Page 60 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread

We talk a lot with the people and we have an idea about living collectively. Vladimir Centeno was 22 years old

The only way to survive in jail under the repression is to be together. This is at the time of this interview (given
the only way we can survive. So we teach the people how to cook because here in translation) in Mariona
in each cell everybody has to cook for the others. We are learning how we political prison, near San Salvador,
can all live cooperatively together-workers, farmers, students, professional El Salvador. He was the son of
Humberto Centano, who, at the
people. I can say that this really works because we have learned how to
time was President of the Telephone
really love each other. We are strong because we are together.
Worker’s Union ASTEL and an
Executive Member of the UNTS,
We need your solidarity. There is a war in this country and we are victims
the National Union of Salvadoran
of this as political prisoners. We understand that the people of the Untied
Workers. The UNTS was the most
States are not the U.S. government [directed to the U.S. members of our representative and broadest array
delegation]. We should feel that we are all brothers and sisters in this world. of labour and peasant groups in

You are going to see [in time] how beautiful our country can be, and how Salvadoran history, representing
beautiful the people are. many thousands of people and
central to El Salvador’s growing

I was captured in the early morning of November 8th, 1985. Army movement for peace in the 1980s.
members without uniforms came into my house, looking for my father, At the time of his capture Vladimir
who belonged to a union. They made a lot of noise. They threw open the was a third-year medical student at
the University of El Salvador. While
door and put all my family on the floor at gunpoint. Another man said that
in Mariona he worked with COPPES,
my brother had to be captured too. They put us in a truck and took us to
the Organization of Political
San Salvador. They were saying we were Communists - subversives. They
Prisoners, and he was a key figure in
put us in separate cells so we couldn’t see each other and they took off all
making medical attention available
our clothes. They started torturing us - every kind of torture. First, they
to the political prisoners. It was an
start to break your mind, to make you tired, hungry, thirsty. They hit you open prison and two cells had been
for nothing. They don’t ask you anything. Hit, hit, hit. They torture you converted into an infirmary where
until you get tired so you will accept anything they want. You could be Vladimir, under the most austere

standing up for 24 hours and they want to know your name. You tell them conditions, treated more than 1000
your name - maybe 10,000 times. Then they say you are a guerilla and people on an on-going basis: the
you have to sign a confession. You never get to read what you are signing. political prisoners, the common

When they were torturing my brother, they took me to see it. They also prisoners, and the guards. As
played tapes with a woman and child crying and told me it was my family members of a fact-finding delegation,
we went into Mariona prison and
crying. They also gave me drugs. Our case is the case of a lot of political
met with him, July 26th, 1987. A few
prisoners. Everybody here has been tortured a lot. One of our objectives
months later a military grenade was
here is to help people who have been tortured. The Salvadoran people have
thrown into his infirmary, seriously
been suffering and tortured for a long time. Now we are fighting to stop
wounding him. He was later released
that. I can say from my experience that physical torture you can endure, but
from prison. But in the early 1990s
not the psychological torture. Now they have really good methods. I think he was assassinated while returning
the CIA taught them. This is hard - because now I have problems. I was to El Salvador by car on the highway
tortured two years ago but still at night it is hard. We are together now in the that runs from Guatemala City to San
prison so it helps. We talk about it in groups…” Salvador. He was killed just north of

the Salvadoran border.

56 MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE LANDSCAPE & BREAD