“No one here has ever asked me my name, Madre. When I marched into the compound wearing my long coat, everyone thought that I was a priest, and ever since, I’ve been known as Cura. Well, I could do nothing else but accept my new name, just like the rest of the compañeros, especially the jefes, who are called Gato, Cirilo, Pájaro, Chato, and other names that sound like these. La Pintada, la Nena, la Doctora; that’s how the women are called.
“It was good I let them call me by another name because it proved to the compañeros that I was one of them. I know in my heart the guerrillas have made me one of their own, even though I didn’t spend my life with campesinos like them.
“Still I feel like an outsider. No one knows that I blundered into them because I was confused and scared. All I ever wanted was to become a priest.”
Bernabé spoke to his mother as if she were standing next to him. He worried about her constantly, and his fears were complicated by the knowledge that he had crossed a forbidden line when he followed the crowds up the mountain. There were spies, even among the ranks of the guerrillas, he knew. Orejas they were called.
“If I return to the city, and to you, the spies will find me. Like dogs, they smell everything. They’ll arrest me and kill me, maybe even kill you. All I ever wanted was to help people, to minister to them. Now I’m afaid I’ll be forced to kill people. Madre, I’m ashamed of my fears.”
To all appearances, Bernabé had become part of the guerrilla band. No one knew that each day he felt great anxiety. At night his fears took control of him, robbing him of sleep and within a few weeks those sleepless nights began to take a toll on him. He thinned down to skin and wiry muscles, and his face hardened and aged beyond his years.
Unaccustomed to the rigor of mountain living, Bernabé hated the crude ways in which the compañeros lived. His stomach turned with the stench of the makeshift outhouses, and he was plagued by the clouds of mosquitoes that bit him day and night. He was embarrassed at having to bathe naked in front of the women of the band, and was ashamed to admit he was profoundly disturbed at the sight of men and women openly engaging in sexual acts.
He knew that he was different, and he wrestled with this, knowing that it isolated him from the rest of his companions. He tried to become like them, hardened men and women, accustomed to the bitterness of pain and death. “I am not them. And you made me this way, Madre. I don’t know what it is to be pushed away from my land, to see my sisters attacked like Nestor’s, or to see babies burned and killed. Around here, they all talk of el Escuadrón, of being tortured by government agents. I had never even been in a demonstration. All I ever saw was what happened the day the Archbishop was buried.”
For days and weeks in the mountains, Bernabé learned how to become a guerrilla. He felt pride mixed with apprehension when he was issued a weapon and cartridge belt. Without betraying his ignorance, Bernabé draped the sling diagonally across his chest while he held the rifle stiffly because the wound in his hand still ached. He stood rigidly at attention, his feet together and knees locked; then he arched his back, and held his head as far back as he could just as he had seen soldiers do when they stood on the street corners and plazas of San Salvador.
The discipline of guerrilla training was difficult for him, especially in the beginning. The new recruits, male and female, were awakened at four in the morning when they were given a few minutes to dress and splash water on their faces before joining the group for a breakfast of tortillas and coffee. The day’s training followed immediately.
The new members were splintered into groups of eight or ten men and women each headed by a veteran instructor who taught them the basics. These exercises were intensive, causing the newcomers severe fatigue and pain, and in his weariness at the end of each day, Bernabé thought of abandoning the group to take his risks in the city, even to face the possibility of torture or death. Each morning, however, he renewed his decision to remain as part of the force.
The training program for the newcomers included hours of marching. At times their feet blistered and bled. The new guerrillas learned the tactics of hand-to-hand killing, and also how to shoot from behind rocks, or how to hang from the limb of a tree. They were instructed on how to be prepared to wait in the darkness to catch the enemy off guard, to learn to make a weapon from whatever was at hand since a firearm would not always be available. They learned to convert a tin can into a jagged, cutting instrument and to transform an ordinary stick into a gouging and throttling device. They were trained for quick, solitary movements. And they were prepared especially to die alone.
Bernabé and the other beginners had trained for a month, when their leaders decided it was time for them to move out of the stronghold, and head north towards the Sumpul, the river seperating El Salvador and Honduras. The order was given for twenty-seven of them to prepare for a march the following day at dawn.
Bernabé was unable to sleep that night. When Chato came to his hut to awake him, Bernabé was already out of his cot, putting on his trousers. He dressed himself in the clothing he had been given when he had first arrived at the camp: old denim pants, a faded cotton shirt, heavy boots, and a panama hat. His jacket had belonged to a government soldier, and when Bernabé had first gotten it, the garment still had the patches of a corporal as well as the soldier’s name. At the time, Bernabé removed the emblems because he was afraid they would bring him bad luck. The faded spots had remained, however.
“¿Listo?”
Chato’s voice was muted, but clear.
“Sí. I’m ready.”
At Gato’s signal, the group marched north. The first few hours of the trek were quiet and uneventful. All they heard was the crunch of branches and leaves beneath their boots. Soon one of their scouts returned to report that a large group of civilians was at the river, apparently intending to cross into Honduras. Without hesitating, Gato ordered his band to make its way to those people whom they might be able to assist in the crossing.
When they neared the river, the guerrillas stood on a ridge that gave them a wide view of the action. Bernabé was astounded by what he saw. Four or five thousand men, women and children of all ages, were milling around. Many of the adults were old. Some hobbled on canes, or makeshift crutches, or clung to someone else. Babies were carried in a mother’s or brother’s arms; many young people appeared to be alone. Dozens of women were pregnant, and the men, even he apparently able-bodied ones, looked lost, dejected, and weighed down by an invisible burden.
