We were sitting by the pool in Leon and suddenly we decided to go to El Salvador. Ok then, so five bus journeys through three countries in one day may not sound like the best of ideas, but off we went nonetheless. Needless to say no fun was to be had, but it was worth it to arrive in such a lovely and un-touristy (sorry, I hate that phrase but can think of no other) country. Our first stop was a small mountain village which was a guerilla stronghold during the 12 year civil war here, which ended in 1992.

Like a tale as old as time, poverty and inequality in El Salvador lead to peasant uprisings which were brutally supressed by the government (1932, the year of ´the massacre´, 30,000 people were killed, imprisoned or exiled alone). The government created what was charmingly known as ´Death Squads´ which went about doing pretty much whatever they wanted, culminating in the attrocities at El Mazote, a tiny village just a few miles from Perquin itself. In 1981 US trained and funded government soldiers stormed the village, claiming they had provided food for the guerillas, and rounded up every inhabitant, tortured, shot and then burned their bodies. It is estimated 757 men, women and children (the youngest was only months old) were murdered, only one woman survived the ordeal.

We learned about this in the local museum which housed many relics from the war. It's still possible to go to El Mozote to see the mass graves, trenches and bullet holes, but we felt it was a bit too weird to go there to be honest. Instead we were shown around the museum by an ex-guerilla fighter whose Spanish I tried hard to understand as much as possible. We saw photos, old land mines, guns, rocket launchers and the remnants of a downed helicopter (which carried a government general) and learned about the history of it all. Some facts... 40% of guerilla fighters were women, the US government spent over $5 billion on the Salvadoran army to prevent a ´socialist´ nation, over 180,000 people died, and nearly one third of the population fled the country, many of who have never returned.

After knowing all this it was weird to walk down the street and not imagine the old man holding an AK-47 or the group of women hiding machettes under their layers of petticoats. Everything seems so normal now, there are only scars if you look for them. Still, what got me most was the fact that not one of the governement soldiers who carried out such attrocious human rights abuses (to put it more bluntly torture, rape and murder) during the war has been punished by the legal system. They too still walk the streets looking like any other passer by. It just amazes me that people can still live with that thought. Even an investigation into the El Mozote massacre was closed by the government, and will very likely never be reopened.

Anyway, in contrast to all that doom and gloom we actually had a suprisingly good time in Perquin and El Salvador in general is turning out to be one of the best places in CA so far!