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

Mesa Grande, Honduras

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Ángel Serrano

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In this oral history, Ángel Serrano offers a long-range historical account of the organizing and migration of people originally from northern El Salvador in Chalatenango and Cabañas departments. Angel has held leadership roles in the resettled community of Guarjila, El Salvador over many years. He first discusses how extreme inequality was behind the long history of regional seasonal agricultural labor migration and planted the seeds for the peasant movement that eventually evolved into civil war. As military repression increased, some peasants began participating in the organizations that formed the FMLN, he explains. Others fled El Salvador, thousands of whom ended up in the Mesa Grande refugee camps in Honduras. He describes the role of international organizations involved in the International Solidarity Movement in supporting the refugees’ decision to organize their collective return to El Salvador during the war, despite initial resistance from UNHCR and the Salvadoran government. His oral history concludes with a reflection on the importance of the peasant movement and the decision of refugees to return to El Salvador.

I am Ángel Serrano. I am originally from the municipality of San Antonio de la Cruz, and I currently live in Guarjila. In 1979, we organized campesino organizations, some others organized Christian organizations, and we were part of the UTC, because we could see that our rights weren’t being recognized when we demanded loans during the sugarcane harvests and the cotton and coffee cutting. So, it was necessary for us to unite and demand from the haciendas, or the finqueros, the right to at least have a roof over our heads at night to sleep in the fincas, or to be fed better. And, for example, other farmers demanded that we join them to get more land. What I am saying is that here in this place—or in this region where we are—in the northeast of Chalate, we have been immigrants for a long time.
That’s because in the summertime we would go out to do all those jobs to earn a few cents, which would help us to be able to grow our food or rent land to plant seeds and survive. But the response the organizations got from the government and the military at the time was repression against all of the organizations. The repression made it impossible in the 1980s to be able to participate in the work of cutting coffee, sugarcane, and cotton, because anyone who protested for their rights would disappear. So that meant that we had to stay home and continue to remain organized and to analyze the situation.
This meant that we were not safe in our homes because if they found us at home, we could have been captured and disappeared, and if we weren’t found at home, the same could happen.
So, we fled, together with one another: women, elders, and children. And when we fled, by necessity, we were never thinking of a war. Rather, we were fleeing to defend ourselves, to not be captured. But once we were up in the mountains, there was a need to establish control so that we would not be captured, and the first weapons we had were some pistols—a few—and some grenades with gunpowder to let people know to keep moving.
We got to a point where we were being persecuted more severely. The military operations were after us, and so we had to defend ourselves with what we had, with what we could. We would take the weapons away from the military patrols. There were many to fight. Many were left behind, and many also fled to Honduras, which was the closest country. As for those of us that stayed behind in the resistance, we stayed as a militia, getting by with what we could, with some guns. But it wasn’t yet the guerilla, it was a militia—or it was the people who were organized to defend ourselves—to shoot a few shots here and there and then flee so that the people would follow.
Later on, it was no longer just paper hand grenades. The repression continued to grow in such a way that—for example, the killing of priests—which was the maximum expression of repression. That also scared us because we had Archbishop Romero as a mediator, because he wasn’t on either side. He was just on the side of the people who wanted their lives respected and their livestock and farms for survival. But we didn’t have that; they would burn our crops, kill the animals, and the people were left to eat jocote roots or fruit on trees.
The situation was getting worse and worse, and by 1981 they had the military soldiers in every municipality. Fleeing had gotten so difficult that you had to make it through them, and so the guerrilla was formed. We continued as a militia, but the large number of people from Cabañas, Cuscatlán—they felt safer in Chalatenango, so they moved over there.
At one point when there weren’t any military operations, those of us who could read and write a little became teachers. In 1982, that was my case. I was a teacher who taught kids to read and write with what we had. It was more about the willingness to teach than the actual capabilities one had. We would go teach those wounded in undercover hospitals. We already had doctors here, like Benito, the one that was recently buried here in Guarjila. He was the first doctor that came to Chalate and he stayed among the people and the guerrilla.
After 1982 or 1983, along with others who taught in the area, we got together and formed the Poderes Populares. The Poderes Populares organized with the goal of working together to figure out how to bring safety to the people. The guerrilla moved away since they had to fight the soldiers, and the people stayed here. In part, we needed to provide civil control, and there was also the need for first aid and medicines among the health promoters, for education, and for food production. There were about four areas, and there was a council in each region called the Poder Local that would meet and oversee everything related to health and education.
