WEBVTT

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A long time ago, our ancestors came across with this color.

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They discovered it in the sage of a plant.

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They felt it was the color of their very essence.

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They called it \"xiuquilit\".

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Today, we call it \"indigo\".

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Chalchuapa. It is one of the most
ancient settlements in El Salvador.

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It was built 2,500 years ago

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by a Mayan civilization of complex knowledge and traditions.

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These are some of its remaining traces.

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Those hands were the first to extract
the sacred dye from the indigo plant.

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They cultivated our history,

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they spread the seed that would give color to our lands.

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Today, we continue extracting this blue essence,

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with the same respect that our ancestors did,

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and indigo continues to pulse through the veins of our territory.

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Indigo

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Well, what I just read is really hard to summarize,

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but it is a compilation

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of testimonies of women who were brutally attacked by the army,

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and by the... guerrillas, in the armed conflict,
in the civil war in El Salvador.

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I find it super symbolic the fact that there are twelve... twelve testimonies because we always say the \"twelve years of war\".

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This violence is something that has to be recognized,

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something that we have to know, something that...
has to reach the ears of all people of El Salvador.

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Reading the first stories, I felt pain...

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an enormous pain, but by the last
ones it became a tremendous fury.

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As a woman, as a person, as a human being.

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As a woman who was born in 1987,

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and having not suffered something physical like
what happened to any of these women,

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I can say that it is a wound that I carry with me and.

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Also, I believe that at the generational level we have to...
or we have to know how to see these wounds,

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recognize them, and be able to heal them.

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We are having this interview before we start filming.

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So, also for me it is...

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Before, when we were told about the project,

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I was aware that it required a lot of responsibility.

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But now... knowing names, knowing details, knowing...

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By creating the images from what we have read,

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the responsibility becomes even more intense.

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I believe that these stories have to be told without dampening the
horrific and without becoming sensationalist.

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Honoring... honoring survivors.

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And if you had any of these women in front of you,
what would you ask them?

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If I had...

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If I had one of these...

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If I had these women in front of me, all I would want to do is to hug them.

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Their testimonies are so powerful. So horrible.

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That, no, no... I just do not understand.

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And also I would thank them for their courage of...

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of being able to share their stories.

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I am Xiu.

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The spirit of indigo.

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We have decided to tell you two of the twelve testimonies.

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You will come to know the story of Neris and Rebeca

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through their own voices and through our recreations.

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The indigo will draw the destiny of our country,

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it will be the one which will mark the path of its people,

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its history and its wounds.

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I see my children, my people.

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My colors and my land.

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I recognize their ancestral knowledge,

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their growth through time.

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I watch them suffer,

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I approach to them, I cry with them,

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I vindicate them, and I accompany them.

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Dye yourselves with my color to heal your wounds.

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When the European invaders arrived in these lands,
they marveled at the indigo

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and with the different usages that our ancestors gave it:

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To paint clothes, utensils and architecture.

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When the colonization of these lands was completed,

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the inhabitants of this region dedicated
themselves to cultivate the indigo plant,

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since, in Europe, they longed to have our color blue.

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For three centuries, the life of our communities

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revolved around sowing, harvesting
and extracting the indigo dye,

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under the institutions of slavery and feudalism.

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Indigenous peoples and African slaves left their
work and their lives in the indigo fields

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that occupied most of our territory.

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In this state of production, women not only had to generate dye,

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care for, and maintain the communities,

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but, since then, their bodies were sexually exploited.

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When the colonies became independent from Spain,

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it was so important for the local creoles to maintain control of these gains,

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that the Salvadoran province separated
itself from the General Captaincy of Guatemala

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to keep the wealth of the \"blue gold.\"

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We could say, then,

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that indigo was the plant that defined our borders,

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that created what is now El Salvador.

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A few decades later,

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aniline was invented in Europe:
A synthetic blue dye.

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Then, our plant ceased to have
value on the other side of the ocean.

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But the lands and the bodies had to continue to be exploited.

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The creole elites needed to keep their wealth.

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Thus, the creole owners of our land

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decided that coffee would be the
crop that would sustain our economy.

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From that moment on, the country revolved around planting coffee.

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We faced the century of peasant uprisings and social movements,

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of massacres and military governments.

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And then, we reached the dawns of the civil war.

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A war that devastated our social fabric,

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whose violence wanted to eradicate our indigo blue essence.

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My name is Neris Gonzáles

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and I grew up in my hometown San Nicolas Lempa,

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where I was born on May 26, 1955.

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I was lucky to be born on the land
and on the hands of my grandmother.

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She was the midwife who welcomed me in this
world and removed my umbilical cord.

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Throughout all my childhood, she took care
of me with natural medicine,

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with what we had in the community.

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Another one of the advantages that I have
of having been born in this place

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is that it faces both the Chinchontepec
volcano and the Lempa River.

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Nowadays, I value them so much because they are the two powerful energies

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in which my hometown is covered.

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And yes, I grew up with natural medicine,

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natural food, harvested from chickens grown by my grandmother.

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My grandmother had... It is like she was \"the first ecologist.\"

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The ancestral ladies were the first ecologists,
because they took care of the land.

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That character of my grandmother has been what
has helped me throughout my life.

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The voice in our house was my grandmother\'s.
At home, there was no patriarchy.

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My father was not the boss, nor my mom.

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My grandmother was the one who gave orders in the house.

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And her love... She was not someone who would cuddle us,

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she did not give us hugs, we did not know about all that.

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Yet, for me, the best hug and the best cuddle
she gave me was to teach me how to be firm.

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Because when we were going to bring firewood

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and I could not tie the wood together,

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she used to say to me, \"Well, bitch, use your head!\"

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\"We are rich in creativity. We do have economic poverty
because those motherfuckers have us like that.

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But here, we are creative.\"

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Here, in my hometown, I grew up with my church.
It was a small church.

