This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Refuge and Return : Stories of a Resettled Community in El Salvador Main Menu Refuge and Return: An Introduction The History of Our Community Oral Histories Archive of Photographs Contributors

Jon Cortina offering Mass in Guarjila, 1999

16976

This page has tags:

This page is referenced by:

Suyapa Serrano Cruz

To view the transcription and its translation as subtitles, click on "CC" and select Spanish or English.
In this oral history, Suyapa Serrano Cruz describes her experiences in the early 1980s during the Salvadoran civil war. Suyapa is a former war refugee and survivor of wartime violence. She recalls how her family was forced to hide in the mountains and move from place to place to seek refuge from Salvadoran military operations in northern El Salvador. She explains that two of her sisters disappeared and her father was killed during this time. She describes her attempt to cross the Sumpul River during the Guinda de Mayo, a Salvadoran military operation that involved civilian massacres. She explains that she remained in El Salvador until 1985 when she took refuge in the refugee camps in Mesa Grande in Honduras. After a year and a half in Mesa Grande, she and her mother returned to El Salvador with the hope of reuniting with family members and finding her two missing sisters. She also shares her memories of the violence she and her family experienced as a teenager when soldiers came to their home in Santa Anita, El Salvador. Finally, she speaks of the ongoing search for her missing sisters. She discusses Fr. Jon Cortina’s encouragement and support for their search for her daughters, the time she served as a witness for the case before authorities after the 1992 Peace Accords, and her mother’s hope for their reappearance until she died.
My name is Suyapa Serrano Cruz. I belong to San Antonio de la Cruz, in the department of Chalatenango, but now I live here, in Guarjila, part of a repopulation that happened 28 years ago.
I understand the purpose of this interview is to remember the stories we lived in the war. It was very difficult. We were originally from Santa Anita, which belongs to San Antonio de la Cruz, a hamlet. We had to leave our places of origin because of the conflict. At that time, I was 18 years old. Also, at that time, the armed forces persecuted and killed many people. During that time, my father and a brother were killed. My sisters disappeared on June 2, 1982. There was an armed forces operation in the area in May. We had to spend many days taking refuge in the mountains, hiding from them so that they would not find us.
At the time, my mom was carrying a small girl and they hurt her leg. That’s when my sisters, Herlinda and Ernestina, disappeared as well, during this same guinda de mayo. The operation took place when we were still living in our houses. They killed a lot of people. I lost a brother-in-law. I was captured; they raped me. There was a bigger operation after that. Lots of people died.
After that, my dad said, “We are going to have to go to Honduras.” Then, my mother replied, “Yes, because my daughters disappeared, today he is thinking about leaving for Honduras.” But he still stayed another two years. Fleeing, we didn’t have a house, just some plastic covers to cover ourselves. There was a lot of rain. Almost all the houses had already burned, and there were no houses, so people collected some branches and made a few makeshift ranches with plastic covers when there were any, and if not, then, however one could do it, even with tiles from some other houses. Then my dad decided he was going to Honduras. But a military operation happened, and in that operation, my dad died.
The planes had bombed where my father, and a seven-month-old boy, who was my nephew, died. After the incident, my mother said, “Your dad died, and without him, what are we going to do? Life is sorrowful.” Rosa was a little girl who was my little sister. Oscar was little, and I also had a baby of six months. My husband and I did not want to go to the refugee camps of Mesa Grande. My husband said, “We are from this country, and we are going to suffer more over there because we suffer here, but this is our country.” My mom said, “I'm going because my children are small.
She started looking for a way to leave. Then when we went to the border. Another military operation happened, so we came back to a place we used to call Santa Anita, and we stayed a couple of months there. Up until 1985, we were in the same area. After that, there was an operation that lasted three months, and we managed to leave looking for refuge in Honduras, heading to a place named Peña Blanca.
In Peña Blanca, Honduras, they sent us back to El Salvador because there were many Honduran soldiers. Then we arrived at a place known as Platamera. From there, they arranged for us to go to Talpujas, Honduras, to reach La Virtud.
In Las Talpujas, many Honduran soldiers arrived. We thought they were going to kill us, and we could not do anything because we were in Honduran territory. But behind the soldiers a commission of internationals were coming to take us to La Virtud, where they only had us for one day and from there they took us to the shelter of Mesa Grande in 1985. We were only in Mesa Grande for a year and a half.

