Accessibility statement

Carlos Santos

El Salvador, CAHR, Autumn 2013

My name is Carlos Santos, I was born the 15 September 1966 in El Salvador, the same day we celebrate the independence from Spanish rule in almost all Latin American countries. I do not believe in predestination, but most people who knew me said I was going to be a patriot. When I was 3 years old we had war with neighbouring Honduras, images of planes circling the sky have stuck in my head as blurry ad yellow prints. There was a collective horror; people walking in the dark at night, no lights lit in houses for fear of being targeted by an enemy plane.

Since elementary school I've written short stories and poems, I found a passion for literature at an early age. When I was 11 I won the first contest in literature, then.

In 1978, social movements began to protest against the military dictatorship that had ruled El Salvador since the beginning of the century. The streets were flooded with protesters, the government responded with shrapnel, and every day the same scene: hundreds of people dying in the street. In 1980, the armed opposition had called for an armed rebellion, the war began with the shadow of death, every day hundreds of mutilated bodies appeared in the streets, covering every corner of the country. The guerrilla with few weapons and few men faced a powerful enemy supported by the power of the U.S.

Images of planes circling the sky have stuck in my head as blurry ad yellow prints.

When I turned 16, I started to study theatre at the National Centre of Arts, a place where liberal thought was the norm. Studying theatre I understood what was happening around me; I learned to identify those responsible for these painful deaths that had brought shame to our country. Although radio and television called the rebels traitors and bad children of our country, I was no longer a patriot.

So I started writing plays for a student theatre group, we presented the plays in schools, parks and squares. Until one day we were captured by police, who identified themselves as members of the death squad. We spent a month in a cell underground, they tortured us every day and accused us of belonging to the rebels, they sent us to a prison in which there were a lot of political prisoners, and for one year we remained locked inside the jail. We suffered daily harassment by the police who threatened us with their weapons, or hit us when they came to our cells.

When I left prison, I went to live in Mexico due to the threat of the death squads that murdered any political prisoner released from jail. In Mexico I studied at the university, and continued writing fiction, short stories and plays. I won several literary prizes and contests. After four years of living in Mexico I moved to Canada and lived there for 20 years.

I returned to El Salvador 8 years ago and started working as a journalist. I founded the association for survivors of torture (Asociación Salvadoreña de Sobrevivientes de Tortura) and I have been working as a human rights defender since then.