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In the 1960s and the 1970s, well,
my grandmother and I went to mass,

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which, at that time, was preached in Latin.

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The priest, I remember one day, that with his Bible in hand

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surprised us all:

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\"Well,\" he said, \"I will open my Bible and
that is how far I can go to deceive my people.

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Because I do not even know Latin well.

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I have learned about it a bit here and there,
and I also have been taught about it a bit here and there,

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but I feel I am responsible to say that I am lying.

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\" And then he added: \"Let us go,
let us go with Father Rutilio Grande.

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We have a program for the youth, for grassroots communities,

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we will have Bible reflections, we will have meetings

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with young people, with the women, with everyone,
because here we will integrate even the child.

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The theology of liberation comes as a whole\" he said,
\"because it is the reflection of the Bible.\"

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I got involved... Well, I got involved
with the liberation theology in 1976.

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Father Rutilio Grande began with the meetings
here at the Chinchontepec Volcano.

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That was when Father David had the first meetings.

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He was the one who took us to that first meeting

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and whom explained to us how we were
going to begin the evangelization process

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with Father Rutilio.

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And I did not even know... Father Rutilio was a very upright man.

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And then he said, \"Do not call me
Father Rutilio anymore, just call me Rutilio.\"

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And then, there, we began with Bible reflection classes,

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and with the training of catechists for grassroots communities.

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Then, Father Rutilio told us that we had to see the social problem,

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that that was called Bible reflection.

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\"But,\" he said \"We are going to get into trouble.

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Because waking up to reality, learning the teachings of the Bible,

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knowing how to interpret it and compare it, brings problems.

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But that is what we are for.

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So that we can wake up, take away the
blindfold that they have had on us for years.\"

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As a community, we came up with
two big issues: The health problem

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and the exploitation of the workers
in the farming of cotton and coffee.

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I had to go to examine the crop scale and literacy [of the workers].

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What we found was that no one could read or write,

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so my fellow catechist told me,

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\"Well, I am going to teach them to learn the letters,\"
she said, \"to write their names,

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and you take care of teaching them the numbers from 1 to 100.\"

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Because that was the main issue,
not knowing how to count from 1 to 100.

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I saw it as a social problem.

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The clerk, that was what they called him at that time,
came down with his notebook

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to write down the pounds [of crops]
that he peasants had harvested.

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They made a long line to weight the cotton from
6:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the afternoon.

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So then, they filled the scale with cotton.

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And they said “Oh, these are 50 pounds.”

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And I, I could not stand it. I said: Those are not 50 pounds.
Those are more than 100 pounds

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because the weight went all the way to the top.

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\"How do you know?,\" they asked me.
Well, because I can count.

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\"But how do you know?\"
Well, because I can read.

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\"And why are you speaking for them?,\" they asked me again.

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Because they do not know how to read or write.
So that is why I do it.

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\"And why do you care about them?, they kept asking me.
Well, I do care because it is my community.

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So I did not sit and stay quiet. That has always
been a big problem of mine.

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The repression began rising when the peasants

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already learned how to sign and how to count from 1 to 100.

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That was the key for the persecution to begin.

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it was not just one truck with guards that showed up by then,
it was two trucks full of guards ready to kick people.

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When they began persecuting me, it was after
they had killed Father Rutilio Grande.

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First, in 1977, they killed him to intimidate us.

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They killed Father Rutilio Grande, they massacred
him with the catechists... with his companions.

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Then, they began persecuting the catechists, the priests, the nuns,

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they killed Monsignor Romero.

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So, being a cathechist was a crime. They called us subversives.

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They said that we were subversives.

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I did not even know what that was: subversive.

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I did not even know what was a communist, either.

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I used to carry my bag with my Bible inside. Imagine!

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And that book is not subversive.
The Bible is not subversive. It is the Bible!

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We could not even sleep in our houses anymore.

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We had to go to the mountains to sleep, when the
National Guard started raiding us.

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My grandmother remembered the genocide, back in 1932.

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My grandmother went through so much when
they persecuted them and she said to me:

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“It is the same thing as when they persecuted
us back in 1932, when Farabundo Martí”

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she said to me. “When we were with the artisans, the dyers,”
she said to me, “and the leather grinders, all of that.”

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She told me \"They are going to kill you!

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already went through all that!,” my grandmother told me.

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Imagine that!

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And then I said... But I am not doing anything wrong...

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until they detained me.

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They started chasing me, chasing me, until they
detained me there in the San Vicente market.

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I was born in San Vicente.

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The whole family, really, the majority of the family

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organized themselves in the FMLN, especially
back in the 1970s, and more specifically in 1976.

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At that time, the Army baegan to raid San Vicente,
paryicularly the rural areas to destroy everything.

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We fled in 1978 to San Salvador.

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They were still organized there.

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My father left. He left the country
and my mother stayed with us.

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We were in a \"clandestine situation.\"

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We lived in hiding all the time.

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Now, I realized that from 1979 to 1989, in those ten years,

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we lived in about nineteenth different houses.

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In some of them, we lived for three months,
in another six months, in another one year.

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It varied depending on the level of security of the house.

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Our house was a safe house

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and had to have all the security conditions
for the people who gathered there,

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or the person who was, so to speak, being
sheltered as a member of the urban commandos.

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I can tell you that, from a very young age, I was aware
about the whole situation, the conditions, you know.

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About the participation of my parents, my aunts, my uncles.

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I knew everything perfectly. So, I did want to
participate and ask around if I could participate.

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But, my mother was always cautious.
My mother was the one who said

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\"Definitely not.\" She said that I was too young and so
she did not want to let me participate.

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To her, it was enough that the whole family was
involved for me and my brother to also be involved.

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What we had to do was study, she said.

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I was really careful,

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and they also guided me on how
to maintain our security measures.

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For me, it was always very traumatic to live like a nomad.

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I always left every house crying.

