Speaker 1: Warning, this episode contains references to extreme violence. Please use
Speaker 1: discretion when listening. Nearing the end of my first week
Speaker 1: in El Salvador, I was feeling completely exhausted. I'd traveled
Speaker 1: all over from San Miguel to the capitol and back,
Speaker 1: interviewing people who had lived through the war and listening
Speaker 1: to the saddest stories. I had tried to mentally prepare myself,
Speaker 1: but being here in the place where it all happened,
Speaker 1: it was a lot harder than I'd anticipated. So every night,
Speaker 1: after a long day of interviews, I really looked forward
Speaker 1: to going back to my hotel room, eating a quick dinner,
Speaker 1: and going straight to bed. I got my parents a
Speaker 1: room at the same hotel so that we could spend
Speaker 1: a little time together at the end of each day.
Speaker 1: But on this particular evening, my dad interrupted dinner to
Speaker 1: casually mention something. By the way, he said, I invited
Speaker 1: my cousins over to the hotel so you can interview them.
Speaker 1: They'll be here soon. I was totally caught off guard.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about these cousins. What would I
Speaker 1: ask them? Why would my dad just spring this on me?
Speaker 1: To be honest, I was pretty annoyed. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that these cousins were about to tell me about the
Speaker 1: incident that sparked my family's journey north to the US,
Speaker 1: the moment that brought the war to my family. I'm
Speaker 1: Jasmine Romero and this is Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints,
Speaker 1: episode five, a death in the family.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back, okay, thank you.
Speaker 3: Is damn for power?
Speaker 4: Margharita, are you stay Yiness and relation familiar?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: We settled into my hotel room, me, my parents, and
Speaker 1: my dad's two cousins, Sola and Margharita. Soyla is the
Speaker 1: shorter of the two, with a mullet of dark, curly hair.
Speaker 1: She didn't really want to talk much, but Margharita slowly
Speaker 1: warmed up and.
Speaker 2: See is it that one?
Speaker 1: Margharita is in her mid sixties with straight black hair
Speaker 1: and hooded eyes that gave her the nickname Lachina growing up.
Speaker 1: For most of the interview, she held a plastic water
Speaker 1: bottle in her hands, twisting it every time I asked
Speaker 1: her a question. Apparently I wasn't the only one being
Speaker 1: ambushed by this interview. I started out slowly asking questions
Speaker 1: about what Margharita's childhood.
Speaker 5: Was like.
Speaker 1: My dad and his cousins grew up playing together in
Speaker 1: San Miguel. Cousin Soula mentions a game called yanked onion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a kid would wrap their arms and legs around a tree,
Speaker 1: and all the other kids would make a line and
Speaker 1: grab each other by the waist trying to pull the
Speaker 1: kid off. These sound like the kind of stupid, fun
Speaker 1: games that you can only play with a group of
Speaker 1: neighborhood kids that really know each other. Everybody starts chiming
Speaker 1: in with the names of games that I've never heard of,
Speaker 1: little broken pot, walking Pilgrim, since they all seem to
Speaker 1: have fond memories of this time, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they were playing all these games barefoot. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that I've heard my dad talk about from time to time,
Speaker 1: how poor his family was growing up, the things that
Speaker 1: they had to do to survive, But I've never actually
Speaker 1: heard these kinds of stories, the details in the same
Speaker 1: light joking tone that he uses to talk about these games.
Speaker 1: He talks about hunting for.
Speaker 6: Food mala guando to o.
Speaker 5: Y.
Speaker 1: My dad and his brothers would go out looking for
Speaker 1: skunks or possums, and if they found one, they'd whack
Speaker 1: the animal with a stick and bring it home to cook.
Speaker 1: My dad's childhood seems to be filled with these kinds
Speaker 1: of little anecdotes. He once told me that he did
Speaker 1: his first Communion through three times just to get the
Speaker 1: bread and milk that the priest would give you at
Speaker 1: the end. It makes me so sad for him, for
Speaker 1: the child that he never got to be. For cousin Margharita,
Speaker 1: there were other events that shifted her childhood, something that
Speaker 1: happened when she was a teenager in the late seventies.
Speaker 6: Porquer Ricardo Kei, Earlia ke and Elenin here at the home.
Speaker 1: Elenim is the nickname for the local high school in
Speaker 1: San Miguel. This was the late seventies, around the time
Speaker 1: that labor movements had really started to take center stage.
