Speaker 1: Warning. This episode contains references to violence, domestic abuse, and
Speaker 1: sexual assault. There's a fire in the women of my family.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because they're born in the land of volcanoes,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's because it's what they have to be
Speaker 1: to survive. But every single one of them is like
Speaker 1: a character from a Garcia Marquez novel. They burn hot,
Speaker 1: and no one burns hotter than my Tiavilma Dina. My
Speaker 1: Tiavilma describes herself as bratty, rebellious, and spirited, which I
Speaker 1: would say is putting it mildly. She's the kind of
Speaker 1: person who takes shit from no one, and I think
Speaker 1: the best way to understand who she is is through
Speaker 1: a story she told me about when she and her sister,
Speaker 1: my Ta Marta were young girls is.
Speaker 2: Yea by Land.
Speaker 1: Their father came home to find the two young girls
Speaker 1: dancing on the kitchen table to a song on the radio.
Speaker 1: He was an abusive drunk. As soon as he saw them,
Speaker 1: they stopped, but he said, oh, so you like dancing,
Speaker 1: Get up and dance for me, margharita you first. Marta
Speaker 1: didn't want to, but her father warned her, if you
Speaker 1: don't dance for me, I'm going to beat you. Ula
Speaker 1: got up on the table and danced. When he was satisfied,
Speaker 1: he told her to get down, that it was Vilma's turn.
Speaker 1: Pilma refused again. He demanded get up and dance, but
Speaker 1: she said, why would I dance for you? He beat
Speaker 1: her bloody with an extension chord all the while she
Speaker 1: refused to dance.
Speaker 2: Lostrapa, that's my Tia Vilma.
Speaker 1: The only exception in my family of tough women was
Speaker 1: my Dea Margarita. Pilma and Margharita were only two years
Speaker 1: apart in age, and they were basically inseparable. They were
Speaker 1: what we call in Spanish unya imoure as close as
Speaker 1: the dirt is under a fingernail, And talking about Margharita
Speaker 1: is one of the only times that my Tia Vilma's
Speaker 1: voice softens.
Speaker 3: Marra majors annos losa maori.
Speaker 2: Betterinta.
Speaker 1: She remembers my dear Margharita as being softer than the
Speaker 1: rest of my family, prettier, gentler. She was named after
Speaker 1: the Margharita flower. In English we call them daisies. A
Speaker 1: flower is so simple and common you forget how beautiful
Speaker 1: it is. The story of my Dia. Margherita's life and
Speaker 1: death is like that. It's not an extraordinary story. It's common.
Speaker 1: It's the story of so many Salvadoran women then and now.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few stories that I knew about
Speaker 1: my family, that my dear Margherita was killed by a
Speaker 1: death squad. That shortly after my mom said goodbye to
Speaker 1: her in El Salvador, masked men came in the night
Speaker 1: to take her away. I'd always assumed that maybe she
Speaker 1: was part of the FMLN. The leftis Geriez. The truth
Speaker 1: was something so much more complicated, something that gets at
Speaker 1: the heart of what war does to people. I'm Jasmine
Speaker 1: Romero and this is Sacred Scandal, Season three, Nation of Saints.
Speaker 1: This is episode six, The Flower. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: If you ask anyone in San Miguel about my family,
Speaker 1: they'll probably answer you with one phrase. Les chilette. Ras
Speaker 1: chilate is a hot, thick drink made from corn, ginger,
Speaker 1: pepper and cinnamon, and selling chilatte in the mercado has
Speaker 1: been my family business for generations. The women of my
Speaker 1: family would load baskets full of hot chilatte on their
Speaker 1: heads and head to the market to sell them. I
Speaker 1: asked my Tiavilmar to show me what it sounds like
Speaker 1: when she sells chilatte. The chilata comes in plastic baggies.
