Benjamin Meyer

Their Stories Must be Told: Documenting Salvadoran Massacres in Santa Marta

I lived in the rural village of Santa Marta, El Salvador, in early 2008 as part of my AJWS World Partners Fellowship.  In several attacks, the Salvadoran government massacred citizens, decimating Santa Marta's community during the twelve-year civil war that shook El Salvador between 1980 and 1992. The few of the town's survivors lived as refugees for nearly a decade, and have recently begun to resettle and rebuild the community they had once inhabited.

The community is working on a memory project to document the tragedy, led by ADES (the Association for Economic and Social Development), a grassroots NGO and AJWS partner organization.

My job was to record and transcribe interviews about the experiences of survivors. Those I interviewed were often visibly shaken and sometimes cried profusely when recounting their experiences, but they also expressed a certain amount of relief at the end of our interviews. Despite all of the suffering the experienced, they consider it crucial that their stories be told.

The following is a description of one of the worst attacks that occurred, known as the Massacre of the Lempa River, drawn from several testimonies:

In 1980 the Salvadoran military rolled into the municipality of Victoria in jeeps and tanks; they were preparing to attack Santa Marta, located in the hills above Victoria, in a strategy that would later be known as "Tierra Arrasada," or scorched earth. This attack method consisted of the Army burning down a village's houses and churches after killing all its citizens in the hope of destroying evidence of what they had done and insuring that those who fled would never return.

Santa Marta's residents had begun to flee the village in order to cross over the Honduran border, approximately eight miles away. When the military arrived in Santa Marta, they found the town deserted, and burned down the remaining buildings.

By the time the residents arrived at the Lempa River, which demarcates the Honduran and Salvadoran border, they were exhausted, dehydrated, hungry and scared. A Salvadoran military plane swooped down from sky and dropped its bombs on the people waiting to cross. Those who could swim jumped into the river in an attempt to cross it, and set up a rope to help those who couldn't swim.  But the people did not expect that the Honduran army, which was coordinating anti-insurgent campaigns with the Salvadoran government, would be waiting on the other side with machine guns.

In total, approximately 80 people, including young children, were killed. Some mothers accidently suffocated their babies in an attempt to keep them quiet as they hid from the army. 

After being exposed to these deeply traumatic testimonies, I have chosen a new career path. I plan to pursue a career in social work to help victims of tragic political and social events cope with post-traumatic stress.

 

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