Although El Salvador´s civil war ended in 1992, the scars still remain fresh in the memories of anyone old enough to remember the dozen years of chaos the country was plunged into. Scratch the surface of any conversation with a Salvadoran and you´ll find that many of their trains of thought run back to the war. But, unlike other countries where past abuses of power are only now coming to light, El Salvador began the fight against historical amnesia almost as soon as the war ended with the contruction of The Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution the same year the peace accord was signed. The site is a must-see for those who travel to this tiny Central American country hoping to understand its tortured history.
The museum is housed in a small,ordinary looking complex of whitewashed buildings in the tiny town of Perquín, which once served as the headquarters of the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), a leftist guerilla movement which won broad support in the area during the 1980´s. It is in Perquín and the surrounding state of Morazan that some of the fierecest fighting between the FMLN and the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military took place. Several kilometers down the road from Perquín is an even smaller village named El Mozote, made famous in December of 1981 when governernment forces murdered an estimated 800 villagers in one afternoon, with more bodies still being turned up in an ongoing exhumation of the site. The Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution tells the story of the war through the eyes of those who fought against the government through photos, displays of weaponry, and artifacts preserved from those who fell incombat. Former guerillas like Catalino Gómez Arqueta float between the displays patiently answering the questions of visitors. Arqueta,who walks with a limp from having stepped on a landmine, carries a fading 25-year-old picture in his back pocket. It´s a portrait of himself as a teenager dressed in olive fatigues, a rifle at his side.
"I tell this story to anyone who will listen," he says. "Men who used to be soldiers come to this place and we talk to them just like anyone else. Both of us know about what each other went through. But there are some young people today who don´t know about the war,whose parents won´t tell them what happened. That´s why I do this."
The photos that line the museum are disturbing-young women with pigtails and men barely old enough to grow moustaches. Some only show the date they died or disappeared, others carry short paragraphs about their childhoods and dreams for the future. There is another hall with posters from as far as Israel and Ireland, relics of the the world-wide El Salvador solidarity movement that flourished during the 1980´s. Many of them bear the same message in various languages "El Salvador:We Will not Forget."
An adjacent building hosts the former broadcasting station of Radio Venceremos, the clandestine station that mixed music and popular song with updates on fighting at the front. In an elaborate 1984 hoax FMLN members rigged the station´s transmitter with explosives, detonating it to destroy the helicopter of Colonel Domingo Monterrosa the U.S.-trained commander of the Atlacatl Brigade responsible for the massacre at El Mozote. The remains of this helicopter, as well as the crater left from a bomb dropped by the military, can also be seen at the museum.
The museum may lack the size and funding of more well-known monuments to injustice,such as Washington D.C.´s Holocaust museum. Its isolated location can make it a difficult trip, even for other Salvadorans on vacation. But the honesty and simplicity of the museum can be a powerful experience for any traveller seeking to understand the roots of Central America´s troubled past and the shameful role the United States played in the conflict. Although many of the exhibits have yet to be translated into English, the images one finds will speak for themselves.
Buses bound for San Miguel leave from San Salvador´s eastern bus terminal (Terminal Occidental) on the hour and take around three hours, costing $2.50-5.00 depending on the quality of the bus. From San Miguel ocassional direct buses leave for Perquín, although service stops in the early afternoon. One can also catch a bus to San Francisco Gotera (1.5 hours) and transfer to a pick-up truck (make sure to secure breathing space) to make the remainder of the hour-long journey to Perquín.
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