Mo(u)rning in El Salvador (Page 2)

The neighborhood was also where the FMLN launched its offensive on San Salvador in 1989. After the demise of Communism put in doubt the survival of Latin American revolutionary movements, including El Salvador's, the FMLN made a strategic decision to bring its guerrilla army of young men and women and older adults, some of whom had little to no combat experience, into the capital, leading to some of the bloodiest battles of the war.

I walked along the crowded blocks of the Escalon with my good friend Joaquin Chávez, a fellow in the NYU history department, who founded the first Central American studies program in the United States with three other colleagues and me. Passing by Citibank and Scotiabank, OfficeMax, McDonald's and other corporate buildings on the Escalon never felt so exhilarating. The major difference was the hundreds of thousands of boisterously happy, red-shirted, mostly poor children, youth and families waving homemade red-and-white FMLN flags.

For his part, my bookish, bespectacled historian friend Joaquin, who had lost many friends and family members during the war, was initially pretty academic about what the electoral victory meant.

"The origins of the war were not ideological. What brought on the armed struggle," began Joaquin, whose current research looks at the role of intellectuals in the origins of the war, "was the reaction of various groups to the repression of the state. If the government had allowed fair elections in 1972 and 1977, there would have been no war." His voice started to crack slightly with emotion. "And that's what makes tonight so hope-inspiring: it makes possible a political transition through legal and electoral means."

Watching the wave of thousands of mostly young FMLN supporters walk, sing and dance as they held handpainted signs with messages like Misión Cumplida: Compañeros Caídos en La Lucha (Mission Accomplished: Compañeros Who Fell in the Struggle), Joaquin reminisced, not as the accomplished historian but as the former guerrilla leader: "I remember being here on Seventy-fifth Street (during the 1989 offensive) to pick up the bodies of dead and injured young combatants. They were the ages of these kids walking here now."

He continued: "Tonight I feel like they didn't die for nothing. Spiritually, it feels like a weight has been taken off of you, where you feel the absence of those who initiated these processes. This is an explosion of happiness and a celebration of rebellion, a triumph of the 1932 rebellion of Feliciano Ama and the indigenous people."

Back at the empty lot, near the blackened patch of dirt that is ground zero of revolutionary El Salvador, Juliana Ama pondered the escape from silence her country had begun. Despite the threats the commemoration ceremonies provoked, she said, "our ceremony is not intended as a political act. It is first and foremost a spiritual act. We have no choice; we can't remain and suffer in silence." Her eighth-grader son, Alex Oswaldo Calzadia Chille, stood solemnly nearby.

Asked what he thought the political turns in his country portended, the rather reticent, dark-skinned 14-year-old star student, soccer forward and drummer at the Mario Calvo school responded with an unexpected forcefulness. "I'm Pipil (Indian). Feliciano Ama, he's my family and was killed defending the land against the government, like many people do today." As if he'd been waiting for the opportunity to speak even more, he declared, "My family voted for the FMLN because they wanted change." His intense brown eyes alive with the energy one imagines his rebellious ancestor had, Alex added, "When I'm old enough, so will I."

• « Previous
• 1
• 2

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.