At the End of the Search: The Final Result

By Rosario Melgar O.

AT THE END OF THE SEARCH is an agonizing story of abduction taking place during the bloody civil war in El Salvador. Told from both the perspective of the parents whose young children had been snatched from their homes as well as through the eyes of loved ones grappling with the news in the United States. The language is direct and deeply heart felt, recreated by a close family member, comprising an important work of historical fiction which documents circumstances all too familiar for Salvadoreans living through that tragic era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hekate Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912017782

Book preview

AUTHOR

At the End of the Search

(The Final Result)

-1995-

Rosario Melgar O.

At the End of the Search (The Final Result)

By Rosario Melgar O.

Cover image and all artwork by Rosario Melgar

At request of Author, all rights of this work are

Property of the author’s son, James Oswald

Copyright © 2020

All Rights Reserved

Hekate Publishing First Edition, 2020

ISBN 978-1-912017-78-2

Hekate Publishing US

73 John Drive

Farmingville, NY 11738

[e-mail]

https://www.hekatepublishing.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.

Although based on true occurrences, this work is fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, or business institutions is coincidental.

Photographs of the author’s paintings included here:

The Era

Homeless

Imagination

Candilejas

Unfinished Portrait of Author

Dedicated to

Mothers of the Lost Children

and

My Son James

Forward by the Publisher

My mother had lost her place at an assisted living facility in New York City after a prolonged hospitalization and ended up at a nursing home undergoing short term rehab. She shared a room with Maria, Rosario Melgar O., our author, who suffered from advanced Parkinson’s Disease. During my first few visits, I enjoyed chatting with Maria. We shared juice and snacks. At some point I mentioned having started a small publishing company whose mission was to uphold the rights of authors and publish underrepresented writers.

Maria said, I wrote a book.

I went on to learn more about this remarkable woman, that she was a poet from age 15, a song writer in her native language as well as an artist. Throughout the nursing home were hung her paintings, the only artist represented on the walls there. I photographed each work, all magnificent, and included several here. One of her many poems Las Guerras y la Violencia, was presented at the outset, left in the original Spanish.

Maria had written At the End of the Search in English, in her own words telling of an all too common horror which affected many Salvadorean citizens. Written using her imagination while distilling knowledge of circumstances relating to members of her own family, the words arise from Maria’s heart. Her narrative grips the reader, becoming unbearable at times in its intensity. Hekate is honored to take part in producing Maria’s book.

A.F. Knott

Hekate Publishing

Forward by the Author

While based on real events, AT THE END OF THE SEARCH is a fictional account of circumstances reoccurring with tragic frequency during the bloody civil war in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992.

The book describes in detail an agonizing three-day search undertaken by three dedicated parents in order to find their kidnapped adolescents, all within the chaos of war. Also described is the final result of their exhaustive effort, a too familiar occurrence during the time period. Included also is the perspective of helpless relatives living abroad, how they grappled with the shocking information family members communicated by telephone and how they tried to help.

While this story is close to home, the narrative’s gaps have been created using logic, my knowledge of my country, and pieces of stories I have heard. The important thing to understand is that events such as these took place every day during that time period, becoming a tragic part of Salvadorean life. The story is retold here by someone whose own family suffered great losses, the book dedicated to all who similarly lost a loved one during the terrible war.

Rosario Melgar O.

LAS GUERRAS Y LA VIOLENCIA

¿Qué dejan las guerras y la violencia?

¡Muerte, llanto, luto… Destrucción y desolación!…

¡¡Dejan tumbas, pobreza, dolor, tristeza,

hambre, lisiados, desplazados, separación!!…

y un inmenso vacío en el corazón…

¿Por qué entonces odiar, en vez de amar?

¿Por qué blandir un arma,

en vez de enarbolar, nuestras banderas?

¿Por qué entonces quitar, en vez de dar?

Y… ¿por qué oprimir, en vez de liberar?

¿Por qué armarnos y matar,

en vez de proteger la vida?

y por qué robar y usurpar,

en vez de respetar lo ajeno?

Si las guerras sabemos,

no dejan nada bueno…

¿por qué no desarmarnos

dejando el odio atrás…

por un mundo sin armas,

por un mundo de paz?

Rosario Melgar O.

25/02/2014

PART I

First Day: The Abductions

Santa Marta City was enclosed in a pitch-dark night. El Salvador, the smallest country in Central América, was at war. Only flimsy streetlights illuminated the straight wide streets and avenues. The warmth of evening air promised a sunny and beautiful day ahead, only a matter of time before the various shapes and shades of color within the city and its beautiful gardens would start to appear. At that moment, however, the grass, the opening flowers, pearled with morning dew, could not be seen through the thick black.