Speaker 1: The same movements that had taken root in the capitol
Speaker 1: were finally reaching Saint Miguel, and local students at Elnim
Speaker 1: had organized a protest to advocate for higher wages, and
Speaker 1: just like in so many other protests, the local police
Speaker 1: showed up and fired at the students. See among the
Speaker 1: students killed or three of cousin Margharita's classmates. She remembers
Speaker 1: seeing their bodies get dropped off at the Morgue a je.
Speaker 1: It was the same story playing out across the country.
Speaker 1: The more the government squashed the protests, the more the
Speaker 1: people saw the need to fight back, and the more
Speaker 1: that the government cracked down. But this was the first
Speaker 1: time that the war that had been brewing in the
Speaker 1: capitol was rearing its head as far south as San Miguel.
Speaker 1: In the years to come, the psych would repeat. Of course,
Speaker 1: the government's reasons for the killings were always the same,
Speaker 1: rooting out those who were cooperating with the leftists. Even
Speaker 1: for people like my parents, the assumption always was if
Speaker 1: someone was killed, they must have been part of the
Speaker 1: f m l N. Not a justification, but at least
Speaker 1: a way to put some reasoning behind every death. It's
Speaker 1: what my dad says to Margharita about someone named Maria
Speaker 1: no Nadi. My dad had always assumed that Maria was
Speaker 1: part of some leftist organization, but Margharita insists, no, Maria
Speaker 1: wasn't involved in any of that. Maria, I learned, is
Speaker 1: my dad's aunt cousin Margharita's mother.
Speaker 4: El Partido and mah prom Pero or local.
Speaker 3: Porce.
Speaker 1: To this day, no one knows exactly why the Amara
Speaker 1: was murdered. They all have theories, and it kind of
Speaker 1: seems like my dad and his cousins are trying to
Speaker 1: work it out in front of me in real time.
Speaker 1: It's like this is the first time that they've ever
Speaker 1: talked about it. It's definitely the first time that I
Speaker 1: hear about it. Cousin Soila chimes in with her own
Speaker 1: theory El Sindicato the union. She says, Maria was part
Speaker 1: of the workers union at the factory, and maybe that
Speaker 1: was the reason, which my dad agrees with.
Speaker 6: Cando.
Speaker 1: They were rounding them up, he says, dumping them into
Speaker 1: common graves. My dad remembers that around this time was
Speaker 1: when people started disappearing in San Miuel, especially those aligned
Speaker 1: with the unions. Police would come to your house and
Speaker 1: pick you up for questioning, but when your family went
Speaker 1: to go look for you at the police station, the
Speaker 1: cops would say, I don't know who you're talking about,
Speaker 1: or maybe go check at.
Speaker 7: That other station.
Speaker 6: No no yeki, no taqi.
Speaker 1: Then a couple days later a body would pop up
Speaker 1: on the street, or it would never appear at all,
Speaker 1: it would be disappeared. For my dad and his family.
Speaker 1: This felt like just a crazy thing that was happening
Speaker 1: in their town. But this was happening all over the country.
Speaker 1: This was the work of Loses Squadron, the death squads
Speaker 1: that had started in the capital with Dauisson and his cohort. Finally,
Speaker 1: I ask cousin Margherita, what exactly happened to your mother.
Speaker 1: It was late afternoon. Margharita was out on the patio
Speaker 1: chatting with the neighbors while her mom was inside making
Speaker 1: dinner for the family. When trucks pulled up to the house.
Speaker 1: The men in the trucks put on ski masks to
Speaker 1: cover their faces and grabbed rifles. One of them grabbed
Speaker 1: Margharita and put the rifle up to her face. They
Speaker 1: wanted to know where her mother was.
Speaker 7: Agar Lo Pusil the Amara stepped out of the house
Speaker 7: and told them, if you're looking for me, well here
Speaker 7: I am.
Speaker 1: Let go of my daughter Yasala. Inside, Margherita's two younger
Speaker 1: brothers were hiding in the kitchena.
Speaker 4: E co migoya lasak dentria de la casa isla Mala.
Speaker 1: The men then grabbed the a Maria, forcing her out
Speaker 1: onto the patio. One of them kept Margharita at gunpoint,
Speaker 1: warning her to be still inside. Her younger brothers crawled
Speaker 1: through a hole in the side of the house and
Speaker 1: watched as their mother struggled against the masked men.
