His Children Remember
At my first formal session with Tío Chus on November 28, 2015, before I could even start reading the questionnaire, Tío Chus begins to share memories about Papa Felix’s many violent encounters with authorities:
Tío Chus recalls a time when the persecutions seemed endless. He was around eight years-old in 1937 when these events took place and Papa Felix and Eve were still together. Time and time again his mother Eve would pay the police “hush” money hoping to avoid a search of their home for Panameño. But when he was found, he would be jailed and then she would have to pay the officers to allow her to bring him food. Tío Chus said, “Lo levantaban a las cuatro de la mañana, cuando lo agarraban. Lo llevaban a la bartolina, lo desnudaban y lo sentaban…en volcancitos de arena, a esa hora, con frio…y unos judiciales bañándolo con agua helada, ¡ Helada![29] (They would come for him at 4 am in the morning. They would take him to the local jail, they would undress him and make him sit on mounds of sand, and at that time in the morning, they would throw cold water on him. Cold!)Sufrió él…le dieron…la espalda, lo vieras visto…lo golpeaban con el cordón de la luz. [Quien lo golpeaba?] La guardia, la policía, los judiciales…todo los relacionados en contra de él. Y lo agarraban, y le pegaban, y lo mandaban casi desnudo para Honduras, Guatemala…el día siguiente…ya estaba en la casa, y haciendo la carta al Presidente Martínez. Le escribía: ‘Señor Presidente, tengo el gusto de saludarlo. Ayer me mando usted a la frontera pues ahora estoy aquí adentro de mi tierra. Porque me saco usted de mi tierra’…y seguía metido [en la lucha], escondiéndose que no lo agarraran.[28]
(He suffered…they beat him…his back, you should have seen him…they would hit him with the electric light cord. [Who hit him?] The guards, the police, the officials…all those against him. And they use to take him, and beat him, and they use to send him half naked to Honduras, Guatemala…the next day…he was back in the house and writing a letter to President Martínez. He would write: ‘Dear President, I have the pleasure of greeting you. Yesterday you sent me to the border and today I’m back in my country. Why would you deport me from my country? …and yet he stayed [in the struggle], hiding so they could not find him.)
This is also around the time when Tío Chus and his half-brother, two years older than him, spent time with Papa Felix at the finca (property) in Mejicanos, where Mama Goya lived. They would follow him around town, even to apparently Panameño’s other girlfriends’ homes, and admits having issues with some of Papa Felix’s parenting. Like when his brother wet the bed and Papa Felix would make him undress to whip him with a belt. There was even more questionable parenting, as Papa Felix began to recruit Eve’s oldest daughter. Abuelita Letty remembers her half-sister would not even entertain the idea, more so knowing that one of the female Communist leaders had been tortured and killed. “Ella era del mismo pensamiento de ellos [comunismo], pero la mataron, la hicieron pedazos. (She had the same ideology as them [communism], but they killed her, they cut her up.)
Although the threat of the military, spies, and neighbors, even family members denouncing one another hovered over their daily lives, Salvadorans continued to push forward. Mármol describes a dismal existence after his time in jail. His family was miserable, his friends avoided him, and the Party was in constant turmoil. The police harassed him at work and made it difficult to find a job in order to sustain his family. Even more painful was experiencing the divisions within the Communist Party. The new more bourgeois recruits appeared to be repeating Martinez’s anticommunist propaganda and undermining the political work and social developments that had paved the way thus far. About this situation Mármol said, “To throw all the blame on the communist leaders who did not make a successful insurrection was and continues to be a prejudiced point of view, proper to reactionary or petty-bourgeois mentalities, to intellectuals isolated from reality who, after the events, come up with the most intelligent analyses in the world that don’t serve anyone to take a step forward.”[30]
To Mármol’s point, solely blaming La Matanza on the Communists was to overlook the various mechanisms working against the people, including the growing military relations between Europe and El Salvador, and the influence this had over its domestic policies. During the timeframe between 1934 to 1939, General Martínez was combatting coups repeatedly, and facing national and local opposition mostly from others in the military. In 1936, General Martínez was sending Salvadoran officers to train in Italy and Germany, fortifying his Pro-Axis alliance. Trading coffee for guns, and even appointing a German, General Eberhardt Bohnstedt, as director of the Escuala Militar to replace “Colonel Ernesto Bara, of French descent and a veteran of French campaigns in World War I.”[31] He eventually would have to break ties with Germany in order to align with the United States based on WWII and pressure from officers who were experiencing the “armament shortages”, and waiting in the wings to sell arms was the United States. “The Germans in the officers’ school were replaced with personnel from the United States, and German-owned properties throughout the country were expropriated.”[32]