Speaker 1: I remember drinking it when I was a kid, tearing
Speaker 1: the corner of the bag with my teeth and sucking
Speaker 1: the chilatte out. It's kind of sweet, but mostly Herbi,
Speaker 1: my great grandma, was in charge of making a huge
Speaker 1: batch of chilat at dawn. Once it was ready, the
Speaker 1: women of my family would go to her house and
Speaker 1: load up their baskets, and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: chila terras. Remember my mom is one of nine.
Speaker 3: Is the Anna is La Mayor, Margharita, Doos, Bill Matres, Mercedes, Quatro.
Speaker 2: Mercedes.
Speaker 1: I guess when you have nine siblings it's easy to
Speaker 1: lose track. It's also tough to remember them all because
Speaker 1: in Alsavaor no one really calls you by your real name.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone goes my nicknames Mauricio, Florentine, Holain, La Jus,
Speaker 1: Roxanna becomes China, Maria de Jesus becomes Cheos. You get
Speaker 1: the picture. Selling chilate is how my dis will man
Speaker 1: Margharita would spend their days in San Miguel. They from
Speaker 1: young girls to teenagers, carrying those heavy baskets on top
Speaker 1: of their heads, going up and down the streets of Elmergado,
Speaker 1: calling for customers, selling the bags for twenty cents. By
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen eighty one, Margherita was nineteen and
Speaker 1: she had three young kids. She had just separated from
Speaker 1: the father of her kids, who was an abusive alcoholic.
Speaker 1: It was Vilma who convinced her to leave him.
Speaker 3: Yo la vive, la viv I cannot say parde lombres,
Speaker 3: yes dolts.
Speaker 1: At the time, Vilma was seventeen and dating a guy
Speaker 1: named El Bajaro the Bird. His real name was Walter,
Speaker 1: but everyone just called him El Bajaro. I suspect it's
Speaker 1: because he had a big nose. Elbajaro's family had all
Speaker 1: left for the US, so he had his place all
Speaker 1: to himself. It was kind of a crash pad where
Speaker 1: friends would party before going to dances in town, so
Speaker 1: he told Margharita that she could stay there. Margherita moved
Speaker 1: in and soon she met one of El Bajado's best friends,
Speaker 1: a guy named Chara. The two of them hit it
Speaker 1: off and started dating. They became like the cast of
Speaker 1: a sitcom. Two sisters dating, two best friends, Bilma and Elbajo,
Speaker 1: Margharita and Chara. The girls would spend their days in
Speaker 1: the mercado, but at night they danced. To this day,
Speaker 1: my Tia Vilma loves to dance. She'll dance anywhere, at
Speaker 1: any time, for any reason, and I love to watch
Speaker 1: her dance. That fall, one of her favorite singers was
Speaker 1: in town, Maria chacao A. Bilma was eight months pregnant,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't going to stop her from going to
Speaker 1: the dance land. By the fall of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: the war had started to trickle down into the streets.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while there were shootouts in town,
Speaker 1: but for the most part the combat was happening in
Speaker 1: the hills. And what does a seventeen year old care
Speaker 1: about politics and war anyway, My teas just wanted to
Speaker 1: do what all teenagers want to do. Party.
Speaker 2: That's yota, They war on Macho.
Speaker 1: They would go to at Baho's house to pregame and
Speaker 1: drink before heading to the dance. Now, I know it's
Speaker 1: not great that Mike Tia Vilma was drinking while she
Speaker 1: was eight months pregnant. It's easy to judge, but I
Speaker 1: try to have grace for someone who was seventeen, had
Speaker 1: never been to school, and didn't really know any better.
Speaker 1: On the night of November fourteenth, the four of them
Speaker 1: were pregaming at Albajaro's house, but pregaming turned into just drinking,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon it was late at night and Mike
Speaker 1: Tiavilma wasn't feeling so great.
Speaker 2: Lacynthia y Maria.
Speaker 1: I know. Vilma wanted to leave to spend that night
Speaker 1: at my great Grandma's house, but Margharita wanted to stay.
