EL SALVADOR

EL SALVADOR
Salvadoran Refugees
in the Camp at
Colomoncagua, Honduras,
1980-1991
A PHOTOESSAY BY STEVE CAGAN
IN 1980 AND 1981, MORE THAN 35,000 REFUGEES
fled from Salvadoran military actions into
Honduras. In the mountainous northern
part of Morazán department, the military’s
scorched-earth campaign resulted in about
9,000 people fleeing El Salvador to the
Honduran border town of Colomoncagua.
The Morazán attacks are best known
for the infamous massacre at El Mozote,
which left only one known survivor, but
there were a number of less well-known
massacres, causing the Honduran camp to
swell. By 1981, refugees concentrated in a
camp near the town, administered by the
United Nations and surrounded by Honduran
military, were permitted to leave
only with special permission—usually for
medical emergencies.
The refugees came from one of the most
remote areas of El Salvador. They had lived
in widely scattered family units. Children
grew up knowing only siblings and cousins,
and had little if any schooling. The
soil was inadequate to support the traditional
basis of Salvadoran rural life, the
milpa (corn field), and frustrated farming
efforts left people increasingly poor over
the generations. Men supplemented family
incomes by migrating to work in coffee
plantations. Mistreatment and repression
by the representatives of El Salvador’s
notorious oligarchy and by public institutions
were widely felt and resented.
In these conditions, liberation theology
found a ready audience, as did the
revolutionary politics of the groups that
would become the FMLN. The two liberatory
messages reinforced each other. The
response of the Salvadoran government
to the increasing radicalization of the
countryside was to launch a widespread
military repression. While peasant communities
suffered, the military was not
ultimately successful, and in areas like
northern Morazán, the counter-thrust
by guerrilla forces pushed the army back
and established a substantial area that
remained under guerrilla control for the
duration of the internal conflict.
Meanwhile, the refugees in the camp
at Colomoncagua faced a situation totally
new to them. With the clandestine leadership
of guerrillas of the ERP (one of the
five guerrilla groups in the FMLN), who
slipped in and out of the camp through the
Honduran lines, the refugees had to create
new social structures that would support
life in their now crowded conditions.
They had to learn how to live without land,
unable to practice the agriculture that had
been at the center of their family economy
and culture. And they had to face life as
people newly dependent on the support
and solidarity of international agencies
and organizations that worked with the
camp.
Within these strange and difficult conditions,
a perhaps surprising set of changes
turned out to support very positive developments.
Indeed, looking back on their
decade-long stay in the camp after the war
ended, some of the former refugees saw
their time in the camp as a “golden age.”
With the support of the United Nations
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and a few
European and North American NGOs, the
refugees created several sub-camps, which
they called colonias, the Salvadoran term
for neighborhood, constructing dwellings,
buildings for workshops, classrooms,
nutrition centers and health stations, nurseries,
a chapel, latrines and small gardens
54 ReVista SPRING 2016