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And, well, to make a long story short, 1989 arrived

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and my mother sat my brother and I together and told us:

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“On Saturday, the military offensive “To-the-Top\" begins,

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and the party has decided that you both have to join the struggle.

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So, my brother, who knew about electronics, the party had decided
that he was going to participate in communications area.

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And, since I was studying my baccalaureate in nursing,

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they said that I was going to be designated
to the hospital to care for the wounded.

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The house that was my mother\'s
responsibility was more like logistic

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base to wait for the comrades and to provide them with food.

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I went with my mother to do all the logistics which involved the
preparation of the so- called \"party,\" also so-called \"wedding.\"

00:28:15.916 --> 00:28:19.916
My mother\'s house was more about logistics.

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The thing is that, several of the houses
fell into the hands of the army

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and one of those was the house
where my mother and I were living in.

00:28:32.333 --> 00:28:36.375
I remember that I was a little bit bored that day,

00:28:36.375 --> 00:28:41.666
so I went out and sat in a small alley in Prados de Venecia.

00:28:41.666 --> 00:28:46.333
When I look toward that alley, toward the street,

00:28:46.333 --> 00:28:53.791
suddenly I had in front of me, one on each side, two soldiers.

00:28:53.791 --> 00:28:57.458
I was surprised when I saw them so suddenly, right, there they were...

00:28:57.458 --> 00:29:00.166
Suddenly I saw them just there.

00:29:00.166 --> 00:29:03.666
And we started talking and in the calmest way:

00:29:03.666 --> 00:29:06.875
“Oh, yes. Hi. How are you? Ah, yes.”

00:29:06.875 --> 00:29:09.833
The most trivial questions.

00:29:10.625 --> 00:29:15.458
And suddenly one could not restrained
himself and he told the other,

00:29:15.458 --> 00:29:19.750
“It is too bad, right?” “Yes,” the other said.

00:29:19.750 --> 00:29:23.208
“So pretty, pity.” And so, just that.

00:29:23.208 --> 00:29:24.833
I said, \"Oh, no.\"

00:29:25.208 --> 00:29:28.458
In the end, they decided to take us out of the house.

00:29:41.125 --> 00:29:47.000
Well, at the Treasury Police, when
they took us into their headquarters,

00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:49.958
they handcuffed and blindfolded us.

00:29:51.166 --> 00:29:54.416
Then, they put my mother and me next to each other.

00:29:54.416 --> 00:29:57.125
I was wearing heels, which, by the way,

00:29:57.125 --> 00:30:02.666
I did not want to wear heels to go to that supposed \"party.\"

00:30:02.666 --> 00:30:08.000
But since they said it was \"party,\" my mother said
“Well, you will have to wear your little heels.”

00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:14.458
Then, those heels tortured me, because
I was standing all night in those heels.

00:30:14.458 --> 00:30:21.208
Being detained was horrifying because you are blindfolded,

00:30:21.208 --> 00:30:23.750
disoriented, you just do not know...

00:30:23.750 --> 00:30:29.125
You can only hear the screams of the
people who are being tortured.

00:30:29.125 --> 00:30:33.416
That happened throughout the whole
first night, because they did not let us sleep.

00:30:33.750 --> 00:30:36.750
They put me into the National Guard\'s office...

00:30:36.750 --> 00:30:39.833
There I... They took pictures of me. .
They took my information.

00:30:39.833 --> 00:30:45.833
They took away my ID. And because I was from
Tecoluca, they said I was a subversive.

00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:49.041
\"You are a subversive. You are
teaching the numbers from 1 to 100\"

00:30:49.041 --> 00:30:50.958
Imagine that!

00:30:50.958 --> 00:30:54.666
that time, I was about eight months pregnant.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.208
And that was when my pain began.

00:30:59.291 --> 00:31:05.541
At seven o\'clock in the morning, we were
transferred to the National Guard\'s office.

00:31:05.541 --> 00:31:12.791
Later a man arrived, a guard, and he put us against the wall.

00:31:12.791 --> 00:31:16.208
Handcuffed, right, and blindfolded.

00:31:16.208 --> 00:31:23.208
Then, all of a sudden, I felt that a hand
was grabbing my pubic area and,

00:31:23.208 --> 00:31:28.416
of course, it was so sudden... and in that area...

00:31:28.416 --> 00:31:35.083
If in a normal situation you get scared when being grabbed
by a man, let alone if they grab your pubic area.

00:31:35.083 --> 00:31:39.541
Then, I got scared, I ducked, I curled up, right.

00:31:39.541 --> 00:31:44.250
And when going through those motions,

00:31:45.250 --> 00:31:48.666
I hit, I think his arm. And he said,

00:31:48.666 --> 00:31:54.375
\"Oh... You, right now that you are alive, you do not want to enjoy this.

00:31:54.375 --> 00:31:58.416
You will see,\" he said. \"We are going to kill you.\"

00:31:58.416 --> 00:32:03.666
And then he grabbed again my pubic area pretty tight.

00:32:03.666 --> 00:32:13.875
With his other arm, he pushed me on my forehead
against the wall to expose my neck, and put a blade, a knife.

00:32:13.875 --> 00:32:18.875
I am not sure what it was, but it was a something sharp.
And he had it like this,

00:32:18.875 --> 00:32:22.458
and I felt the blade on my throat.

00:32:22.458 --> 00:32:28.583
And then, of course, I was feeling the edge of the blade on my throat,

00:32:28.583 --> 00:32:32.750
and also I was feeling his hand on my my pubic area, on my vulva.

00:32:32.750 --> 00:32:38.041
So that was terrifying. Really that was one...

00:32:38.041 --> 00:32:43.416
Practically it was a... A psychological rape, right.

00:32:43.416 --> 00:32:52.416
I was... I was feeling that, with the blade,
I was feeling that he was removing my entire vulva.