But in 1986, there was the invasion of Andres Carreno, an operation of 18,000 military officials. They captured just about everyone, because by then many had already left for Honduras. The refugee camps were holding about 11,500 people there. That operation lasted a long time and people did not resist and were captured. And so the Poder Popular no longer had power because their people were captured. There were people who wanted to go back. Carasque, for example, was where the first people came back to repopulate. It was in the municipality of Nueva Trinidad and five families arrived to repopulate. When the operations began they would leave, and once the military left, the people started to show up.
So, it was exactly in October of 1986 that some of us went to the refugee camps. There we began to accompany them in the consultation process among those who had already organized, with camp committees and sector coordinators. It was the consultation for the return for those who wanted to go back. What was the situation like at the time? There were people who wanted to go back because they had their children here, or there were children (of the guerrilla) who had their parents here, and so they wanted to establish contact with them. But they also wanted to be productive, rather than living in a militarized camp as refugees. The face of a refugee in any part of the world is a face with trauma because they are without their homeland, without rights.
And so, people saw that they could produce and that they had not committed any crime for which the military would have taken revenge. At the time, Duarte was president. The consultation process stretched over nine months, and during those nine months we made efforts to make connections with the international solidarity movement, with priests and bishops such as Luis Santos and Monsignor Urioste from San Salvador, and other pastors, such as the Lutheran pastor who accompanied us and supported our plan.
However, the government did not want to give the green light to let us go back. So it was at the last minute, after sending nine letters to the government, that the government commission shows up to tell us they would attend to us at an aerial bridge and that we would be allowed in, but that we would have to go to an agrarian cooperative. We didn’t know the location of it and would have been lost. They said that each month, 100 people would come back, but we had already organized a plan to come back all together: 1,464 were to go to Guarjila, 1,000 would go to Las Vueltas, to Copapayo, and to Santa Marta. The people had already made the decision to move back and where to go. But because the government never gave us the “yes”, it was the people from outside, by way of the solidarity movement, who played such an important role at the time. I believe that at any time that someone sees a problem, even if it is on the other side of the world, that solidarity never ceases to have its value.
So, we published a statement and it scared the government because we announced in our release that we would be coming back on the 10th of October. The government had not wanted to reply to us, and so they sent the government delegation to meet with the repatriation committee. And when the repatriation committee was ready, they were accompanied by bishop Luis Santos from Santa Rosa de Copan. We really couldn’t come to an agreement because they wanted to break apart our organization. That wouldn’t be possible, so they had to go visit the refugee camps, where the decision of the people was firm and strongly felt. They also wanted to be producing what they were eating and consuming. Supposedly, when they would first arrive, they were going to need food from the support of churches and all of that, but the people were ready to work and highly capable.
Luis Santos met up with us, the repatriation committee, and he told us, “Think about it. You might be taking the people back there to be massacred. Why don’t you take the strongest ones back and leave the weakest ones here?” But the elders and women, just like us, were determined to come back. And we knew the solidarity would be accompanying us. Luis Santos advised us to go forward with the repatriation cautiously because he saw a threat, danger, in this war situation.
Finally, we made the decision and started our way back. UNHCR saw that we were unstoppable, so they had to give us the green light and help us with conditions for the movement, which was large—4,500 people.
It was a very difficult situation, with no food, no medicine, and no communication. But that us how we went, only with coordination among 10 families. We lost communication on the way, and there was no way to communicate from one point to another. And that is how we got to La Vueltas. We had a series of problems on the way. We slept in El Poy, under the buses and some inside them. And we woke up at 4am because Coronel Majano came to meet with the repatriation committee, and he told us we would have to walk at night. We resisted, and Monsignor Urioste told us that the decision of those who were going—of their compatriots, of their representation—should be respected. So, he intervened there, and that’s why we stayed in El Poy, since we considered it to be dangerous to walk at night.
And so, with everyone in place, we took into consideration everyone who raised their hands to make the decision for those going to Guarjila. They raised their hands and said let’s go. Just like those in Las Vueltas, in Santa Marta, and Copapayo, I believe it was the right decision, because now we are enjoying it. The elders (the few that are left)—those of us who know the story—enjoy the result and the communitarian living that these communities have. It was definitely the right decision and we do not regret. Had anyone regretted it, one could have easily gone back to the refugee camp just over the mountains, since there were still people there.

So, that was proof that the people came here with the will to fight obstacles, the will to work, and the will to survive. And the church here also gave us support; the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the National University and other universities, and the solidarity, which was right away was present! They allowed the world to see us. Even though we were visible, we still had to be careful because there was a war, and there could still be massive victims, a massive massacre. So, even with the airplanes and the military (that isn’t to say there weren’t cases), things were really good, quite solid. That was the most important element.