REAL STORIES SAL-MEX-CA 62-21

By José Alas

I want to give a special thanks to my parents, Ana de Jesús Erazo de Alas and Lorenzo Alas Solís, to my wife Mar a Dolores Jiménez and to my inlaws, Berta Lidia Flores de Jiménez y Francisco Jiménez Borja. To my sons Freddy Alexander, Eric Saúl, and Tony Alas, my daughters-in-law Amy, Alyssa and Rita. My grandkids David, Frankie and Aeris and th

• Language: English
• Publisher: ibukku, LLC
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685740757

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REAL STORIES

SAL-MEX-CA 62-21

José Alas

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the copyright holders. The infringement of such rights may constitute an intellectual property offense.

The content of this work is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. All texts and images were provided by the author, who is solely responsible for their rights.

Publshed by Ibukku

www.ibukku.com

Graphic Design: Índigo Estudio Gráfico

Copyright © 2021 José Alas

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Facebook: josealas

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-68574-074-0

ISBN eBook: 978-1-68574-075-7

Index

Introduction

Chapter 1

My Childhood in Los Naranjos, Chalatenango, El Salvador

Chapter 2

City Life in Santa Lucia, San Salvador, El Salvador

Chapter 3

Escalating Violence in El Salvador

Chapter 4

Starting over in Puebla, Mexico

Chapter 5

My Hard Time in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Chapter 6

A Beautiful Life in Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Afterword

Introduction

It was always my hope to write this book. I have thought about this dream for a long time, knowing I wanted to share the story of my life story with my children, my grandchildren, friends, and even curious strangers. I want to share the story of how, with the blessing of Almighty God, I was able to make it out alive from my war-torn home country of El Salvador as a refugee of war and started my life over by moving to Mexico and then to Canada.

To tell you a little about El Salvador, it is the smallest country in Continental America. It is a convulsive and dangerous country, but it is also a country of incomparable beauty. Look to its beaches, its countryside, its mountains, and rivers, and you will see what I mean. It is a country with complex and beautiful people, delicious and unique food, and it has a long and rich history; to summarize, it was a place I loved. Why then, did I leave my home? I had no choice: I had to flee, or I would be killed. While I lived there, El Salvador was an impoverished and suffering country ruled by a corrupt, militant government that publically executed anyone who criticized the country or its rulers. Death squads patrolled the streets and controlled food and enforced curfews. It was only guerrilla groups, like the one I belonged to as a guerrilla soldier, that dared fight for the people and tried to make things better. When people are poor and hungry, they become desperate, and we were desperate for change and for justice. But in fighting the corruption, I put a target on my back because I had become a notorious and famous rebel.

This is the story I will share with you now; the story of how I became a political guerrilla and my escape from capture and death, and how I started my life over again in two other countries, finally finding peace. My journey carried me through three different countries, and I will tell you about the memories I made along the way. Some of these memories were joyful and good, filled with laughter and adventure, but others were filled with anguish and loss, and unimaginable sorrow. Through it all, my story begins and ends with Jesus Christ, who carried me through every moment and who carries me still. You will read for yourself the undeniable miracles I experienced in my life, and the fact I am alive and here to write this story today is the ultimate testimony of God’s goodness.

But I should warn you first and honestly that I wasn’t always as devoted to Jesus Christ as I am now. As a teenager, I was rebellious and a radical and I believed more in my own revolutionary ideas than I did in the word of God. I thought I could change the world and I tried to. I thought I could change El Salvador for the better and save its people if only I were brave and reckless enough. This is where I’ll begin my story from my childhood onwards. It is a long beginning and I hope you will stick through it because it is important to know my beginning. I need you to understand the humble life I came from and what lead me to my revolutionary ways.

It is there you will see how a poor and shy child became an impassioned rebel dedicated to a cause. You will learn, too, how I grew to be a person who realized he was important and special to God, no matter what I have done in my past. There are so many things that I have done and experienced that I regret but I know, despite everything, God forgives me and loves me still.

I hope in sharing these memories from my youth and my life that young people who are looking for adventures and thrills pause and think back to this book. I know from experience that everything we do in our youth has real repercussions in our future, and as we grow older and older, the consequences of our actions sometimes come back to haunt us.

Such is the case for a very old friend of mine. He was affectionately nicknamed The Mosquito, or Mosco, because of his notorious drinking habits and love for partying. I found out last week that my dear friend passed away from cirrhosis, a failure of the liver due to excessive alcohol consumption. He was 58. I want to dedicate this book to him and my other lost friends. It is only by the grace of God that I am still here to tell my story and theirs too.

