August 13, Day 53: Perquin, El Museo de la Revolucion, & El Boquerón

Lately, I have been mentally exhausted, regardless of how many activities I have stuffed into my day (or not). Perhaps it is for that reason that my last few posts have been looking ahead, rather than looking back, on my experiences here. My soon-to-be "past" in El Salvador is the entire point of this blog, so I'm going to get my thoughts straight and go over the last few events worthy of mention that I should have done several days ago.


My slacking off with the blog began after Gerardo's fam and I went to Perquin on the 5th and the 6th, just a few days after returning from our vacation in Apaneca and Ataco. Gabriel and Andrea were still on break from school, and to my great surprise, Ernesto and Karla had planned to take us and go camping, an activity that I despise with a passion in the States. I was curious how El Salvador stacks up, but I never found out due to the fact that the original place they were going to take us had no spaces available (since everyone else in El Salvador had similar plans). Unwilling to waste the last few days that their children were off school, we instead headed to Perquin in the Morazan department, a mountainous area an hour or two away from San Miguel.

Of all the places I have been to in El Salvador, Perquin was the area that reminded me the most of Arkansas, and perhaps for that reason, it was the only place in El Salvador that has given my allergies trouble.  Nonetheless, it had incredible views, being so high up. You can really see the limits of cameras when confronted with those kinds of sights and you can only capture a tiny portion of the magic...but it wasn't all sunshine and lollipops. On the 6th, we went to a major museum for the Civil War. There were tons of excellent artifacts: guns, radios, cars, exploded remains of airplanes, pictures and newspaper clippings, flags and awards, and much more. As a museum, I think its greatest strength was the fact that it was located on one of the very battlegrounds that the rebel forces had made one of their most important command centers. There were craters in multiple areas from where bombs had been dropped (as seen in the picture on the right), collapsed bridges that had been replaced for the benefit of tourists, and underground tunnels called "tatus" where the rebels took refuge when the government was bombing them. The stereotype for a museum in the States is "boring" and "slow" because usually the curators are somehow able to cram the history of ten or twenty artifacts into an entire exhibit. That doesn't deter me when the subject is of interest to me, but this museum was so much more than that, a fact that haunted me the entire time we were looking around. For a long time, the US was responsible for funding the Salvadorian government during the war. The war ended shortly after the US withdrew its support, meaning that the Salvadorian government was only sustained by the US fear that the rebels were looking to spread communism, resulting in the prolonging of a dictatorship. Though I have no say in what the majority decided and what happened in history, as an American that feels empathy for the innocent, the weight of history was particularly heavy for me at this museum.

Despite this, I was blown away by the ingenious tactics of the rebels. Rather than transmitting radio waves through an antenna, they used the wire of fences to transmit information throughout the camp, an underground radio network known as Radio Venceremos, or "We Shall Overcome" Radio. Since fences are so common in El Salvador, the military had no reason to be suspicious of it. Because the military could not figure out how the rebels were broadcasting, capturing this link was an important priority for them, a fact that the rebels exploited. Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios, a military commander and major antagonist to the rebels, was particularly known for his obsession with Radio Venceremos and when he received word in 1984 that the transmitter had been discovered, he rushed to retrieve it, taking numerous pictures of his greatest triumph before hauling it off in his helicopter as a victory trophy. But this particular transmitter was a fake, a booby trap by one of the rebel groups, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). It blew up in midflight, killing the commander and dealing a heavy blow to the military. Remnants of his helicopter were at the museum as well. For anyone interested in an accurate history of the Civil War that I have been learning about in El Salvador, here is a great link that can elaborate on what I have already referenced in several of my posts: http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/ElSalvador80/Salvador80.html


After we left the museum, we went swimming in a beautiful area that Gerardo called the "Frog River." Not sure why; there wasn't a single frog, toad, tadpole, or polliwog in the entire area! The swimming was wonderful, but the walk there was torture; I still have blisters from it! An hour later, we started off for home, stopping in San Miguel at "La Tarteleta" for dinner. Words cannot describe how happy I was to eat that pizza one last time. So concludes the end of our experiences in Perquin.

On the 10th, Mario and another friend that I knew from U of O decided to come and hang out with Gerardo, Connie, and me. We enjoyed lunch, a snack at the mall (I finally got to eat another sweet crêpe!), and dinner together. Though the entire experience was enjoyable, what stands out the most in my mind was dinner at the pupuseria on the Boquerón volcano, which is part of the San Salvador Volcano. The entire city of San Salvador could be seen below us. It was an awe-inspiring sight, seeing millions of lights flashing about and waving below us. The pupusas were also some of the best I have ever had. The following day, I went up there once again, but with Gaby and her family for lunch, and got to see the enormous city by day. Both day and night views were pretty amazing, though as with Perquin, pictures just don't do it justice.

I believe I am all caught up now. There are five days left until I return to the States, plus I will include a few more days for reflection over the whole experience. I have received a very good question that I will answer in a post sometime over the next few days, but if there are any more questions about any aspect of El Salvador, please message me, email me, or comment on this post so that I can address them together. A lot can happen in five days! Also, today was Karla's birthday. Funny to think that in less than two months of being here, I have gone through four birthdays of Gerardo's family of five.

One.