Speaker 1: She wasn't ready for the night to end. They argued
Speaker 1: back and forth for a bit, but finally Bilma gave
Speaker 1: up and left her there. When Vilma got to my
Speaker 1: great grandma's house, my grandma asked her, where's Margharita la
Speaker 1: my Dea. Vilma just shrugged it off. She told her
Speaker 1: I tried to bring her, but she didn't want to come.
Speaker 2: Para midichus.
Speaker 1: My grandma was worried that something would happen to Margharita,
Speaker 1: but Vilma just went off to bed. The next morning,
Speaker 1: someone arrived at my great Grandma's house with a message
Speaker 1: a young don't wait for Margharita, they said. She said,
Speaker 1: the morgue, We'll be right back after the break. Mitia man,
Speaker 1: that's my grandma. She remembers thinking it was strange that
Speaker 1: my Tia Margharita didn't come home that night, because Margharita
Speaker 1: was such a hard worker. It was a Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: and Sundays were always good selling days in the market.
Speaker 4: Domingo.
Speaker 1: A man came by and knocked on the big wooden
Speaker 1: gate at the front of the house. She thought they
Speaker 1: were just coming to get mimbroso umbros. Mimbros are a fruit,
Speaker 1: kind of like a star fruit. There's a big mimbre
Speaker 1: tree in the yard of my grandma's house, and the
Speaker 1: local drunks would come by sometimes and ask my grandma
Speaker 1: for some free fruit. But that's not what they wanted.
Speaker 1: Helioka Well, they told her that the National Guard had
Speaker 1: rounded up some people last night and that Margherita was
Speaker 1: one of them. My grandma didn't believe it. She was
Speaker 1: sure that Margherita would turn up later. God willing, she said,
Speaker 1: she had no reason to think that Margherita would be taken.
Speaker 1: To understand why Mithia Margherita was killed. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about the death squads and why they existed in
Speaker 1: the first place. Earlier, we talked about how Roberto Lauson
Speaker 1: was central to the creation of Loses Squadron the death
Speaker 1: squads in El Salvador. These death squads were paramilitary groups
Speaker 1: that were not officially part of the government. They were
Speaker 1: usually comprised of soldiers, police officers, and National guardsmen who
Speaker 1: were paid on the side to carry out operations at night.
Speaker 1: The alleged goal of these groups was to gather information
Speaker 1: to find out who was part of the leftist Geria
Speaker 1: group that had declared war on the government, the FMLN.
Speaker 1: These were the same squads who were targeting priests, nuns,
Speaker 1: and religious workers all over the country, but their directives
Speaker 1: kept escalating and their targets became more and more broad.
Speaker 1: First it was the leftists, then it was anyone who
Speaker 1: was helping the leftists, then it was anyone sympathetic to
Speaker 1: the leftists. To gather the information they needed, the death
Speaker 1: squads would torture their victims. Once the information was extracted,
Speaker 1: they would kill the person with a mercy bullet through
Speaker 1: the temple and dump the body in a rural area.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that of the seventy five thousand people killed
Speaker 1: during the Civil War, forty thousand of them were killed
Speaker 1: by death squads, not in combat, but in secret, taken
Speaker 1: from their homes in the dead of the night. This
Speaker 1: is what happened to Matia Margharita. The next morning, she
Speaker 1: was found on the side of the road, along with
Speaker 1: the bodies of Walter Baho, her boyfriend Schara, and two other.
Speaker 4: Men Fuelen Blumen Quatro Ayena more yea Jenna Plante.
Speaker 1: Matia Vilma went with my grandmother to identify Margharita's body
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 2: Morgue Mirma and subra is La Choki Comando.
Speaker 1: Margharita had cigarette burns on her arms and belt marks
Speaker 1: on her neck and wrists. Matia Vilma instantly understood where
Speaker 1: they came from. She had seen the chair where they
Speaker 1: tortured people. As part of her route selling chilate. She
Speaker 1: would stop by the local police precinct and sell to
Speaker 1: the cops. She'd been inside, She said. Chair looked like
Speaker 1: a dentist chair, but with leather straps hanging off the sides.