Barely visible was the gothic structure of the majestic towers of the Mount Carmel Church, as well as the bell tower of the Immaculate Conception Parochial Church. Though old and poorly illuminated, the structures seemed untouched by the passage of time, proudly shooting straight up into the sky, a living symbol of hope for this tiny but courageous nation that had been for several years engaged in bloody war with itself. In the end, eighty-five thousand people were said to have been killed. Five hundred thousand souls disappeared, never to be seen again, with one million fleeing to different countries throughout the world, leaving behind families, their native land and a way of life. Thousands of Salvadoreans would never return to their homeland.

At the time our story unfolds, El Salvador was at the peak of turmoil, its fiercely fighting leftist guerillas believing if there was a blood price to pay for freedom, the people were willing to pay no matter what the cost. Blood ran like rivers through the fighting zones. For innocent people having nothing to do with the conflict, life was not worth one cent.

Nonetheless, though war was raging on, on this particular night, Santa Marta City slept peacefully, seemingly undisturbed beneath the watchful eye of the San Salvador Volcano standing in the distance, a most faithful guardian, present day and night.

Santa Marta was a small city. In spite of this, it hosted a large, busy commercial area. In the heart of the town was a general market where you could find a diversity of items for sale such as clothing and shoes, fruits and vegetables, pottery and much more. Around Salinares Park as well as the marketplace were scattered general stores, drug stores, restaurants, and cafeterias in which favorite tunes were played on old juke boxes. Businesses were housed in one story buildings with block long porches overlooking the park and marketplace. Those were the most transited areas of the city, especially during the Christmas season when they were crammed with street vendors and holiday shoppers.

People from all walks of life lived in Santa Marta City. On Sundays, more than any other day, goods and flowers were purchased from peasants pouring in from all over the countryside, giving anybody there the sense they were participating in a colorful and joyous feast.

Spread across Santa Marta were colonial style homes and mesons, or community houses, as well as many European and American style mansions at the far end of large wooded areas, surrounded by well-kept grassy lawns and expansive gardens. Many rich people lived in Santa Marta as well as many poor people, in its community houses, the so called mesones where each room might contain a whole family, where all tenants shared the same old fashioned kitchen, the same laundry stone slab, and the same cracked shower room. People better off lived in newer, more modern houses, or in the old one-story Spanish colonial houses with several rooms overlooking the street, with tall, wide main entrances, as well as many rooms on the inside, with their own kitchen and bathroom. These houses with their cement tiled floors, long, wide corridors, had, in their courtyard gardens, in some cases, mango, orange, and even avocado trees.

In a home without a garden, a few blocks away from the center of town, there lived a woman by the name of Lydia Luz Soriel. Her divorced husband Gilberto Soriel lived in The United States while she raised her five children, two girls and three boys.

Lydia Luz was unsophisticated, you might say, with long dark hair, dark eyes, and beautiful dark skin. She was poor, but a good person: Hardworking, down-to-earth, a one-man woman. Thus, though she was already divorced, her only man continued to be her ex-husband Gilberto, even though, at that time, he was out of her life living in another country.

After his divorce from Lydia Luz, Gilberto Soriel kept a home in El Salvador with a woman named Consuelo Mirandel. Together, they had a son named Joselito (Chepito), who at the time of the story, was seven years old. Lydia Luz, instead of starting life with another, as some might have done, dedicated herself to her children entirely, providing them with the best education she could afford. She had very little education herself, making her living selling corn pancakes (tortillas) which she produced at home for her neighbors. This kind of business was not what she envisioned for her beloved children: Cristina, Fernando, Alfredo, Paquito and Paulita. She hoped for all of them to finish school, to have careers, and be successful in their lives. Lydia Luz was not willing to rest until her children were able to fulfill their dreams, whatever they might be. Cristina, the oldest of the five, twenty-one years old, was the one inheriting her mother’s looks, slim, with a nice figure and a little taller. She was also unsophisticated and only wore face powder on her soft complexion which did not diminish her Latin good looks. The young girl had already graduated as a secretary and was starting a new job, an accomplishment that made Lydia Luz very proud and happy. After her school hours, the girl was always available to help around the house, run errands, and assist with her corn pancake business. Lydia Luz felt great satisfaction watching her oldest daughter succeed in this way.

