海角大神

Laura Quinteros, a seventh grade teacher at a private school, noticed something missing from her class reading list: Salvadoran literature.

So she added 鈥淔ireflies in El Mozote,鈥� a first-person account of a 1981 massacre when soldiers killed nearly 1,000 unarmed civilians. Although her students are too young to remember the days when El Salvador was in the midst of a civil war between the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government and a left-wing guerrilla insurgency, she didn鈥檛 want the lessons and realities of the war to end with those who lived it.

鈥淗istorical memory should be revived,鈥� Ms. Quinteros says.聽

But not everyone here agrees.

On Jan. 16, El Salvador marks 30 years since the government of the day and rebel guerrillas signed a peace accord to end a 12-year civil war. El Salvador, like many in the region, is still grappling with how to come to terms with its dark past. During the civil war, the military and death squads sowed terror by murdering nuns, priests, and peasants, and disappearing political dissidents and student leaders.

The atrocities were documented by a Truth Commission, which counted 75,000 dead and 5,000 disappeared, most at the hands of the military. But present-day politicians, businesses, and communities have direct ties to one side of the conflict or the other, making the war a tender topic. And some politicians, such as former President Alfredo Cristiani, argue that efforts to document the past, like the Truth Commission, are biased, and it鈥檚 better to 鈥溾�� and move on.

From Colombia to Guatemala, Peru to Nicaragua, the question of how to talk about past national conflicts can be difficult. In El Salvador, the clash between those who want to remember and those who prefer to forget has gained strength in recent years, as the current administration displays increased reliance on the military.

And although politics, pandemic exhaustion, and issues such as gang violence and migration all threaten to overshadow the memory of El Salvador鈥檚 civil war, those who believe that knowing history is the best way of not repeating it are stepping up.

People often prefer to avoid talking about recent conflicts, says Virginia Garrard, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin聽who researches historical memory in Latin America. Perpetrators directly involved in past abuses may feel threatened by efforts to recall them, and younger Salvadorans feel the country is 鈥減icking at scabs鈥� of events long past. 鈥淭hey want to get on with it,鈥� she says.

Turning the page

Shortly after the peace accords were signed in 1992, politicians promised to educate students about the civil war, says Claudia Garcia de Cartagena, director of education programs at the Museum of the Word and Image (MUPI), an organization founded by former聽left-wing guerrilla聽fighters that is dedicated to preserving historical memory of the civil war and more distant history.

But these promises fell short. Most curriculum reforms over the past 30 years only scratched the surface of the conflict and have increasingly been seen as a partisan matter, with leftists pushing to include the civil war history in the national curriculum, and more conservative politicians ignoring or countering them.

Then, President Nayib Bukele, a young populist, took office in 2019. Under his leadership, El Salvador has seen authoritarian rule, political polarization, frequent attacks on political enemies, and militarization, according to watchdogs.

Mr. Bukele, who was born a year after the war started, has minimized its importance, angering victims and nongovernmental organizations. 鈥淓l Salvador has turned the page on the postwar era,鈥� Mr. Bukele said in his election victory speech.聽

This week, his Nuevas Ideas party proposed making the anniversary an opportunity to commemorate the war鈥檚 victims. But critics see this as a bid to rewrite the past. 鈥淲hat they want,鈥� says Celia Medrano, a human rights expert here, 鈥渋s to force people to forget that at one moment in our history, we understood that we have to talk through things鈥澛�in order to move ahead.

鈥淭hey are betting on forgetting history,鈥� Ms. Medrano says.

But civil war survivors like Dorila Marquez can鈥檛 forget.

Perhaps no case is quite as sensitive in El Salvador as the 1981 massacre in the remote village of El Mozote, carried out by an elite, U.S.-trained Salvadoran military unit. Ms. Marquez was 24 when troops stormed into her village and, over the course of the next three days, killed nearly 1,000 people, the youngest of whom was 8 months old.

