What You Have Heard Is True

by Carolyn Forche

  After two days, Leonel came for me, and this time the back of the Hiace was filled with duffels and metal trunks. He was dressed in a clean white guayabera and pressed khakis. I nodded toward the duffel bags.

  “Are we going far?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet. It depends on what happens. Do you have everything with you? In your rucksack,” he added impatiently, “your nice clothes.”

  “Should I change?”

  “No, not yet. Say good-bye and thank them. We have to go.”

  Most of the people were already in the fields, but I did say good-bye to Fina, who also wished me to Vaya con Dios.

  The gun was wrapped in Time in the space between us, a sign that Leonel was worried, or that we would be traveling through areas where the coming blowup was expected, but after stopping along the road to make a phone call, Leonel, his spirits bright enough, pushed a cassette of flute music into the dashboard player and asked me how I was, how Fina had seemed to me, and when I described the young catechist, he nodded but, for the first time, didn’t ask questions. We drove to the music of stuttering breath, the pitch of wind through bamboo, and beside us the green walls of cane gave way to the meadows of cattle.

  “They thought I was an American nun.”

  “Really? Does that bother you?”

  “A little. I’m not a nun.”

  “Well, it bothers me quite a bit. That isn’t a good identity to have here.”

  On such drives as this, with the windows down, I would push the seat all the way back and brace my bare feet against the glove box. Sometimes we traveled in silence, but usually Leonel would take the opportunity to review the previous days, or recount a conversation we’d had with someone, or he would verbally assemble a puzzle he was trying to solve or a mystery that had as yet eluded him. Often, he retold the story of the dead American, beginning with Ronald Richardson’s detention for failing to pay his hotel bill and ending with his being tossed from a helicopter into the sea.

  “It’s not as you imagine,” he said. “When a body hits the water from that height, it is the same as falling into a block of stone.”

  The Richardson story was always the same, but more often lately the focus was upon Colonel José Francisco René Chacón, that hijo de la gran puta Chacón, who was believed to have ordered Richardson’s death.

  “He has his victims butchered and keeps their body parts frozen in plastic bags to feed to his dogs,” Leonel reminded me, “most especially when he wants to impress a visitor.”

  He took his eyes from the road to be certain that I had again registered this information.

  “His freezer is the kind that opens from the top, like a coffin or a treasure chest. His dogs are mongrels. I also told you, didn’t I, that he anesthetizes his victims and . . .”

  “You told me about that, yes.”

  “Who knows how many he has killed, Papu.”

  “I like this,” I said, turning the volume up on the cassette player, but when the song came to an end, the cassette popped out of its slot, and I was about to push it back in when Leonel said, “Leave it, we need to talk for a while. We need to review.”

  “But you’ve told me this story so many times that I know it by heart.”

  “Do you? What do you mean by ‘know’?”

  “Is that another trick question?”

  “It’s not a trick, Papu. Chacón flays people alive. He kills a man’s child in front of him and makes him dig the grave. I mean, goddamn it. You think you know this story from the few facts I have given you? What if I told you that Richardson might have been an intelligence agent?”

  “You’re kidding, right? That makes no sense.”

  “It doesn’t? Why not? Look, the man arrives in Central America with no apparent reason to be here. The first thing he does, both in Guatemala and El Salvador, is to try to get work as a mercenary. From another perspective, he was trying to infiltrate the military. From another perspective, his target was Chacón, who happens to have his own small band of killers. But no one trusts Richardson until he starts talking about drugs. In this scenario, the flimflam man is an act. Richardson thinks he’s getting close to Chacón. Apparently, no one brought the embassy into the loop, so they are busy trying to verify his driver’s license and the addresses he has given, but none of it checks out. He isn’t who he says he is. There is no Ronald Richardson.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that it is possible that the man who called himself Richardson was an agent.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means that the Salvadoran chief of immigration, one of the highest-ranking officers in the Salvadoran military, might have had a U.S. intelligence agent murdered. And despite the embassy’s best efforts to find out what happened, there were no repercussions. The man who called himself Richardson is dead. End of story, except . . .”

  He stopped, distracted by something: a cow, all hide and bones, loping along the road, the man following behind the cow, or something else he saw.

  “Except what?”

  “We can’t let it be the end of the story.”

  * * *

  —

  Of course, he must know what I was thinking. Why did he care so much about this American? It had been months since his probable death, months in which dozens of campesinos had been murdered in the campo, had been thrown down wells, mutilated, left in the fields for vultures, and every day people were disappearing from the streets, abducted while walking to work or coming home from school, some to reappear in the morgue, but most never to be seen again, and if they were, by chance, alive somewhere, in secret detention, in a clandestine jail, they would no longer resemble the last photograph taken, the one that was meant to celebrate a watershed moment of their lives. Why was this one man, this Richardson, so important to Leonel? He more than others, and a North American? And if it is true that he was an agent, which seems a bit farfetched—well, the obsession with his death was even more puzzling.

