did they bring you from?” “From over in Paisnal,” he said. “Puya,” I said. “Why?” “They say we stole a rifle,” he said. They kicked us hard for that, for talking. Well, that happened and from then on we couldn’t talk because they would hit us. Yes. We were all so silent. After a few days, I had no idea how many days because when you’re blindfolded all the days are the same, day and night. I had no idea how long it had been. So a few days went by and they let us out to hand us off to the police. The same thing started again, we were taken to a cell. But there, when I started down the stairs they said, “No man, don’t worry, you’ll get out of here.” Yes. I was happy. I was able to sleep in that cell. When I regained consciousness there was a bottle with coffee, it was lukewarm but since I hadn’t eaten that coffee tasted so good. Yes. So I drank it and after a while they came and let me out and started saying, “Today you are going to tell us what you were doing.” And I said, “What I was doing?” I said, “But you’re the ones who were doing things there!” They said, “No, what do you do?” And I didn’t know anything, I don’t even know a single letter, what was I supposed to say? Well then they started cursing, they held a knife at me, they pulled on my neck, they held a pistol at me. That’s what I thought, because I could feel it was cold, I couldn’t feel what it was but because it was cold I thought it was a knife, because it was sharp, and the other object was blunt so I thought it was the barrel of a rifle or pistol. Well, after that, they beat you all over, and started asking so many questions, because they said that there was a man named Neto who had gone to Cuba, “for who knows what,” they said, “those are the ones who are tricking you people,” they said. Yes. “That is your leader,” they said, and that he had told us that “it was beautiful and so on” in Cuba. Yes. But it’s not like they just said one thing, but, well. And then they brought down another person. They said they had captured him “at a protest,” they said, “with propaganda,” they said. That was their form of trial.