-Jose Alas

Chapter 1

My Childhood in Los Naranjos, Chalatenango, El Salvador

I was born on March 7, 1962, in Los Naranjos, El Salvador; it was Ash Wednesday the day I was born and the beginning of Lent. Knowing my story now, it seems appropriate I was born on Ash Wednesday because it is a day signifying human mortality and the need for reconciliation with God. Los Naranjos is a hamlet so small that it doesn’t even appear on the map of El Salvador. The hamlet was located in the department of Chalatenango, in the North of El Salvador. El Salvador is the smallest country in Continental America and at this time in Los Naranjos in 1962, there was no electricity or bathrooms in our little farmhouses. We didn’t even have running water in the village but instead there were 3 public fountains where the people of the town came to fill their buckets to bring home.

In this time, the men of the hamlet went to work cultivating the land where they sowed corn, beans, and other vegetables. The men would bring water with them to work by filling their tecomate, a type of fruit shaped like a large pear, which was then dried and hollowed out to form a drinking jug. When these tecomates were filled with water, the water acquired a unique flavor and stayed fresh all day long on the fields. It is a specific memory that stays with me and reminds me of home even after all these years.

The main street of his tiny hamlet was paved but the rest of the sidewalks were simple dirt paths. For fun, the young people of the town met at the house of a woman named Mrs. Chalia and Mr. Juan at night because Mrs. Chalia would tell stories of local legends and myths like Siguanaba, the Cipitillo, the screaming cart, the headless man, the cadejo, and more. They were frightening stories; some were true, and others were myths specific to our hamlet.

Mrs. Chalia’s house was on the edge of town and behind her house was a place that everyone knew as the Mangón; it was a stretch of land where there were many mango trees and a river that passed around it. Many people from the town had seen the Siguanaba in this place. According to local legend, the Siguanaba is a spirit with the body of a beautiful woman. In the stories, she lures men near rivers and ravines, drawing them in with her beautiful body until she leads them to their deaths and steals their souls, similar to the western legends of sirens or mermaids. I grew up hearing my neighbors and family talk about seeing her, but it was my father’s own account that scared me the most.

He told me that when he was 12, he went to the Mangón very early in the morning to look for mangoes, because during the night, the heavy and ripe mangoes would fall to the ground. Those highly coveted mangoes were always collected as soon as possible and snatched up quickly, and my father wanted to be the first one there that day before all the other boys.

It was still dark when my father arrived under the mango trees. He began collecting his mangoes when he felt like he wasn’t alone. He looked up and froze when saw a woman standing there alone, under the trees. She appeared to be gathering branches for firewood and looked young and pretty. His hair rose on his arms, filled with sudden terror and dread he couldn’t explain, and if sensing this, the woman straightened her back slowly, fixing her gaze on him, and waved to him, as if beckoning him to her. My father remembered the stories of the Siguanaba and turned on the spot, sprinting back to his home with his heart pounding in his chest.

All the local boys of the hamlet had a similar tale to tell and when they went to see Mrs. Chalia the storyteller, they spent their time talking quickly and sharing their own stories, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. As they exchanged stories, Mrs. Chalia put out a sack of corn for them to shell, or peanuts to roast or shelve. We would gather together to eat, to tell stories, and have fun together, since there was nothing else for us to do at nighttime.

Another of Mrs. Chalia’s stories involved the famous Cipitillo, who was said to be the son of Siguanaba, and is depicted as being 8-10 years old who wears a large hat made of palm leaves. Eerily, it is said that his feet are backwards and that when farmers and townsfolk follow Cipitillo’s footsteps, they get lost because they follow his trail in the wrong direction. It is said that if you touch either the Siguanaba or Cipitillo, you would be driven to madness for the rest of your life.

My father always believed there was truth in these stories because two of his own cousins experienced madness themselves after reportedly seeing these phantoms. They were strange men who never married and instead spent their life wandering the mountains alone and living off the land.

Mrs. Chalia shared another story about the legends of the ceiba tree, which are famous because the legend says that spirits gather under these particular trees at midnight. This is another strange story that family experienced firsthand, as well which I will share with you now.