  He pounded his fist on the steering wheel.

  “The man was a human being. That’s reason enough. The question is: Why did the American government stonewall the investigation, and why was the new president so eager to accept the resignation of the ambassador to El Salvador before any other resignation in the world, and at a time when human rights had suddenly become so important? It was to be the centerpiece of the new president’s foreign policy, or so they claimed. Believe me, I have thought long and hard about this question, Papu.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I told you, I was able to arrange something. We are going to Ahuachapán.”

  * * *

  —

  After the cattle ranches, we entered the sugarcane. The cane was ready for harvest. I watched from the Hiace as workers hacked the canes close to the ground with their machetes, hacked and stood and, with sun flashing from the blade, took the green leaves from the top and laid the stalk on the bundle, then disappeared again into the cane stands.

  “What do you see?” Leonel asked, as he always asked.

  “A cane harvest?”

  “What else?”

  “What else am I supposed to see?”

  He nodded his head toward the cane fields and raised his eyebrows.

  “Men are cutting cane with machetes,” I said.

  “Look at their hands. He slowed the car. Look carefully.”

  Their hands appeared black with soot.

  “Do you know how sharp sugarcane leaves are? They are like razors. Do you know what happens to a man’s hands when he cuts cane?”

  There was movement among the cane stands, falling cane, a flash of machetes in the distance, and smoke.

  “Why is the cane black?”

  “It’s been burned. That’s how they get rid of the dead leaves. But the canes are filled with water, so they surv
ive the fire. A good cane cutter can harvest a thousand pounds in an hour. If they don’t work fast, they’re sent away with nothing. Keep looking.”

  For some kilometers, I stared into the burned cane, doing as he asked. From time to time, a cutter staggered from the cane break with a bundle on his back many times his size and tossed the bundle to a waiting truck.

  “Try to imagine, Papu, doing that every day, and for almost nothing.”

  I knew that he hadn’t brought me to Ahuachapán principally to watch a cane harvest. After a time, he slowed the Hiace and pulled into some kind of compound, yanked on the emergency brake, and sat without speaking for a while.

  “You want to know something about human rights? You keep asking me about human rights. The groups you are talking to—who are they? What are they going to do with our information? How far are they going to take it? What are they willing to risk?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well?” he said, and shrugged.

  “No, really, I don’t know what you mean. They are human rights groups, Amnesty International, and others. You know who they are.”

  “No, I don’t. I have seen these groups, and you saw one too when you first got here. And look what happened.”

  “What do you mean ‘what happened’? Nothing happened.”

  “Precisely.”

  “It’s not their fault.”

  “Okay. Let’s give this the benefit of the doubt. Suppose you were to give some good information to a human rights group, information about torture, about things going on even in a prison for common criminals. What would they do?”

  I didn’t like to answer these sorts of questions, but that was because, at the time, I didn’t yet understand what he was trying to accomplish—in El Salvador or, for that matter, with me.

  “I have no idea what they would do,” I answered sarcastically, and then regretted this.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s find out, shall we?”

  He opened his door and gestured for me to follow him.

  “Bring your sweater,” he said, “it might be good for you to cover your arms.”

  It was a warm day, but I usually had a sweater with me for the cooler evenings.

  “Leave everything else here. It will be all right.”

  As we walked a few feet from the Hiace, I saw the barbed wire for the first time, surrounding a one-story building, where soldiers had gathered near a gate.

  “This is a prison,” Leonel said in a low voice. “It’s supposed to be for criminals, but there are quite a few political prisoners here too, and others who have become political prisoners during their incarceration. I went to school with one of the wardens. We’re not friends, but let’s say we know each other.”

  He stopped well short of the gate and looked at the clouds.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m okay.”

  “Good. Now listen carefully.”

  He explained that I would be going inside to visit an old friend of his, who would now become instantly an old friend of mine too: “Miguel,” or that’s the name Leonel used for him then. Miguel had been in prison for several years for a petty offense committed when he was quite young, but his sentence was extended over the years as a result of his work as a prison organizer. Recently, he had led yet another hunger strike in an attempt to improve prison rations.

  “He’s a good man,” Leonel said, “and he’ll show you around.”

  “Me? You’re not coming?”

  “No, it’s better if you go alone. But I’ll be here.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “See as much as you can. Memorize everything. Especially the layout and the locations of anything you think human rights groups should see.”

  “Why are they letting me in?”

  “I told you. I went to school with one of the wardens.”

  “But who does he think I am? And what does he think I’m doing here?”

  There were two sharp cracks. Shots fired into the air. He nodded toward the building.

  “Those are just warning shots. A visitor. Behave.”

  “Who should behave?”

  “Everyone. Prisoners. Guards.”

  “What do they think I’m doing here?”

