(Picture is a view of the mountains surrounding La Palma, Chalatenango) Today I finally sat down with Deisy and Walberto to put together a workplan for my time here. All of a sudden, I'm inundated with projects! Hopefully I'll be able to complete them all in the 2 months that I have left to work here.
One of the projects I'm going to be working on is the Mental Health and Living Memory program in the town of Arcatao, Chatatenango, right near the Honduran border. For a few years, Deisy has been working with a committee of community members in a process of community-based healing from the many massacres, disappearances and other acts of violence committed in Arcatao before, during and after the war. The idea behind this is that the community experienced collectively this violence, so the healing process should also be experienced collectively. In cooperation with a woman from Holland, community members engaged in many kinds of natural healing such as massage, breathing, visualizations, art therapy, dance therapy and exercizes focusing on energy centers in the body in order to learn strategies for self care and self healing.
After this experience, the committee wanted to do something more to seek justice for what had happened and to give a proper burial to their loved ones. They decided to work on three projects: a book of testimonios (personal stories of violence), a Museum of Memory and a process of exhumation of massacre sites. Deisy is also involved in a participatory research project with another woman from Holland related to the themes of Memory, Gender and Religion. I'm going to be helping her put together workshops for this research project and collect interviews with a few key community members. I'm so excited to be able to go back to oral history work, especially in a situation where it's actually useful for a community's process of healing!
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