Live in a Beautiful Town

Marisela Elias at age 60 has lived many years in the large city of Los Angeles. As I entered the room, I saw her staring into space recalling her past years when she lived in the small town of Delgado, El Salvador. She had spent her childhood in a poor but friendly town where most people would know each other. She tells me the many adventures that she had as a kid and the different places in her town. Mrs. Elias was, herself a very loving child that was liked by the entire town, as she tells me this I see the smile in her face as she remembers her past. She tells me many of the stories that kids in her town would tell each other, in the night surrounded by the trees of their beautiful forest. She tells me that though the small town she lived in wasn’t perfect she does miss it very much.

My name is Marisela Elias, I am 59, I was married in1967. I lived in the city of Delgado. It is a small city, not too small, but it had three neighborhoods. It also had three churches which was where most people went. There were people that were very good and liked others. Between the politics and the nonpolitics, you would like your teachers who were very nice; we liked the mayor since he collected the taxes. He was a very good man. We liked a lot of people like cousins or relative of others. So everyone was like that. It was weird if children didn’t know each other or got along, because they would go out and drink a little, go to the courts and play basketball. I was godmother of the basketball player.

Many, people knew me since my mother was friends with many of the older women, well they like my attitude because I would follow them, I bought them little presents, sandwiches, beverages, everything. There weren’t many famous people in my city, but there were people who had their little savings. There many men who had businesses and were somewhat famous. There was a man that would make rice soup made of iguanas. So everyone liked this man and he was famous for his restaurant and everything.

Marisela Elias on the right next to her is her husband, and on the left is the friend.

I had good parents and my parents loved me, I was the only one. My brother was already married, he was already big, my sister the same. My mother already had another daughter from another marriage and my dad a son from another marriage, but the smallest was still me. Everyone where I lived would go to a park; up close to the church it had a beautiful cement fence. The people would come and sit to see the city people would also come to play basketball. Further away in the other city they would also do this.

On 15 of September there were many schools parading, nicely, and the cheerleaders, they were very pretty, and the marching bands there was a sculpture of the man that founded that city and that’s where everyone reunited. They would touch it and they would make some stories.

Not many foreigners came to Delgado. They started to come here after the war, but for many years before they didn’t. And after the war they started to come more. People worked and the women even if they were poor they were good people, it was hard for them to raise their kids. It was always tough because women became widows or their husbands left them, so it was only them. My father would always let these women borrow money, they would work in the markets, for example they made cones, you’re used to making cone in San Salvador. They were delicious then they made other things that had syrup in the middle. I knew a woman that had a great business; she had a son named Jacinto that helped her with a lot of the work. The woman in Delgado all fighters, they’re great life fighters. I had in my town a pair of friends, Terre and her little sister, we were very close. We got along very well because she was very educated very sweet. Now they are all, married the older one and the younger one, well they got married.

We had a television; it was in black and white, later came the color television. We would get the news with channel four it was my uncle’s who got killed when he was going to the collision with two woman from the street and then a cow got in front of him.  They were coming from a place where there were many holes, they were really drunk. When he died his wife didn’t want to go recognize him but his children did he was the owner of that channel but now there are many more. The newspapers, well great news papers, they give you a lot of stuff because now there are a lot of tourists. Before there were very little, people who would come had family members there or young men who had girlfriends in the city. There was this one young man who was the godson of my father, he made donuts and he was gay and my father would tell him to stop gossiping about people, that he shouldn’t do that but he wouldn’t stop and he would go on, he just loved it. There were a lot of people that were disrespectful; my mom hit one of them. He was after me and he was really vulgar and my mom who was really tough hit him with a milk carton.

Everyone would go to church they would go at nine in the morning well it started at five but the mass began at nine and everyone went all fancy, really well dressed. The church was a great part of people lives because it was a church that had been there for a hundred years but like the last big earthquake it was knocked down. But I’ve heard they rebuild it really beautifully. San Salvador and us also had places that were historical. At first these were quite towns the natives would get a lot of money so they could raise money to lift up some murals, because they were really huge.

Well there weren’t many races, there were mostly Salvadorians. There were Some Turks; there was a Turkish lady that lived down the street there were few. In El Salvador there were more of its people. People did get married with people of other races and others that would only marry their race. But everyone, for example the natives they had to get married with each other and they were very happy because the young men came to very drunk and the police would come to calm them. We never had problems with other races, far from that we had different races at school. I had many friends from different races. Before there weren’t many Christians but there were some Baptist, there were little of them, very little because we were mostly Catholics. My school was catholic, so I had to go to church all the time.

We had very beautiful places; we had a church that was called The Church of the Souls. On Mondays for example people came, it’s really beautiful and there were these paintings that were many years old. There was everything like cakes, pupusas, what ever you want. Every Monday people would come and pass close to the images it’s like a tour. Right now more people come from other places because it’s really pretty. There are still many natives that make pots, jewelry, clocks, and they have their Indian dialogue.

Interviewed by Axel Dominguez