Conspiracy of Silence

Fear of the guerrillas--and the army--rules a typical village

A sleepy collection of adobe buildings around a dusty main square, the Salvadoran village of Osicala stretches across a steep hillside in the northeastern department of Morazdn, only about ten miles from the Honduran border. Defended by the Salvadoran security forces, Osicala was briefly seized by the insurgents last May, and has suffered three major assaults since; sporadic fighting is an almost daily occurrence. The report of TIME's Caribbean bureau chief, William McWhirter:

Life in the village is like the tale behind the three bullet holes in the wooden door--terrifying, mysterious, obscured by fear. When the shooting began, eight members of the Ramon Portillo family had been squatting as refugees in the shuttered mansion once occupied by the village's wealthiest man, who owned all the cactus fields and a coffee finca (plantation) that stretched as far, it is said, as the volcano four miles away. On New Year's Day, guerrillas swept up the back road, firing into the village as they came. Ramon Portillo was killed instantly as the bullets pierced the thin green door of the house. They were only stray shots, maintains his widow Graciela, nothing more than that. But other versions of the story are softly voiced in the village.

Portillo was marked, say some residents, because the guerrillas learned that he was a distant relative of the mansion's owner. Others say that he was shot because he refused to open the door, or because the rebels wanted him for something he had done in another village. "It was an accident," insists the village priest, Father Sebastian. But no one really knows. All that remains is three small holes in a door.

Osicala lives by elaborate charades, invented to disguise actions and conceal motives. A man was kidnaped one night by los muchachos (the boys), as the guerrillas are known, and ordered to drive them five miles in his truck. When he returned to Osicala at dawn, he told his neighbors that the rebels had given him a shot of a mysterious serum so that he would not remember anything. During a guerrilla attack in January, two guerrillas were killed outside a house in the village. Because of the intense fighting, says one resident, they were buried in the garden rather than the village cemetery. The truth? A sign of fear? A sign of sympathy with the guerrillas? Such questions provoke an act of sign language on the part of villagers: a right hand held to the side of the face while the lips remain resolutely sealed. Father Sebastian, for example, shows off his garden and points to a mango tree riddled with bullet holes and grenade fragments. How had it happened? He smiles and gives the sign of silence.

The villagers have good reason for their circumspection. At least 70 have been killed in the past year by the security forces and the guerrillas, some in crossfires, most by kidnapings and assassinations involving both torture and mutilation. A number of the incidents stemmed from the war, but a frightening number of people in Osicala have settled village grudges by denouncing their rivals to killers on either side, knowing that murder would follow.

The village seethes with vendettas.Says an elder: "If one side has killed your mother or daughter, you set out on a personal hunting mission. This is a terrible chain. Everyone is praying to God that it will come to an end."

The villagers are polite to strangers but are always careful that visits do not last too long for fear they will cause suspicion. Says a nervous schoolteacher: "The life we have here is on credit, day to day. The people go indoors early in the evening and stay there until daybreak. We wake up not knowing if we are going to sleep again in the evening. We don't tell the truth, even to people we know. We've lost faith in everyone and everything. If we find a dead body, we leave it for the dogs to eat. It's not laziness on our part. It's just caution. People don't dress in mourning, not even for relatives. It is only seen as a way of advertising sympathies. You can't even visit the cemetery."

Somehow, many normal functions of the village carry on, although there is a striking absence of teen-agers over the age of 15. Last year there were 38 students in that age group; this year there are only 18. Where have the others gone? Another mystery. Some have joined "the boys" in the bush beyond the village. Others have fled to safety with relatives in towns farther away from the fighting.

The election campaign has caused barely a stir in Osicala. When the voting is over, the guerrillas and the armed forces will remain, and the fighting will go on, and so will the problem of staying alive. Says one of the better-educated people in the village: "You can't be friendly with the armed forces because someone will see you. If you get stopped by the boys and someone sees you talking, they'll pass that along too. The only reason that this is an army town is that they are here. If the boys show up tomorrow and say, 'Give me this,' we'll be on their side too. With armed people, you have to say yes."

The next morning government air strikes were hitting the area around Osicala, sending up thick gray clouds of smoke in the valley and surrounding hillsides. Some of the villagers stood, arms crossed, on points of high ground, hoping for a better view. Don Juan Portillo, 82, who was born in Osicala and served four years as village mayor in the 1930s, remained in the large front room of his house, a space that was empty except for straight wooden benches along each wall. Don Juan was philosophical about the future of Osicala. Said he: "Life here may cease to exist. We may have to leave here, but the land will always remain."

That weekend two more bodies were found below the village on the paved highway. One was a local woodcutter; the other was a stranger. None of the residents made a move to carry off or bury the corpses. By noon, as air strikes continued to hit the nearby hills, fat turkey vultures began to gather in the trees below Osicala.

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