Warwick Fry, November 28th 2020
In El Salvador October is the cruelest month.
1989 Fenastras massacre (Photo: Ahora El Salvador)
The end of that month is marked by All Saints Day (in Anglo culture ‘Halloween’); the Day of the Dead ‘Dia de los Difuntos’. In 2014 my future wife took me to the mountains near the Guatemalan border to meet her family. I was launched into the middle of the febrile preparations for the Day of the Dead. The entire family; mother, eighty-two year old father, two sisters, a brother, aunts, nephews, nieces, neighbours, all were engaged in making imitation flowers from died corn husks to place on the grave. Mari and her family were preparing to visit the grave of her younger brother, murdered by a Salvadoran gang two years before. There were a thousand locals congregated in the local cemetery coloured on the day by the dried floral offerings made of corn husks, capturing the experience of the vibrancy of life in the proximity of death.
My own first experience of El Salvador was the unforgettable October of 1979. There had been a bloodless internal coup by a rival faction of the military that had controlled El Salvador for forty years. In the turmoil and political uncertainty a huge population of activists took to the streets. The ‘popular organisations’ - students, unionists, opposition parties, and progressive religious movements – all came out in days of rolling street marches and rallies of ten thousand or more in the capital, San Salvador. I arrived that October morning to a city riddled on every wall, every pole, with a palimpsest of graffiti. Acronyms, slogans, underwritten with names, overwritten with caricatures; a reflection of the crowded buzz and bustle and politics of the teeming streets of the capital.
There I witnessed my first massacre.
Returning to my hostel one day I noticed an eerie silence. The streets abandoned. On one corner a group of people. I went to cross the street. I was unceremoniously hauled back. “Don’t go there, they are killing people”! Then it was that I became aware of the ‘crack! Crack!” of single shots. Peeking around the corner we saw an armoured car with a soldier on top systematically shooting young students trying to shelter in the entrance bays of shuttered shops, one by one. We counted eight. Blood was running down the gutters.
A few days later I read that an army vehicle had ploughed into the funeral march for the eight victims killing another twelve. That was when the Bishop gave permission for the bodies to be taken for burial in the Church Rosario facing the Plaza Libertad, to avoid further atrocities. I woke up one morning in my hostel across the road from the Church to hear revolutionary songs being played from the bell tower. I looked out my window. Youths with the red berets, dark glasses and red bandanna masks – the ‘uniform’ of the marshals and autodefensa (self defense) - were cementing crosses on the roof of the church. Over the next few days tens of thousands filed past to observe and pay their respects to the line of coffins on the patio of the Church.
After this experience I knew that I would always return to El Salvador.
Fast forward to 1989. It was the 9th year of a Civil War that was triggered by the assassination of the Archbishop of El Salvador (March 1980) for calling on the government armed forces to cease killing their fellow countrymen. In 1989 FENASTRAS was one of the largest of the many militant unions of that era. They had women’s workshops, a comedor popular (a bit like a ‘soul food’ eatery) training and workshops in areas like photography and theatre. I contributed with some English lessons. Most importantly, it was the first trade union in the Central American region to have a woman as its General Secretary – Febe (sic) Velasquez. On October 31st 1989 a bomb blast ripped apart the headquarters of FENASTRAS in the middle of a press conference where ironically the international media was asking for an evaluation of the possibility of the government negotiating a peace with the FMLN guerrilla movement. Nine were killed in the blast, one of them Febe . Over twenty more were injured or seriously wounded. On the eve of the guerilla offensive triggered by Febe’s death acting secretary Gerardo Diaz spoke. In the bombed out ruins of the headquarters of FENASTRAS he invited all to a memorial service at Febe’s burial. But there was an unspoken message: “In the coming weeks many of us will not see each other for some time, if at all”. He was in effect, announcing that FENASTRAS would be going underground and that the offensive was about to be launched.
Fast forward again to 2013. The FMLN is now a legitimate political party. The 1989 offensive had stalemated the military and their supporters in the financial elite, and long sought peace negotiations by the FMLN had finally gotten under way and the accord of 1992 signed. FMLN Presidents have finally been elected. I returned to El Salvador to attend the memorial service for Febe. It is the end of October. Emotional reunions with the comrades of the former FENASTRAS. The unions have a street march in her honour. Gerardo Diaz has flown over from Australia (where he took political asylum) as one of the few survivors of the FENASTRAS executive, and lobbied the government successfully to have October 26 declared a public holiday as the National Day of the Salvadoran Worker.
The struggle continues. The vibrancy of life in the proximity of death.