"El Salvador" I reply cheerily while chugging on my beer.
"That's a dangerous place, son" His expression turns a light shade of concern.
"The war is over, I'm sure It'll be fine" I say with fake bravado.
"Hell, I'm a retired Chigago cop, and you'd never catch me there. Too many guns son, and too many wars". He turns his attention back to his Coke. I start to worry that I'm about to cross the border into the gates of haedes.
What actually awaits you on arrival, is not Dante's inferno but the very pretty and laid back town of Suchitoto. Artists hang out in cafes swapping jokes over cafe con leche. A lovely church, painted in brilliant white, dominates the southern side of the neat main square. Kids run around having finished a Sunday afternoon's football game. Some are decked out in Arsenal shirts.
Reminders of the 13 year civil war are easy to find though. Next to the chilled out cafes hang out the police. They are armed with side by side pump action shotguns and kevlar vests. The bank is guarded by a very stern looking pair of men both with an array of guns atached to their belts. Security is a big issue. In a population of 6.2 million, there are 1 million guns on the black market. There are street signs everywhere showing a hand gun with a red line through it. There are murals on the sides of buildings dedicated to the FMLN fighters who used the town as a stronghold before being overrun by the Army.
Apart from Costa Rica, every country in Central American has been affected by Civil War. In El Salvador over 300,000 fled to escape the conflict. Many are now in Calafornia and Texas. Guatamala'ps civil war lasted 36 years, killed 200,000 people and displaced over a million citizens.
Dry facts are one thing but Miguel's story brings the civil war history some immediacy. In 1978 Miguel was captured by URNG fighters in Guatamala and taken into the mountains.
"I was kept there for 19 months". He was 17.
He was trained to shoot on sight any Army soldiers, often men from the same Mayan tribe. In that time he was given missions to hijack trucks for supplies."I was given a shopping list of say 100lbs of corn, 100lbs of rice and that was my mission, I could not fail. If I came back without the supplies I would be shot".
His family didn't know what had happened to him. If the army finds out a gorilla fighter is hiding in a village they will toture the locals to find out. A favoured method was to bury people alive up to their necks until they talked. As Miguel's family didn't know what had happened to him, they presumed him dead and held a funeral in the main street of the village.
Finally Miguel was set free and was smuggled back to his village in the dead of night, to his suprised and delighted family.
"Even then, I had to go to the mayor with a made up story as cover for me being away fighting. I said I was trying to get to the US and got thrown in jail in Mexico for being an illegal".
The after effects of conflicts still rumble on. The poverty of some of the towns is all too apparent. Earthquakes and tornados wreck havoc and hold back recovery. But at least the countries are enjoying relative peace. Except for all those guns, son.
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