Interview with a Centenarian?

I'm coming up on the half-way point of this trip, and I've still got so much to write about.

I was in Cahaboncito this afternoon for a sit-down with some community elders. This was a big deal for me because for some of these communities, the only claims they have to their lands is through oral history and the memory of those that came before them. When I heard that the meeting was a go-ahead, I was excited to hear what they had to say.

Don Pedro looked incredibly old, but acted like a man 3/4 of his age. When I asked him how old he was, he couldn't remember...so he pulled out his papers.

Puchica Vos! It says 18 calculado 1920! A debate ensued: I though this meant he was born in 1920, and he was 18 when then back calculated his age. Although no one was certain, many thought this meant that he was 18 years old IN 1920, which would then make him born in 1902. The third perspective was that it wasn't exact either way, so we shouldn't spend to much time talking about it. I found it hard to explain my reasoning in spanish, so we decided to move on. Regardless of who was right or wrong, the man was somewhere in between 90 and 108 years old. I can only guess as to what some of the things those eyes have seen.

Among his stories included his survival of the Panzos massacre of 1978. Community leaders and citizens of Panzos were called to meet in the town square to hear a decree by the mayor and the regional head of the military. When the mayor gave a signal, the military surrounded the square and opened fire. The exact number of dead is still unknown, some reports place it at 58, although Don Pedro swears it was in the hundreds. Neither the intellectual or the material authors of this crime have ever been brought to justice. So it goes.

Their stories will hopefully be going into a feature article about the history of Lote 8, and the claims that they are making of the land from which they were driven.

More to come...