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Refuge and Return : Stories of a Resettled Community in El Salvador

On the way to Guarjila from Mesa Grande

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Ernesto Cruz Franco

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In this oral history, Ernesto Cruz Franco offers his memories of the different forms of collective organizing that took place among Salvadoran peasants who fled the civil war in El Salvador to live in refugee camps in Mesa Grande, Honduras and then returned to resettle communities in northeastern Chalatenango, El Salvador. Ernesto is a former refugee of the war and an elder who resides in the resettled community of Guarjila, El Salvador. He first discusses his leadership role overseeing the cooperative production of clothing in the refugee camp in Mesa Grande. He goes on to describe how Mesa Grande refugees organized their collective return to El Salvador. He discusses the role of international churches and organizations that supported the refugees’ return to El Salvador. He describes how, once resettled in the community of Guarjila, the former refugees worked cooperatively to build houses and grow food, and to participate in productive workshops similar to those that existed in Mesa Grande. To finish his story, he sings a local folk song that conveys the history of Salvadorans’ fleeing and returning to El Salvador during the war.
My name is Ernesto Cruz Franco. I am from a place in the municipality of Nueva Trinidad. We moved to Honduras at the time of El Salvador’s civil war.
We organized coordinators. I coordinated ten families. There were only 10 rooms. But I had always worked in the shoemaking workshop. It had a coordinator there, too. I worked two and a half year. Then, two and a half more years in the tailoring workshop. That is where I learned to make shirts and pants. I also worked one year in the gardens. I was the coordinator of a group of five persons who would take turns at night guarding the camp. There were seven camps in total, five camps located at the lower ground were about a kilometer apart from the other two camps at the top. That’s where I used to live: in camps one and two. And we used to organize the guards’ shift times and hours with the coordinator with a time to start working and to stop working. We did not receive a wage—we would only receive two changes of clothing (two pants and two shirts) per year, two pairs of shoes, and food that Caritas and UNHCR provided to us.
We worked for the benefit of the entire camp. I worked at the shoemaking workshop first. We used to make shoes, boots—like these ones but not from this material. They were made out of leather. And, women’s sandals. For the two and a half years that I worked in the tailoring workshop, we would make women’s brumeras [panties] and brassieres. We also produced combat uniforms and articles such as baseball caps, combat (guerillero style) sunhats, and backpacks with little compartments on the sides. The hats were made out of black fabric, and we would bring them to the zone.

I also worked as a channel to pull people from Mesa Grande to El Salvador to serve in the guerilla. There were five of us doing this, and we were all armed: some were carrying an M16, others had a FN-FAL [rifle], and others had a 22 carbine; I was given a FN-FAL. We would come and drop people off. We used to depart Mesa Grande around 9 pm and we would arrive to the El Salvador and Honduras border at around six or seven in the morning. Usually, we would bring up 30-45 people at the time. They would stay here overseeing and controlling the situation and we would go back and bring another group. It would take us about fifteen days to come back with another group; at times it was a small group of ten or fifteen. We would also bring medicine and shoes (the ones that we made). El compadre Angel knows—he was at Los Amates, and I brought him a pair of shoes there. We used to bring a lot of things, even matches. That was at the time when we were pulling people to where we are.
Preparing for our return to El Salvador, we organized into family groups and designated a coordinator leader. The coordinators were established (there were about twelve or fourteen). Each coordinator was in charge of ten families. We wanted to leave on October 10th, but intricacies with UNHCR prevented us from leaving until the 11th. We had trucks filled with luggage, equipment that we were carrying. During the journey, some of us slept under the trucks and under the buses, and some of us slept inside of them. We woke up on the 11th at El Poy, and we had to leave because they wouldn’t let us through. They said [the army] that it was too dangerous to be there, and that there was a big war that was taking place, and they would take no responsibility if the guerrilla killed us. They said that they wanted to bring us to a place where they could protect us. Because we wanted freedom, we said to the soldiers: “No, we are leaving for Guarjila, and we are not going to fight anyone. We are not against the guerrilla nor are we against you, either. We are getting there to work, not to fight.” Then they let us leave to go to Guarjila. When we arrived here [to Guarjila], all of these streets were nothing but grasslands; there was no path. There was a small path made by the guerilleros. There was no road. There was a road, but it was barricaded in sections. It wasn’t useful.
When we arrived, we saw the DM1 battalion of Chalatelango had taken over all of Guarjila. But we had the support of UNHCR and an institution in Honduras called SEDIN . We had Caritas and other international agencies supporting us, like the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church. Bishop Merardo Gomez, from the Lutheran Church, helped to oversee the construction of the new houses here. This project was only backed up by the Lutheran Church. t The Catholic Church did not help. The Catholic Church refrained from helping because their bishop did not agree with the project. We all organized ourselves in groups and started constructing the houses. We also kicked out all the soldiers, and they left. There was a soldier per post to try and intimidate us. But we were fearless because we already knew our faith. If they were going to kill us, they just would, but if they wouldn’t, then we would just stay. But we knew that we had protection from the international agencies, and they were the ones dealing with the lieutenants and the sergeants, not us.

After they left, we started with the construction of the houses. There were different groups scattered here and there, and each group had their coordinator, and we were all working. When we finished constructing the houses, we enumerated them, and then we raffled them. It wasn’t like they said to me: “Hey Neto, this is your house,” no, we had to raffle them to be fair and to avoid any conflicts or misunderstandings. We didn’t want anyone to think that I was privileged over anyone else because I was one of the coordinators, and that I would get a better house just for that reason. All of the houses were the same, but some of them, for example, were closer to water puddles, while others were set up in dryer ground. It was a matter of one’s luck. The first houses were made out of thatching grass [straw like] and nylon; this lasted a year. The next year, we started with the construction of ranchos [huts]. We lived in ranchos that had mounts. We were organized in groups of ten and twelve [people]. I still have the list of the people that I coordinated.

