In the memory of horror and pain, Salvadorans overcome massacre with faith
In the memory of horror and pain, Salvadorans overcome massacre with faith
Rhina Guidos | Catholic News Service
May 13, 2020
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The place where the Rivera family lived, the department of Chalatenango, is a rural region in the northernmost part of El Salvador, where government officials periodically carried out brutal attacks on the peasant population, killing, raping and pillaging the rural towns, justifying the actions by saying the residents were rebels or rebel sympathizers.
The Sumpul River massacre isn't the only massacre Rivera and others in the group survived, it was just the most brutal one.
Chalatenango is said to have been the setting of more than 50 such mass killings during the country's 12-year civil conflict, and almost all of the Sumpul survivors lost family members in other attacks. The Sumpul River massacre, however, is the most well-known in the department, though little is spoken about it at the national level because, even today, its remote setting, deep inside a mountainous area, makes it difficult for many to access the site where it happened and where annual commemorations take place.
Survivors say on May 13, 1980, the day before the massacre, hundreds of armed soldiers on the Salvadoran side of the river began invading towns around the Sumpul, driving terrified residents toward the river, toward a demilitarized zone known as Las Aradas, a hamlet on the riverbank where locals regularly had flocked to seek safety.
Soldiers on the Honduran side, in the meantime, began combing for Salvadorans who had been hiding in the brush near their side of the border, driving them, too, toward the Sumpul. At 7 a.m. the next day, when soldiers on both sides had trapped a large group of peasants in a perimeter, they opened fire on them. Some died by bullets, as the assault included an attack from two helicopters, with soldiers shooting from above and members of a paramilitary group on the ground. Some victims, including many children, drowned in the river because they couldn't swim and were carried away by the current.
When Rivera and his father managed to hide in thick brush, it proved to be a front seat to "barbarity," he said. He remembers watching soldiers order the men to line up, then opened fire on them. Children were taken from the arms of their mothers and some babies thrown in the air and caught on the way down on bayonets, he said.
More:
https://angelusnews.com/faith/in-the-memory-of-horror-and-pain-salvadorans-overcome-massacre-with-faith/
Historical Background
On May 14, 1980, hundreds of people from different communities gathered in Las Aradas, a small village in the district of Yurique, located on the banks of the Sumpul River, near the border with Honduras. Las Aradas is part of the municipality of San José Ojos de Agua in the Department (province) of Chalatenango, El Salvador. The people gathered there to seek protection from violence because they faced daily persecution by the Salvadoran military, the national guard, and a paramilitary organization called ORDEN (Nationalist Democratic Organization).
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Felipe, then a 25-year-old campesino, met with the other campesinos and campesinas who had arrived at Las Aradas the same day. Ana, aged 12, was also there with her mother and her 15-year old sister. So was Yanet, a 19-year old woman accompanied by her father and her baby. They had all taken refuge in Las Aradas because it was a historically demilitarized space. On previous occasions, when they knew about a military or ORDEN operation in the area, they organized civilians to go across the Sumpul River and hide in the Honduran hills until the Salvadoran government troops left the region.
At approximately 7:30 in the morning on May 14th, the Salvadoran army initiated their military operation. They came from every direction. From his vantage point, Felipe saw a group of soldiers running and shooting through the hills. The noise of shots and grenade explosions was everywhere. Many families, along with their children, tried to escape. Some sought shelter behind stone fences to protect their children while others ran, terrified, to the Sumpul River. When Felipe reached the Sumpul, he could see that countless people had jumped in the river for fear of being captured, and many were drowning. The river was swollen because of heavy rains the night before, and the current dragged people away. Felipe also jumped in the river, but he was caught by a group of drowning women who latched onto him and made him sink beneath the water. With incomprehensible strength in the agony of death, Felipe dove to the bottom and was able to escape. He emerged to the surface coughing up the water he had swallowed, and he managed to make it across the river. When he could finally stand on his feet, with the water up to his chest, he saw the army on the shoreline gunning down the people who were still struggling in the river. He watched as people fell dead right in front of his eyes, and he felt thankful that God had allowed him to survive. Once on the shore, he climbed to the top of a ravine and watched as a group of soldiers killed the wounded people in the water and searched for others hiding in the bushes on the banks of the river. The gunfire frightened Felipe so much that he decided to walk further into Honduras.
More:
https://www.asociacionsumpul.org/historical-background
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The Sumpul river. Scene of many massacres during the El Salvadorian civil war. They murdered the people upstream and the bodies floated down river.
Joleen Richwine
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Historical Context
On May 14, 1980, the US-backed Salvadoran military massacred campesinos (peasants) in a tiny hamlet of Las Aradas, in the Department (Province) of Chalatenango. They had taken refuge there, knowing that the government army was initiating a counterinsurgency operation in the area. As the army descended on them, many lay by stone fences and were staffed by helicopters. Many others ran into the Sumpul River to try and make to Honduras (on the other side of the river), where they were shot at by soldiers. Many were gunned down and many others, especially children, drowned. At the end of the action, 600 people were dead. In August 2017, the survivor community formed the Association of Survivors of Chalatenango Massacres and one of their main goals is to build a memorial at the site of the Sumpul Massacre.
https://www.1069thex.com/2018/02/12/a-call-for-solidarity-survivors-of-the-1980-sumpul-river-massacre-in-el-salvador-inch-closer-to-justice/
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Wikipedia:
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Prelude
Following the 1969 Football War between El Salvador and Honduras, the Organization of American States (OAS) negotiated a ceasefire that established an OAS-monitored demilitarized zone (DMZ) three kilometers wide on each side of the border. When the Salvadoran Civil War began, many villages, including the hamlet Las Aradas, were abandoned and camps were formed within the DMZ on the Honduran side of the border to avoid harassment from the military, as well as the National Guard and paramilitary Organización Democrática Nacionalista (ORDEN), which did not cross the border.[2]
The Honduran government became concerned with Salvadoran refugees residing in Honduras, one of the causes of the Football War. The Salvadoran government believed these camps were being used by FMLN guerrillas, partly based on the membership of many peasants within the DMZ in the Federación de Trabajadores del Campo, a political organization promoting agrarian reform and seen by the Salvadoran government as supporting the guerillas.[2] In early 1980, FMLN guerrillas organized several small Salvadoran border villages and provided rudimentary military training. In early May, they began farming nearby fallow land.[3]
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Massacre
On May 14, 1980, Salvadoran soldiers ordered the refugees to return from Sumpul River. They threatened to throw children into the river. The refugees did not return.[3] At 10:00 am, the soldiers fired "fistfuls" of bullets penetrating walls and killing many people and cattle.[4] They gathered and killed many refugees,[1] shooting them with machine guns,[1][4] bludgeoning them with rifle butts[4] or goring them with machetes and military knives.[1] ORDEN members threw babies and young children into the air and cleaved or decapitated them with machetes.[4]
The refugees attempted to cross the Sumpul river into Honduras,[1][4] but Honduran soldiers prevented them, possibly by shooting.[a] Salvadoran soldiers shot many refugees attempting to cross the river,[4][8] while many others, especially children, drowned.[8] Helicopters strafed the refugees hiding along stone fences.[8]
The massacre lasted six[4] to nine hours,[9] leaving at least 300 dead. Many sources place the death toll at 600.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumpul_River_massacre