We began to organize with the intention of returning to our country. We knew there was a war. But two of my brothers had still remained. We decided to return to maybe see them again. We started to organize. Eventually, we returned to repopulate here, Guarjila. Unfortunately, when we returned to Guarjila there was only one brother. The other had already been killed, Pichoncito. He was 16 years old. It was very hard to come to realize that almost the whole family was gone. But my mother always had hope. She said, “I must find my daughters, God willing. God did not die because we arrived in El Salvador. Maybe one day, with God’s help, we will find them.”
Eventually, after we came back from Mesa Grande, they didn’t come back. They stayed in camps with the guerrillas, with the compas. I still remember that there is one boy in Arcatao whose mother, father, and his other two brothers were all killed. Only three brothers were left, and then the other two brothers died, and only one from that family was left. There are many disastrous cases that we became aware of. For me, this is when one day, Father Jon Cortina told me, “Today you have the opportunity to present your case. The Peace Accords and the Truth Commission happened. It will be the beginning of a big fight, but it is a worthy effort for you to be able to find and see your daughter.” Here in Guarjila, another big struggle began: the search for my sisters. She endured difficult times. We haven’t been able to locate them. It’s difficult for me because my mom had already died. My older sister had died. We were twelve siblings. This war left us in pieces. So many memories of suffering, but the fight is not dead. We still exist, and we still have the strength to recount what we went through.
For me, it was difficult when the operation of the Guinda de Mayo happened, which began on May 28th. A lot of people from Santa Anita, Sumpul, and Los Amates began to arrive. There a lot of people gathered: wounded, old people, young people. After we had arrived in Los Amates, a big shooting occurred, and people tried to return, but the Sumpul River was deep. There was a boat carrying lots of children. It overturned. The kids drowned. The boat kept going. The people were crossing as they could. There were also wounded people who were taken in a hammock, but when the shooting started, the wounded remained on the other side of the river because no one could get the wounded across.

