Santa Marta, El Salvador


My time in El Salvador is almost over, with this ghastly revelation one must suck the marrow from every moment till at last the plane door shuts and my time here is finished. As departure comes closer though, it’s necessary to reflect in writing and try to make some sense out of this place, how ever impossible that task seems to me now. How can one understand El Salvador when the towns we pass by are either strewn with bullet holes or have disappeared, burned back into the jungle by ruthless government soldiers? What is reality when the old woman you are living with sits in her chair at night and talks, eyes glazed, of pregnant women thrown on spikes by armed men?

I’m writing this in a hammock, somewhere in the North East near the Honduran boarder. Appropriately I’m wearing my green Che shirt open to the heat, machete on the floor beside me as I listen to the sound of cocks crowing in the growing twilight. My memories are fragmented now by a need to sleep, flashes of mountains reaching far into the gathering dusk, a cow wandering dusty streets with a perplexed expression on her face, political slogans and bullet holes sprayed across whitewashed walls. Through this sea of thought I see Kyle, clinging to the back of a pick-up truck as I film him talking about guerillas he has known. If images can stay with you forever then these might. There was a church as we drove through the jungle to La Mora, it’s roof gone, the edges of it’s windows stained black with soot. It’s crumbling façade caught my eye and wouldn’t let go until the church finally disappeared around a bend and was gone.

I viewed all this through the viewfinder of the video camera I carried slung over one shoulder. Filming in the heat and dust was hard. I remember keeping focus on the person I was interviewing while a team of builders knocked down the house behind me, trying to be able to hear as a hoard of insects started their singing in the tree above a meeting I was trying to record. Every morning Roy would toss me the film bag as I’d check the batteries and grab the tripod. Sometimes we’d have to run to capture a moment on time, stills cameras bouncing up and down on our chests, laying the tripod just as an ex-guerilla, a teacher, a doctor began talking. Sometimes it was incredibly moving, the camera rolling as a man describes how he'd been tortured during the war and a doctor tells of his struggle to prevent AIDS and HIV. In the end perhaps we're wannabe war reporters, slugging beers and talking to girls at night, fingers clicking on camera triggers during the day, a constant stream of footage carving it's way into our tapes.

Sometimes though, there's a time to stop. I remember now hanging with one hand onto the back of a pick-up truck I’d haggled hard to use, finger far away from the film button as Roy crouched down trying to light a cigarette. The sun was going down, the sky rosy, orange, blood red all at the same time as if in mourning for the past day. My lens cap was on, I'd tried to get the sunset on camera at first, but there are some things you have to see for yourself. Around us all was still as the light fled over the horizon, leaving only the truck, the wind and us.


Are you sitting comfortably?


Roy and Camera, San Salvador


Arrival at the Airport



Camera Rolling...



The Suffolk Documentary Team Setting Up Shop, Santa Marta

San Salvador, El Salvador

We were walking down an empty street when I noticed the policeman. He stood, high above us on the edge of a small park, a mountain bike resting against one blue-trousered leg. He wore a cap and carried a truncheon, his face indistinct in the near dark of the El Salvadorian night. We’d seen him earlier when we’d wondered down a quiet avenue and spotted the police station, two officers sitting listlessly by the forever open door. Both Roy and I had been drinking so, camera at the ready we sauntered up smiling and I introduced us in pigeon Spanish, “Hola, nosotros es Journalistas de una periodico en de Eustados Eunidos, donde es graffiti political por photographia?” This translates vaguely to ‘hello, we’re journalists from a newspaper in the United States, where is the political graffiti we can photograph?’ It was a harmless lie, more likely to get us an interview than admitting we were two college students on spring break.

Perhaps it was my Spanish, maybe they didn’t believe the story, it could have even been that the policemen were taken aback by two hairy gringos with a paparazzi style camera and the stink of tequila on their breath suddenly appearing from the night and demanding directions. Whatever, they gave us bull-shit instructions and waved vaguely towards the entire village before returning to the more serious business of putting their feet up on desks and looking bored. Disheartened by this sudden failure we slouched off up the hill towards our guesthouse, buildings pitted with bullet holes all around us, mangy dogs slinking from shadow to shadow. It’s an odd feeling to walk through a sleeping town and know that ten years before the entire place was filled with flying bullets and explosions, I can never put the past together with the future in places like that.

As we crossed the park, almost home now, the policeman appeared on his bike. He sat looking at us for a few seconds before signaling that we should follow him through the strands of palm trees towards a grubby red pavilion, it’s paint chipped and tile floor dirty. Just by its entrance he stopped and put the bike down, pointing above our heads at something. Looking up I could see what appeared to be the tail of an aircraft, olive green, stuck to a pole in the middle of the park. “American” the man said in Spanish, “from the war.”

For the next half an hour we talked to the policeman, who was soon joined by another. Roy set up the tripod and camera, snapping pictures and searing the darkness with his high-powered flash. Every so often he’d glance up from the viewfinder and ask me to translate for him, then something would catch his eye and he’d return to the camera, trying to photograph the plane. The tail section was definitely that of a military aircraft or helicopter we decided and the writing in English stenciled all over it seemed to confirm what the man had said. The conversation between our new friends and us went something like this, all be it with many mistakes and awkward pauses due to the language barrier:
Me: American, you’re sure?
Policeman: Si, a warplane. The Americans fought in the war.
Roy (to me): The Americans were actually fighting here? They must just mean the plane is American.
Me: (to the policeman) Only American planes or also American pilots?
Policeman: Si, pilots too
Me: You’re sure the Americans we’re here?
Policeman: Yes, and the Israeli’s.
Me (Half miming): The Americans were on the ground and in the air?
Policeman: Yes, the Israeli’s trained the troops and the Americans also fought.
Me: And the American’s dropped bombs (miming an explosion) here?
Policeman: Many bombs, in the hills there is a village the Americans destroyed. There are unexploded American bombs there. (He writes the name down)
Me (to Roy): I might be getting the translation slightly wrong but he seems sure that American pilots and troops we’re actually fighting here during the war. Did anyone ever mention that before?
Roy: S***. He seems sure?
Me: Yes. He also says they destroyed a village.

Afterwards, lying half asleep in my hammock I thought about what the man had said. My own countrymen dropping bombs on innocent people for the greater good, it reminded me horribly of Cambodia and the two 50 ton bombs turned into the pillars of a gate, marking the entrance to Aki Ra’s landmine museum at Siem Reap. It seems tragic that in the countries I love the most the people who are so amazingly kind to me have the least reason to be so. I should feel ashamed when they welcome me into their house and give me their food, after the damage the western world has done they should with every right lock their door and turn me away.


Unexploded Bomb in Northern El Salvador