While the land leveling was taking place (for the My Lai Peace Park), we met under the banner for the My Lai Peace Park with representatives of the Women’s Union from the province, district and village (My Lai) for a special ceremony involving the women of El Salvador.
Earlier this year I traveled to El Salvador as a representative of a coalition of organizations from Madison, Wisconsin, which hopes to bring together the women of El Salvador and Viet Nam for an opportunity to share their experiences of rebuilding their lives, families and communities after war. We hope this project, called "Sisters Meeting Sisters" is the first of many such meetings that will later include women from other countries such as Nicaragua, Bosnia, or Iraq.
During my many meetings with the women of El Salvador, the women have enthusiastically opened their hearts to this opportunity. They have much respect for the Vietnamese people, and they told me they very much wanted to talk to the women of Viet Nam about a number of issues: globalization, privatization, domestic violence, etc. But the issue most of these women came back to over and over again was healing from the wounds of war. I was asked many times if I thought the women of Viet Nam have ways of healing that could help the women of El Salvador. The wounds cut so deeply in the women of El Salvador, as they do women all over the world whose lives have been devastated by war, that these women have lost the ability to dream or hope.
One meeting illustrates the trauma the women of El Salvador are dealing with. We were invited to attend the monthly meeting of the 40 Presidents of the Directivas of the state of Chalatenango. Usually these meetings are held in each others villages, but this time the meeting was held under the over hanging trees on the dry riverbed of the Sumpul River. After the meeting, I was introduced to the six women who were Presidents of their Directivas. We gathered in a circle and I explained our proposed project to them emphasizing that our role in Madison was only to fund and facilitate this project. We would follow the agenda set by the women of El Salvador and Viet Nam. Once again, this concept was eagerly embraced by the El Salvadoran women, and we discussed it at length. Then, as we sat in our circle on the riverbed under the trees. Esperanza began telling me what happened on this spot more than 10 years ago. El Salvadoran government troops had surrounded their village to begin one of the many massacres committed during that war. The villagers fled but were stopped by the Sumpul River. As they swam to the other side to escape, the government troops began firing, killing more than 600 men, women and children. One of Esperanza’s surviving children, a boy of nine at the time, climbed the hill on the other side of the river to keep an eye on the government troops. He watched them become so physically tired of killing that they would hand their M-16s to other soldiers to continue the killing.
Four of the six women sitting in this circle survived that massacre, and as Esperanza told this story, they sat there with tears welling from their eyes, their faces twisted in pain. Esperanza finished her telling of this story and said that she had given testimony about this massacre many places around the world, including the Vatican. But she said this was the first time she gave testimony of the massacre on the site itself. Tita then reached down to the riverbed and picked up a small rock and handed it to Esperanza. Esperanza brushed it off and handed it to me and said, "Please give this to the women of Viet Nam as a symbol of today’s witness."
So today, March 16, (2000) the anniversary of the massacre at My Lai, I formally handed over the rock in its beautiful lacquer box to the women of My Lai. This simple rock, now a symbol of hope and the potential for healing, will be held in care of the Women’s Union. When the My Lai Peace Park is completed and a small museum is built, the rock in its lacquer box will be placed on display there.