Speaker 1: But why would they have taken Margharita. She wasn't a
Speaker 1: political activist she wasn't a union organizer. She was just
Speaker 1: a teenage girl. I'd always assumed that maybe she was
Speaker 1: secretly a part of the f MLN, or maybe her
Speaker 1: boyfriend Chara was, But the answer came to my Tia
Speaker 1: Vilma there at the morgue, while she was identifying her
Speaker 1: sister's body, an what Charra's mother was there to identify
Speaker 1: her son. Crying over her son's body, she cursed Gita,
Speaker 1: saying it was her fault that her son was killed.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until much later that Vilma understood what she meant.
Speaker 1: Chara's mother didn't approve of his relationship with Margharita. To
Speaker 1: this day, no one's really sure why, but the story
Speaker 1: goes it was Charra's mother who sent a tip to
Speaker 1: the National Guard.
Speaker 2: The Benganza.
Speaker 1: She told them that Margharita was hiding f m l
Speaker 1: N soldiers no name, la senor this thing. Chara's mother
Speaker 1: didn't realize that if they came to take Margharita, they
Speaker 1: would take everyone who was there, including her son. That night,
Speaker 1: the death squad killed Margharita, Charao, and two witnesses that
Speaker 1: saw them taking the group. A man who was across
Speaker 1: the street cleaning a school yard, and his son. All
Speaker 1: of them received the same fate Fromitia Vilma. It was
Speaker 1: a bitter irony. Vilma was the tough one. Vilma was
Speaker 1: the fighter. I always carried a knife in my bra
Speaker 1: she tells me, just in case. My sister didn't even
Speaker 1: carry a needle. My Grandma, Madia Vilma, and the rest
Speaker 1: of my family buried Margarita in a simple wood box.
Speaker 1: They borrowed money from the other vendors and at mercado
Speaker 1: to put the funeral together. The lady who owned the
Speaker 1: flower shop that my mom worked at, she gave my
Speaker 1: grandma the rest of the money she needed. My grandma
Speaker 1: went back to work the very next day, selling chiletta
Speaker 1: in the market. She says she didn't shed a single tear.
Speaker 4: Yo Mima mahino hokomo Perqueylarima parati particular in particular, in particular,
Speaker 4: Riora peramino meslarima.
Speaker 1: Amdia Vilma says, my grandmother does cry for Margarita now
Speaker 1: in her sleep.
Speaker 3: Jora madre antesui.
Speaker 1: My ta. Margarita was in a saint far from it.
Speaker 1: By the teachings of the Catholic Church. She was a sinner,
Speaker 1: but she was one of Oscar Romero's people. When he
Speaker 1: preached about nuestros or suffering people, he meant her not
Speaker 1: a saint, but a martyr all the same. On the
Speaker 1: next episode, we'll talk about one of the most controversial
Speaker 1: moments from the war, one that people are still debating today.
Speaker 1: That's next time on Nation of Saints Sacred Scandal. Nation
Speaker 1: of Saints is the production of a HA podcasts in
Speaker 1: partnership with Iheart's Michaultura podcast network, and is hosted and
Speaker 1: written by me Jasmine Romero, produced by Jazmine Romero with
Speaker 1: help from Alvaro Sespeles. Research and reporting by Jasmine Romero,
Speaker 1: edited by sare Kevelo. Nation of Saints was recorded in
Speaker 1: New York City at the Relic Room, with engineering by
Speaker 1: Sam Bear, mixing and sound designed by Paciquinones. Original music
Speaker 1: by Golden Mines, Darko and Ieme based on Patrick Hart's
Speaker 1: original composition. Fact checking by Erendidra Aquino Ayala. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Gorman gerterol Isaac Lee Rose Reed, and Nando Villa.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers at iHeart are Giselle Bansis and Arlene Santana.
Speaker 1: Sacred Scandal was created by Lenie Bartley and Baula Badros.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Alice Wilder. For more podcasts, go to
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.