00:32:53.666 --> 00:32:58.708
Approximately around 2:00 in the afternoon, they put me
in the place that they used to call \"the slaughterhouse.”

00:32:58.708 --> 00:33:03.500
Then, they said “You are going to collaborate.”
They started torturing me, and demanding me to collaborate.

00:33:03.500 --> 00:33:09.958
They told me that I had to go point fingers and to point
out who the other subversive catechists were.

00:33:10.416 --> 00:33:14.333
They took me to where they were torturing
another person, and they started to...

00:33:14.375 --> 00:33:17.708
He was a student, I guess from college.

00:33:18.500 --> 00:33:24.416
And they started wrapping a blindfold on his
head until they covered his head completely.

00:33:24.416 --> 00:33:31.041
From there, they hung him from a beam by the head,

00:33:31.041 --> 00:33:35.583
and then they started punching him like a boxing bag.

00:33:35.791 --> 00:33:38.625
They kicked him in the testicles until he could no longer...

00:33:38.625 --> 00:33:42.958
He was only moving his...

00:33:42.958 --> 00:33:48.625
His breath was the only thing you could see and I was paralyzed!

00:33:48.625 --> 00:33:55.458
I was crying, and so they slapped me
around for me to watch what was going on.

00:33:55.458 --> 00:34:00.791
I did not want to watch, and they
slapped me around, they slapped me!

00:34:00.791 --> 00:34:04.208
I had to see what... That was my \"first lesson.\"

00:34:04.208 --> 00:34:07.375
This is what happens to the ones who do not want to collaborate...”

00:34:07.708 --> 00:34:10.125
They tied up his feet with his hands behind his back.

00:34:10.125 --> 00:34:14.625
They threw him into the wall trying to smash his head.

00:34:14.625 --> 00:34:18.125
How terrible! When he was finally dying,

00:34:18.875 --> 00:34:22.041
they chopped him with a machete here...

00:34:22.041 --> 00:34:27.291
Right here... In the middle of his stomach,
and they put my head in there and said:

00:34:27.291 --> 00:34:30.500
“You are going to drink your comrade’s blood.

00:34:30.500 --> 00:34:33.958
You do not want to collaborate...
This is what is going to happen to you!”

00:34:34.583 --> 00:34:36.458
I could not even speak...

00:34:37.625 --> 00:34:39.500
And so then the torture began...

00:34:42.083 --> 00:34:49.666
When they took me in, and put me in an isolation cell,

00:34:49.666 --> 00:34:54.541
I heard a man who started talking to me,

00:34:54.541 --> 00:34:56.458
and I recognized his voice.

00:34:56.458 --> 00:35:00.125
So he came and said: \"Nothing is going to happen to you,\" he said.

00:35:00.125 --> 00:35:03.041
“I just want to do a few things, but nothing
is going to happen to you.\"

00:35:03.416 --> 00:35:09.125
And then he began to roll up my dress from behind.

00:35:09.125 --> 00:35:12.791
And I started saying to him: \"Please do not do
anything to me, do not do anything to me.\"

00:35:12.791 --> 00:35:16.083
\"No, no nothing is going to happen to you, nothing will happen to you.\"

00:35:16.083 --> 00:35:25.208
And so then I started to cry, softly, but I did cry.

00:35:25.750 --> 00:35:30.166
And he came, and place me on a table, a desk, a table...

00:35:30.166 --> 00:35:34.250
I do not know. But I guess it was a desk, a table.

00:35:34.333 --> 00:35:40.125
He put me in a doggy-style sex position and turned off the lights.

00:35:40.333 --> 00:35:43.333
Then, he stood behind me,

00:35:44.291 --> 00:35:52.708
and put his hands between my legs, and
parted them with such force that I yelled.

00:35:52.708 --> 00:35:57.333
\"Ay!\" Because, I am telling you, I could not move them.

00:35:57.500 --> 00:36:00.500
That was such an excruciating pain.

00:36:00.500 --> 00:36:04.000
Then he started groping me.

00:36:04.666 --> 00:36:10.125
He did... what do people call it, a push.
A push is an attempt, right?

00:36:10.125 --> 00:36:14.791
And I, I do not know where I got the
strength to move my sored legs...

00:36:14.791 --> 00:36:19.791
I do not know, but I jumped, because I felt like it hurt infinitely.

00:36:20.208 --> 00:36:23.333
I jumped however I could, and screamed so loud.

00:36:23.333 --> 00:36:30.208
That scream came right out of the depths of my bowels.

00:36:30.208 --> 00:36:33.291
Immediately, someone knocked the door,
somebody knock on the door.

00:36:33.291 --> 00:36:39.666
He quickly came to me, pulled up my panties,
and, and lowered my dress.

00:36:39.666 --> 00:36:44.333
When he finished, he lit the light on, opened the door, and left.

00:36:45.750 --> 00:36:51.166
When he finished, he lit the light on, opened the door, and left.

00:36:51.166 --> 00:36:55.166
Then, after that, the door opened again, and somebody grabbed me by my arm, and pulled me out of the isolation cell,

00:36:55.166 --> 00:36:57.333
and took me to my cell.

00:36:58.500 --> 00:37:04.791
The torture began: They took my nails off, stick pins in me

00:37:04.791 --> 00:37:10.416
I felt that the baby was coming up here and I could
not do, do anything with the baby anymore.

00:37:10.458 --> 00:37:14.208
And then I... You feel like you have already died.

00:37:14.208 --> 00:37:18.208
The pain stretches over your body so much that one feels like frozen.

00:37:18.208 --> 00:37:21.625
The body no longer... You want to vomit and...

00:37:21.625 --> 00:37:24.750
The pain is so deep.

00:37:24.750 --> 00:37:28.583
It is not the kind of pain that you feel
when you get pinched, or cut, or hit.

00:37:28.583 --> 00:37:35.250
No! It is a pain that I cannot... I cannot
describe the dimensions of that pain.

