Unforgettable Experiences Can Happen Even If You’re Not Involved in Politics

Rosa Olivares spends her day watching television and going to doctor and therapy appointments. She sits on her beach chair by the window, writing everything she can remember back in the early years. She had a difficult time recalling little details, but manages to finish three pages of one unforgettable experience in her beloved country, El Salvador. She later walks to the nearby post office to send the paper to her granddaughter. In just a week later she steps into the living room and goes back sixty years ago.

On Sunday, April 2, 1945, in San Salvador, I was nine years old. It was the beginning of the revolution and Mr. Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez was the president. In those days, children were not permitted to ask questions, nor hear adult conversations. I remember that on that day, at three in the afternoon, my sisters and I were sitting in the patio. You could hear an airplane flying overhead and there was firing at the administrator’s office and so we were scared. My mother said that we all had to go under our beds to prevent an accident. We lived in the Barrio Santa Anita and we were in a distance of the “Cuartel El Zapote” which was on top of a hill and nearby was the presidential house and it was three days of gun firing. My mother didn’t permit us to walk around. We were maintained under our beds until meal time when we took a plate of food. Then we stood up and saw the dust going up, where the guns were shot. Logically you couldn’t see the bullets but the movement of the leaves seemed that the trees fell. In that time, the candidates were Mr. Castañeda and a doctor, Mr. Romero. One day Romero was attacked when he was driving in his car which left a cut on his face. My mom was the owner of a photography studio, which she owned, not the government. So someone took her where Romero was hidden and she took a picture where it was later shown in the newspaper. There were two principle newspapers, La Prensa Graphica and El Dario Hoy. But I don’t know which newspaper the photo was in, but those two still exist in the country. Anyways the accident was a big deal in El Salvador.

I had an uncle that was a doctor, he was a supporter of Romero, but my mom belonged to the party of Castañeda. People wanted to kill the supporters of Romero or keep them as prisoners. So then my uncle came to hide in our house, but then he saw a big poster, an advertisement displaying Castañenda, and he got angry. With a small knife he ripped it and my mom got angry. My mom didn’t like when someone just comes and rips a picture of her candidate. I don’t know what other problems they had. My uncle just spent there one day only and he went. We had, well I was the youngest of the children of my mother. There was my older brother who then hid in the house because there were soldiers searching house-to-house, and even under the beds. The government wanted men to fight upfront; the men not knowing how to manage guns and firing arms. Our house was big and my mom fixed a ladder that went up the roof and in that attic, so that’s where my brother and my uncle hid. When the soldiers came, they didn’t find my brother and neither my uncle. They only looked around and they didn’t find the men up there, at the top of the house and so then that’s how my uncle and my brother were saved from going upfront, to fight. The soldiers were obligated to support the president because Mr. Maximiliano Martinez, the president, already had more than fourteen years in the presidential office. He was a dictator.

My mom and my sister went outside for a good two hours and they came back frightened what they had seen on the street which was a big hole that was created by a bomb. My mom and my sister came anxious, scared of the number of bodies lying on the ground. The revolution, let’s say, it lasted for three days. Maximiliano was out of power and the one who stayed as president was Mr. Castañeda. It seems that the U.S. forced him to resign because he killed some American people in the revolution.

Well one day, we were outside the house when we saw like a fence of pineapples, but soldiers had rifles and were ripping it to get through. They entered in our property with their riffles pointed at us and we were just little girls. They told us that we shouldn’t be outside and we should get inside our house. The soldiers were passing in trucks. In those days, when they captured men, they made them walk, even though they came from long distances because they were prisoners of war. People told my mom that soldiers were passing by or home so she took food, beans, and tortillas to give to all of the soldiers that came walking by foot. The men were against the president and that’s why they were captives. In reality, I was, well nine years old and with the fact that we weren’t allowed to ask, well that’s what I remember from that experience.

When I was like 32 years old in El Salvador, I didn’t vote and I didn’t register, but I wasn’t obligated to do it. Well in the neighborhood where I grew, it was poor and I wasn’t involved in politics. I didn’t understand and I didn’t participate in politics, never.

I sold meat for a living. Well where we lived, there wasn’t an official place, like a store, we would get a permit and sell meat by the supermarket. We got a permit by each of us doing our finger prints in our house. We paid a fee so you could kill animals. If we had workers’ protection-well if you didn’t get into problems, not to get involve in any crime, no, nothing happens. If you live in an honest matter, no, no you don’t get into problems with the government. I never had problems with anything, not even the black market stuff.

Then the Civil War in El Salvador took place. El Salvador fought against Honduras, and the Salvadorian troops entered Aramisina, Honduras. The executive of El Salvador and even the priest came to celebrate a Mass in Church of Aramisina and they saluted to the flag of El Salvador in the city of Aramisina. I was informed by the newspaper and the radio because in that time we didn’t have a television, we were poor. We heard in the radio that the United States put a stop to El Salvador so they wouldn’t continue to invade Honduras. Yes, El Salvador kept invading cities in Honduras. They wanted, but they couldn’t because the U.S. stopped them and that’s what they called the War of 100 Hours.

                                                                                          Interviewed by Cristina Olivares