When my uncle was two years old, my grandparents took him to see a family member who lived across the main street of the town. On the way to the family member’s house, they had to pass a ceiba tree. It was the middle of the night when they passed the tree and as they did; my two-year-old uncle began to cry uncontrollably. He continued to cry for the next 24 hours without stopping, until suddenly he did stop, falling into silence all at once. He stayed silent for the rest of that day and the rest of his life as a mute. He is still alive today, married and with 4 children, but he has never spoken even one word.

These stories were what brought us together and what entertained us in our little village. There was no electricity to watch television and even if we had electricity, no one had a television in their homes. If you wanted to watch television, you had to go to the next town over called San Luis, where only one man had a television, and he would charge people .25 cents to watch. You can understand then, the importance of storytelling in my town. It was what the young people looked forward to most each day and these stories have stayed with me my whole life.

My town was so small that we didn’t even have a school built until I was 7 years old. Instead, my friends Arnulfo, Carlos, and Herminio and I were taught by my godfather. He taught grade one to grade six and all in one room together, since there were hardly any children to attend. Such was the life in a small village in El Salvador in the 1960s.

This is why our education was minimal. My father, a born musician, dreamt of being a music teacher but since he was only in school until grade 3, it was impossible for him to get a job with the Ministry of Education. He longed to continue his studies but when he was 10 years old his mother passed away and his father remarried. They pulled him out of school and put him to work in the fields. My father dedicated himself to working the land all his life. Even when he married my mother, he continued his work as a farmer. Despite his circumstances, he remained passionate about music his whole life, and this is something I will always remember about my father. It is nice to remember stories about him and he helped shaped me into the man I am now, so I want to share some stories about my father with you now.

When there was a marriage in the village, or if a child died, they hired my father and his friend Mr. Bone to play music. It was our custom to play music at the funerals of children because when a child died, they were an angel who went straight to heaven. In this way, my father was able to earn extra money doing what he loved, and even though he couldn’t be a music teacher or work fully as a musician, he still made it a priority in his life and was something that brought him joy.

My father also loved fishing. There were some streams near our house, but the largest river in El Salvador, the Lempa River, was two hours away. My father loved fishing there and would walk two hours to that river and return the next day with lots of big fish for our family to eat. My mother would wait for him to return, and they would make many dishes with the fresh fish he caught. One fish in particular I loved and remember fondly are the fish pupusas. Pupusas are a famous dish in El Salvador, named after a Náhuatl word meaning stuffed. Náhuatl is a dialect spoken by the indigenous people who populated our region. A pupusa is a thick, flat griddle cake similar to a tortilla made with cornmeal and stuffed with cheese, beans, or meats. It is an extremely popular and well-loved dish all over the world, and the pupusas my parents made were especially delicious.

I have many stories from my father about his fishing adventures, but one that particularly stands out to me is this: one day he had been fishing all day and night at the Lempa River and he hadn’t caught a single fish. He was desperately discouraged because he knew my mother would be waiting for him to return with fish so she would have something to cook for our family. My father told me that in his desperation he lay down on the riverbank on his back and stretched out his hands, crying out to God, saying God, I have not caught anything, and my wife and children are waiting for me to eat. I have nothing!

Suddenly, an eagle circled the sky above the river and dove down with a large fish in its beak, stopping to rest on a tree branch right above where my father was laying. The fish flopped around frantically in the mouth of the eagle until it broke free and fell, landing directly on the ground at my father’s feet! My father scooped up the fish into his bag and thanked God for hearing his plea and went home a very happy man. The fish was so big that my whole family was able to eat happily and have seconds, too. To me, this story really demonstrates who my father was – a man of great faith in God.

On the first weekend of every month, my father and a small group of men from town would walk three hours to the city of Chalatenango to go to the church there. They would spend the whole night in vigil and the next day, after sleeping a few hours in the church, would walk through the city, buying some supplies he would bring back home, such as sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Now you have an idea of my father’s simple but meaningful life. He was a dedicated and hard worker who spent his life working the land and providing for his family. He was a man who made time for the things he loved such as music and found happiness in simple things like playing his guitar and fishing. He was faithful and a man of God, and I am happy to say I take after him in that.

You now know a little about village life for me and how we kept ourselves entertained and while these are very nice memories to me, but not all are happy stories. Some of these memories are sad and heavy ones, but it is important to hear these too. One of the saddest things I experienced as a child was the loss of my baby brother. When I was 4 years old, my mother was pregnant. I was anxiously and happily awaiting the arrival of the baby because I always wanted a little brother of my own. I had sisters, but a brother was something I always dreamed of. I wanted a brother to play with and to be