00:37:36.500 --> 00:37:42.166
And then the constant rapes, day and night. And nobody care!

00:37:42.166 --> 00:37:48.166
They laughed. They said that the babies
had to die in their mother’s stomach,

00:37:48.166 --> 00:37:53.208
because it was easier to kill them in their stomach,
than to go all the way to the mountains to kill them.

00:37:53.625 --> 00:37:57.250
I was already in constant pain. I was almost fainting.

00:37:57.250 --> 00:38:00.750
But that bed... That metal bed... Ah!

00:38:00.750 --> 00:38:02.791
The electric shocks!

00:38:02.791 --> 00:38:10.958
Here... Below my breasts is where they put...
Where they put the rod to poke me.

00:38:10.958 --> 00:38:13.500
That was another kind of torture.

00:38:13.500 --> 00:38:17.250
In the breasts you feel an excrutiating pain.

00:38:17.250 --> 00:38:21.750
That was why they placed the
electric shocks on the tip of my nipple.

00:38:21.750 --> 00:38:25.000
And here on the sides of my breasts...

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:27.500
Imagine that pain!

00:38:27.500 --> 00:38:34.416
And the pain of the metal bed, where they stood and jumped
on me. It is like they stretched you all over.

00:38:34.416 --> 00:38:36.916
And that was where I could not resist anymore.

00:38:40.916 --> 00:38:45.666
After that incident... It was over... They did not bother me anymore.

00:38:45.666 --> 00:38:49.750
The Red Cross arrived and they took our statement.

00:38:49.750 --> 00:38:53.000
But they told us: “You are going to remain in our hands.

00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:58.750
You have to say that we treated you well, because
you are going to remain in our hands.\"

00:38:58.750 --> 00:39:04.041
Oh, I said they had treated us well! I was...
The Red Cross was leaving!

00:39:04.041 --> 00:39:07.500
I was in their hands.

00:39:07.500 --> 00:39:13.000
The point, really, was to survive, it was just to get out of there alive.

00:39:14.708 --> 00:39:19.958
When I was detained, I remembered when
Jesus Christ was hanging in the cross.

00:39:19.958 --> 00:39:23.708
He remained silent because He said “I am going to be killed
anyway, so I am not going to speak.”

00:39:23.708 --> 00:39:26.625
And so, I did the same. I decided not speak.

00:39:26.625 --> 00:39:31.000
They tried to force me to speak, but I remained silent. I said
to myself “They are going to kill me anyway.”

00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:32.916
And they really did kill me because I...

00:39:32.916 --> 00:39:38.750
By the time they went to throw me in the dump,
it felt like they had killed me because I fainted.

00:39:38.750 --> 00:39:46.083
I could not resist any longer the pain
of torture, the humiliation, the rapes...

00:39:46.208 --> 00:39:49.208
And maybe I did I died because I only saw darkness...

00:39:49.208 --> 00:39:50.583
Darkness... Darkness...

00:39:50.625 --> 00:39:53.166
And from there on I do not remember anything...

00:39:53.166 --> 00:39:55.833
I just know that I appeared in a dumpster.

00:39:55.833 --> 00:40:00.166
I know that the baby was handed over to a lady who knew me.

00:40:00.166 --> 00:40:02.833
I know that my mother went to pick up the baby...

00:40:02.833 --> 00:40:06.416
My poor baby... Who suffered the torture in the womb.

00:40:06.416 --> 00:40:09.875
And who was born through a provoked birth. I imagine...

00:40:09.875 --> 00:40:13.958
I imagine that when they threw me
in the truck with all the dead people,

00:40:13.958 --> 00:40:16.291
of course, the baby must had come out, right?...

00:40:16.291 --> 00:40:19.375
Eight months. Almost ready to be born...

00:40:19.375 --> 00:40:25.916
And this is how my grandmother... Thanks to the
care of my grandmother...

00:40:25.916 --> 00:40:28.791
I imagine that the child must have died of gangrene...

00:40:28.791 --> 00:40:31.291
Gangrene. Yes, that must had been it.

00:40:31.291 --> 00:40:35.750
And the pain... The torture of the baby...

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:48.250
So many times I was killed.

00:40:48.250 --> 00:40:50.541
So many times I died.

00:40:50.541 --> 00:40:54.083
Nonetheless, I am still here.

00:40:54.125 --> 00:40:58.500
Coming back to life. …

00:40:58.500 --> 00:41:01.583
I am grateful to the misfortune.

00:41:01.583 --> 00:41:03.791
And the hand holding the knife.

00:41:03.791 --> 00:41:08.458
For it failed at killing me.

00:41:08.833 --> 00:41:14.791
And I kept on singing.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:17.708
Singing to the sun.

00:41:17.708 --> 00:41:20.708
Like the cicada.

00:41:21.333 --> 00:41:23.416
After a year.

00:41:23.416 --> 00:41:26.416
Under the ground.

00:41:26.458 --> 00:41:31.541
Just like a survivor.

00:41:31.708 --> 00:41:37.083
Returning from the war.

00:41:37.750 --> 00:41:40.541
So many times I was erased.

00:41:40.541 --> 00:41:43.000
Many times I was disappeared.

00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:46.375
To my own burial, I went.

00:41:46.375 --> 00:41:51.041
Alone and weeping.

00:41:51.583 --> 00:41:53.791
I made a knot with the handkerchief.

00:41:53.791 --> 00:41:56.458
But afterwards, I forgot.

00:41:56.500 --> 00:42:01.291
That it was not the only time.

00:42:01.541 --> 00:42:07.500
And I kept on singing.

00:42:08.500 --> 00:42:11.208
Singing to the sun.

00:42:11.208 --> 00:42:14.833
Like the cicada.

00:42:14.833 --> 00:42:16.916
After a year.

00:42:16.916 --> 00:42:20.625
Under the ground.

