BRATTLEBORO — On Oct. 8, 1980, while my family and I gathered at our safe house in Las Canoas as our homeland El Salvador erupted in civil war, we were attacked by soldiers of the National Guard, dispersed by gunfire and grenades, then tortured and disposed of as if we were animals.
Only five members of my father's family survived. My two siblings and I are the youngest of those who remain.
I was 3 years old.
When I think of the day of the Las Canoas massacre, I remember the sounds of torture, rape, and killing.
The blood of my family forever runs through my veins. To have my bloodline severed by war was a memory I cannot contain and compels me to share with you the spirit of what remains.
On the day of the massacre, my paternal grandmother brought my sister and me to the safe house where she and my grandfather lived, so that we could be fed, given new clothing, and visit with our relatives. My mother followed behind, moving slower because she was carrying my infant brother. As she entered the hallway of my grandparent's house, she recalls that that is when the shooting began.
As my grandmother took my sister and me and ran out the back door, my mother tried to follow but was prevented by ricocheting bullets. She ran another way and made it to a hill, covered by the blood of another woman shot and killed close by.
The threat of death evokes a sense of self preservation like no other urge in the human experience. Although my mother wanted to stay with my sister and me, she had to run to save her own life and that of my infant brother. When someone is shooting at you, your primal instincts override all other choices.
For six hours, the soldiers tortured and raped my family and neighbors, killing many of them. My grandmother was raped and killed before my eyes. Afterwards, I crawled over to her to try to wake her up.
My sister and I lay face down on the ground as we had been ordered to do. Foremost in my sister's memory were the black army boots worn by the soldiers.
I tried to look nowhere but the ground and keep my eyes closed, but I could hear everything around me.
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At the time of the massacre, my father, Angel Gonzalo Nolasco, was not present.
My father had been a farmer. He and his brother Emerito were well-respected lay catechists in Las Canoas.
But circumstances of heightened warfare eventually compelled him to fight as a guerilla. It was too dangerous to bring his family with him on his missions.
Prior to the massacre, my family and neighbors had modeled solidarity and survival, creating a cooperative community where the safe house served as a community center, dispersing food, clothes, information, and other resources necessary for our survival.
As poor families like mine gathered their resources in order to sustain themselves through collective organizing efforts, we lived under constant threat of violence and death by Salvadoran government forces.
The Salvadoran oligarchy in power at the time viewed all popular collective efforts as attempts to overthrow their government. With financial assistance, military training, and support from the United States, they assassinated their own citizens.
During a genocide, entire families are killed in order to erase their existence from the historical memory of the country. On the day of the massacre, my uncle Emerito was assassinated, as well as nine of his 11 siblings, in addition to his parents - my grandparents.
Massacres were a regular occurrence throughout the countryside but were reported as victories for the Salvadoran forces as they claimed to be fighting a war against communism.
After the Las Canoas massacre, my father was rarely at home with my mother and brother. In 1984, a street vendor told my mother that my father had been killed.
My father's name does not appear on the memory wall that commemorates victims of massacres carried out during El Salvador's civil war. He remains a member of the disappeared.
His spirit lives within me, compelling me to put his memory in its place, beside truth and witness wherever it can be found. His life is a testament to the struggle of the Salvadoran people in their fight to live with dignity.
That history cannot be erased by his death. The rest of my family and thousands of other families still search for answers.
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In a 2015 report compiled by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, the district attorney's office in Santa Ana, El Salvador, approved in 2007 the exhumation of the remains of my family executed during the Las Canoas massacre for humanitarian purposes and DNA analysis.
But they have yet to be analyzed for identification or returned to my living relatives so that we may give our family members a proper burial and the recognition they deserve.
There is no justice without identification and recognition. There is no resolution for our family without the return of our family members' sacred remains.
In this way, our loved ones remain disappeared and the country cannot move forward and heal.
Currently, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights is partnering with various human rights organizations, such as the Mauricio Aquino Foundation and the Our Parent's Bones campaign to persuade the U.S. government to release CIA documents containing information about military operations conducted during El Salvador's civil war.
These documents include places, names, identities, the historical memory of El Salvador's civil war and the key to recognition and accountability of those who were responsible for the genocide.
Because the U.S. government funded the Salvadoran government in its war against the people, trained its soldiers and provided many other forms of support, it is incumbent upon the U.S. Congress to support the declassification of U.S. files pertaining to the civil war in El Salvador.
With access to these files, cases of disappearance of family's loved ones could finally be resolved and their remains put to rest, at the same time empowering the Salvadoran people who continue to struggle within forced silence, violence and repression.
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If you feel compelled to support these efforts at recognition and reconciliation, you can contact Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy's office and ask him to support declassification of U.S. files pertaining to the Salvadoran civil war.
Senator Leahy could be a powerful figure in this effort, given his position as ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State Department, Foreign Operations, and related programs.
Within the request to declassify U.S. files, attention must be given to the current Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. Pertaining to the U.S. strategy for engagement in Central America, Senator Leahy and other supportive lawmakers should mandate that the Salvadoran government report on progress toward resolving cases of disappearance as part of its compliance in order to continue receiving financial assistance.
Recently, the Salvadoran Supreme Court ruled that the Amnesty Law of 1993 is unconstitutional, opening the way for investigations and prosecutions of crimes against humanity carried out during El Salvador's civil war.
To ensure the success of this ruling, U.S. files must be declassified and Salvadoran military records must be opened and investigated by a truth commission with investigative and forensic capacity. Such a commission must have access to Salvadoran government military intelligence and records.
We - the survivors of the disappeared - and our allies, with the support of U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Norma J. Torres of California, are calling on the support of their fellow members of Congress to urge President Barack Obama to support declassification of U.S. files.
In addition, we are calling on Salvadoran President Sánchez Cerén to launch a national truth commission dedicated to transparency and the international rule of law.
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By witnessing the pain of others, listening to their stories and acting on a sense of compassion, you have a part to play toward the healing of conflict and violence. We all share the human story of love and survival and have a responsibility to help lift each other out of the darkness of silence.
I will never forget what the violence of my early life in El Salvador during the war taught me about the nature of humankind - how deeply evil it can be, but also how strongly love for family endures, through distance, time and death.
The memory of loved ones lost endures as well. The assassination of my family, among thousands of other killings and disappearances during El Salvador's civil war, must be recognized as an act of genocide, a living history very much alive today.
Within the souls of its survivors, the fight for truth and recognition is a powerful legacy that speaks of love and the strength of witness.
Within that passionate endeavor, our fight for truth and peace is universal.