As I went southward I seemed to enter a dark jungle of stories about the my country and how it had been involved in the lives of Central Americans. On the bus down to El Salvador I sat next to a fat and pasty bald man that leaned away from me in his seat and shot sidelong glances at me from time to time. But when I began to ask him questions he became animated and began to talk.
He was catholic priest who had worked alongside Oscar Romero, a Salvadorean martyr who had stood up on behalf of the poor against the oppressive military dictatorship funded by the States and was shot down while serving communion. "I was with him the day before he died," the priest told me. "We went out into the campo to give communion. Monsignor Romero was the most important bishop of the Catholic Church in the country but he would not forget the poor suffering in the countryside. His theology was grounded, based on the actual lives of the people he served, based on liberating them from injustice." As we moved on through the hot lands skirting the Salvadorean volcanoes he told me stories of brothers killing brothers, of his brothers who had died or fled to The States, of heroic priests and violated nuns. "I am glad to be telling you this," he told me. "Most Americans have no idea."
Three million Salvadoreans live in the US, out of a population of 10 million total, and when I got off the bus in San Salvador the effects were evident everywhere. The city's arteries are clogged with American fast food chains and shopping malls, the infrastructure of the city was much more developed due to the capital sent home from America, and every person has a story about their journey north, or their father or mother or brother or sister's journey north. The air was thick in the city and clung to my skin and made me sweat. No matter what I did I couldn't rid myself of the sticky filthy feeling on my body. I began to dream of clear cool rivers, of diving into pools below clear cascades.
I left the city and hitched up to the highlands of Morozan, a complex and rolling country just below the dark rim of the Honduras pine lands. As the pickup groaned up the grade, the air began to cool, but the thin film of humid sweat lingered on my skin. At the top of the road was Periquin, the bastion of the rebels in the civil war, impoverished peasants who started fighting with picks and hoes for the right to farm their own land. I set in the plaza, suddenly very weary. The land fell away on all sides; even the town was built on a steep slope. People did not greet me. They did not talk much at all. I began to walk a bit and on the hill above town I saw craters five feet deep and fifteen across from 500 ton bombs. On the mangled iron shrapnel next to the crater I could make out the words MADE IN USA.
I began to feel ill that night, a strange aching in my shoulder joints and neck as if a heavy iron bar were pulling down on them. I was alone in the hostel that night and laid awake long hours sweating and aching on top of the sheets. In the morning I felt somewhat better so I began walking. All below me in the cloudless day were the thickly populated lowlands, burnt brown by in the dry season but were I was the foliage was still green and tangled. I was nearing the village of Mozote. The only noise was the crickets that screamed from the trees, and I was once again aching and nauseous under the noonday sun. Suddenly a truck rattled up behind me with blaring loudspeakers, making my heart jump into my throat. "GAAAS! Get your gas! GAAAS!" No one came out. The streets were almost empty, many buildings abandoned. Twenty years ago soldiers from the Salvadorean government had rounded up a the thousand plus villagers in this town– men, women, and children– and had killed them all with the exception of one. In the center of the town was a memorial.
I shuffled out of the town, wondering if I would make it back on the parched roads to Periqiun. I felt dizzy, the world spun slightly. "GAAAS!" I waved frantically at the truck to give me a ride but it barreled past me, leaving only the dust that settled silently on the leaves beside the road. I walked on for miles. Finally got I ride clinging on the back bumper of an already packed pickup, the billowing dust caking in my eyes.
When I got back, I walked down the path to the quebrada, a series of small cascades of spring water that fall into a deep cleft in the rocks. The water is clear but the cleft so deep that it looks black. The sun was lowering, and one side was in deep shadow and the other in light. I slowly peeled the clothes off my aching body. I paused a long time at the edge, spent in the silent afternoon. Then I toppled into the icy water.
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