A loud voice at High Desert State Prison cracks to life over the P.A. system. “Everyone get the fuck down, get down on the ground! Stop, stop!” Live rounds from a Mini-14 rifle are fired. Bodies stumble against each other. Utensils hit the pavement. A fresh stain of blood appears on the hot tarmac. The burn of pepper spray stinks in the air. Shots continue firing. Echoes of rubber bullets piercing flesh, attempting to cease racial hostility.
I am in the midst of a riot, praying to make it out alive while dodging bullets. I flash back to being five years old.
My past blends into my present. Trapped in my own abyss of incarceration with unhealed ashes of childhood trauma. The resurgence of a familiar fear, the echo of rapid fire and smoke grenades, trigger suppressed memories of trauma deep inside the mind of my five-year-old self. I closed my eyes in fear of being hit by aimless bullets. After all, I had survived the disarray of a civil war in El Salvador that left me breathless and nearly orphaned me on multiple occasions. Timelines converge; old visions of spattered blood stain my current reality.
Hot lead rained from every rooftop in El Salvador. The peaceful avenue cracked, violently slicing the air between my five-year-old self and my mother’s outstretched hand. Rapid fires of war whipped across the stars. The Sandinista rebels had taken over the city of Santa Ana. It was a dispute between the U.S. and the Russian governments, but as a young child I was oblivious as to why our lives were full of discord and misery at the expense of foreign politics. The only thing I knew was that people were dying. I remember when my friend’s father was kidnapped in the middle of the night by Escuadron de la Muerte, the Death Squad. This was a mercenary group that killed people and left their decapitated corpses in the middle of the highways, or hanging from a bridge with placards in red letterings: “He is a traitor and deserves to die!”
My mom would often remind me that if I wanted to stay alive, I needed to listen to her. One day, I was on the street where my mom had set up shop to sell her things on the sidewalks of the city, and my siblings and I were in a big plastic container where we bathed outdoors with our underwear on. It was here she noticed people shouting and running in all directions, in a panic. She demanded for us kids to get out and dry off as she started quickly gathering up her merchandise. A soldier in the National Guard pointed a rifle at my mother’s head as she tried to collect her things and pack them into a cardboard box. Around us, rapid fire continued to steal innocent lives.
My mother immediately raised her hands into the air. “I am not armed, please don’t shoot me,” Mama pleaded to the soldier, shivering from head to toe.
He yelled at her, “Are you stupid? I thought you had a bomb! Leave everything behind or you will get blown into pieces!” Then he walked away, shooting around.
I had looked down, placing my small hands into my ears in an attempt to block the noise of live ammunition. I didn’t know if my mother was shot. I looked up and saw the soldier’s shining boots disappearing into the distance.
My mother’s defiance allowed her to retrieve her chinaware dishes, which she collected rapidly. As people ran by, stumbling into one another in search of refuge, she begged them not to step on her dishes. She refused to leave the things that allowed her six children, her partner Frank, and herself to eat. The fear of not having a way to put food on the table was more important than her own life. This heroic act kept us safe. “I was a young mother, and I knew that if I lost our stuff, I was going to be in a bigger debt. All that chinaware was given to me on credit,” my mother explained to me years later.
My mother sought shelter for us like a wild hawk protecting her chicks, going door to door, begging anyone to take us off the streets. Making herself small in moments of desperation, her bravery ignited the flames of hopes which kept us alive. She refused to give up, even while feeling powerless.
“Por favor,” Mama beseeched a stranger on the safe side of a thick, rust-colored door, her tiny knuckles bleeding as she knocked, “Tengo mis hijos.” I have my children.
I was confused and scared when I saw my mother’s body language change. She spoke in a tone of voice I had never heard before. She moved quickly, with one child (my baby brother Amilcar) on her arm, practically dragging my sister because she couldn’t keep up. I was yelled at for not moving fast enough. I could see Mama’s fear—no one needed to tell me. Her legs were shaking, yet she moved quietly, like a deer in the wild. When an explosion erupted in the distance, one of my siblings cried, making her more jumpy and nervous, as each thundering blow grew closer and closer.