Speaker 4: I ye yasilvaro miselle and cordenot yes.
Speaker 3: I am helpak.
Speaker 1: They shot the Amaria there on the patio in front
Speaker 1: of her children. Margherita was only seventeen years old when
Speaker 1: she watched her mother.
Speaker 3: Die and joto yamugia.
Speaker 1: That night, my dad heard the news that his aunt
Speaker 1: had been killed. First thing in the morning, he and
Speaker 1: my mom walked over to the Amaria's house, expecting to
Speaker 1: get their condolences to the family. They found the whole family,
Speaker 1: Margarita and her younger brothers all huddled around the Amaria's body.
Speaker 1: They had sat there all night waiting for the corner
Speaker 1: to come and.
Speaker 2: Take her away.
Speaker 1: My dad says that the police came and took note
Speaker 1: of where she was shot, collected evidence.
Speaker 6: Guanto di Paro as if that mattered to anyone, He says,
Speaker 6: as if anyone would do anything about it.
Speaker 1: To this day, my family doesn't know exactly who did
Speaker 1: it or why. It was August of nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: months after Oscar Romero's murder in the Capitol. For my parents,
Speaker 1: it was the first time that the approaching war had
Speaker 1: really affected their lives. The first person in the family
Speaker 1: to die, and she wouldn't be the last. That's after
Speaker 1: the break. After talking with my dad and his cousins,
Speaker 1: I realized that it was time for me to finally
Speaker 1: sit down with my parents and get their full story.
Speaker 1: If I'm honest, I think I'd been avoiding it, dreading
Speaker 1: what I might hear.
Speaker 8: Testing testing one, two three, say something that was very cute.
Speaker 1: Mom, that's my mom, Anna Viatrice.
Speaker 9: Introduce yourself in English. Please, your accent is not bad. No, no,
Speaker 9: you sound great. Speak English please.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 10: My name is Anna Veatrice Reyes and I'm the mom
Speaker 10: of Jasmine Romero, who is my fourth daughter.
Speaker 1: My mom's pretty shy. She's the kind of person who
Speaker 1: covers her mouth when she smiles, so it was like
Speaker 1: pulling teeth to get her to talk to me on Mike.
Speaker 1: But with some coaxing, she finally came around. My parents
Speaker 1: have been together since they were teenagers. Together is the
Speaker 1: only life they've ever known, and El Salvador was the
Speaker 1: only place they'd ever been. After Theamaria was killed, Cousin
Speaker 1: Margharita left for the US. It was becoming more and
Speaker 1: more common for people to immigrate north, especially with the
Speaker 1: escalating violence.
Speaker 6: That year.
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty began a flood of immigration that hasn't stopped
Speaker 1: to this day. When Cousin Margharita left, around ninety five
Speaker 1: thousand Salvadoran immigrants had already immigrated to the US, mostly illegally,
Speaker 1: and even if they had wanted to go legally, that
Speaker 1: wasn't really an option. Only two percent of all asylum
Speaker 1: claims from El Salvador to the US were approved because
Speaker 1: allowing those claims would have confirmed what the US continued
Speaker 1: to deny that their funding was, making the situation in
Speaker 1: El salvas Or worse. So illegal immigration was kind of
Speaker 1: the only option, but it was really expensive. It required
Speaker 1: buying a flight into Mexico and then paying a coyote
Speaker 1: to get you.
Speaker 2: Across the border.
Speaker 1: At the time, my mom was nineteen years old with
Speaker 1: two young daughters. She and my dad were living with
Speaker 1: my great grandparents, seven people sharing a one room Shack.
Speaker 1: The idea of getting enough money together to get to
Speaker 1: the US felt like climbing Mount Everest, but they took
Speaker 1: the Amaria's death as a warning and started saving every
Speaker 1: penny they could. After a year, they'd saved enough for
Speaker 1: one person to go.
Speaker 10: Jotania Mocho messaged them, Baiha Wendy either repentel.
Speaker 3: Oke Tnie.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen eighty one and my mom was now
Speaker 1: pregnant with her third daughter, my sister Wendy. They decided
Speaker 1: that the easiest path would be for my dad to
Speaker 1: go solo. My dad had a friend who was heading
Speaker 1: north to the US and had invited him along. The
Speaker 1: idea was that my dad would send money back to
Speaker 1: help support my mom and the girls, and eventually save
Speaker 1: up enough to send for them. For my mom, it
Speaker 1: was an impossible decision, break up the family and possibly
Speaker 1: never see my dad again, or keep living meal to.
