It's from El Salvador en 1978. It's from one of those horrible events that took place in El Salvador en '78 when the violence escalated. It represents some people trying to escape over the river Lempa which is part of the frontier between El Salvador and Honduras. They are Salvadorans - poor Salvadorans escaping from their village - they are probably Mayan descendants...  
 
     Let's take a look at History: In 1932 some horrible massacres against the Mayans took place in El Salvador. At that time El Salvador was the land of the Indigenous and most of the people wore traditional clothes like they do en Guatemala today - but they haven't been wearing these clothes since 1932. They are poor people - illiterates trying to escape from the violence in the North of El Salvador. They are being persecuted, murdered, and chopped down with machetes... But the people who were most affected, were those who tried to cross the river - it's a wild river and a lot of them drowned. The worst of it is that the Salvadoran army shot them from the helicopters... they were killed like animals. And on the other riverbank the Honduran soldiers were waiting for them as well. They shot the refugees because they didn't want to let them in....  
 
     IFGUIA has made some reports about this event - as well as the report about Panzos - they estimate that about 350 people were killed - 350 people shot down from the sky and from both sides of the river. That was a real massacre... And the only thing these people did, was trying to escape from the violence. I and other persons with me think that the soldiers were in a state of chock. We've seen that in Vietnam and in other places - where an apparently disciplined army suddenly goes berserk and shoots on everything that moves. So, according to the estimations about a 1.000 people died this afternoon - in a few hours. Most of them drowned. The following days and weeks they kept finding drowned people along the river... and the river was coloured red with blood... It's terrible.... 
 
      There are various examples of similar massacres en Guatemala - various - and it seems that along the '80s when the violence escalated, it got even worse. It's like if the army and the paramilitary groups were caught in their own circle. I was told that the hardest thing is to kill for the first time - after that it's like doing an everyday job - and it seems that is was pure everyday routine to them during the '80s - most of these things seemed like everyday events...  
 
 
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