Review: How a book on Salvador’s civil war helped me understand my own family history
By hola | Published | No Comments
Vanessa Núñez Handal’s novel, Dios Tenía Miedo, is a collection of unspoken truths about El Salvador’s Civil War which took place in the ’80s and early ’90s, when 75,000 people lost their lives. Núñez unapologetically presents the reader with the grotesque impacts of war: the violence, the images of dead bodies on the streets, open human flesh.
The main character, Natalia, searches for answers through the archives of history, memories, and people’s accounts of their experiences. The novel jumps from past to present, juxtaposing the naiveness of a child and her now deeply rooted understanding of the war as an adult.
The novel also presents different perspectives of the war. The press is scrutinized, human rights abuses perpetrated by the rebels questioned, as well as the purpose of international participation. The battles won by people in other parts of the world are placed side-by-side with the decline of El Salvador’s sense of justice. People’s memories and historical accounts are integrated in a way that expands the reader’s point of view on the war. The role of the media is censoring the truth, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, remembering lost family members, these are a few of the themes that dominated the short chapters of the novel.
Themes the author came to explore later on while learning about her people’s history. Vanessa Núñez Handal was born in 1973. She is a Salvadoran writer, editor, and lawyer with a master’s in political science and Latin American literature. She has published other novels: Los locos mueren de viejo; La caja de cuentos; and Espejos. She has also authored short stories in various anthologies and magazines published in Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, the USA, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico.
In an attempt to understand her own country and herself, she embarked on writing the novel hoping to pave the way for Salvadorans to speak about something that is mostly kept hidden. In an interview with the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre, Vanessa said the book was well-received in El Salvador. People shared with her their suppressed feelings saying “I am touched. I am crying because I had these feelings stored and I had not reopened that closet where I had it locked.”
Dios Tenía Miedo was assigned to me as part of the D.C. Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs book club over last summer. At first inspection, the book is short, unintimidating. However, its context is immense, intimidating and perplexing. Even though I and the other young people of Salvadoran heritage didn’t live through the war, we all had family members who did. We shared the stories of our families and we shared a common astonishment to the details of death in the novel.
The book starts with chaos. Confusion and sounds of destruction are established early in the novel. A curious young Natalia is ignored and shielded from the truth. Her questions go unanswered.
I see my mother in Natalia. How she and her family fled, and how she, too, was a child born into a war and left with such raw memories that for decades she’d panic at the sound of fireworks. As a result of talking to her about the book, I’ve come to understand my mother more. I’ve asked her questions that I’m not sure I would’ve asked but I am glad that I did.
My mom told me how their house was visited regularly by both rebels and government soldiers in search of food. While the military would trade with them, the rebels only demanded. My mother’s family escaped the rebels when they attempted to take her brother and older sister. They wanted to make them into soldiers for the rebels.
The day the rebels came to my grandmother’s house to take her children, the children weren’t home, so she told them to come back later. I Right there and then, she packed a few essentials and what belongings she could gather and fled that same day with her entire family. They left everything behind, the comfort of their home, business, their animals; and fled to another city to start all over again to escape the rebels, who would have them killed if they were found.
Núñez shares in an interview with Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion that many of those who lived through the war had nothing to do with it but ended up complicit by opting to align themselves with the stronger side, the government. Núñez tells La Nacion that “the unforgivable thing is that today, having so much evidence, people are not wanting to accept the collective lie to which we were subjected to.” Adding that “others, find the truth, but see living in a lie more convenient for them,” not wanting to spark a confrontation.
The novel ends with a summary of the current state of the country. A grown-up remorseful Natalia realizes that injustice resides in forgetting the innocent victims of war and in wanting to forget it ever happened.
However, last Salvadorans voted in a new President, Nayib Bukele, look to undo all the corruption of previous government. Bukele won 53% of the votes, avoiding a run-off. Before elected, Bukele was being investigated by the electoral court to see if he had broken the law by violating a news embargo. Another accusation was that he had asked for votes during an interview broadcast live on Facebook, according to BBC.
Hopefully, El Salvador will see itself renewed and reinvented. Healed.
-Jasmin Avila
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