What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

by Carolyn Forché

“Leonel? Do you mind if I smoke?” “Go ahead. It won’t help.”

“Señorita, señorita, of course I believe in democracy. We all believe in this. But unlike in the United States, we can only have a little democracy here. Just a little. We are a small country and most of our people are illiterate and live as the animals do. We have to take very small steps. If we had a lot of democracy here, you see, the peasants would win elections, and we cannot have that happening. The peasants vastly outnumber us. Surely you understand this?”

The woman who went into the prison in Ahuachapán left herself behind in a barrio called La Fosa, the grave.

“Armed uprising is one way to attempt to lessen repression and begin building a just society, Papu, but it is not the only way, and it is, without question, the most difficult, and when it is over, and let’s say you have triumphed, you must guard with great vigilance against becoming an oppressor yourself.

“As Sun Tzu teaches us, ‘the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’”

“Don’t get caught up in the rhetoric. If the Salvadoran campesinos fight, and I think they will, they must win. If they do not win, they will suffer for another two hundred years. But to win, they must defeat the Salvadoran military, and if, in this engagement, they are perceived as so-called Communists, the Salvadoran military will have the backing of the largest military force in the world. So. If you are going to wave a red flag around, you had better know where is the bull.”

Lesson number four: If someone promises to do great things, ask them first for something small, like a bridge or a cow.”

For one thing, this is outside the realm of their imaginations. For another, it isn’t in their interests to believe you. For a third, it is possible that we are not human beings to them.”

It isn’t the risk of death and fear of danger that prevent people from rising up,” Leonel once said, “it is numbness, acquiescence, and the defeat of the mind. Resistance to oppression begins when people realize deeply within themselves that something better is possible.”

You believe yourselves to be apart from others and therefore have little awareness of your interdependencies and the needs of the whole.

It was as if he had stood me squarely before the world, removed the blindfold, and ordered me to open my eyes.