Another worst war story

*This post was written on Wednesday night.

There are two types of people in El Salvador: People who talk openly about the war and people who don’t talk about it at all.

When someone gets on the topic of the war, I always ask him or her to only share with me what they’re comfortable talking about. I would never want someone to relive horrifying memories just for my sake. However, in my experience, the people who willingly bring up the war are the ones who are most definitely comfortable talking about it, even if it is in a detached and factual manner.

I really do want to know about what happened here. I do. But every time I hear a war story I think, “That has got to be the worst one.” Beheadings. Bombings. Execution. Rape. Children, women, the young and the old. I will never be able to understand what these individuals are truly thinking and feeling as they speak about their passed loved ones. Many people have buried their pain so deep down that they don’t seem to feel anything at all.

I’m at odds with this. I mean, how do you respond to a man who casually discusses driving a pregnant woman to her execution? Or when in passing you hear about how your host mom found the remains of her 14-year-old sister dumped on the street? How do you let people share these extremely personal and tragic experiences with you when you yourself haven’t been desensitized to war?

It’s been a heavy experience. It’s pulled me outside of myself.

Tonight I found out from my host dad that a very close friend of mine lost two young daughters when a bomb hit her house during the war. My friend has never shared this with me, and I might have gone on never knowing if my host dad hadn’t added it to the conversation.

At first I felt stunned. My friend is an amazingly cheerful woman. How could she have suffered this loss and still be so unfailingly hopeful? It doesn’t make sense. She has talked about the war with me during the year and a half that I've spent time with her, but she's kept the loss of her daughters to herself. I felt more affected by this omission than by all the revolting recounts of torture or murder that others have so freely given up.

I started tearing up, but I thought it would pass. My host mom called me into the kitchen to make up a plate of platanos con crema, and I just lost it. It was awkward. I could sense that she felt weird by me crying and she just started piling platanos on my plate to make me feel better. I tried to laugh it off, like when I broke down crying to my first host family during my first weeks in-country or when I cried all over the Director of PeaceCorps. “Sorry for crying! I just love your platanos so much!”

We ate our platanos outside and I told her the real reason for the waterworks. She just kind of stared at me like it was very strange that I should cry for children I have never met, or for a woman I’ve only known for a short amount of time. I guess it would seem a little bizarre to her, given that her tears have long dried up for the loved ones she lost.

The topic disappeared along with our platanos. I’m left here feeling… sad? Unsettled? I really don’t know. In a way I’m thankful I feel anything, even if I can’t explain it.

I have no part in this

I was an idiot if I thought hiding out in my house on election day would excuse me from intense political conversations.

PC is strictly, very seriously, 100% apolitical. You kinda have to be in a country that's very polarized. Walk around in a red t-shirt and you could lose (or gain) all the support of your community. Election time has turned up the political tension, and unfortunately I've been subjected to some very politicized debates and conversations. Now that there's going to be a run off election in March, I have to sit quietly and nod as more and more people tell me how their party will save the country.

Today I had two very different conversations with two very important women in my life. They couldn't have more different political views, and that's what made it so interesting to listen to them. Both women are mild mannered, but they are die-hard supporters of their chosen party. I honestly never would have guessed it until today when each woman decided to share their positions with me, whether I wanted to hear it or not.

I won't get into the positions of FLMN or Arena, and I won't give you a laundry list of the ridiculous sweeping promises they both made leading up to election day. FLMN is left, Arena is right. Google can tell you the rest.

What is more interesting to me is why these women support the side they do. The first woman is dirt poor. Literally, her house is made of mud and bamboo. Her husband passed away recently, and with him went the small amount of income the family depended on. She's an illiterate small business owner, but it's hard work and she's barely making it. She supports FLMN because she knows that with a little push she could get herself above the worst of poverty and her kids could know a better life. She's suffered in poverty all her life and supports the party that would give free school uniforms to her children and subsidios for her home.

The second woman is very devote. She believes that the lord God our savior provides her with three square meals a day, the clothes on her back, and her good, solid home. He provides for her- not the government. Those who would have the government support them are Godless and/or lazy.

Now, I've been known to throw shade on the Evangelical church. I simply don't agree with what they preach. So imagine my dismay at hearing this woman I care for very much disregard the backbreaking work her husband does to harvest the corn and beans she eats, the plentiful remezas she receives from her children in the US, and the substantial land she inherited from her father. All because God. The guy who frowns on women in pants.

But then the conversation changed. She started talking about the war. It's a very sensitive topic around here, especially because I live in northern Morazan where it all began and where the most people were killed. She told me stories that would have given me nightmares if only I hadn't heard such terrible, terrible stories before from other Salvadorans. The worst was a story about when her brother was taken in the middle of the night from his bed, had every single tooth pulled out, then was forced to lie face down in the street next to his father as they were pumped full of bullets from a machine gun. That happened in front of my house 30 years ago.

She remembers what frente meant back then, and no amount of campaigning will ever help her to forget. It pains her to see her nephews and nieces wear red to support the left. "They don't know what it's like to suffer. I do. I'm always suffering."

So there you have it. Two women who suffer. One sees the front runner FLMN as a solution to her pain, the other sees it as the source.

This is hardly the last political conversation I will have here in El Salvador. I know it isn't because my community is completely polarized and everyone suspects the other of misleading me. They all think they have the responsibility to enlighten me, even though I tell them time and time again that I have no part in this. I cannot care either way. 

And after hearing these two women's stories I don't think I would choose a side, even if I could.