00:42:20.625 --> 00:42:26.458
Just like a survivor.

00:42:26.458 --> 00:42:31.500
Returning from the war.

00:42:31.500 --> 00:42:34.208
Singing to the sun.

00:42:34.208 --> 00:42:37.833
Like the cicada.

00:42:37.833 --> 00:42:39.916
After a year.

00:42:39.916 --> 00:42:43.625
Under the ground.

00:42:43.625 --> 00:42:49.125
Just like a survivor.

00:42:49.125 --> 00:42:56.958
Returning from the war.

00:43:06.583 --> 00:43:10.375
After they found me in the dumpster...

00:43:10.416 --> 00:43:19.416
What I have been told is that they took me
first to a church, and there they welcomed me.

00:43:19.416 --> 00:43:22.416
Then they moved me to another house.

00:43:22.916 --> 00:43:27.041
By that time I was like a vegetable.
I remained as vegetable for six months.

00:43:27.333 --> 00:43:30.875
Then, I recovered a bit of my memory.

00:43:31.083 --> 00:43:36.291
Little by little, that process took me
more than six months, they told me.

00:43:36.375 --> 00:43:38.458
When I woke up.

00:43:38.458 --> 00:43:43.625
When they told me that I started waking up,
the first thing I asked for was where was the baby...

00:43:43.833 --> 00:43:47.166
I said, “Bring me the baby, please.”

00:43:47.208 --> 00:43:53.541
Then, after that, I started eating like I had never eaten before...

00:43:53.666 --> 00:43:57.791
So I was constantly asking for food, but they gave me a strict diet.

00:43:57.791 --> 00:44:00.791
I was given a diet. Iwas given food little by little...

00:44:01.333 --> 00:44:08.375
So they say that I started therapy to
recover from the vegetable condition...

00:44:08.375 --> 00:44:11.375
With nutrition, with good nutrition.

00:44:13.500 --> 00:44:17.791
I returned to the grassroots communities in 1981.

00:44:17.791 --> 00:44:21.000
All the year of the 1980, I spent it in recovery.

00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:23.791
My exercise program started in 1981.

00:44:25.333 --> 00:44:27.500
When I was fully recovered,

00:44:27.500 --> 00:44:33.833
I returned because I saw that there was a defenseless community,

00:44:33.833 --> 00:44:38.041
a community that had no option to flee anywhere.

00:44:38.041 --> 00:44:40.166
They were not able to migrate anywhere.

00:44:40.166 --> 00:44:43.916
And it was a community that was extremely poor

00:44:43.916 --> 00:44:46.291
because their houses were burned down and everything else...

00:44:46.291 --> 00:44:50.208
Then we arrived. Well, I arrived, and started a project

00:44:50.208 --> 00:44:54.291
with all the cathechist leaders of that time.

00:44:54.500 --> 00:44:56.833
But what I am trying to say is that later,

00:44:56.833 --> 00:45:01.708
when I felt recovered, after experiencing
the war and after seeing the children that were killed,

00:45:01.708 --> 00:45:03.000
that were massacred...

00:45:03.041 --> 00:45:15.083
“Oh, no.” I felt like my grandmother’s voice within me and said,
“No, If my grandmother resisted 1932...”

00:45:15.083 --> 00:45:18.583
And we had no other option, we had been cornered,

00:45:18.583 --> 00:45:22.833
so we stayed there and a we established a guerrilla zone.

00:45:24.208 --> 00:45:30.666
They forced us to be guerrilla members,
because the guerrilla is born through exclusion.

00:45:30.666 --> 00:45:36.083
And so, by bombardment,
by death squads, by torture,

00:45:36.541 --> 00:45:42.583
they uproot you from your place of origin, from your hometown...

00:45:42.916 --> 00:45:49.375
Well, after the war was over, I was a peasant
woman who did not know anything,

00:45:49.416 --> 00:45:55.291
I did not even know what a resume was,
but I had to work and look for my daughters.

00:45:59.083 --> 00:46:02.041
I joined the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)

00:46:02.041 --> 00:46:10.583
between January 15 and January 16,
once I got out of the women’s prison.

00:46:11.791 --> 00:46:13.875
I had already went through being captured.

00:46:13.875 --> 00:46:17.875
By then, I had experienced psychological
and sexual torture, and that whole thing,

00:46:18.750 --> 00:46:22.041
and I had faced with my head held high

00:46:22.041 --> 00:46:25.708
I felt like I had come out of that experience
successfully, as they would say.

00:46:26.791 --> 00:46:29.791
I was sent to Guazapa.

00:46:30.291 --> 00:46:38.958
Well, I got there, and we were there
for about a month and a half, perhaps.

00:46:40.541 --> 00:46:43.166
Then, I left for San Vicente

00:46:44.666 --> 00:46:54.375
and there, in San Vicente, I experienced
the daily life of the battlefield, right.

00:47:00.208 --> 00:47:06.416
I had my shack. Finally, I had managed to get my own shack.

00:47:07.166 --> 00:47:13.166
A shack is a tent, but a tent made by hand.

00:47:14.666 --> 00:47:18.875
I gave lodging to men and women alike.

00:47:19.375 --> 00:47:25.375
However, almost since we arrived in Usulutan,

00:47:25.375 --> 00:47:29.333
this female comrade asked me for
lodging, so every night we stayed together.

00:47:29.625 --> 00:47:33.875
So that day, I say to my female comrade:

00:47:33.875 --> 00:47:41.541
“Look, it is my turn in the kitchen today. So,
I am going to leave my backpack here. You keep it for me.\"

00:47:42.041 --> 00:47:44.500
And I spent the whole day at the kitchen.

00:47:44.500 --> 00:47:47.500
When I came back at around six o\'clock in the afternoon,

00:47:48.500 --> 00:47:54.125
I went to my shack. When I got there,
after a day of work that had killed me,

00:47:54.458 --> 00:48:03.125
I saw my female comrade and asked her:
“Hey, what is that man doing there with you?”

