El Salvador is a small country in Central America, still recovering from a 12-year civil war that killed at least 75,000 people. This nation’s story is the one director Jamie Moffett depicts in his documentary Return to El Salvador, the product of a two-month stay in the country and the subject of a recent screening in Ottawa.
“El Salvador is a needle point example of how the United States’ policies affect other sovereign nations,” Moffett said.
Moffett referrs not only to the millions of dollars the U.S. sent to the Salvadoran government during the 1980–1992 civil war, but also to the military equipment and training the U.S. government gave to their army.
Furthermore, the officers and death squads of El Salvador’s army had been trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), Moffett said.
Also known as the “School of the Americas,” the WHISC trained the soldiers of Latin-American countries whose governments were aided by the U.S.
Following a brief introduction detailing the history of the country, the documentary presents the stories of two Salvadoran couples: one that fled to the U.S. during the war, and one that stayed to live the horrors of it.
The objective of the documentary, Moffett said, is to inform the North American public about this small country, so affected by foreign states and institutions.
The story of the couple that stayed and fought the government portrays the horrors of war: mutilated corpses in the streets and high school and university students arrested, tortured and executed, their bodies later dumped in public places like animals.
The film shows that this brutality is still present in El Salvador today because the military and guerrilla forces that were trained to kill during the war are still out there after 19 years, struggling to adapt to the new, relatively peaceful society.
The past war-torn generation has made El Salvador one of the most violent countries in the world, averaging 12 violent deaths every day and creating a constant atmosphere of danger and insecurity, Moffett said, noting the constant fear that hung in the air while filming the documentary.
“It feels like you are in constant conflict. There is a security guard with a tactical shotgun in front of every convenience store,” he described. “I spent a couple of weeks in Iraq, which was in a war, and I can tell you that I felt safer in Iraq than I did in El Salvador.”
Despite this discouraging scenario, Moffett said the final message that the documentary brings is hope. In 2009, for the first time a candidate of the popular party won against the military party, and the streets filled with people celebrating. Some citizens walked hundreds of kilometers just to make sure their vote would count.
Moffett said this display of democratic spirit deeply changed him.
“I was separate from politics,” he said, “But [to] go and see how my government has been so involved in so many different really deplorable things, it moved me to take action.”
Moffett said he was so determined to spread this message that when faced with the possibility of having to stop the production of his film for lack of funds, he sold his house without a second thought.
“It was a hard decision, but it was the right one,” he said.
Moffett is now trying to reach those in positions of power by sending free tickets to all members of the Canadian Parliament for next week’s screenings in an attempt to show them the effect of their actions in other countries.