Under Martínez the economy still benefitted mostly the elite, especially the landowners. However, some of his policies did begin to create jobs, especially when his regime stopped paying the foreign debt, which created a chain reaction of economic benefits, and thus generating employment. There were families in the cities, such as Mármol’s family that were able to once again find work. Mármol once again began to make a good living as a shoemaker, his wife found a job and his sister had a successful cheese business.[33] Panameño began a hair product line around this time to supplement his shoe business. Tío Chus remembers the hair product being sold in pretty bottles from Vaseline bought in Mexico and Abuelita Letty has a similar description of the product:
But all this was short lived. As WWII progressed, the country began to experience the decline in international trade, especially the importing of raw materials necessary to keep working. Unemployment grew to 20 percent in El Salvador due to the decline of exports to Europe.[35] The Communist Party spent most of its time managing internal strife, and thus began the division of the party. The alienation of the older comrades in the Communist Party persisted leaving them out of any kind of organizing. By the late ‘30s, the party split into three factions. Mármol saw the strife as counterproductive, and so he looked for other opportunities to support the struggle.…en ese tiempo se vendían los galones de vaselina, como la que se le hecha a los niños…que no lleva perfumes ni nada. Él mandaba a traer los toneles [de vaselina], desde yo no sé si de Alemania o aquí [U.S.] …y sus clientes eran los barberos…Mando hacer las cajitas porque no había de metal, ha si grandecitas [gestures size with fingers] …le hecho perfume…y mira, se ponía a rebatirla a si y claro que ya olía…Y empezó irlas a ofrecer a los barberos, y esos eran sus clientes.[34]
(…in those days Vaseline was sold by the gallon, like the one you use for children…that are not perfumed or anything. He used to order the barrels, from who knows where if from Germany or here [United States] …and his clients were the barbers…He had the containers made because there were none made from metal, like this big [gestures size with fingers] …he added perfume…and look, he would mix it like this and so of course it had a scent…And so he began to offer the barbers [the hair product] and those were his clients.)
Under General Martínez’s political program Pro-Patria, the “Salvadoran Social Reconstruction” plan aimed at providing workers with alternative programs. Although the motivation for these programs were suspicious, workers had very little alternatives of making a living. Mármol mentions attending their first meeting knowing it was a “maneuver by the regime designed to broaden their base and keep the workers’ movement under control, on behalf of the dominant classes.”[36] Despite the intentions of the government for social control, Mármol mentions he “got comrades Porfirio Huiza, Ismael Hernández and Felix Panameño together so we could adopt a common position with regard to the newborn organism.”[37] At the meeting it was clear to him that the majority of the shoemakers were against General Martínez’s crafty proposal to have them work in Panama. They knew immigrating to neighboring countries for work was a disruptive practice felt hardest on them and their families. So Mármol took the initiative to denounce the proposal and presented a new proposal for an independent guild. His outburst and defiant proposal caused Panameño to warn him. Mármol recalls Panameño “was worried and said we shouldn’t talk more, that we were going to get the fucking over of the century.”[38] Despite the reminder, Mármol pressed for The National Alliance of Shoemakers that included a cooperative to assist the poorest shoemakers. The idea was well received by the majority of the workers and surprisingly by General Martínez, whose administration provided funds to start their work.
The Market Space
During the organization of the shoemakers’ Alliance, Felix Panameño’s mother, Mama Goya died, and he separated permanently from Eve as well. They would now enter the 1940s separated; Panameño continued his political activities and Eve continued to manage her clothing stall at the Central Market. While the children saw less of their father, they would now need to play a more active role helping their mother support the business. For Eve, the market place was central in her life; it remained constant while the world around her did not. She depended on the Central Market for her family’s livelihood as all the women vendors inside and outside the markets did virtually 24/7. It is here where Abuelita Letty established herself as a meat vendor at the young age of fourteen, and as it was for Felix and Eve, the location where Abuelita Letty would eventually meet her future husband.
