El Salvador: The Horrific Civil War

Every day Teresa Escobar wakes up to the cool and quiet of a new day in her apartment.  She takes a shower, gets dressed, and prepares for her job.  By 7:30 she is walking to her job.  She is a large woman with brown eyes and brown hair streaked with gray and stands over 5’11.  Her face is lined and creased, but it still radiates strength and life.  Although she is a very kind and caring person, her past was filled with the horrors of war and the gruesomeness of death.  Her family was living in a suburb of El Salvador when fighting erupted between the ruling right-wing National Conciliation Party and the leftist antigovernment rebels.  After over a decade she still remembers living in El Salvador during the civil war that lasted over 12 years.

I am Teresa Ecsobar.  I am fifty-three years old.  I lived in El Salvador for twenty-eight years.  During the war, my family supported the President who controlled the south.  The other side, the rebels, were very, very bad.  They were in the mountain, and they would come down and shoot off their guns and throw bombs.

 Before the war, you know there was a big mountain by where I lived?  The mountain had a lot of flowers. Mostly orchids.  The mountain had a lot a lot of different kind orchids.  Oh, it was so beautiful!  Because the mountain was very close I saw the orchids all the time.  The trees were big.  But, you know, the war destroyed the mountain.  They put dynamite in the mountain.  The rebels bombed it and blew up the trees and orchids.  Many parts of the mountain are now black.  There are still some parts with trees but it’s terrible.  It looks dry and has big, deep holes.

During the war there were no jobs…no nothing.  After 9^th grade I have to leave school because I need to work to support my family, you know.  I helped my brother for his studying, so I worked in a factory for shoes.  In the factory I never see the finished shoe.  I just make one part and another made his part. And so on and so on

I knew many people who were killed.  A lot, a lot of people were killed.  In my family, my cousin and my aunt were shot.  They lived up in the North.  I don’t know why they died.  Somebody just tried to rob them and they were shot when he steal something.  

People were left dead in the streets so a lot of people were dying.  Because of the dead, the doggies, they eat the dead arms or legs.  The poor too, they also were eating the dead because they no have food to eat.  It was terrible.

Many buildings closed or were destroyed.  Especially in the North.  In the North, there is so much fighting that everything is closed over there.  The rebels, they destroyed the schools and the bridge and the road.  They mostly went after government building but in the end, everything was blown up. Everything.  Because I lived in the South, things were not that bad.  Every night I could here the rat tat tat of the guns and the bombs going off, but buildings in my area were not blown up.  People where I lived they brought the people killed and injured in the fighting back to my area.  That is why there were so many dead in the streets.

There was not much fighting in my area, but it was still dangerous.  Everything was scary.  In my area, it was mostly dangerous because of the stealing.  The people who stole they also shot the person after they stole from them.  Because of the danger, my parents they bought a gun and had doggies.  My daddy never have to use our gun because of our doggies.  Every night people tried to steal from us, but the doggies scared them off by barking and growling.  Except once, the person was not afraid of our doggies and he came up to our house.  He didn’t come in, but he shot one of our doggies and ran away.  I was very sad because I liked that dog.  He was my favorite dog, but we still had another one who was angrier so no one came to our house.  And we were not robbed.

When I turned twenty-eight, I married and moved to the United States.  When I was in the United States, I worked really hard and I got money to bring the rest of my family to the United States.  I brought my brothers over first because I did not want my brothers to join the fighting for the government or for the rebels.  If they did, they might have died.  After working for years, I brought one brother over and then another.  I brought five brothers total over the border.  I still support my family and I send them one hundred dollars every month.  My mommy and sister are still in El Salvador because they didn’t like America, and they don’t want to come now that the war is over.

Interviewed by Billy Paulson