Bernabé was shocked to see so many people. From his vantage point, he could see that many of them were already at the edge of the river attempting to cross over to the other side. He turned to the others of his group hoping to see what could be done. There were no boats or canoes, or even rafts, with which to cross the river’s deep spots and its tricky currents. Anyone could see that if the refugees were to reach the other side, they had to ford the river either by swimming or by finding its shallow spots.
Bernabé’s head began to throb with panic. He clamped shut his eyes, hoping that the sight would evaporate, that when he opened his eyes the mirage would have vanished. But when he looked again, the people were still there, buzzing like mosquitoes, melting into an immense blob of blacks, blues, and browns. He was afraid and confused, and he cursed himself for having been caught in that trap.
Suddenly, army helicopters appeared, casting long shadows over the crowd as they swooped lower and lower. People began to scream and to shift wildly from side to side as they sought cover from the guns overhead which suddenly, indiscriminately, began to fire on targets. The revolving blades of the helicopters sucked the air, tearing at the refugees’ hair and clothes as the loud whirring deafened the people’s ears to their own fearful screams. When the attack began, Gato ordered his followers to retreat, but most of them panicked. In his confusion, Bernabé separated from the main group, thrashing about in the bushes, making abrupt false starts. He zigzagged in different directions, reversing his steps, losing his balance. He bumped against trees and crashed into bushes. Then he lost his rifle and hat, and his hands and face began to bleed from the scratches and cuts. Once, he fell in a small hollow in the ground, and as his fingers dug into the moist volcanic earth, pain flashed from his wounded hand up his arm, and he screamed. Finally he was able to free his feet from the mud that held him down, and he ran, not away from the helicopters and the terrified people, but mistakenly straight into them.
Most of the fugitives had been able to run for cover behind rocks and thickets, but some were caught off-guard and without the possibility of escape. Those who were at mid-river when the attack began were the first to be gunned down. As they were hit, their bodies somersaulted into the air like mannequins or rag dolls, plunging head first into the swirling waters of the Sumpul. Others were riddled by the helicopters that buzzed overhead and by the machine gun fire of soldiers that had by now come out of the underbrush, firing at will.
It was into this cluster that Bernabé had blundered. When he realized what he had done he tried to go back, but the shoving and pushing bodies made escape impossible. He was knocked to the ground, and although he attempted to stand several times he was forced down each time. He stopped resisting, and instead arched himself into a ball, while bodies crashed down on him. Automatically he clamped his muddied hands over his eyes. At one point he looked through his fingers long enough to see a boy held in his mother’s arms ripped apart by a piece of shrapnel. It happened so quickly that even the woman did not realize what had happened.
Bodies and pieces of limbs piled on top of Bernabé. Certain that he would be buried alive if he didn’t move, he sprang to his feet, screaming. “¡Mamá! ¡Ayúdame!”
Crying for his mother’s help, Bernabé plunged head-long toward the river. His unexpected thrust caught the soldiers off guard, stunning them for the few seconds he needed to escape. Confused by his sudden appearance, they stared at him, mouth open, instead of firing. Bernabé ran with his arms rigidly stretched forward, as if sleepwalking, and his hair, plastered with blood and excrement from bowels that had been torn-apart, stuck out in a grizzled aura. He screeched as he ran, and his howling sounded inhuman, like the baying of an animal.
As he streaked toward the river, his strange appearance triggered the refugees into moving, for they felt that he knew the way, that he was commanding them to run, to follow him across the river to Honduras, and to safety. Like him, they also screeched in defiance, lurching after him. Men, women and children pitched forward, oblivious of the helicopters that hovered above them like giant flying scorpions. As they pressed ahead they trampled past the soldiers, who were still confounded by the sight of the howling specter that had arisen from among the dead. Everyone ran forward, their arms stretched out rigidly as they yelled and strained to reach the other side of the river. They continued following Bernabé because they saw that his feet found the shallowest, safest route across the river. Where he stepped, the reddish waters of the Sumpul receded, exposing flat stones on which they could run.
Panting, driven by terror, his chest splitting with pain, Bernabé kept running even though he had already reached the other side of the river. He didn’t know in what direction he was headed, but he didn’t care. His body was in command, ordering him to go on.
The troops, unable to cross the river into Honduras, stood gawking, machine guns hanging limply from their hands. They turned to their commanding officer for his orders, but he only gestured obscenely towards the other side of the river. The helicopters dangled in the gloomy air, unable to cross into foreign air space.
No one knew for how long or how far into Honduras the people had stampeded before their pace lessened. Bernabé, his body nearly doubled over, staggered and stumbled as he took each step, dragging his feet, swerving clumsily as if he had been drunk. His arms hung limply by his sides, while his head wobbled grotesquely. Nearly an hour passed before he realized that behind him followed hundreds of people. This was the last thing he remembered because, no matter how much he tried to focus on what he was looking at, objects and colors began to blur, until there was only blackness.
When he awoke, Bernabé was in a gloomy hut with two women tending to him. They worked in silence. One was rubbing his arms and chest with a wet cloth, and the other was preparing food over a fire set on the earthen floor.
“Señoras…”
His voice was shrill and seemed to tremble. The women nodded in recognition, but remained silent. Bernabé leaned back onto the mat trying to reconstruct what had happened to him, but he could only remember that he had blacked out after crossing the river.
“Señoras, is everyone safe?”
“Sí, hijo. Most of them. Thanks to God, and to you.”
“Where are we? Have I been here a long time?”
“We’re in Mesa Grande, but you have been in the other world for three days. You’ve been calling your mother. Many times you whispered, ‘¿Mamá, mamá, dónde estás?’ You could not hear her answer, and so you cried out that you were afraid. You can see that she did answer your calls. She has returned you here to us.”