A rebel ran up to us and told my mom to stop. If we wanted to survive, we needed to stay still between the concrete walls that were temporarily shielding us from the conflict. The walls were old, and had hardly enough space for one person to hide from plain view. We all ran up to a corner house wall and hid in this small entrance. We found ourselves packed in, squeezing each other, gasping for air. My small body was pinned against the wall, my nose pressed into the rusty paint. It smelled like burning flesh, urine, and death. The rebel left. We waited for his return. A few minutes later he came back—he had found a place for us and other families with children. As if she was his own concerned mother, Mama asked the rebel in a quivering voice, “Aren’t you afraid that you will get killed?”
“I won’t be the only person to die for all the injustice that our people are going through,” the rebel replied and took off running, disappearing into the night. Finally, a frightened old woman cracked her door open, just enough to lend us her tidy wooden floor for the night.
In the morning, the war woke us when a radio came alive, pulling back the blanket of security. The Communist Party, Faramundo Martin para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), announced: “Tienen media hora para comprar comida o para irse a sus casas.” You have half an hour to either purchase food or go home.
In the commotion, I sought shelter by making myself as small as possible. I tried to escape the wrath of war by hiding inside my small clothes, to make myself invisible. I stuck my little arms inside my shirt. I pulled the top over my head. “!Aqui no me encuentran!” In here they can’t find me!
“¡Edwin! ¡Edwin! ¡Deja de jugar, nos tenemos que ir, apúrate!” shouted my mother. Edwin! Edwin! Stop fooling around, we must go, hurry up!”
We flung open the rusty metal door that had temporarily protected us all, and ran, every one of us, in every direction. The city had been shut down, and no one could make it home. The stores had been closed and food was scarce. The fear of ending up dead on the streets made it a race for our lives. We were caught up in the middle of cross fire. I was confused—I opened my mouth but couldn’t utter a word. Trying to make sense of my surroundings, I blinked my eyes in hopes that the situation before me would change, but the disorder and panic remained. I couldn’t understand what was happening. In a state of shock, I found myself in the streets, my little body shaking in the midst of anarchy, as if I was inside a horror movie. Folks were screaming, calling on loved ones to no avail. Distraught, I ran. All I could see in the smoke and fog were shadows running in different directions.
I felt sick from the smell of burning flesh. Surrounded by rapid fire, I sprinted into an intersection. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—dozens of abandoned buses and cars with their doors open and their motors running. Bloody corpses littered the streets. I couldn’t understand the lack of movement in body after body, or why cars were parked in the middle of the street. Looking everywhere for my mother, I tripped and fell over a child’s body, laying face-to-face with her frozen eyes, lightly dusted and dull.
I lay on the street, listening to the eerie calm of a dying diesel motor, afraid to move, afraid she might blink. Afraid my heart was going to pop out of my small chest. Does she want to blink and say hello? Is she afraid like me?
In my mind, I tried to create some distance. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Donde esta mi mama?” Where is my mother? “¡No quiero morir alguien por favor ayudame!” I don’t want to die, please someone help me! No response. A few minutes felt like an eternity. Then, a soldier pulled me to my feet and made me walk through the dream of bodies. He took me to a church, where I found my family. Then he left. Years later, I learned through some relatives that three days after he found me, he became another bloated dream in the streets. I never knew his name.
These episodes rattled around my young mind, into adulthood. Even now, my existence is interrupted by the chaos of prison violence; emergency responders move swiftly, responding to the trail of bloody men laying on the ground, fighting for their lives. The war in my head continues to live on; I wonder, at any given moment will this be the end of this Salvadoran refugee? Physically, I am in a riot among deadly convicts, but mentally I am lost in my own memories, all while prone on the hot concrete inside a maximum-security prison.