Speaker 3: Meal like Desi.
Speaker 1: She asked herself would she ever see him again?
Speaker 3: For primers ok so sera, it was.
Speaker 1: Pretty common for men to abandon their families after they
Speaker 1: got to the U s. My mom worried if she
Speaker 1: would ever even hear from him again.
Speaker 10: Yes, lots and serra Quel and really that see MeV.
Speaker 3: What's will be there?
Speaker 2: Meet?
Speaker 1: She wondered, how strong is the love between us? Will
Speaker 1: you forget about us? But she couldn't pass up this
Speaker 1: chance of creating a better future for the girls.
Speaker 10: Now that's economic parts.
Speaker 1: They made preparations for him to go. By the end
Speaker 1: of summer, my third sister, Wendy was.
Speaker 3: Born, Docermene, Wendy wonder and I lost.
Speaker 1: My dad left two weeks after Wendy was born. Sitting
Speaker 1: there un the thatched betha that they had as a bed,
Speaker 1: my mom considered her options. She still had her three girls,
Speaker 1: and now with my dad gone, even less income than before,
Speaker 1: she had to figure out how to get by. How
Speaker 1: could she work? Who would take care of the girls.
Speaker 1: She found a local flower shop and made a deal
Speaker 1: with the owner. I'll work for you from sun up
Speaker 1: to sundown, but I need to bring my kids along.
Speaker 1: The owner agreed. So every morning she'd get up, Oh
Speaker 1: a lass, say the la man, get things ready for
Speaker 1: the girls, lechitaitai, dress them, comb them, strap her newborn
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 3: Back, I Lata.
Speaker 1: Her job at the flower shop was making paper flowers.
Speaker 1: She'd spend her days making paper bouquets for the upcoming
Speaker 1: holiday Elia Fiinados all Souls Day. It's the Salvadoran version
Speaker 1: of the day of the Dead. For Liale Fiados, it
Speaker 1: was customed to place paper flowers or crowns on the
Speaker 1: graves of loved ones who had passed. She still remembers
Speaker 1: exactly how to do it all these years later. Within
Speaker 1: a few weeks, letters started showing up for my dad,
Speaker 1: saying how much.
Speaker 2: He missed her.
Speaker 3: And Ceo missing timas.
Speaker 1: How he wanted them to be together in the us quanto.
Speaker 1: It was reassuring to know that their love could survive
Speaker 1: beyond borders, but the timeline for their reunion was not clear.
Speaker 1: He said he'd have to work for at least a
Speaker 1: year to save up enough. My mom would write her
Speaker 1: letters back and put on lipstick to seal them with
Speaker 1: a kiss. My dad did not receive the intended message.
Speaker 11: Como, why are you wearing lipstick if I'm not around?
Speaker 3: He asked.
Speaker 1: Of course, why would a woman put on lipstick if
Speaker 1: her husband isn't around? I guess love and machismo, No,
Speaker 1: no borders. My mom wanted the family to be reunited,
Speaker 1: but the poverty that they were living through wasn't the
Speaker 1: only problem. More than anything, she wanted to leave El
Speaker 1: Salvador because the country was becoming more and more dangerous.
Speaker 2: By the day.
Speaker 10: Lasse ya weltmas masinceura porque constantin minte jan una vesporo
Speaker 10: manaunaves almeao ya rang masquentez.
Speaker 1: What had been an occasional problem had become an everyday occurrence.
Speaker 1: That disappeared were showing up dead on the side of
Speaker 1: the road every day. It's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: sounds so unbelievable to me, the idea that you could
Speaker 1: just be walking around, going about your business and run
Speaker 1: across a pile of dead bodies. At the time, my
Speaker 1: mom understood very little of what was going on. Even
Speaker 1: with the death of Mitia Maria, she still couldn't fathom
Speaker 1: why so many people were being killed, the greater politics
Speaker 1: at play. All of it went over her head.
Speaker 10: No porque porqueerra los indicatos porquela hente de las fabricas,
Speaker 10: protesta porcelos indicatos, protestesosvilla porqueto maestroque maestral mate.
