El Salvador

Morazon Province

January 1990 • After 9 years in the Colomoncagua refugee camp on the border with Honduras, 2,000 Salvadorans decided to go home. I volunteered with one of the nonprofit faith-based organizations that was accompanying them to a remote and isolated province in northern El Salvador—scene of heavy fighting and a major atrocity during the worst years of the Salvadoran civil war, which was chronicled by Mark Danner in his haunting book The Massacre at El Mozote. The war flared again shortly before the refugees vacated their camp (seven Jesuit priests in the capital were slaughtered by a right-wing death squad); nevertheless the repatriation took place over several weeks without a hitch. The returnees immediately began rebuilding the homes and workshops they'd created while living in the camp, and two years later the war was finally and officially ended. Met a lot of good people with good intentions, from all walks of life and many corners of the world, but ultimately learned a lot about shades of gray.

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