I remember that episode. Along with the child I had, I dragged holding onto the shoulder of a much older man. But when the water started to take him away, I had to let go of him, and I held onto another man. And the other man—I do not know if he crossed over or drowned. But in that river, a lot of people drowned. Many stayed on the other side, and those who could, would cross. We arrived at a ravine that was called the Acapate creek. There, the next day, we saw the aftermath of the ambush. There was a grove of avocado and mango trees, and the place was full of dead people: children, adults, everyone.
That event–every time I go to Los Amates I remember many things because that was the last place we were together, and we could not return. They died in the river; on the other side of the river. Many people did not return. Entire families died in that guinda de mayo, it was a very big operation. There were families where there were only two children left, some of the children got away because they left other people behind. As we passed through the creeks and ravines and all, some children were lost and then the children died. Others were already dying of hunger.
I remember when we arrived at one place known as Los Albertos. There, three children came, and those three children grew up to become boys. Those were difficult times and memories. Even though it has been a long time, the wounds are always hurting because we are human beings and it is hard to forget what one has lived.
At that time, I was young. I remember that I went to work with an uncle in San Salvador. I had been there for about five months and I came back. I was in San Salvador when Archbishop Romero died, when he was killed. When I returned, we returned to the Guayabo dam on the Ilobasco side. There were checkpoints, and many people had already been captured and killed. When I went to Santa Anita, a military man said to me, I would not recommend that you go there because those places are very ugly. They are from the UTC. The UTC was the organization that was forming at the time. They also told me–that people were going to–that many people had already left, and those who do not leave are going to die.
But my mom and dad lived in that place—Santa Anita. I decided to return. When I returned, I felt happy when I arrived, and I found my father and my mother. The next day after we arrived, in front of our house, there was a road—back then, the roads weren’t for cars but for walking. All these people were going to an activity, so I asked my dad, “Where are these people going?” “It’s for a party–for a meeting,” he answered. He said that it was for a meeting that they have in Santa Anita down in the hamlet. I asked him what it was, and he answered that it was for the organizations that people were forming; they are groups of people. He also told me, “Today we are going to sleep in the mountains.” And I asked him, “Why are we going to sleep in the forest where there are so many mosquitoes?” He told me that they were already killing people; they arrive at the houses and kill them in the night. But I told him that I did not want to go to sleep in the mountains, that I wanted to stay at home with my mom.
He told me, “No, daughter, your mother stays with the children,” because she had four little children. There was still Tina and Herlinda. At that time, they were very small. We went to the mountain to sleep. But one couldn’t sleep because of all the sitting water and the mosquitos, and so one could not sleep. I was just thinking, “why did I come back from my uncle Alejandro’s place in San Salvador, only to come and suffer?” The next day I asked my mom why we were not going. “But,” she said “where are we going to live? We do not have money, and here at least we have a little bit of corn, beans,” she said, “and we are going to suffer instead, where we will not have anything,” my mother said. I told my mother that I was not going to go back to sleep in the mountains. But my mother said that if the soldiers came, they would kill us. But I asked her why she stayed. That same night I did not go to sleep in the bush. But the third night, yes, I did go to sleep in the mountains, and when we returned the next day, and my mom asked me to wash a bundle of clothes that are dirty, to go to wash it in the well.
When I returned from washing out of the well, I was tending the clothes on some wires in the house. That’s when the soldiers surrounded the house. They locked me in, and my mom and Tina and Herlinda. And my dad was with Enrique, Fernando and even Arnulfo—the three biggest men they had—who were out cutting rice. My mom gave them breakfast in the house and she sent me to wash. At that moment, a group of soldiers arrived. In the house, a boy named Adam had arrived. The day before, the soldiers had arrived at his father’s house and burned it to the ground. Their family had left for Honduras, fleeing. My dad was not going to leave the house.
So, when the soldiers arrive, they killed Adam in the house. Later, they killed another boy named Mariano, who was my brother-in-law, the husband of my older sister. After that, they locked me up, my mother—not Enrique, no—and Tina and Herlinda. They locked up just the four of us. As a young lady, I was very curious, looking through the cracks of the doors. I saw how they killed him: they left him minced.

