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| Oil Pastel by Mercedes Vega |
Learning about the civil wars of Central America, was part of my upbringing as kid. I met one of my uncles who developed PTSD, two that came here under asylum for taking part in the Guerilla aka as the FMLN in El Salvador. They were kidnapped and tortured for days by Right military supported by the Reagan Administration, who was also responsible in instigating and directly killing groups of innocent civilians. The rest of my family who came here as refugees, told me some of the most gruesome stories about kidnaps, cold killings, and the recruiting of innocent young people trained to kill and fight their own people.
El Salvador has had a long history of fighting economically liberal elites, who have have controlled most of the largest export in our land;coffee, in the past decades. Among the most affected since 1932 were our indigenous people working as farmers to the wealthiest land owner in El Salvador at the time. The first massacre ("La Matanza") listed in this picture is an example of one of the biggest killings of over 40,000 Salvadoran, mostly from the Pipil Indian group. These fights and wars have not been limited to El Salvador, but were also present in Guatemala and Honduras for similar reasons. Many artist expressing the grief, feelings and beliefs about the ongoing social injustice/inequality have been censored, killed, threatened and forced to exile. Their work has been hiding in the shadows and/or destroyed by the very own government and political leaders.
There is so much more to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the rest of Central American countries than civil wars and violence though. We have some of the most profound writers who have shared their depictions of the beautiful land and culture through imagery, art and poetry. Recently, we have seen more film-makers and photographers, along with writers begin to shed light in the untold history and heroines/heroes who have worked towards achieving peace in these regions. As a daughter of Salvadoran parents, and ancestry of Guatemala, I believe that it's time to mend the broken pieces of this isthmus through our inner creativity.
