Warning. This episode contains references to violence, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. There's a fire in the women of my family. Maybe it's because they're born in the land of volcanoes, or maybe it's because it's what they have to be to survive. But every single one of them is like a character from a Garcia Marquez novel. They burn hot, and no one burns hotter than my Tiavilma Dina. My Tiavilma describes herself as bratty, rebellious, and spirited, which I
would say is putting it mildly. She's the kind of person who takes shit from no one, and I think the best way to understand who she is is through a story she told me about when she and her sister, my Ta Marta were young girls is.
Yea by Land.
Their father came home to find the two young girls dancing on the kitchen table to a song on the radio. He was an abusive drunk. As soon as he saw them, they stopped, but he said, oh, so you like dancing, Get up and dance for me, margharita you first. Marta didn't want to, but her father warned her, if you don't dance for me, I'm going to beat you. Ula got up on the table and danced. When he was satisfied, he told her to get down, that it was Vilma's turn.
Pilma refused again. He demanded get up and dance, but she said, why would I dance for you? He beat her bloody with an extension chord all the while she refused to dance.
Lostrapa, that's my Tia Vilma.
The only exception in my family of tough women was my Dea Margarita. Pilma and Margharita were only two years apart in age, and they were basically inseparable. They were what we call in Spanish unya imoure as close as the dirt is under a fingernail, And talking about Margharita is one of the only times that my Tia Vilma's voice softens.
Marra majors annos losa maori.
Betterinta.
She remembers my dear Margharita as being softer than the rest of my family, prettier, gentler. She was named after the Margharita flower. In English we call them daisies. A flower is so simple and common you forget how beautiful it is. The story of my Dia. Margherita's life and death is like that. It's not an extraordinary story. It's common. It's the story of so many Salvadoran women then and now. It's one of the few stories that I knew about my family, that my dear Margherita was killed by a
death squad. That shortly after my mom said goodbye to her in El Salvador, masked men came in the night to take her away. I'd always assumed that maybe she was part of the FMLN. The leftis Geriez. The truth was something so much more complicated, something that gets at the heart of what war does to people. I'm Jasmine Romero and this is Sacred Scandal, Season three, Nation of Saints. This is episode six, The Flower. We'll be right back. If you ask anyone in San Miguel about my family,
they'll probably answer you with one phrase. Les chilette. Ras chilate is a hot, thick drink made from corn, ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and selling chilatte in the mercado has been my family business for generations. The women of my family would load baskets full of hot chilatte on their heads and head to the market to sell them. I asked my Tiavilmar to show me what it sounds like when she sells chilatte. The chilata comes in plastic baggies.
I remember drinking it when I was a kid, tearing the corner of the bag with my teeth and sucking the chilatte out. It's kind of sweet, but mostly Herbi, my great grandma, was in charge of making a huge batch of chilat at dawn. Once it was ready, the women of my family would go to her house and load up their baskets, and there were a lot of chila terras. Remember my mom is one of nine.
Is the Anna is La Mayor, Margharita, Doos, Bill Matres, Mercedes, Quatro.
Mercedes.
I guess when you have nine siblings it's easy to lose track. It's also tough to remember them all because in Alsavaor no one really calls you by your real name. Almost everyone goes my nicknames Mauricio, Florentine, Holain, La Jus, Roxanna becomes China, Maria de Jesus becomes Cheos. You get the picture. Selling chilate is how my dis will man
Margharita would spend their days in San Miguel. They from young girls to teenagers, carrying those heavy baskets on top of their heads, going up and down the streets of Elmergado, calling for customers, selling the bags for twenty cents. By the summer of nineteen eighty one, Margherita was nineteen and she had three young kids. She had just separated from the father of her kids, who was an abusive alcoholic. It was Vilma who convinced her to leave him.
Yo la vive, la viv I cannot say parde lombres, yes dolts.
At the time, Vilma was seventeen and dating a guy named El Bajaro the Bird. His real name was Walter, but everyone just called him El Bajaro. I suspect it's because he had a big nose. Elbajaro's family had all left for the US, so he had his place all to himself. It was kind of a crash pad where friends would party before going to dances in town, so he told Margharita that she could stay there. Margherita moved in and soon she met one of El Bajado's best friends,
a guy named Chara. The two of them hit it off and started dating. They became like the cast of a sitcom. Two sisters dating, two best friends, Bilma and Elbajo, Margharita and Chara. The girls would spend their days in the mercado, but at night they danced. To this day, my Tia Vilma loves to dance. She'll dance anywhere, at any time, for any reason, and I love to watch
her dance. That fall, one of her favorite singers was in town, Maria chacao A. Bilma was eight months pregnant, but that wasn't going to stop her from going to the dance land. By the fall of nineteen eighty one, the war had started to trickle down into the streets. Every once in a while there were shootouts in town, but for the most part the combat was happening in the hills. And what does a seventeen year old care about politics and war anyway, My teas just wanted to
do what all teenagers want to do. Party.
That's yota, They war on Macho.
They would go to at Baho's house to pregame and drink before heading to the dance. Now, I know it's not great that Mike Tia Vilma was drinking while she was eight months pregnant. It's easy to judge, but I try to have grace for someone who was seventeen, had never been to school, and didn't really know any better.
On the night of November fourteenth, the four of them were pregaming at Albajaro's house, but pregaming turned into just drinking, and pretty soon it was late at night and Mike Tiavilma wasn't feeling so great.
Lacynthia y Maria.
