Caught in the Crossfire

February 1987
Children of the War Zone

The helicopter’s engine roars overhead. The avispita (the so-called “wee wasp”) threatens to spit out its bullets and rockets among the surrounding hills as it patrols, hungry in search of the guerrillas.

Looking anxious and needing reassurance little Nena says, “Mummy, I’m scared of the wee wasps.” Her mother smiles. Nena voices everyone’s feelings.

A rocket explodes against the sheer rock face up above and bullets stutter out loudly. The avispita has spotted its prey. Ana Cecilia begins to cry tears of fear. I pick her up in my arms and she feels comforted and not so lonely and she stops crying.

Soon the government troops occupy the village. They approach cautiously, very wary of a possible guerrilla ambush. I sit in the schoolhouse porch and watch them gradually relax their guard and loiter around the people’s houses, asking for tortillas.

Rosa Philomena comes and sits beside me on the school bench, her chubby cheeks and head of curls reminiscent of the cherubim. She usually likes to giggle and play hopping games, letting the bare soles of her feet smack against the cement. She seems more subdued today. She senses the tense atmosphere and hears the menacing drone of the avispita in the sky. Rosa Philomena thrusts her cherubic cheeks to my ear and whispers: “I’m going back to my house if that guerrilla goes away.” I look at the soldier sitting on the porch wall of her house and, with a smile, wonder if he would be flattered by Rosa Philomena dubbing him “that guerrilla.”

A few hours later the go-ahead command is given over the military radio and the soldiers file out of the village, climbing into the hills. Tension disappears and tranquillity returns to Avelares. Things become normal again.

In the evening, as I go for a quiet stroll, another barefooted, grubby youngster, about seven years old, meets me on the dirt track. He carries in his hand a toy – a green, plastic airplane. Its tail is broken off. Plastic propaganda toys were distributed by the soldiers on their Christmas-time operation. I ask the lad how he is. His face serious, he answers: “Padrecito, they haven’t killed me yet.”

June 29, 1987
Pablo

Pablo is old and frail, beaten by the years. And because his body can no longer withstand the rigor of working in the corn field, and because there is no such system as Social Security for the campesinos of El Salvador, Pablo must beg for his daily food. Crouched and leaning on his stick he shuffles slowly to the houses of those who will give him charity. His nearest relatives are themselves too poor to keep him fed.

I used to preach that the poor need justice, not charity. Charity is ineffectual; it’s no good mopping up the floor while the tap continues to gush out water. The system needs renewing. I used to speak of getting to the cause of the problem and not being content with treating symptoms. “Repair the ------- tap; don’t mop the floor! Justice, not charity!” was the battle cry. But the fact is: the system is hopelessly corrupted and sinful. Justice is long-delayed and uncertain. And Pablo’s hunger needs to be satisfied here and now.

He comes to our house most mornings and asks for the “laying on of hands” and a blessing. Then he goes on his way searching for food. If he’s unsuccessful in his quest he’ll come and beg charity from us.

Sometimes, Pablo will spend a long time chatting incoherently of past times and past peoples. On one such occasion, as I sat listening, Little Rosa passed by and eavesdropped through the porch’s wooden spars.

Later in the day, when I was sitting alone, she returned and said to me, “Padre, Pablo tells pure lies … pure lies.” Raising my eyebrows and smiling I replied, “Not pure lies, Rosa, only … imaginative stories.”

Despite his simplicity, Pablo has always struck me as being a sort of “apocalyptic” figure. Maybe it’s the grumpy manner in which he occasionally raises his stick to young kids impeding his passage with their frolics. Maybe it’s the unwitting way he voices Sartre’s “We’re beings for death” and is overheard talking to Christ about his own death while prostrating himself before the tabernacle. Or maybe he’s an apocalyptic figure because, on Judgement Day, Pablo will be sitting beside the Son of Man and telling him how his human dignity was taken away by the unbridled greed of a rich minority.

January 15, 1988
In Remembrance

José Roberto found it amusing that a priest should be walking through the village carrying a tray of eggs. Flip-flopping down the slope in my plastic sandals, I did not stop to greet this grinning guerrilla and his companions, partly because of the likelihood that an army spy network operates in the main village of our parish, and partly a feeling of acute embarrassment at being caught doing the shopping. I mean, John Wayne would not be caught doing the messages; it taints the macho image somewhat.

José Roberto was his war name. He picked as his pseudonym the names of his two children because he loved them and wanted them to live in a better, more just homeland. For this he was prepared to sacrifice his life.

“My father is very rich. Two cars. Big house. I was a student at the university and had a promising career ahead of me. One day I lay on my bed, looked at the ceiling, and said to myself: ‘It’s not right. People in El Salvador are living and dying in squalor, and here am I, comfortable, in high living.’”

So, he joined the guerrillas.