00:48:04.333 --> 00:48:12.625
She replied: “Ah, look, I do not know, the leader of the platoon told me that he was going to sleep here with me tonight.”

00:48:13.833 --> 00:48:20.375
I was beside myself, because I wanted to rest.

00:48:21.500 --> 00:48:26.041
I went to look for the leader of the platoon
and asked him why had he done that?

00:48:26.041 --> 00:48:29.583
And also, where was I supposed to go?

00:48:29.583 --> 00:48:34.875
He was a forty-something-year-old man. I am not
even sure. Maybe he was fifty already.

00:48:34.875 --> 00:48:38.041
And I was a nineteenth year-old girl.

00:48:38.041 --> 00:48:42.750
We are talking about 1990, and I had just turned nineteenth.

00:48:44.875 --> 00:48:46.666
“You are going to sleep with me,” he told me.

00:48:46.666 --> 00:48:50.625
“Look,” he said, “there is no \'shack\' here,
there is no private property here,” he told me.

00:48:50.666 --> 00:48:53.875
“Everything belongs to the party,” he said to me.

00:48:53.875 --> 00:49:02.291
And I have already made the decision that the man is going to
stay there with her and that you will stay here with me.

00:49:02.291 --> 00:49:06.000
“No,” I replied. “I’m not going to stay with you.

00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:14.291
You are completely wrong.” Then there
begins my journey, my torment.

00:49:14.875 --> 00:49:18.000
I started going from shack to shack.

00:49:18.875 --> 00:49:25.916
I started to walk around the camp. I felt, as they say, abandoned.

00:49:27.250 --> 00:49:29.125
I felt that being there...

00:49:29.125 --> 00:49:33.708
I do not know how to explain it to you,
but I felt a sensation of total abandonment.

00:49:33.708 --> 00:49:38.458
That nobody cared about what happened to me, nobody.

00:49:38.500 --> 00:49:42.375
No one cared what could happen to me.

00:49:45.708 --> 00:49:53.875
Then, in the end, after crying for a long time and after
feeling so vulnerable, so abandoned, so lost,

00:49:54.791 --> 00:49:57.791
I abandoned myself.

00:49:58.291 --> 00:50:03.916
The world had already abandoned me,
and I had resisted so much.

00:50:04.916 --> 00:50:08.041
That was when I abandoned myself.

00:50:08.041 --> 00:50:11.583
I said to myself, “Whatever it has to be, it will be.”

00:50:13.583 --> 00:50:19.125
so I went back and I entered the shack with him.

00:50:20.041 --> 00:50:26.625
Inside there, he said to me: “Take a drink to warm me up.”

00:50:27.041 --> 00:50:30.958
He gave me a little drink of liquor and...

00:50:32.958 --> 00:50:35.958
And then later, he began to take off my clothes and that was it.

00:50:38.333 --> 00:50:41.458
And I begging him: Please no, please no, please no.

00:50:42.708 --> 00:50:46.666
And he did not listen. So, I stopped talking,
and I abandoned myself again.

00:50:46.666 --> 00:50:47.958
And I did not say anything anymore.

00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:56.625
And again I relived what happened at the
Guard, but with much greater pain...

00:50:58.500 --> 00:51:12.583
Because I perfectly knew that when I was detained by
the Guard, at any time, someone could rape me, right.

00:51:12.583 --> 00:51:15.583
I took that for granted.

00:51:15.583 --> 00:51:18.875
Yet, never ever in my whole my life

00:51:20.166 --> 00:51:23.166
did it occurr to me, thought about it, imagined it...

00:51:23.791 --> 00:51:28.250
I never thought that I could be raped by a comrade.

00:51:28.916 --> 00:51:32.625
So, I tell you, the pain was much greater, it was bigger.

00:51:32.625 --> 00:51:38.625
It was like you had been raped by your father,
your brother, your uncle, your relative.

00:51:39.458 --> 00:51:46.458
Because it violated your trust and, besides,
there was a power relationship there.

00:51:46.458 --> 00:51:48.583
And what could I do?

00:51:48.583 --> 00:51:52.875
He was just any comrade that I could just shout at.
He was the leader of the platoon.

00:51:53.666 --> 00:52:01.166
It took more than a decade to say,
to verbalize, that that was a rape.

00:52:01.541 --> 00:52:06.791
There will come a time when I will say to him:
\"What you did to me is called rape.\"

00:52:07.625 --> 00:52:12.125
Let him know that if he is still not aware,

00:52:12.166 --> 00:52:15.583
\"What you did to me is called rape.
And you abused your authority.\"

00:52:27.250 --> 00:52:34.416
It took me two years to really understand
what recovery from torture trauma is...

00:52:34.416 --> 00:52:38.250
As part of my trauma treatment, I have learned what is dignity.

00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:46.666
Rebuilding the dignity is not easy, it has a lot of components.

00:52:48.333 --> 00:52:54.291
I have talked with people from the FMLN, with
female commanders, and they deny it.

00:52:54.291 --> 00:52:58.333
They deny that there were rapes within the FMLN.

00:52:59.125 --> 00:53:04.416
Which makes me more angry, since
I lived it in my own flesh, right?

00:53:04.875 --> 00:53:09.208
I think that, like it happened to me,
it happened to other women as well.

00:53:09.208 --> 00:53:13.583
And what I was telling you about is that in these camps,

00:53:14.166 --> 00:53:18.208
in these shelters, the leader of these shelter

00:53:18.208 --> 00:53:26.958
had what it was called in medieval times the
“droit du seigneur” (the right of the lord).

00:53:27.333 --> 00:53:32.833
He had to be the first to have relations with the female comrades.

00:53:32.833 --> 00:53:37.791
When women were captured, that they do recognize it as rape...