Felix and Eve both left the house at 12 Calle Poniente in Barrio El Calvario. Felix Panameño made his permanent residence at a house on “calle” Mejicanos in the city of Mejicanos, where the Panameño family had been established for over ten years or more.
Abuelita Letty and Tío Chus continued to visit with their father from time to time, and often played with their half-brothers and sisters. At around the age of twelve or so, Tío Chus recalls how his father would fill his and his half-brother’s time with grammar lessons. Papa Felix would go out and buy things he needed to make shoes, and upon his arrival they reluctantly had to recite, “La gramática Española es la que nos enseña hablar y la que nos da entender en forma correcta…”[39] (Spanish grammar is the one that teaches us to speak and gives us the correct understanding…) Tío Chus also remembers witnessing when the doctors and lawyers came to the house for meetings, and they would quickly be sent to bed.
Eve moved her children, Abuelita Letty, Tío Chus, and their two sisters near Barrio El Calvario to el meson Dardeno (also known as Chiquero) located in front of the fruit market. “Mesones” were urban dwelling units for the working class, and an indication that these were financially harder times for them. Abuelita Letty painfully recalls, when her mother after a full day’s work at the market would take her on long treks to make extra cash when she was only ten years old.
Eve was indeed a hard worker and an exceptionally strong woman. She was born in Metapan in 1901. Her parents were Mercedes and Joaquin Castro. Eve’s story was told to me by Abuelita Letty during one of our informal sessions. She told me the story about her older half-sister. There was a time when Eve worked for a Nicaraguan family as a domestic worker. It was there that a romantic relation between her and the son in the family began, resulting in her pregnancy. Knowing that the common practice in this situation was for the upper class to become responsible for the child, Eve feared being separated from her child and decided to leave Metapan for the capital without telling anyone about her condition. In San Salvador, Eve raised her daughter as a single mother working at the Central Market until she met Felix Panameño. Unbeknownst to her, the Nicaraguan family found out about the child and was searching for them. For Eve, this turn of events ended in her favor. The young man decided to pay for his daughter’s private school education and maintain a “visiting” relationship with her. This luxury of course was not within a shoemaker’s budget, and so Panameño’s three children with Eve attended their local schools. Tío Chus was sent to be educated locally, and Abuelita Letty finished her education around the age of fourteen.Ella era la que trabajaba porque tenía mucha clientela de mercadería…Ella daba fiado e iba después a cobrarles. Hasta a mí me llevaba en la noche hasta Santa Tecla. Yo con un canasto aquí y ella otro… eran las diez de la noche y estaban esperando las clientas.[40]
(She was the one that worked because she had a lot of clients…She gave credit and would later collect. She would even take me at night to Santa Tecla. I would carry a basket here and her another…it was ten at night and her clients would be waiting for her.)
The meson they went to live in after Eve separated from Papa Felix was located near the Central Market. With the eldest daughter in private school, Eve depended heavily on her two daughters to make ends meet. When Abuelita Letty reached her mid-teens, she joined her mother and sister as a market vendor. While Eve remained at the Central Market selling clothing items, my grandmother (Abuelita Letty) and her sister sold meat at el Cuartel (Military Headquarters), also known as el Cuartel Quemado (Burned Military Headquarters). She remembers her sister helped her purchase the meat, and then guided her through the selling process, and also recalls that particular market was surrounded by armed soldiers.
The Central Market, where her mother Eve had her stall, was divided in three sections: 1. Puestos exteriors (exterior stalls), 2. Puestos sencillos – interiores (interior-plain stalls) 3. Ventas ambulantes (street vendor stalls). The government charged $90 colones a month for exterior stalls, and $.03 per day for stalls in the other two locations.[41] According to Abuelita Letty, before the fire in 1961 her mother had a stall inside the market, but after the fire, they negotiated a stall (champa) outside from another merchant. She remembers her mother, Eve, buying the stall from a local merchant and exchanging papers for legitimacy, and soon after Abuelita Letty also bought a champa (stall) for herself close to her mother’s stall for $300 colones from the same merchant. As family members have explained, as a market vendor you worked for yourself but the working conditions were rough and at times even dangerous, for example, physical altercations between vendors. At the same time, you built a strong kinship with trusted vendors, and they became part of the whole experience.