Fernando, the oldest of the boys, was slim, tall, dark skinned, and quite handsome. He had beautiful dark, big stretched out eyes. At nineteen, he was mature for his age. Having recently graduated from High School, his dream had been to become a medical doctor. His mother had vowed to support him in any way necessary. At the time, Fernando was madly in love with his girlfriend Gloria, the daughter of Raul and Alicia Odel. The girl, in turn, was madly in love with him. The parents knew their love was serious and the real thing, that both were headed for the church altar.

Alfredo was shorter than his brother Fernando and more on the stocky side but no less handsome, with a vivacious gaze and the same big, dark, stretched eyes, a trademark of the Soriel family. Like his mother and father, he had beautiful dark skin. Seventeen years old at the time, mischievous and rebellious, he was a good hearted, compassionate kid loved by his mother to no end.

Paquito, fourteen, was not as dark skinned as his parents, but like them, possessed of the same beautiful dark eyes, and black, straight hair. Very humble and an excellent student, Paquito was a very good boy. Lydia Luz never had problems with him.

Paulita, the youngest, had lighter skin, her hair not as dark as her parents’ but shared their gorgeous eyes. Like Paquito, she was humble, of few words, a good student and a well-behaved young girl.

As it happened, when Paulita was four years of age, her father Gilberto’s sister, Aunt Rosalba Kardel, , who lived in The United States, had come to her rescue while on a trip back to El Salvador. She noticed the girl had an unusually prominent stomach, yellowish skin, and discolored brittle dark brown hair. Her little sister Linnet had died a few years earlier from liver disease. Rosalba rushed the ailing girl to a doctor who in turn prescribed medicine and treatment. As a result, Paulita is a healthy young woman. Lydia Luz, her mother, had never recovered from the loss of Linnet and had come very close to losing Paulita in the same way. The aunt’s lucky intervention took place just before war erupted in the country. Paulita was quiet, shy, but thankfully always healthy, happy and blessed.

Besides her five children by Gilberto, Lydia Luz had another daughter, named Carmenza Moran, by a prior relationship. She lived in The United States, was in her early twenties and kept in touch with her mother mostly by phone and mail. They had not seen each other in years. This saddened Lydia Luz.

Lydia Luz had little money. She made ends meet by selling corn pancakes, a food traditionally eaten instead of bread in El Salvador. The house she lived in with her five children did not belong to her but was property of two adoptive aunts who raised her from childhood: Monchita Calderon, who was blind, and her sister Elmira. Although she hadn’t much to count for at the time, Lydia Luz remained the family’s bread winner. After many years of hard work, being only fifty years of age, she felt exhausted and was continuously afflicted by nagging stomach pains. In spite of her fatigue and health problems, Lydia Luz continued to make corn pancakes over an open flame, day after day, month after month, year after year.

When her oldest daughter, Cristina, started to work, economically speaking, things should have changed for the better, but this was not to be the case. Lydia Luz was nevertheless content in being surrounded by her family, her few possessions, a small dining room table, four chairs, a wide canvas bed without mattress or fancy covers, and an old mahogany wardrobe.

On this night, however, life dealt them all another dirty hand (one similar or worse than the event of little Linnet’s death). Their whole world had fallen apart for a second time. Lydia Luz was a very strong woman, but even before this, she had asked herself every now and then, how much more can I take?

We begin the story finding the distressed woman sitting on the edge of her big wooden bed in the early hours of the day . . . sobbing and trembling with fear.

Still dark, with the lights out, her form could barely be seen within the small room she shared with her daughters Cristina and Paulita. The boys normally slept in another room. She sat up, head in her hands, looking to be in agony. On any other night she would be sleeping soundly next to her daughter Cristina, both of them at Paulita’s feet. On this night, instead of sleep, she was desperately waiting for the first rays of day light to filter through the fine crack beneath her front door so she could finally go outside and speak to her neighbor Mrs. Adilia Martel, who lived across the street. While impatiently waiting, she could not help but lovingly glance first at Cristina, then at Paulita, who had, moments before, exhausted herself and collapsed onto the only bed in the room around 5 o’clock, and lay at her sister’s feet.

Lydia Luz had been crying for hours and wiped her still tearing eyes with the back of a hand, at the same time gently caressing Cristina’s shoulder. In the very same way, she turned to Paulita and rubbed the girl’s feet before pausing once more to wipe away the tears.

The room was pitch dark. If the only light bulb, hanging from the center of the ceiling, had been switched on, anyone could have seen evidence of the violent struggle which had left the home in shambles. Lydia Luz and her two young daughters were puffy eyed from continuous sobbing but at that moment, finally, everything was calm and quiet.

Extreme fear nevertheless left