Hallowed Ground

The hallowed ground of the Guadalupe massacre

I remember visiting Gettysburg as a youngster. A beautiful picturesque countryside, with lush farmland expanses still being utilized for growing wheat as the fertile Eastern Pennsylvania land was meant to be. The “high ground” which General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac luckily backed into as they were driven back the first day of July, 1863 still afforded panoramic views. That “hallowed ground” full of the memories of death and horror that mounted as the two Armies struggled for two more days became known as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. And to many historians the turning point of the war. 

The first poem I had to memorize and recite in the fifth grade was John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”, a poem written in the aftermath of brutal trench warfare during World War I. What did I know about crosses row by row, in a far off place somewhere in Europe, from a battle fought some fifty years hence? But that is the way of capitalist pedagogy. Expose students to the horrors of war through literature and history books. They don’t show the blood and the real horror. Descriptions are full of simile and metaphor, painted with glory and heroic patriotic color and flair. While casualties are measured in cold hard data rather then true descriptions of lost limbs or blown off heads. 

Why do we find it acceptable, even necessary to glorify these horrors of war? The Gettysburg National Park is one of the most visited Parks in this country. It is a common sight on any day in the summer to see a family taking a tour of the battlefield. Why do we find it necessary to teach our young people to glorify the dead who have died in war, but not to teach our children about Peace? War is always necessary. Chris Hedges describes the phenomena succinctly in his book, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”. 

"Illusions punctuate our lives, blinding us to our own inconsistencies and repeated moral failings. But in wartime these illusions are compounded. The cause, the protection of the nation, the fight to ‘liberate Kuwait’ (or whatever nome de guerre is apropos of the moment) or wage ‘a war on terrorism,’ justifies the means. We dismantle our moral universe to serve the cause of war. And once it is dismantled it is nearly impossible to put it back together. It is very hard for most of us to see the justice of the other side, to admit that we too bear guilt. When we are asked to choose between truth and contentment, most of us pick contentment." 

Somehow we tell our children to “turn the other cheek” when they are picked on and bullied for the first time in the school yard. Yet our leaders say no to diplomacy and dialogue and promote war preemptively. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, when asked if the US would have discussions with Iran, Syria, Jordan, or North Korea about nuclear disarmament issues during a recent critical moment, simply answered “no”. It is no wonder that we find ourselves paying a majority of our tax dollars to fund military machines and the perpetuation of war. It is no wonder that we prefer to spend money on prisons and penal institutions, rather than on teaching conflict resolution and peace. It’s no wonder we glorify war actions, study war in such minute detail with tenacity that is almost obsessive. There were no chapters on peace in my history books. There were no paragraphs about massacres, either. There were pages and pages of in depth analysis for the justification of war, and the consequences of its brutality, and the inevitable humanitarian rebuilding process necessary after all wars. 

These were some of the memories of my introduction to war that came back to haunt me as I sat on the edge of the pila, or die pit, outside Cinquera, in the Cabanas region of El Salvador listening to Don Pablo. The pila had once been used by the colonial invaders to force the indigenous people to mash the anil plant with their feet into a paste that was the staple of the Indigo dye trade in the highland regions of El Salvador. Many indigenous people died serving their Spanish colonial masters. Now it served as the final resting place for hundreds of indigenous ancestors of those people. A huge coffin, with the shadows of the people painted along one side filled with their bones gathered from the countryside after the massacre, now sat inside the old pit. 

The pila now serves as the burial site for victims of the Guadalupe massacre

Along one end was a plaque with names of the victims, most of them children, and a cross. 

A tear was still rolling down my cheek as I thought about what I had just heard from Don Pablo. We sat on a flat area in the midst of the surrounding beautiful golden sloped hills above the manmade Lago de Suchitlán. Don Pablo had spoken of the massacres that had occurred over many years in this region. THIS was hallowed ground, the site of the Guadalupe massacre. The ground where unimaginable horrors had been wielded upon defenseless people, mostly children, led by a United Status CIA agent paid by my tax dollars. 

Don Pablo began his story: 

“On February 27 – 28, 1983, the people came from Suchitoto, fleeing from the military units commanded by Colonel Monterrosa. There were thousands of people fleeing through the area. After 10 days of hiding, the army captured some of them and killed them. Many children escaped, because the soldiers were firing their bullets high, killing the adults but sparing the shorter children.” “Monterrosa called to the hiding children, ’Come, we have candy.’ But the children trembled with fear. He persisted, and convinced the children. They came. ’Where are the guerrilla?’” he asked. The children did not know anything, and were silent. He said, ’Make a line, to receive your candy.’ Then he told his soldiers, “’Kill them.’ And they killed them. 

Another line of families came, crossing the river below, and Monterrosa called for an aerial bombardment, and the bodies covered the earth, children and adults. A woman came upon a dead woman with a crying child on her body, a child crying for help, but it was not possible to help under the fierce bombardment.” “The next day, the woman found the bodies, the woman and the child who was now dead on her body. The woman later told me it is ‘a nightmare she lives every day of her life’. Every year, the people who live here come to vigil at the site of this massacre through the night. Some years, the people of Guazapa came to remember the 400 and more who died at the hands of the Atlacatl Battalion, Colonel Monterrosa, trained in the United States at Fort Bragg and Fort Benning.” 