Evidence gathered by the Truth Commission shows that the victims, almost half of whom were under the age of 12, were unarmed. Yet the military maintains that those killed were guerrillas. A criminal case against more than a dozen high-level military officers involved in El Mozote was reopened in 2016 when an amnesty law was overturned, but the trial has moved slowly. Without a ruling, the events are still disputed.

Ms. Marquez says despite the government鈥檚 announcement that it wants to honor victims, she has not been invited to any kind of anniversary ceremony. Although she鈥檚 discouraged with the lack of justice, she has placed her faith elsewhere.

鈥淭he hope is in the youth,鈥� says Ms. Marquez, who shares her experience with student groups that visit El Mozote. 鈥淭here are few of us left who lived the massacre in the flesh. So I encourage students to learn the history.鈥�

Jose Cabezas/Reuters/File

Relatives participate in a ceremony in 2016 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, in which Salvadoran troops killed nearly 1,000 villagers, half of whom were children.

Acceptable to speak openly?

Groups like MUPI are trying to teach that history. The organization trains teachers, such as Ms. Quinteros, to incorporate lessons about the country鈥檚 past into their curriculum. Nearly 200 educators have been part of the program since it began in 2015, reaching thousands of young Salvadorans.聽

Students are taught to 鈥渁nalyze their reality and see what is needed so that this history is not repeated,鈥� says Ms. Garc铆a de Cartagena from MUPI.聽The course focuses on first-person testimonies, so as to elicit empathy for everyone involved, whether they were guerrilla fighters who took up arms against inequality or government soldiers who took the job to feed their family.

About six years ago, Ms. Quinteros聽felt it had become acceptable to speak openly about the war, and sought out MUPI鈥檚 training. A former guerrilla leader had been elected president, and the right-wing ARENA party, founded by a death squad leader, was no longer in power.

But when Ms. Quinteros introduced 鈥淔ireflies in El Mozote,鈥澛爏he was met by a backlash. Some of her students came from upper-class military families, for whom the subject was still taboo. While teaching about the war, Ms. Quinteros discovered that one student鈥檚 grandfather was accused of civil war-era human rights abuses.

鈥淭hat student got uncomfortable,鈥� she recalls, but she did not see it as a reason to 鈥渇orget [history] or erase it.鈥�

Dr. Garrard, the historian, says family ties often motivate a desire to forget the past. 鈥淚f your version of the story is on the wrong side of history, that鈥檚 another reason to just say, 鈥楲et鈥檚 not talk about it,鈥欌�� she says. She sees MUPI鈥檚 work in Salvadoran schools as unique in the region, where much of the effort to preserve historical memory is confined to museums.

Students鈥� 鈥渙wn experience starts to fit into something,鈥� she says. Citizens become 鈥減art of a larger narrative in a way they didn鈥檛 necessarily understand鈥� before.聽

鈥淣ever stop questioning鈥�

Some students who have studied the civil war period see disturbing echoes in today鈥檚 El Salvador.

Mr. Bukele鈥檚 administration has been accused of harassing civil society members, journalists, and opposition politicians, and of quashing public debate. 鈥淭his doesn鈥檛 allow the country to have harmony, peace, and development,鈥� says Aaron Manzano, a recent graduate who learned about the war in MUPI鈥檚 after-school program. As in the 1980s, today everyone has to pick a political side, he says.

Karen Rivera, a former student of Ms. Quinteros鈥�, recalls that she began noticing an increased military presence on the streets during the pandemic as part of Mr. Bukele鈥檚 response. 鈥淏ut then they stayed.鈥�

If she hadn鈥檛 learned about the civil war in school, she might not have noticed this or been alarmed by it, she says.

And the classes have taught her a broader lesson. They 鈥渉elped me to learn to never stop questioning everything that is happening around me,鈥� Ms. Rivera says. 鈥淟iving without questioning is dangerous.鈥