  “I told them you were a friend of mine, and also of Miguel’s family, and you just want to pay him a little visit while you are here.”

  “That doesn’t sound credible.”

  “Well, can you think of something more credible?”

  “What if anything goes wrong?”

  “Things can always go wrong, but I really think you’ll be okay. As I said, I’ll be nearby. Just stay with Miguel, and when you see him, greet him like a friend and send good wishes from his family. Then stick close to him and pay attention.”

  “How long will I have?”

  “I would guess about thirty minutes. As I said, stay close to Miguel and follow his lead.”

  At the entrance, there was a guard booth and a soda machine stocked with Fanta and Nehi, the grape and orange drinks of my childhood. There were several soldiers there, guards I supposed, but they looked like regular army to me, and they carried G3 automatic weapons, standard issue for the army. Leonel shook hands with the man I presumed was the warden, and they talked for a few minutes by themselves with their faces turned away from everyone else. When Leonel turned back again, a man was coming toward us, leaning on a crutch as he walked, his pants torn up the side to make room for a bruised and swollen leg. He dragged himself toward me by the crutch and smiled and held out his hand.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Carolina! How have you been?”

  “Well. Very well. I’m fine,” I said, or something like that, and then remembered to say, “Your family sends love. They miss you.”

  He was tender-eyed, unshaven, with crow’s feet that belied his youth.

  “Gracias, Carolina. Tell them the leg is a bit better. Would you like something?”

  He was dragging himself toward the soda machine. Leonel was still talking to the warden. The soldiers were near.

  “Oh, no, no, that’s okay.”

  Miguel already had the coin from his pocket and he met my eyes and whispered, “Take it” as he handed me an opened bottle. “You’ll need it.”

  I took a sip and Miguel smiled. He was younger than I thought he would be, perhaps thirty or so, not much older than me, and he was thin from the hunger strikes, but his eyes were bright and gentle.

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “Didn’t mi madre tell you? I have thrombosis. But it’s getting better. Shall we go?”

  He nodded toward the prison entrance, where the gate was opening for us, and after passing through another set of gates, we were inside.

  The stench came first, rotting coffee husks mixed with human waste, the hot smell of blood and sharpness of urine lifting from the pails that lined the hallway, an odor of unbathed humans together with smoke from the many tin-can fires, cans punched with holes holding burning coals, and over them, men were heating rations of beans and tortillas.

  The prison had four wings and an open courtyard, the hallways on the four wings gave onto this yard, so the odors and cook smoke lifted toward the clouds, but the stench still hung, trapped in the air. I put the Fanta to my nose and Miguel smiled.

  The men filled the courtyard lining all four wings, squatting on the tiles or sitting with their backs to the wall and their legs outstretched. When I walked through the hall, some of the men pulled their legs in to make way for me and some didn’t. Some had tucked newspapers into the rims of their straw hats, and these hung down over their faces and all around their heads. They tented their heads with newspapers for privacy. They were wearing their own clothes, not prison uniforms but rags, filthy, torn garments pocked with hole
s. As Miguel walked on his crutch, the prisoners pulled their legs away to let him pass. I walked close to him.

  “There is where we sleep,” he whispered, pointing to a room that appeared to be lined with wooden shelves. “Those are the barracks. This place was built to hold about two hundred men but there are twice that number here now.”

  He stabbed the tile with his crutch and kept moving.

  “Here are the latrines. Don’t go in there.”

  The odd thing was that no one was looking at me. As I approached, they turned their faces away or looked down at the floor or at one another. Only Miguel looked. And it was quiet too. When we were outside in the beginning, I could hear a din of voices and shouts and even laughter coming from inside, but now nothing.

  “Here are the workrooms.”

  These were long, narrow rooms with wooden benches, the walls made of peeling concrete painted aqua. I didn’t see any tools or other evidence of work.

  We turned a corner, where a group of prison guards had gathered in a circle, playing a game with dice, thoroughly occupied with the game, tossing dice and laughing or groaning. No one looked at us. We had made almost a full circle of this courtyard on all four wings. Miguel glanced around cautiously.

  “¿Listo?” he whispered. “Are you ready?”

  He locked eyes with me, then asked if I saw the dark open doorway nearby. I did. It was not quite ten feet away, a room with an entrance like the barracks, like the workrooms, but it was on the other side of the courtyard, the far side.

  “No one is paying attention to you now. Just walk into that room and try to see what you can. Don’t stay long, and control your face when you come out. I’ll be right here. If anyone sees you and asks what you are doing, just make an absentminded North American lady face,” and he imitated such a face, by looking at me blankly with his mouth slightly open. I had never seen anyone do that before and didn’t realize that this is what we looked like to others.

  “And just say that you got lost.”

  For a moment I froze, and then he smiled and nodded yes to me, tossing his head in the direction of the doorway.