During the civil war, the people of Cinquera couldn’t hope to thrive, they could only hope to survive. At the end of our visit, Don Pablo and his friend, Réne, take us along winding back roads to a place outside of the nearby village of Guadalupe, the site of a massacre of civilian refugees during the war. The one survivor of the attack was able to witness to what had happened. About thirty woman and children were moving along the side of a mountain when the army caught up with them. Machine gun fire caught all of the adults, but went over the heads of several of the smaller children, who ran into the forest. As she hid among the trees, the witness heard one of the officers call to the children to come out. He had food for them, he said, and milk and chocolate. He wouldn’t hurt them, he just wanted to talk to them. When the children finally came out from the forest, the officer asked them where the men were hiding. When the children replied that no men were with them, the officer gave the order to his soldiers to shoot them. Réne said that as the witness ran, she came across the body of a dead mother, her two-year-old lying across her, crying. Take me with you, take me with you, the child begged. The young woman hesitated, but realizing that she would not likely escape with a toddler in tow, she ran on, leaving the child behind. When she returned to the massacre site, she saw that the child had been shot. She still has nightmares about this, Réne says.
The Guadalupe Massacre
Without the witness, no one might have found out the truth of what happened, or ever the massacre site, the fate of so many scenes of death and destruction during the long war. After the Guadalupe massacre, some bodies were buried, some were hacked to pieces, the arms and legs thrown into the forest to rot. An important part of the healing process after the war has been to document atrocities, bury the dead openly, and find ways to remember that reach the majority of Salvadorans born too late to have any real memory of the conflict. People from Cinquera gathered the remains from the massacre and built a mausoleum to house them. Painted on the sides of the white tomb are U.S. warplanes flying over masses of protesting Salvadorans. The United States bears a large share of the responsibility for devastation of the war, but even in the face of this, Don Pablo and Réne, like so many Salvadorans, seem to be able to forgive as long as they are not asked to forget. Réne tells us that he still sees men in the area around Cinquera who fought as government soldiers in the war. Most are unrepentant, and Réne says that almost all of them act as though the war never happened. When pressed, they blame their officers for the atrocities they committed. But, Réne says, a few of them are beginning to have doubts about what they did, and the direction the country is taking. There’s still hope.
The hills where the refugees were spotted and attacked by the army
The road to the massacre site
Réne & Don Pablo at the mausoleum. The planes on the side are labeled "USA"
On top of the tomb, Monsignor Romero is pictured with two beloved rebel commanders
Don Pablo asks if we can end with a prayer. Actually, we end with many prayers, because there’s much to pray about. We ask God to comfort and bless those who lost family and friends in the war. We ask God to heal the divisions that still run so deeply between old enemies, and that continue to wrench El Salvador. And we pray that God will heal the many who have suffered trauma and torture and feel unable to recover. Don Pablo closes us in prayer with a litany that’s become familiar to us on our pilgrimage. Viva Romero – Viva! Viva international solidarity forever – Viva!