And then they took me from inside the kitchen. My mom asked them, “where are you going to take her?” They said, “We are going to take away your daughter.” “Why are you going to take my daughter if she owes nothing?” my mom said to them. “She did not—she did not go with the guerrillas,” she told them. Then, the soldier claimed that I did “go with those terengos.” “She does not know about that, she has been in San Salvador with a brother of my husband,” she said. “Do not give us explanations, we are going to take her,” said the soldiers. Then my mother comes and says to them, “and where are you going to take her?” “Well, we’re going to take her where we are located.” The militia was based in Patamera. My mom told them, “you really want me to believe that you are going to take her? She is the only thing I have. This girl helps me to do our work,” she said, “she is the biggest one I still have here.”
“Well, you think that you will be stable all the time here if these places are going to be destroyed? Do not believe you will stay any longer if you don’t go now. You won’t be around to tell the story.” They came, and they took me out to another house. When I got to that other house, the soldier who dragged me down there said to me “you say you are a girl,” he told me, “have you not accompanied the terengos?” “I do not know what or who they are,” I said. “Well, we’re going to find out if you were with them or not!” the soldier said. “Look, all the girls who accompany them, they are theirs. You don’t have a husband, do you?”, the soldier said. “I do not know what that is,” I told him. It was true; I did not—I was a girl then, I did not know anything about it.
So, he comes and takes me to that house. There were quite a lot of soldiers gathered there. There were two women tied to trees at the edge of the house. There was a head of a 13-year-old kid who was killed on one of those trees. They blew his head off. His body was lying on the other side of the fence. The head was there with blood.
When the compas shot a few times, the soldiers go outside. The soldier did not realize there was a little room, and in the room, there was a little door like that, and he did not see that there was a window, like, for the back of the house. I escaped through that window. The soldiers were watching over the doors on the other side. I escaped. Come night time, there was a big storm that came. It got darker and when the storm hit, I returned to our house. When I arrived, my mom had already left where she had been left locked up. She had been left locked inside the kitchen. She was pregnant.
Tina and Herlinda who were the two girls—my sisters—they and my mom had gone from the kitchen to the other part of the house. The house was divided between the kitchen and the rest of the house. When I arrived, the pigs were eating the boy they had killed in our house. I said, “Mom, Mom,” as I knocked on the kitchen door because I knew she had been locked in there. My mother said, “daughter, I thought that they had killed you.” “No,” I replied. “Go,” she said. And so, I left the house to go up the hill, and there I saw a lot of blood. The body of another young man was lying there. When they were firing, that’s when they had killed that young man. I arrived at another hamlet, another valley where my dad was, and I told him, “Daddy, my mom is in the house, and they killed Don Toribio and they killed Señora Luria, Ofelia, and Carlitos.” I went to tell the other people about who had killed these people so they could be taken away the next night to be buried, further down where there were more people. My dad went back to look for people, he went to look for my mom, and from that point forward we never returned to the house.
When the Truth Commission was established, my mother submitted a case to the prosecutor’s office. It started with about five mothers who began looking for their kids. My mom arrived at the prosecutor’s office to put forward the case of my sisters and the rest of her children who had been disappeared. She was told by those at the office that they were not receiving documents after a vandalization situation. My mom answered them, “I do not come to look for vandalism, I come to submit the case of my daughters that disappeared during the war. “Why didn’t you come looking for them when they were disappeared?” “How would I have come to have look for my children at a time that was so difficult?” she replied. “I’m here now that the Truth Commission was established and after the Peace Accords.” They didn’t attend to her then.
Later, my mother, Father Jon, and Rafael–another young man who supported this organization—came to pressure them. Finally, they said, “Bring witnesses who can testify that your children disappeared.” She said, “Yes! We have witnesses. My daughter is one of the witnesses,” she said. “She was with her father when the girls disappeared.” They gave me an appointment and the first thing they asked was, “Ms. Suyapa Serrano, are you sure about what you’re going to say?” “Yes,” I told them, “I am certain.” “You know if you come to lie, you’ll get 30 years of prison?” (There, in the prison in Chalatenango). “Look,” I said, “I don’t come to lie. I don’t know if by telling the truth I can go to jail. I came to recount the events that happened when they took my sisters. But I did not come here to lie to you.” Finally, they stopped saying those things, and they took my testimony.
The person that I was interviewing with told me to “pray to God so that they could find my sisters because many young people were taken to other countries,” he said. “Well,” I said, “that’s what we hope for, that they will reappear someday, but we want you all to help us, too, because it’s the state and we are trying to do things the right way.” Our case went far. Father Jon would say, “Suyapa, maybe when your mother dies.” Our case was still in process in the courts and not well defined. My mother told me that she was in her last stages and that she didn’t know if she’d get to see her daughters. She said to me, “if you ever get to see my daughters again and you get the chance to speak with them, explain to them that my struggle was big, and my suffering was even bigger.”

My mother’s sugar was high. She would sweat, and her skin would break out. She would cry. As her children, it was difficult seeing my mother suffer. Her diabetes worsened. She died at 62 years old. My mom started to go blind. My mother said that if she ever saw her daughters again she wouldn’t be able to see them clearly. She would only have the memories of how they were, as young children. “If I ever get to touch their hands, then I would pass away happily,” she said. But, it’s been many years, and we can’t find them. We are still in the process. Hopefully, one day, they will reappear.