Don Pablo went on to speak of his early life, and post World War II experiences, and then being told about “the evils” of communism for the first time: 

Don Pablo speaks with his hands

"In 1968, a Colonel came to talk in the home of our patrol commander. He told us of a danger, ‘Communism’. We asked, ‘What is communism?’ ‘Communism is what is happening in Cuba.’ ‘What is Cuba?’ He did not know. ‘What about Cuba?’ He told us about Cuba, ‘In Cuba there is Fidel Castro, using military threats to stay in power, he is half monkey, with much hair, long fingernails, two horns and a tail, eats human flesh, prefers children, raw, eaten like fruit.’” 

“We thought, ‘what?’ But if it was said by the Colonel, it must be true. We asked, ‘If that is Cuba, what does that have to do with us? Where are the communists?’ He told us, ‘In Suchitoto, the priest at the church.’ We knew these priests, as we were praying and taking confession with them every week. We asked, ‘How are they communists?’ The answer: ‘They are organizing campesinos and taking advantage of their ignorance, teaching them to support each other, forming cooperatives, that is how it begins.’”

“We asked, ‘What will happen?’” 

“He said, ‘Are you married? In everything, all is shared. You will have to share your wife. Do you have old parents? In communism, all work hard for the State. Old people will be sold for meat, to feed zoo animals. Do you have children? The government will send them to the Soviet Union, to be trained to work and will never be seen again. What is the Soviet Union? It is very far. Communists will take your land. We said, ‘But we have no land.’ Then they will take your harvest. You will have to line up for food.’” 

Sometime after their “learning” about Castro, Cuba, and Communism, a new young priest came to their community and began to teach them Liberation Theology in the spirit of the Bishops statement of 1968 from Medellín.  Don Pablo continued: 

“The new priest provided new Bibles from Spain. He taught us the use of the Bible. A woman fainted during the service. ‘Why?’ the priest asked. We said, ‘She is hungry, we are poor, it is the will of God.’” 

“’That is a lie’, he said. He showed us the Bible and the truth in Acts 2:42. The Christian Base community began, let us organize, He showed us Medellin, the Bishop’s statement that we could organize. It was the same time that Rutilio Grande was organizing.”

“The government used the media to combat this. ‘Communism is here! Using the Church!’ they said. We were denounced as communists, and the religious authorities, the Bishop of San Vicente, came in 1978. He said, ‘I have come to cut the bad out, the Church here is Marxist-Leninist – put out the bad Christians.’” 

“Aida Escalante told the Bishop she thought he was good, but he is talking like a rich oppressor. Days later, the National Guard came and put her in a sack and put her in a truck, raped her for three days, cut off her ears, her breasts, her nose, her eyes, dumped her out. The massacres began.” 

“Thirty National Guard surrounded the town, people fled and were killed – animals ate their bodies in the hills. When the people organized, the United States and Ronald Reagan sent a million dollars a day, trained soldiers who committed massacres. They would invade homes, rape the women, kill the men and women, cut the genitals and put them in their mouths. Pregnant women would have their babies removed by machetes. They would say, ‘We kill them before they become guerrillas.’ They scalped a woman, tied her in a field and she was eaten by animals.” 

“Battalion Commanders Echeveria and Monterrosa circled a community, lined up the people, took the children from their mothers, cut them in half with their bayonets and dumped them in latrines. They threw children up and stabbed them with bayonets out of the air. They cut off the heads of adults. All families lost members in these years. I lost 5, 3 boys and 2 girls. One of my sons committed suicide after the war. I was arrested and tortured 3 times.”

Commemoration of the 1932 massacre from the 

Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen

“Today, we live the same situation. Many are leaving, for the United States, they sell everything, then come back to nothing. The situation has again become very grave. The dollar stays the same, while prices rise. There are disappearances; some of Lutheran Church workers who were organizing, and were taken away by masked men and killed, one was disappeared. Some Bishops and fundamentalists want us to sing to God.” 

Some in the Rutilio Grande Delegation did not hear the end of Don Pablo’s story. Some were shaken so much by what he described that they got up and walked a distance away so they could not here the horror. Others were in tears. We must not let this happen again, I thought. 

The roots of oppression are still ever present in El Salvador. Approximately 700 Salvadorian’s per day attempt the dangerous journey through Mexico, and then cross the US border against insurmountable odds to get to a place they believe holds more promise than their homeland. The cost for a “coyote”, what they call the capitalists who promise to get them through Mexico and the US border, is about 7 to 10 Thousand dollars. Many have risked everything to come to the United States, so they can find some meager work and send the "remittance" back to their families. So their children won’t starve. 

This is what we have created out of the ashes of a twelve year Civil war, of Iran Contra, of Peace accords that have made more hollow promises to the poor indigenous populations. And then we forced NAFTA and CAFTA treaties onto them so they aren’t able to feed or support their families. The cost of living has risen about 50% since the switch to the dollar as the currency of El Salvador a little over a year ago. And CAFTA has increased the unemployment rate in poor communities dramatically. Hopelessness abounds. Many of the young see the war as a distance fading memory. They are being sucked up into the consumerism of America that stretches out along the large Avenidos. They buy goods that they used to make themselves (the textile industry is off 30% since the introduction of CAFTA), now made in China. 

Don Pablo will not let us forget about this HALLOWED GROUND that is scattered throughout the countryside of El Salvador, or our complicity as Americans in allowing this dire situation to be created by our government’s failed policies. The current situation brims with the ripeness for history to repeat itself. It is time for us as Americans to recognize that to not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Peace can only be found through economic and social justice. We must honor the poor defenseless people who gave their lives on the hallowed ground of massacres fifteen to thirty some years ago, so the children of today in El Salvador can have their hopes and dreams become a reality.  We must not let war and massacres happen again. 

text and photos - Tim Chadwick, Don Pablo's story translation - Joe DeRaymond