00:53:37.791 --> 00:53:41.583
Such sexual violence can indeed be verbalized and expressed.

00:53:41.583 --> 00:53:45.166
Yet (verbalize that someone was raped by a comrade)
is what it really costs the most...

00:53:45.208 --> 00:53:46.708
Because... Because it was your family.

00:53:46.708 --> 00:53:51.333
And I am not talking about blood relatives,
but it was till a family, right...

00:53:52.375 --> 00:53:59.166
So, I feel that, despite so many years had passed by,
and that so many things have happened,

00:54:00.083 --> 00:54:01.750
when talking about it I feel disloyal.

00:54:01.750 --> 00:54:05.083
I feel as if I was being disloyal to my father, my brother,

00:54:05.083 --> 00:54:11.250
because they were also in this guerrilla movement,
they were also members of the revolution.

00:54:11.875 --> 00:54:16.625
And by saying this, people will think that they were all evil and no.

00:54:16.625 --> 00:54:19.458
I am the first one to defend them.

00:54:19.500 --> 00:54:23.958
To say: \"No, they were worthy people,
people that were willing to give up everything,

00:54:23.958 --> 00:54:26.750
to give the most precious thing they had, to give their life.\"

00:54:26.750 --> 00:54:34.625
I do defend them, but that does not mean that they were
not also sexist and that there were many who were rapists.

00:54:45.583 --> 00:54:48.166
Rebuilding the dignity.

00:54:48.208 --> 00:54:51.375
The dignity will not be recovered overnight.

00:54:51.375 --> 00:54:56.958
It is recovered through your actions, your participation, it is life.

00:54:56.958 --> 00:55:01.958
It is me. My dignity is like the essence of my body

00:55:01.958 --> 00:55:07.166
and I have to defend and rebuild it, which is what I am doing.

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:21.666
I believe that in El Salvador, even though
there was a war, there was no social transformation.

00:55:21.666 --> 00:55:29.416
That means that the causes which gave birth
to the armed conflict were not solved by that war.

00:55:29.416 --> 00:55:32.333
Actually, things remained the same...

00:55:32.375 --> 00:55:37.291
Always considering women as objects, as sexual objects...

00:55:37.291 --> 00:55:41.083
For the use and pleasure of men... This mindset still remains.

00:55:45.291 --> 00:55:51.208
Our voice is worth a lot and we are going to let
them know that: \"Here we are. You failed to kill us.\"

00:55:51.208 --> 00:55:56.791
So, I call on the country, our country, El Salvador,

00:55:56.791 --> 00:56:00.208
to one day be healed, and only through justice can we heal.

00:56:07.666 --> 00:56:12.291
The war left more than 70,000 people killed.

00:56:12.333 --> 00:56:20.875
It also left tens of thousands of people
injured, disappeared, tortured, and raped.

00:56:23.375 --> 00:56:33.458
Of all forms of war, people say that one of the most devastating is a civil war, because it is the one that faces brother against brothers.

00:56:34.708 --> 00:56:40.291
El Salvador is a broken country that
could never heal the wounds of war,

00:56:40.333 --> 00:56:45.166
wounds that, in turn, have generated the
harm that we are still suffering today.

00:56:51.500 --> 00:56:58.458
During wartime, coffee ceased to be the
commodity that sustained the economy.

00:56:59.458 --> 00:57:06.291
Nowadays, what we export to support our
country is the labor force of migrants,

00:57:06.916 --> 00:57:13.708
the lives of Salvadorans men and women who flee
the territory which offers them little to nothing.

00:57:17.500 --> 00:57:26.291
We have changed the ways of relating to our land,
but the exploitation of the bodies continues.

00:57:30.500 --> 00:57:38.083
Nevertheless, in the midst of this devastating
panorama, life continues to flourishes.

00:57:38.125 --> 00:57:40.583
Our essence shines again.

00:57:40.583 --> 00:57:44.875
Our Indigo blue always sprouts again.

00:58:17.625 --> 00:58:21.083
We want to deliver you these indigo shawls.

00:58:22.083 --> 00:58:25.083
Thank you for entrusting us with your stories.

00:58:26.625 --> 00:58:32.041
Thank you so much. Thank you very much for representing me.

00:58:32.250 --> 00:58:37.541
Thank you for being a part of this history, of this country.

00:58:37.541 --> 00:58:41.416
And I am very, very excited. Thank you.

00:58:42.125 --> 00:58:44.458
Thank you very much for this offering.

00:58:44.458 --> 00:58:47.458
For me, this is a spiritual, an ancestral offering.

00:58:47.500 --> 00:58:52.208
And at the same time, it is part of my story, and my son\'s.

00:58:52.208 --> 00:58:58.166
And thank you all, for you are the generations
that are going to carry on this commitment.

01:00:34.916 --> 01:00:46.791
Amid the Salvadoran armed conflict, both belligerent parties committed acts of sexual violence against women and girls. For the government’s security forces, the rape of women and girls was part of their integral counterinsurgent tactics designed to instill terror and erode the insurgency’s social support.

01:00:47.708 --> 01:00:52.583
Contrastingly, while the guerrilla forces officially condemned the sexual assault on women and girls, such crimes were perpetrated within their ranks.

01:00:52.583 --> 01:01:03.833
These crimes often came alongside with other misogynistic practices, such as sexual harassment and sexual abuse. The commission of these crimes were typically overlooked, usually tolerated and seldom punished. It is important to note that these crimes perpetrated by the insurgency can never be justified and always exacted a profound emotional toll on their female victims.

01:01:03.833 --> 01:01:10.291
This film is dedicated to the women, teenagers and girls who
suffered sexual assaults in the context of the Salvadoran Civil War.

01:01:26.875 --> 01:01:36.666
This film is based on the research \"Salvadoran Women Speak: Female Accounts of Their Struggle Within a Revolution, 1980-1992,” conducted by Doctor Paula Cuellar Cuellar.