Megan Lyles :: El Mozote, El Salvador

Monday, January 30, 2006

El Mozote, just a few kilometers from Perquin, is the site of a 1981 massacre by U.S.-trained soldiers of about nine hundred men, women and children. There is a memorial there now and the town is a fairly common backpacker daytrip. Getting there involves either walking or taking a pickup three kilometers down to a fork in the road and catching a bus the rest of the way. The one daily public bus passes by the fork at 8:00 a.m. The one public bus back leaves El Mozote at 12:45 p.m.

Between this and that, we got to the correct fork at around 8:10. We didn’t much feel like walking twenty kilometers, and we didn’t want to stay in Perquin an extra day just for the memorial, so we were a bit disappointed. I voted to let one pickup to Perquin pass because it was too packed, though I knew the next one was likely to be just as crowded.

But this worked out in our favor because while we were waiting for the next pickup, the man who’d told us we’d missed the bus called us over and hooked us up with a guy who was driving there in his truck. When Michael asked him how much he wanted for the ride, the guy just shook his head. So we hopped into the open back and held onto the poles and bounced along down the rocky dirt road standing up.

It was awesome. The view over the top of the cab was incredible. We stood in the wind watching the road climbing and dipping and winding through trees and around cliffs looking down into misty valleys. The truck kicked up a lot of dust but it didn’t hit us.

There weren’t many people on the road, but those that were seemed shocked to see us. Probably El Mozote-bound gringos usually manage not to miss the bus. Once we passed a work crew digging a ditch across the dirt road. They kept working until our truck was a foot away and the driver beeped the horn. Then they moved aside and we drove over their ditch.

After a while, we picked up another passenger, a man who was walking along the edge of the road. As we passed him, the driver slowed to a stop and the man looked up and noticed and then ran to hop on. He did not seem to be expecting the truck to stop, but neither did he seem surprised that it did. Nearly into El Mozote, we picked up a prepubescent girl with a baby. The girl was wearing a piece of lingerie as a shirt, tight and silky black, with a nearly see-through lace front. I found it extremely disturbing.

We shook the driver’s hand at El Mozote. He did not ask for money from any of us. I guess when you live out in places where there are no public options, people just give each other rides.

The town of El Mozote was small and dusty, and we could see the memorial at once, so we headed over towards it. It was simple and moving, black metal silhouetes of a family in front of wooden plaques bearing the names of everyone who had died. But just as we got there and were preparing to think about the immensity of the situation, the little girl in lingerie approached us.

She wanted money. She needed things for school. It was hard to understand her. The Salvadoran accent is tough on us because they swallow the beginnings of the words, even when they enunciate for our benefit. She said she needed a cuaderno (notebook). We asked her how much it cost, and she said a dollar. Michael gave her a dollar, mostly because he had taken her picture in the truck, and we went back to trying to appreciate the memorial.

Now she wanted more money. She still needed things for school, another cuaderno or something, this one five dollars. We said no. She finally left.

The memorial was very effective, particularly the long lists of people with the same last name, whole families that had died all at once, so many children. But still, it’s a small memorial and although we gave it a thorough looking-over and a respectful amount of quiet contemplation, there’s only so much time you can give it and after that, we had nothing to do. It wasn’t yet 9:00 and unless we lucked into another generous truck driver, we were stuck in town until 12:45.

The Lonely Planet says of El Mozote, “Locals are becoming used to the international presence; they’ve even set up snack bars for tourists, and cute kids may follow you around looking for handouts. Nevertheless, visitors should remain sensitive to the seriousness of the site and show restraint when snapping photos.” (Central America On A Shoestring, 5th ed. pg. 320)

Our little girl was cute enough, despite her Victoria’s Secret attire, and she did look for handout. But we did not see this “snack bar.” We didn’t even see any other tourists who could have patronized such a convenience. We saw one store, the type where you stand outside and tell the people what you want, and one pupuseria. The kids playing in the doorway of the pupuseria told us no one was there at the moment. So we bought a couple of sodas and some pan dulce at the store and sat on a bench to eat and wait.

While we were waiting and remaining “sensitive to the seriousness of the site,” some little boys came along and started up a game of soccer with a yellow plastic ball. The fence around the memorial was one of the goals. They found it particularly amusing when the ball flew over the fence and hit one of the metal figures. Well, it’s their town and possibly even their relatives, so they can do what they want, I guess.

They were cute and we had a nice little chat with them. Michael has chosen a favorite soccer team (Barcelona) so that he can make conversation with people. These kids all supported Real Madrid. They were also little litterbugs too, unfortunately, dropping their chips bags on the ground. But nice kids otherwise. They called us “usted.” Some of the kids we’ve met have called us “tu” which seems a bit cheeky to me, but I’m not in the know enough to say for sure.

Sitting there, we met a sixteen-year-old boy in a red FMLN sleeveless shirt who offered to guide us to the house of a famous woman who had survived the massacre and now spends her time traveling around and speaking of her experience. We took him up on it and he led us to a completely unremarkable patch of grass behind a fence where apparently a house had once stood. But he was nice enough and good to practice Spanish with. He also showed us the church and the comemmorative plaque they had there.

We asked him if he went to school and he said he did, but in the afternoon. He said there were so many children in town – around three hundred – that the school had a morning shift from 9:00 to 1:00 and an afternoon shift from 1:00 to 5:00.

We met another guy, who had lived in New Jersey for eleven years. For having lived and worked in the U.S. for so long (even just New Jersey) his English wasn’t very good. It didn’t really seem much better than my Spanish, which is improving but still limping along. We chatted with him for a while about the states, and September 11, and his family and this and that and eventually he invited us to his house.

We said no. We may well have missed out on a great opportunity to get to know someone and learn something new. But there is always that pressure, that wondering “how much is this going to cost me?” that we can’t stand.

Sometimes it’s clear, like with the kid who showed us around, that a tip is expected. That’s fine. Michael gave him two dollars. But spending time with someone whom you think is your new friend and who then wants money for something is a bit painful. We were (reluctantly) willing to take the chance of missing out on genuine goodwill to avoid that situation. But now I feel bad about not going, so maybe we should have just gone.

Even with all the distractions, it was a long wait for the bus back to Perquin and then it turned out that it was actually scheduled for 1:00 p.m. The bus kicked up even more dust than the pickup had, but instead of blowing away, it all came in through the windows. The cobrador had a bandana around his nose and mouth, cowboy style, and nearly everyone had found some scrap to cover their faces with. That dust was no joke.

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El Mozote, El Salvador - Memorial