I remember over a year ago we sat in a village community in the hills to the north. As the candle burned in the middle of the porch, we shared oranges and ideas. The conversation was vibrant. I was speaking about the sinfulness of the church, and he spoke about the wrongs committed by the guerrillas in the early years. “The people never forget,” José Roberto told me. “Nowadays the guerrillas treat the civilian population with respect, but in the early part of the war it was not always so. And the people never forget.”

I reflected, “Often we’ve betrayed Christ. Often we’ve twisted his liberating message to suit our own convenience.”

“We laugh at the Russian image of communism – so sober, so joyless. Our revolution is filled with happiness. It’s different,” he explained to me. “Sometimes when I’m washing myself in a river, I say my name over and over again, just to remind myself who I really am.”

The conversation penetrated into the night. We had been chatting for five hours and more. So, wearied and contented, we called it a day.

At 6:45 p.m. on Sunday, December 13, 1987, a burst of gunfire pierced the night. The next day I left the main village to visit the other villages further north, not knowing what had happened. I imagined the guerrillas had ambushed soldiers outside the village.

Before setting off, I overhead a soldier stationed in our porch ask, “Only one dead?”

“Yes, only one,” the other replied.

I did not know who the dead person was. It was almost a month later I discovered that in the darkness of that night the soldiers had riddled “with about twenty-five bullets” the body of José Roberto. Later, they had stolen his watch from his wrist. They had also taken a bag of money he was carrying to buy food, also his folder of information. And, following the Salvadoran Army’s barbaric habit, they had cut off the left ear of the slain guerrilla in order to take it back to barracks as a trophy.

Image courtesy of Darton, Longman & Todd, 2024.

The villagers had to leave José Roberto’s corpse throughout the night, lying beneath the mango tree where he had fallen. The following morning, they found that the pigs and dogs had eaten away a large part of his flesh. His right leg had been wrenched apart; the dogs were devouring it at the other side of the wire fence. “The dogs were full,” a woman told me.

Today, thirty-three days later, I went to pray the Lord’s Prayer at José Roberto’s grave. I noticed his congealed blood splattered on the bushes and the mango tree, which had also been heavily chipped by the bullets. It was also noticeable that Don Luís had not dug the grave deeply enough, and flies and ants covered the place where José Roberto was laid to rest.

After praying, we set about collecting stones and placed them on the grave. I shooed away a piglet. Eventually, we piled a mound of stones over the remains. Stone symbolizes the eternal. It is appropriate that there be a sign of the undying near the shredded remains of José Roberto. Truth will never be silenced. This man’s love for his suffering people can never die.

A young lad, seeing me and the others putting stones on top of the grave laughed and said flippantly, “He’s not going to come out of there, Padre.”

I looked into the youngster’s eyes and replied, “No, but there will be a resurrection. He will rise.”

The smile disappeared, and the youngster fell into silence.

August 14, 1989
Dying with Christ

Niña Julia, a wrinkled, wizened widow, looked at me expectantly as I made to walk past her house. I smiled, hesitated, greeted her, and, changing direction, walked toward her.

The poor who have become old often exude tranquility, a silent stillness in their eyes, a demeanor which expresses a journey through suffering. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung would possibly describe this maturity as the final stage of the individuation process, a rounding off of the personality. Be that as it may, their deep calmness evangelizes me more than a thousand theological tomes.

Niña Julia made me welcome and hastily put a sheet of newspaper on the wooden bench which had become ingrained with dirt over the years. She asked me to sit down.

In the course of our conversation I inquired about her husband. Her reply took me aback. “They killed him eight years ago. We had moved out of the village and were living in San Salvador. People started making false accusations against my husband, and he was put on a wanted list. There was a time in this village when people spoke evil with their tongue. My husband was informed of their accusations and decided to travel to San Francisco and clear his name with the Civil Defense. It was evening, and darkness was falling when the lorry arrived. He didn’t even have time to descend when they approached and arrested him. They took him captive to the outskirts of the village and tied him with a rope to a tree. Then they poured paraffin over his body and set him alight. He screamed in agony and they shot him twice through the head. They kicked his body down a ditch and left him there. Andrés, a friend, found the body next day.”

She then told me how she had returned to San Francisco Morazán after the murder of her husband, because she had been born in this place and here was where she had her home. “Those who took part in the killing still live here,” she said, pointing to the house opposite. And she named four ex-members of the Civil Defense. Her tone of voice bore sadness, but not resentment.

“It must be very painful for you, meeting your husband’s killers in the street,” I remarked.

“I talk to them,” she answered. “With God there is forgiveness.”

She said this not sanctimoniously, but with a matter-of-fact simplicity while averting her gaze from mine.

“Your husband died the same death as Christ, an innocent victim tied to a tree. And the same as Archbishop Romero …” I felt myself to be in the presence of sanctity and, like Peter the Apostle, I mouthed words too shallow to describe the reality being experienced. “Yes,” she nodded, “my husband died the same death as Christ and Archbishop Romero.”

From Tommy Greenan, The Song of the Poor: And Other Stories of El Salvador (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2024). Used by permission.