Toyi's War Experience Chapter 2

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

To shed a little light how Gov was moving back then... EL Salvador Government was leading under Dictatorship since 1930, Under Maximiliano the Government kept town under control? Well the Government never admited being the mastermind for some Group called "Death Squads" these groups came out specially at nightime during Curfew; they would pick random families, torture them and slaughter them & spread the corpses on the street. The misunderstanding was upon the town, 'cause the reason why a Death Squad visited was never solid (innocents, not inocents?) who knows they just did what they were sent to. Town and media always suspected that "Death Squads" were the same ARMY because they used Military tacticas and of course they were never "seen" by the military in charge of the Curfew. El Salvador was maintained under official dictatorship until 1979. Clandestine Groups tired of the abuse, angered because one way or another a family member was killed by Death Squads, This Clandestine groups tried to free the pressure erupted creating rebellious movements like ERP FPL and FMLN (and some few minor ones). These groups were borne under intellectual minds that cached the way Gov was repressing, These intellectual minds were believed to come out of the "National University of ES" but never taken as a fact. After studying rights in Lawyer school you can easily realize how Gov was operating and tend to disagree and plenty aspects.
Linking the story to mine, I was born on 1975 so the physical war erupted right when I was 4, before that was mainly the Gov repression.


So keeping up with the story, I started going to school across the street from our home and my mother's mom (Granny) would pick me up to take me to my other granny, Dad heard from my mother, she called him from US saying that she was there and safe, that she had a hard time accomodating (now I believe so 'cause is not easy as people in CA think) 'cause it was not like she thought it was going to be, she told dad that her plan was get to US work and pay a loan she made on ES to pay her trip to US but things were not going in her favor and that she wanted to return, Dad realizes he has a big debt now and he tells my mother that she has to hang on cause then the debt is going to double if she returns (around 70's there was no such a thing as round trips, they would have to get another ticket). My mother resented that from my dad but in ES is very dificult to pay out of your pocket for a trip to US. (now a days a regular roundtrip to US costs $600 and ES wages are $130 per month and this is only to pay the ticket, back then it was as dificult as it is today).
We kept coming home very late, one regular day Dad got to my Granny's home very late (around 8PM) his work place had a regular closing month and some accounts did not match, they had to stay until everything closed. When he arrived to Granny's; my little brother was asleep and I was also very sleepy, Granny didn't let him take off that night, as always Dad didn't wanted to stay, she insisted up to a point to grab herself from his shirt and ripping it... my Grandpa got involved and Dad had to stay at Granny's that night... Next day 1st thing in the morning the breaking news " Our neighborhood (where Dad had his home) had been hit, Death Squads had come overnight and killed the people from our neighborhood including kids" Granny almost had a heart attack because if she would've let my Dad leave... then we would've lost our lives that night. She told him to stay with her and never return to his home specially because Death Squads were involved (A way to control) Death Squads the uncertainty was that there was no specific reasons for Death Squads to kill so under those circumstances is hard to determine if they were looking for somebody in specific or they were just in a raid of fear.. oh but nobody wants to find out either, is just wise to try to stay safe, nobody knew if their target was reached that night by them maybe yes maybe not, they certainly knew that there was nobody at our house.. so it was just not safe. Granny went few weeks later to get us some cloth and few belongings but our door was knocked down and there was little left to take, almost everything was taken or broken, the windows were busted & that was the final reason that made my Dad move back to his parents, he thought there was no reason to stay alone with 2 kids, he saw the war coming too close to us.