After the 1950s, with the country still under military dictatorships, authorities responded to the growth of the city and the local merchants by implementing new projects. Social order was paramount to military dictators, which translated into draconian laws. One example was having the local police reinforce public ordinance against street vendors. [42] My mother (see figure 1) shared how in the early 1960s, Abuelita Letty and Eve, as well as other market vendors, cooperated with ambulantes (street vendors) against police to help them avoid jail time, fines or worse-having their merchandise confiscated. They would gesture to each other when police advanced, giving the ambulantes time to hand over their goods to trusted vendors. There was a young, local girl who relied on this informal activity for survival and had established this trusted relationship with Abuelita Letty and Eve. They would often hide her merchandise for her, while she either ran away or dealt with the police.
Persecuted street vendor Adilia Dinora García has shared her testimony with Melgar Morán, who studied the markets and vendors of El Salvador. She recounts her experience and that of others who were less fortunate than her:
Melgar Morán explains that during this time in the 1960s very few, if any, vendor association or organizations existed. However, the “Fraternidad de Mujeres Salvadoreñas” (Fraternity of Salvadoran Women) extended their work to help legitimize the vendors and mobilize them under a women’s movement. While market and street vendors are removed from a formal organizational structure, I would add that to some extent informal cooperation between market and street vendors existed as demonstrated by Abuelita Letty’s agreement with the young street vendor.... In times of the PCN just knowing you were a vendor and they already knew you, chas! they threw you in the ambulance (patrol), at that time I was a young girl, about fourteen years of age and walked with three pairs of socks, two tucked here (at the waist) and another in the hand, without an apron when the ambulance said, rum! I would throw on the other pair of socks and I would act as if nothing to avoid being apprehended" "before we couldn’t even wear our aprons, because at the time of the PCN, well I was small, when the vendors would be thrown to the knolls and the hills. They would take their money, their aprons and even shoes (...) there it is that with children and all would walk back, and if they liked you, among all of them you were taken...[43]
During these years, Abuelita Letty, as did Tío Chus, remained in contact with Papa Felix. She recalls her father going to jail several times in El Salvador, and was exiled and sent to prison on the Islands of Honduras, later ending up in Guatemala. Tío Chus said that when his sisters were in their teens they would also take food to their father at the local police station, a task Tío Chus said they negotiated by “asiéndoles ojitos a los babosos de los policías” (making flirty eyes with the dumb policemen). In the interviews I conducted, both Abuelita Letty and Tío Chus mentioned that in Mejicanos, Papa Felix fought for running water on behalf of its residents, and that he was often nominated for mayor, but never accepted. He would also loan money at $.10 interest and held talks and lessons on communism for young adults in the community.
But it was one of Abuelita Letty’s last memories of her father around 1945 that she shared with me both at a formal and informal session, that best described her relationship with her father. She was around fourteen when Papa Felix walked her to the Apollo movie theatre, which she joyfully remembers was her favorite pastime. He paid for her movie ticket and instructed her to wait for him there once the movie finished. He would be back to pick her up. She does not remember the movie, but remembers that when she walked out of the movie theatre to wait for her father, he was not there. Instead, she heard the roar of a crowd as a mass demonstration moved through the streets where she was.
Abuelita Letty loved her father, despite his absence in her life. She says this with more disappointment than joy. While Tío Chus takes a lot more pride in how he felt for his father, he also expresses the pain of his absence and how family members including his sisters misunderstood his political work. When she left for the United States, she left her stall at the market to her older sister and completely disconnected from her father.Cuando oímos la bulla, mi papa iba en frente con un montón de obreros y todo…Dijeron que iban a salir en manifestación, no hacer revolu [revolución] si no que ha…una manifestación del derecho…mi papa no le paso nada. Y él siguió.[44]
(When we heard the noise, I saw my father in front with many laborers and everything…They had said they were going to march, it was not a revolution, it was a human rights march. Nothing happened to my father. He kept going.)
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- New Era of Terror Claudia Portillo