Repression in El Salvador began long before the war of the 1980s. For decades social movements had been persecuted and the fight for democracy had been a long one (see the History section for more information). As historian Jack Spence explains, El Salvador's history of violence is deeply rooted in the fight for democracy and goes back as far as 1932, when 10,000 to 30,000 people, mostly indigenous, were killed by the military in a matter of weeks to crush down a rebellion. The country was ruled from them on by a series of military dictatorships and a small group of rich families, the “14 Familias.” Labor unions remained illegal until 1950; political parties were only allowed again to form in the early 60s. This political liberalization propelled the left to its first national electoral victory in 1972. However, the winner, José Napoleón Duarte, was not allowed to take power. He was detained, beaten, and exiled to Venezuela together with his vice presidential candidate, Guillermo Ungo.

Salvadorans fought for democracy and an end to the repression until the war exploded in the 1980s. The peace agreement signed 1992 finally gave the left, through the FMLN, the right to run for elections, allowing them to win the presidency in 2009.

But the decade of the 70s and the war itself unleashed an unparalleled state terror on the civilian population. El Playón, for example, is a recurring point of reference in the collective memory of Salvadorans. A desolate, rocky area by the San Salvador volcano, it became a dumping ground for the death squads who disposed of their victims there. Painter David Díaz featured El Playón among his works, calling it “Left for the Vultures.” Cecilia chanced upon El Playón when she was participating in a marathon as a college student in the mid-80s. The shock of seeing the dead bodies marked Cecilia deeply. She explained how she hasn't been able yet to process it, describing the memory of El Playón as a “dream or a movie.”

This section also speaks to the use of torture, which became an insidious part of the military culture. One of the earliest documented accounts of torture in El Salvador dates back to the 1950s, in Cayetano Carpio's autobiographical book Secuestro y Capucha en un País del Mundo Libre (Kidnapping and Hooding in a Country of the Free World). The tactics described—beatings, electroshock, stress positions, extreme living conditions, fake executions, hooding, and suffocation—were repeated by three people who shared their testimonies for this project.

At the onset of this project, I had separate sections for “guerrilla” and “military” but quickly realized that most Salvadorans during the war joined one side or the other not out of ideology, but based on their own life experiences. Many of them, such as Carlos, had family fighting on both sides. Moreover, all are equally veterans of the war and suffered extreme trauma for having participated in the carnage.

In general, ex-guerrilla members were more candid about talking about their experiences. I interviewed about six ex-guerrilla members, of which three are featured here, and two men who were in military. Unfortunately, after a three-hour interview, one of the ex-military members did not agree to be recorded. The second agreed to do so anonymously and under one condition: that his therapist was present. It is important to point out that the army practiced regularly forced recruitment of soldiers (see Juan's testimony about the recruitment of children), while most of the people who joined the guerrilla did so for protection or after their communities were attacked by death squads.

All Salvadorans interviewed for this project were between 35 and 55 years of age, however, childhood memories of the war were prevalent in many of their accounts. Their stories are indicative of the escalation of the repression in the 1970s. A few of those interviewed were children during the civil conflict; one of them, Juan Pleiteza, was born in 1980 at outset of the war.

Children, as it is often the case, were the most vulnerable during the war. Four out of nine people I interviewed who were under 16 at the time of the war joined the guerrilla ranks and one joined the military. One, David Díaz, was sent to the United States on his own to avoid getting forcibly recruited into the military. Another, Juan, became an internal refugee with the rest of his family but eventually immigrated to the United States to avoid getting involved in gang violence.

In the case of Imelda Auron, she is one of many cases of disappeared children—some of them abducted by the military—that ended up as adopted “orphans.” According to Pro-Búsqueda, an organization that works to identify the missing children and connect them with their families, the number of known cases in El Salvador was 787 abducted children as of 2006.

“It's hard to be neutral because when you're not with them they say you're against them. A lot of people, a lot of civilians got caught in that,” said Susan Freireich, a U.S. activist who lived in El Salvador as a health promoter during the last years of the war. Neutrality was a recurring theme during the interviews: the fear of becoming a target, of becoming involved in the conflict versus the inevitability of doing so. The feeling of insecurity was also echoed by many of those interviewed. Cecilia explained that fear and distrust became part of one's daily life and continues to affect the Salvadoran community today, particularly in the United States.

The persecution of the Catholic Church in El Salvador reached such levels that the U.S. Congress held hearings on religious persecution in that country in July 1977. Two months earlier, a flyer had circulated the streets of El Salvador that read, “Be a patriot, kill a priest!” By the time Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated, the murder and disappearance of parishioners and catechists, as well as the random shooting of churches were a daily occurrence. However, as the conflict waged on, even church members struggled with staying neutral.

Unfortunately, for some military strategists El Salvador became a bastion in the “fight against communism” and counterinsurgency strategy. As early as 2004, the “Salvador Option” became part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq. The term alluded to the training and support of paramilitary groups that could unofficially weed out an invisible enemy (“insurgents” in the case of the Middle East) from the general civilian population. In the case of El Salvador, this strategy translated into the indiscriminate killing of church members, opposition party leaders, union workers and organizers, members of women's and student groups, human rights workers, as well as entire villages in guerrilla-controlled territories.

The testimonies I heard from Salvadorans in Boston weighed heavily on me. Most were sharing their stories publicly for the first time and a great majority were emotionally distraught by the end of it. I was not prepared for the level of horror and repression that most of them had experienced. The war is a distant nightmare that continues to affect these people's daily lives, and many show clear signs of post traumatic stress syndrome.

When I travelled to El Salvador on March 2009, I expected to find a country devastated by the war, but instead I found a society built on resilience and hope. I got together with several organizations such as Equipo Maíz and the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, that are already doing excellent work on historical memory. I finally understood that the need to share, the collective experience of the past, and the reconstruction of history are what hold the most promise when moving forward in a postwar society. When the victims of human rights violations are given the space to speak (particularly in situations of state-sponsored terror, which often comes hand-in-hand with institutional impunity), it is possible to discover a way out of the cycle of violence. And what immigrants in the United States are missing, is indeed the space to speak up and build on their collective experience.