Speaker 1: Every day more teachers and students and just regular people
Speaker 1: she knew were being taken seemed to be subversives in
Speaker 1: the eyes of the government. It felt like a taking
Speaker 1: time bomb. My mom was more determined than ever to
Speaker 1: get her daughters out of that terrible situation. And his letters,
Speaker 1: my dad kept saying that he was sending all he could,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't an off. My mom was not going
Speaker 1: to sit around and wait for him to save her.
Speaker 1: With the money she made at the flower shop, she
Speaker 1: started buying materials to make paper flowers of her own.
Speaker 1: For three months straight, she worked day and night. After
Speaker 1: the girls were put to bed, she would stay up
Speaker 1: folding and twisting the paper into roses, coral beans, and
Speaker 1: red button gingers. She made flowers that no one had ever.
Speaker 10: Seen before, yokaria levida ile vivida lis color ros intensos,
Speaker 10: al a latinta ca al colorada mass but a quips
Speaker 10: a mass in tenzo loos coloris.
Speaker 1: When Lia the Finados came with calluses built on her blisters,
Speaker 1: she went down to Elmergado with baskets full of her
Speaker 1: colorful bouquets and sold them by the dozen. By the
Speaker 1: end of the day she had sold every single flower
Speaker 1: that she had made. She had saved enough money to
Speaker 1: pay for her passage north all on her.
Speaker 10: Own parts para compre labisas.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 1: She started making arrangements to make the journey north. She
Speaker 1: bought visas to get into Mexico, ordered Salvadorn passports for
Speaker 1: the girls, and bought plane tickets for everyone. She had
Speaker 1: never even left her hometown.
Speaker 10: Before, Nola Ladino elcho Lordo.
Speaker 1: She didn't know if it was just adrenaline, but she
Speaker 1: somehow built up the courage to make the journey just
Speaker 1: her and her girls. Every time she got scared, she
Speaker 1: remembered that this wasn't just for her, it was for
Speaker 1: the girls, so they'd have a chance to have a
Speaker 1: better life than she did. The first step of her
Speaker 1: journey was to get to the airport in the capitol,
Speaker 1: but she didn't know how to get there, so she
Speaker 1: asked her sister Margharita to take her. To be clear,
Speaker 1: I have two Margharita's in my family. My dad's cousin
Speaker 1: Margharita Saravia, who you heard from earlier in the episode,
Speaker 1: and my mom's younger sister Margharita Lisama my Dia.
Speaker 3: Margharita hielm ansel Mira Mano Posa.
Speaker 1: Was my mom's younger sister. She was bolder, more adventurous.
Speaker 1: When they got to the airport, my Ta left my
Speaker 1: mom with a parting wish. Yeah, OK, send for me,
Speaker 1: she said, when you get settled in the North, send
Speaker 1: for me. My Margarita had three kids too, and she
Speaker 1: was in an abusive relationship.
Speaker 3: And Camino Yah Mexico and Camino.
Speaker 1: While my mom was in Mexico route to the border,
Speaker 1: men in masks broke into where my Ta Margarita was
Speaker 1: sleeping and took her away. That day at the airport
Speaker 1: was the last time my mom ever saw her sister.
Speaker 3: Yeah a.
Speaker 1: Y three days later, just as my mom was arriving
Speaker 1: to the US, Mytha's body was found on the side
Speaker 1: of a country road. This is a story that I knew,
Speaker 1: or at least that I thought that I knew, that
Speaker 1: my Thea was taken away by a deaths. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until this trip that I got the full story,
Speaker 1: one that went beyond the brutalities of war. That's next
Speaker 1: time on Nation of Saints Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints
Speaker 1: is a production of a HA Podcasts in partnership with
Speaker 1: Iheart's Michael Dura podcast Network. And is hosted and written
Speaker 1: by me Jasmine Romero. Produced by Jazmine Romero with help
Speaker 1: from Alvaro Sespelees. Research and reporting by Jasmine Romero, edited
Speaker 1: by sayde Gevelo. Nation of Saints was recorded in New
Speaker 1: York City at the Relic Room with engineering by Sam Bear,
Speaker 1: Mixing and sound designed by Baciquinones. Original music by Golden Mines,
Speaker 1: Darko and Diame based on Patrick Hart's original composition. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by it Indira Aquino Ayala. Executive producers are Gorman geratrol,
Speaker 1: isaac Lee Rose Reed, and Nando Villa. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: at iHeart are Giselle Mansis and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal
Speaker 1: was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Vadro's. For more podcasts,
Speaker 1: go to the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite podcasts.