Like every morning, the roosters and the heat did a good job getting us out of bed and on the move. After breakfast at Bety’s we were back in Juan’s pick-up, this time headed to San Salvador. It was a long ride. We let the wind whip through our hair and soaked in the much-needed sun. Of course some of us turned into walking lobsters. When we arrived we found a university much different than had been expected. The campus was large and open, and there were open grassy areas for us to lie down and rest. We gathered around Juan in a circle beneath the shade of a eucalyptus tree. We saw a pair of Torogoz birds in a nearby tree. Juan told us that they were the national birds of El Salvador. He told us stories about how important the university was during and after the war, and how the government tried to close down the university many times but never succeeded. After this introduction to the university we walked along a path to the gardens. There is where he began to tell us his story of what happen in this place. During the offensive Juan was in San  Salvador sick with hepatitis. He thought he was going to die, so he came to the University to confess his sins to his good friend Padre Ignacio Ellacuría, a Jesuit priest from the Basque Country, Spain. Ellacuría refused, instead inviting Juan to share a scotch. The two friends talked about life and the War, but Juan didn’t know this would be the last time they would see each other. Five hours later soldiers snuck into the living quarters of the Jesuits, ordering them on to the lawn and killing Ellacuría along with five of his fellow priests. They also tragically murdered the maid Elba Ramos and her daughter Celina. Earlier that afternoon Juan made a joke about how Elba was going sleep with the Jesuits that night only to spend the night away from her husband. She told him that they were afraid, and had come to sleep at the university for protection. They wanted to be safe and they were killed for it.  With tears in his eyes Juan told us how he found the bodies of his friend the next morning. He passed around a book of photos documenting what had happened. He emphasized the importance of us seeing those images so that we know the truth of what happened. They cannot tell us lies because we now know the truth. Those violent pictures will be forever engrained in our minds as examples of how inhuman a person can become.

This was by far one of the hardest moments for us as a group.  Many of us broke down in this moment, but at the same time it was in this moment that we felt most connected to a history that wasn’t our own. When I saw those photos and sat in the room where Elba and Celina were murdered, I felt like there were still angry spirits lingering there. The wounds of this tragedy were still fresh, and I felt as if those who died there, and those who experienced this tragedy, wanted us to know what really happened and wanted us to spread this knowledge as we move forward in our lives. We found anger and pain at the UCA not only because of the murder of innocent people, but because justice was not given then and is still not given today. Juan told us how the army had tried to pin the massacre on the FMLN by painting their symbol at the scene of the killings.  As an example of how divided the country still is, Juan also told us about a friend of his that runs in the Olympics for El Salvador that openly denies that many of these terrible killings ever happened during the war. She doesn’t see the point in what Juan does at the Tamarindo, because she doesn’t see the people of Guarjila as equals.

We walked as a group through the garden, past the rose bushes and the room where Elba and Celina were killed, and entered the chapel.  It was at this moment that Juan explained to us why he devotes his life to the people of Guarjila, and why he believes that spreading the truth about what happened here in El Salvador is so important. During his speech Juan motioned to the back of the chapel. On the walls above the entrance there were sketches of twisted and contorted bodies. He told us that these were sketches taken from photographs of torture victims during the war. At first this was a shock to find in a church, especially in a place still marked with the scars of violence, but as Juan continued to speak, everything became clear. He explained how coming to this place was something that he hated more than anything. Listening to the way Juan spoke about what happend at the UCA, we could feel the suffering he endured almost as if we had been there too. Yet even though it was so hard to come there and see and hear these atrocities, he explained how important it was to put ourselves at the foot of the cross. Most of our group is not religious, but Juan explained that there is no need to be religious to understand. Putting yourself at the foot of the cross is about being a witness to the suffering, the hatred and the violence. He explained that many choose to ignore the suffering because it may be disturbing or unpleasant, but you can’t hope to end suffering without meeting it eye to eye.

Standing at the foot of the cross, Juan told us to ask ourselves three important questions: What are we doing? What have we done? What are we going to do? These questions stuck in our minds as we sat again in the back of Juan’s pick-up pulling away from the UCA. Now that we had been at the foot of the cross, how had anything we were doing in our lives back in Portland fought against this kind of suffering? Yet perhaps more importantly, what would we do in the future? Although at times words were not exchanged, minds were racing. With thoughts about what we had experienced, as the sun set behind the mountains we felt an overwhelming sense of togetherness. At the UCA we had experienced something so awful, but the fact that we had been through it together only made us closer as a group. As the warm wind flowed around us, and as the stars poked through the sky, stories and experiences that we hadn’t known about our groupmates flowed freely. 

It was a perfect end to the day to come back to the Tamarindo to be with the people of Guarjila. We played, talked and laughed until what seemed like late into the night. After a day of such emotional experiences filled with death and violence, we ended the day absorbed in the lively spirit of the people of El Salvador.