I know. Vilma wanted to leave to spend that night at my great Grandma's house, but Margharita wanted to stay. She wasn't ready for the night to end. They argued back and forth for a bit, but finally Bilma gave up and left her there. When Vilma got to my great grandma's house, my grandma asked her, where's Margharita la my Dea. Vilma just shrugged it off. She told her I tried to bring her, but she didn't want to come.
Para midichus.
My grandma was worried that something would happen to Margharita, but Vilma just went off to bed. The next morning, someone arrived at my great Grandma's house with a message a young don't wait for Margharita, they said. She said, the morgue, We'll be right back after the break. Mitia man, that's my grandma. She remembers thinking it was strange that my Tia Margharita didn't come home that night, because Margharita
was such a hard worker. It was a Sunday morning, and Sundays were always good selling days in the market.
Domingo.
A man came by and knocked on the big wooden gate at the front of the house. She thought they were just coming to get mimbroso umbros. Mimbros are a fruit, kind of like a star fruit. There's a big mimbre tree in the yard of my grandma's house, and the local drunks would come by sometimes and ask my grandma for some free fruit. But that's not what they wanted. Helioka Well, they told her that the National Guard had rounded up some people last night and that Margherita was
one of them. My grandma didn't believe it. She was sure that Margherita would turn up later. God willing, she said, she had no reason to think that Margherita would be taken. To understand why Mithia Margherita was killed. We have to talk about the death squads and why they existed in the first place. Earlier, we talked about how Roberto Lauson was central to the creation of Loses Squadron the death squads in El Salvador. These death squads were paramilitary groups
that were not officially part of the government. They were usually comprised of soldiers, police officers, and National guardsmen who were paid on the side to carry out operations at night. The alleged goal of these groups was to gather information to find out who was part of the leftist Geria group that had declared war on the government, the FMLN.
These were the same squads who were targeting priests, nuns, and religious workers all over the country, but their directives kept escalating and their targets became more and more broad. First it was the leftists, then it was anyone who was helping the leftists, then it was anyone sympathetic to the leftists. To gather the information they needed, the death
squads would torture their victims. Once the information was extracted, they would kill the person with a mercy bullet through the temple and dump the body in a rural area. It's estimated that of the seventy five thousand people killed during the Civil War, forty thousand of them were killed by death squads, not in combat, but in secret, taken from their homes in the dead of the night. This
is what happened to Matia Margharita. The next morning, she was found on the side of the road, along with the bodies of Walter Baho, her boyfriend Schara, and two other.
Men Fuelen Blumen Quatro Ayena more yea Jenna Plante.
Matia Vilma went with my grandmother to identify Margharita's body at the.
Morgue Mirma and subra is La Choki Comando.
Margharita had cigarette burns on her arms and belt marks on her neck and wrists. Matia Vilma instantly understood where they came from. She had seen the chair where they tortured people. As part of her route selling chilate. She would stop by the local police precinct and sell to the cops. She'd been inside, She said. Chair looked like a dentist chair, but with leather straps hanging off the sides. But why would they have taken Margharita. She wasn't a
political activist she wasn't a union organizer. She was just a teenage girl. I'd always assumed that maybe she was secretly a part of the f MLN, or maybe her boyfriend Chara was, But the answer came to my Tia Vilma there at the morgue, while she was identifying her sister's body, an what Charra's mother was there to identify her son. Crying over her son's body, she cursed Gita, saying it was her fault that her son was killed. It wasn't until much later that Vilma understood what she meant.
Chara's mother didn't approve of his relationship with Margharita. To this day, no one's really sure why, but the story goes it was Charra's mother who sent a tip to the National Guard.
The Benganza.
She told them that Margharita was hiding f m l N soldiers no name, la senor this thing. Chara's mother didn't realize that if they came to take Margharita, they would take everyone who was there, including her son. That night, the death squad killed Margharita, Charao, and two witnesses that saw them taking the group. A man who was across the street cleaning a school yard, and his son. All of them received the same fate Fromitia Vilma. It was a bitter irony. Vilma was the tough one. Vilma was
the fighter. I always carried a knife in my bra she tells me, just in case. My sister didn't even carry a needle. My Grandma, Madia Vilma, and the rest of my family buried Margarita in a simple wood box. They borrowed money from the other vendors and at mercado to put the funeral together. The lady who owned the flower shop that my mom worked at, she gave my grandma the rest of the money she needed. My grandma went back to work the very next day, selling chiletta
in the market. She says she didn't shed a single tear.
Yo Mima mahino hokomo Perqueylarima parati particular in particular, in particular, Riora peramino meslarima.
Amdia Vilma says, my grandmother does cry for Margarita now in her sleep.
Jora madre antesui.
My ta. Margarita was in a saint far from it. By the teachings of the Catholic Church. She was a sinner, but she was one of Oscar Romero's people. When he preached about nuestros or suffering people, he meant her not a saint, but a martyr all the same. On the next episode, we'll talk about one of the most controversial moments from the war, one that people are still debating today.
That's next time on Nation of Saints Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints is the production of a HA podcasts in partnership with Iheart's Michaultura podcast network, and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero, produced by Jazmine Romero with help from Alvaro Sespeles. Research and reporting by Jasmine Romero, edited by sare Kevelo. Nation of Saints was recorded in New York City at the Relic Room, with engineering by
Sam Bear, mixing and sound designed by Paciquinones. Original music by Golden Mines, Darko and Ieme based on Patrick Hart's original composition. Fact checking by Erendidra Aquino Ayala. Executive producers are Gorman gerterol Isaac Lee Rose Reed, and Nando Villa. Our executive producers at iHeart are Giselle Bansis and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Lenie Bartley and Baula Badros.
Special thanks to Alice Wilder. For more podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.