We also worked in collective gardens. In these collective gardens, we would plant corn, beans and rice. We started planting maicillo three years after we had arrived; corn, beans and rice. When we would harvest the crops, we would take it into a cellar located down in that direction. We then divided the harvest depending on the number of families. For example, each person would get twenty pounds [of the crop]. If there were three members in a family, they would get sixty pounds, and if there were five family members, they would get one hundred pounds. This is how the harvest was distributed, in this way.. Here we use a measurement style called the arroba and each person would get one arroba which is equal to twenty-five pounds.
People who didn’t work in agriculture would get the same amount of the harvest because they were also working in other areas and contributing to the community. We didn’t let them down. Widows got the same ration as women who were with a partner. It was equal for everyone; the same portions.
Later on, the collective work started to fade away, and we were only focused on individualistic work. Individual work is only a good thing for people with money, not for people who don’t have it. For these people, collective work is best because we can help each other out. Individually, if I have it, I have it. If one doesn’t have it, they don’t have it. But the way mass production in the community evolved persuaded people to work on their own account, and this is where we are at. We did collective work in the gardens for a long time, but then they started to divide the land, and everyone started planting a bit of corn—about two to three pounds—and that’s how the individual work started. But we still carried out collective work.
I worked for two years as a driver of the first trucks that arrived here. But since we were supposed to be living in a healthy community, they took me out of the driving job because we had a couple of small drinks. The managers got a whiff of alcohol in my breath. They brought us to a meeting and said; “Neto and Jesus, go and deliver the key.” It was strict. If you were coming back from Chalatenango, they would search your backpack to see what you were carrying. And if you were carrying some alcohol, they would throw it away right then. There was a group of community citizens dedicated to this task, but they were chosen by the community. I was part of that group for a while, and I too, used to throw away other people’s stuff.
That is how it was organized but that started to fade. If that code would still exist, there would be no alcohol sales, and this would be a healthier community. But all that kind of organization is lost and now we are even afraid. I don’t think we are organized the right way today. The way we are living now is not okay… there is still a small kind of coordination because we still have one ADESCO [community council]. Without the ADESCO in a community there is no organization because the ADESCO is the head of the community and a community without a head doesn’t work. At least we still have one organization. It’s not the same as the one that we used to have, but we still have an organization that can help to recover some of the things that we are losing.
There were many issues when the committees started to form in Mesa Grande and with the governments of Honduras and El Salvador. The institutions, such as Caritas and UNHCR, had meetings with these governments’ representatives. So the Honduran government, in accordance with the Salvadoran government, agreed to bring us to a place that they called La Mosquitilla. This place is located near Las Gracias, on the Honduran bay of the Atlantic Ocean, on a mountain. They wanted to bring us there, so we wouldn’t keep being so persistent about coming here [Guarjila]. We resisted. We had many meetings with UNHCR. It was presented to ACNUR where they met all of the coordinators. We presented them with a plan and explained the way that we were organized to make the trip. They used to say that if we were to come here, we would die. We told them that even though they were trying to instill fear in us, we were heading for El Salvador because we are Salvadoran, and that nothing would change our minds.
We had a repopulation committee, and then there were the coordinators. The committee was formed by seven people who had contact with the institutions. The coordinators that were communicating with the institutions that would support us were chosen by the members of the committee. I wasn’t part of the repopulation committee. I was only a coordinator for ten families. The members of the committee had more knowledge. Since they were talking directly with the institutions, they could relay information on to us about the consequences of making the trip. El compadre Angel was part of that committee; I was only a coordinator.

In the beginning, we had the same workshops here as we did in Mesa Grande. There was a tinsmith workshop where they used to make crates, buckets, and other things that were made out of iron. There was a hammock workshop where they made hammocks, cebaderas [woven small bags], and big bags such as this one, they also made matates to carry corn and acarallas. I also learned how to make hammocks, matates and cebadera. I can still make them today.
There was a tailoring workshop, a carpentry workshop, a hammock workshop that they called jarceria, and the tinsmith workshop, which were the same workshops that we used to have there. The tailoring workshop was located near the church. Now, the temple is there where it was located. The carpentry workshop was located behind the house of el compadre Angel. The shoe workshop was located there too; they shared the space. The shoe workshop was right there. I don’t recall where the hammock workshop was located, but there was one, too. The same that was done there, was done here. As I said before, we had the same workshops but little by little all the organizations were fading away.

The song says:

[sings:]

Because of the war,
We moved to Honduras.
We moved to Honduras,
Leaving El Salvador,
The Honduran people gave us their protection.
We moved to Honduras,
Leaving El Salvador,
The Honduran people gave us their protection.
The gunshots were heard all throughout the hills and cliffs.Because of the war, we had to leave from here.
Some at La Manjada, and others at San Jose.
Others at La Virtud, and some others at Ganiqui.

[clears throat and gasps, then he continues singing:]

In 81
They head to Mesa Grande.
There we were barricaded all around.
The people from there used to say
That there was a prophe—that it was a prophecy
That the day would come
To go back to El Salvador.
I’m starting to forget it, [laughs]

[sings:]

In 87, we arrived all the way to El Poooy…

How does it go? I forgot already, it’s the nervousness, right? [giggles]

In 87, we arrived all the way to El Poooy…
We made the return on a day like this…
There at the sunrise, we were all sleepless,
But with the hope of going back to El Salvador.
At 2 pm we arrived to Guarjila,
There, all around
Everything was grassland
The people used to go down the hill
Everyone very afflicted,
Because the military
Used to come out from everywhere…
Well, something like that.