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los asesinos presumen no solamente the assassins presume to be de estar totalmente not only totally vivos alive sino también de ser inmortales but also to be immortal Pero ellos también But they too están medio muertos are half dead y solo vivos a medias and only half alive . . . . . . Todos juntos . . . All together tenemos más muerte que aquellos we have more death than they do. Pero todos juntos But all together tenemos más vida que ellos. we have more life than they do. —Roque Dalton, “Todos” (1988, 124) Encountering Chalatenango My excursions to Chalatenango from the capital began with a two-hour ride on a crowded bus. The Troncal Norte wound around the foothills of the extinct Guazapa volcano, a rebel stronghold during the war. The bus stopped briefly in bustling Aguilares, where pupusa stands lined the road, and young women assaulted the bus hawking El Salvador’s famous bean- or cheese-filled tortilla pies and refrescos (fruit drinks) in bright bulging plastic bags. Here was the birthplace of the Comunidades Eclesiales de Base (CEB) or Christian base communities . Jesuit priests, inspired by the new Catholic social theology, organized thirty-seven CEB Bible groups in this area beginning in 1972. CEB activists were 48 2 Repression’s Repercussions Pragmatic Solidarity and the Body Politic Todos nacimos medio muertos All of us were born half dead in 1932 in 1932 sobrivimos pero medio vivos . . . we survived but half alive . . . bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb among the earliest victims of death squad violence, as soldiers cracked down on the movement for labor and land rights (Cabarrús 1983). Farther north the bus passed miles of sugar plantations in lowlands by the Cerrón Grande reservoir created by the dammed Lempa River. The reservoir bridge had been the site of a military roadblock during the war, where buses were stopped—men and boys were lined up outside, hands pressed against the metal sides while soldiers frisked them for weapons. Foreigners and urban-dwellers without army-issued safe-conduct passes (salvoconductos) were routinely turned back. Later the bus turned east off the troncal, stopping at the huge base of the army’s Fourth Brigade headquarters before continuing to Chalatenango, a dusty market town and capital of the department of the same name. The town’s small plaza was flanked by the local army base and a Catholic church. At daybreak hundreds of soldiers shouted cadence and squared off for calisthenics yards from the sanctuary steps. During the war, two camouflaged soldiers had guarded the plaza from a machine-gun nest in the church bell tower. To the east the street climbed a steep hill, turning to dirt as it wound off among steep slopes lined with milpas (cornfields). Here, under a huge conacaste tree, the army had maintained a second roadblock, the more serious one that guarded entry to a “conflicted zone” (zona conflictiva), to use the lingo of the military , or a (FMLN) “controlled zone” (zona controlada) to local campesinos. In the 1980s no one passed this point except with army-issued salvoconductos, plus written permission on the day of travel from the Fourth Brigade commander (and sometimes the local commander as well)—a process that kept reporters, relief workers, and foreign delegations cooling their heels for hours in army bases waiting for approval. To me, rural Chalatenango was both a beautiful and harsh place—even in areas unaffected by war, the natural wilderness of rolling hills, piney mountains, and fast-flowing streams was belied by the visible destitution of its people. In the north there are no cash crops except cattle, and farming is done on steep rocky minifundia—landholdings of medium-to-small farmers, many of whom rent plots to poorer peasant families. People who live in the hills above the town have smaller statures with bony frames. Salvadorans are famously friendly and outgoing. They will invite a stranger into their homes on a moment’s notice and graciously serve up the last leg of chicken in the pot. They laugh easily, but their smiles betray gaps where rotten teeth were pulled. The road passed small wattle -and-daub houses with dirt floors, roofed with sheets of tin weighted down with old tires and rocks. Small children played listlessly in the dirt, their faces framed by the thin, straw-colored hair of malnutrition. Leather-skinned men en route to their milpas walked the roadside carrying machetes and a few tortillas in a woven hemp bag...

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