I was born in La Antigua and although I grew up in one of its suburbs, very close to the center of town. Around my 14th birthday we moved to what I thought looked like a jungle, “on the outskirts” of the city. Besides getting used to the unique lifestyle of a village, I got used to the grunts of the Fuego volcano, to the way the doors and windows of the house trembled at night and to its furious eruptions.
During the cold mornings before leaving home for school or on rainy evenings, it was common for me to watch the volcano with my mother and she, who rarely shared my musical taste, would hum a song by a group called Tango Feroz, and I would join her…”love is stronger”… Together we watched the volcano.
From the garden of my house – and a privileged position on a ladder — I have been able to photograph many of the eruptive phases of the volcano over the years, it is impossible to deny that what I feel is fascination for that huge furious beast.
On Sunday, when tragedy struck, most of us who were a part of the group of crazy people who usually ran to make photos in Alotenango or the El Rodeo field when the volcano erupted (especially at night) knew that something wasn’t right. As the hours went by, and as the magnitude of what was happening hit us, the jokes about the ash ended and the grief arrived and settled.
It was very clear to me that no one’s life would be the same again. Something I love, had killed many, if not everyone. I felt guilty. It’s the only way I can describe it. And yes, observing the volcano from home, in the back of my mind I could hear the song again, “They can steal your heart, they can wash your head for nothing, the school never taught me, the world has been split in two, but love is stronger”.
This was my thought at that time and this is my confession now: I love a giant that killed everything in its path.
On the day of the tragedy, a group of young people from La Antigua organized a collection of food, clothing and medicine. I was not one of the first to arrive (or one of the young ones), in fact, I arrived when I could, and I joined forces. Being there felt like throwing myself headfirst into the sea and, to this day, I still have the feeling of swimming in changing waters.
Since that Sunday (and I don’t honestly know for how long) we have worked together, many volunteers, locals and foreigners, staff and business owners and all those who have wanted to come together to try and fulfil all possible needs.
Once we got our act together and were better organized, for one reason or another, we have visited the place known as Zona Cero (Zone Zero). There, our group has brought food to those who are looking after that area, the rescuers, those who are looking for their relatives using only masks and their hands to remove everything that crosses their path in search of peace, and groups of people who organized themselves and decided to take care of their lands.
I have seen small lumps leaving the area and I have had to supress the urge to cry when it has been explained to me that there are lots of bones and skulls (which can never be identified), which have been found scattered. Some bodies resisted the passing of pyroclastic flows and have been preserved.
I can’t help but wonder, how many are there under the ashes? How many are going to be consumed in the heat? I am not morbid, but I have not found more information in any media about this and believe me, I have searched for it.
Is it that perhaps the lives of the most excluded, forgotten and unequal do not matter, do not count, are not sought, not even classified?
I never knew about institutionality. I pay my taxes, I am a citizen and I understand that the State, subsidiary, assists and prioritizes from the rights and obligations that we all have. I never imagined that they would initiate a strict social control in the shelters and that the ignominy and disdain towards the human being, would result in a kind of unprecedented barbarism that would occur before my eyes, where the contrasts are scandalous, restricting actions and help, recounting lives and hiding figures, forgetting names to finally bury all evidence in the ashes and sentence them to indifference.
And what else has this country done with its sons and daughters? To allow the earth to be scorched by injustice, to leave unpunished any crime and to allow our children to be kept in cages as birds of paradise to be exhibited in the museum of human barbarism to protect their interests through a foreign policy?
And yes, I have asked for numbers of the deceased and I have found silence. I have questioned how many people were missing to everyone I could and nobody, ever, dared to suggest that hundreds were missing, all move their heads from one side to the other when words fail them. Photographers, local journalists, rescuers, relatives and those who want to help, we all know that this is a cemetery that boils over 100 degrees, stripping clothes and meat and leaving bones and yet nobody says anything.
We are missing so many more than hundreds!
We cannot revive them, we cannot find them whole, but we can recognize that they existed, that they were fathers or mothers, brothers, sons and daughters and that, although there is no exact data or a census to this day to give us an exact figure, their lives became extinct in a tragedy that has changed everything. And no, this time I am not talking about a war, nor about a murder, but about the apathy and complicity of the State to hide the truth, to foment impunity and institutional negligence.
It is outrageous and sad at the same time to read in notes that are published abroad that the figure is 110 dead at the time it was decided to suspend search and rescue efforts. It is much worse to see how they continue to carry bones and do not keep counting or raising the figures. For anyone who has recognized their relatives in the morgues, not receiving their relatives’ bodies yet must be hell.
To keep saying that there are only 110 dead is to tell the world that we do not need help because there is no crisis to solve other than fixing a road and relocating a lot of people.
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To continue lying is to deprive the thousands who are still alive and suffering from a worthy aid that, obviously, the government is never going to give them. They are hundreds, they are thousands. A journalist who does his work, who has been in the macabre Zone Zero or in any shelter can hear horrible stories of all the people missing and “where they were last seen alive.”
And the victims? Where are they? Why are we going to allow our silence to be buried with the pain of our people? We are many, many more than those denying the truth and we must rise from these ashes if necessary. Here, within our hearts, the dead are still alive.
This is just the beginning of a long road and we will not be able to move forward without help, and with disinformation that help will soon be over.
But love, love is stronger!
We are going to move on, we must move forward. Together, as one, we only have each other, we just need each other, we are together.
If you’d like to help, get in touch with Antigua al Rescate:
5701-3136
Written by Sofía Letona
