The painful memory

Abstract

In April 2003, twenty-two of the sixty-one FMLN ex-combatants who participated in the Master’s Thesis in Community Psychology carried out by Patricia Silva met in Suchitoto (El Salvador) aiming to remember their experiences during the war and how they feel and what they are doing at the present time. The meeting was recorded, and in the meantime for the transcription a theoretical paper was written on the memory of trauma of the civil war victims. This paper, that is now being published, showed that the FMLN ex-combatants had been exposed to events that, according to the DSM-IV, could open the way to a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, and according to the data coming from the semi-structured interview with six of the participants, they witnessed the destruction of their homes, the disintegration of their family network, and the damage of their community. Therefore, their exposition to such stressful events lead to a psychosocial trauma in their autobiographical memory ten years after the end of the war. This is also the emotional experience of many other people in El Salvador giving rise to a collective memory worth to recover against the ones who try to hide the truth. And the memory of Mauricio Gaborit, a deep friend, is also present and will always be present because friendship has no expiration date.