Scholar's ordeal in El Salvador recounted in video
When anthropologist Philippe Bourgois began the research for his Ph.D. in 1981, he never imagined that the scenes he witnessed in El Salvador would haunt him decades later.
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When anthropologist Philippe Bourgois began the research for his Ph.D. in 1981, he never imagined that the scenes he witnessed in El Salvador would haunt him decades later.
"I thought I'd be staying relatively safely in refugee camps," he said. "The invasion that I got trapped in took everybody by surprise."
Thirty-four years later, the experience of running for his life amid El Salvador's civil war, and hiding in caves for 10 days before escaping across the Lempa River into Honduras, is never far from his mind.
Now, those images may resonate for others, too. In a documentary on the war released last month, Bourgois, now a University of Pennsylvania professor, plays a key role. The short film opens with him retracing his steps on the run.
Pursued by Salvadoran soldiers, he and the unarmed villagers he fled with spent days eating roots and plants, afraid even to make a fire for fear the smoke would attract a military strike.
Doing fieldwork for his dissertation on the root causes of revolution among Central America's peasants, Bourgois found himself caught in what came to be known as the Massacre of Santa Cruz, a scorched-earth operation in which the army slaughtered hundreds of villagers suspected of aiding guerrilla groups.
In the army's zeal to "cleanse" the area, it asserted that all of the villagers fled, and anyone left in the small town of Santa Marta, where Bourgois holed up, and the nearby hamlets, including Santa Cruz, was a legitimate rebel target.
The villagers, including women and children, sought refuge in the hills, Bourgois said; the soldiers were indiscriminate and relentless.
"Soldiers were shooting [in the dark] into the sound of screaming babies in the night," he said. "They'd pour grenades and machine gun [fire] into the noise.
"You can read about it, you can hear about it, but you can't believe it happens in real life until you see it."
He found himself wanting to call out: "Hey, guys, can't you see that it's a crying baby?"
Born and raised in Manhattan, Bourgois (pronounced "bore-gwah") received a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University in 1985. He joined Penn in 2007.
Now 58 and a professor of anthropology, family medicine, and community health, he is featured in "God Alone Was With Us," the 18-minute video, which documents the deaths in Santa Marta, Santa Cruz, and neighboring hamlets.
The documentary takes aim at Sigifredo Ochoa Pérez, a retired army colonel currently serving in El Salvador's Legislative Assembly. He commanded the troops.
Activists are seeking to have El Salvador's national prosecutor charge Pérez with war crimes.
In a recent interview with the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro, Peréz denied culpability.
"I don't remember a single massacre," he said. "I don't remember because it never happened. ... There wasn't a single violation of human rights. ... We attacked the guerrillas of Santa Marta according to the rules of war."
Produced by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington in Seattle, the documentary is part of its "Unfinished Sentences" project, which "encourages public participation in support of human rights."
Almost two years ago, said Bourgois, the filmmakers asked him to return to El Salvador to tell the story.
The film shows him rolling up his pants legs to wade into the river, and bushwhacking in rugged hills.
It also follows Bourgois' March 27, 2014, testimony before the sixth annual International Tribunal for Restorative Justice in El Salvador, a panel of citizens and volunteer jurists independent of the prosecutor's office.
Babies died of hunger, and other people perished as a result of injuries, Bourgois testified. Survivors did not dare bury them for fear that any signs of disturbed earth would be visible from the planes and helicopters that circled overhead.
Reflecting on his time dodging fire three decades ago, Bourgois said this week: "It feels like the most important thing I ever did. It made me understand something about the bizarre combination of heroism, evil, and brutality that humans are capable of, sometimes within the same person or the same community."
And he recalled telling himself, "If I survive this, everything is a gift. I am never going to be worrying about anything petty for the rest of my life."
He paused and then added, "I wish I had been able to hold on to that."
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