Enrique's Writings

 The barn stood empty and unmoving, its silence weighed down by the gravity of past events. The atmosphere was thick and quiet, infused with the musty scent of dust and old hay. Beneath these familiar barn odors, a sharper, metallic undertone lingered, subtle yet unmistakable. This lingering note, perhaps a memory of blood, claimed the air long after the evidence had faded from sight. Sunlight slipped through the gaps in the barn’s wooden slats, forming thin, uneven lines that illuminated drifting motes of dust. These tiny particles floated aimlessly, seemingly unaware of the violence that had disturbed them only hours before. The floor, uneven and comprised of packed earth and splintered boards, was strewn with stray pieces of straw. Here and there, the muted shine of something metallic caught the light, perhaps a dropped tool or a fragment of something, whose significance had already faded with the moment. At the center of the barn, something small lay almost insignificant agains...

 Meeting the First Saint In 1978, as a new law student, I began volunteering in the legal department of the Archdiocese’s Human Rights Office, then known as Socorro Jurídico (Legal Relief). For many of us, volunteering there was a way to gain practical experience in legal procedures, investigations, and case documentation. The Faculty of Law encouraged students to seek such placements to build professional skills. As new volunteers, we were not directly involved in frontline human rights defense; that responsibility rested with a dedicated team of lawyers and senior students. Our role was mainly investigative and focused on documentation. Many of us worked full-time while studying full-time, which limited the hours we could dedicate to volunteering. In my case, I contributed during the early morning hours from seven to nine. Immediately afterward, I rushed to my job at a hardware store, where I worked until six in the evening. From there, I hurried to the Faculty of Law to attend l...

 The rain came earlier than prior seasons. The rain that year appeared to be harder than before. Calling the storms, rain didn’t describe the storms anymore. The water fell in sheets that pounded the roofs until they buckled and carried off whole neighborhoods into the swollen Otonabee river.  That evening Anna pressed her forehead against the window, watching the streets vanish beneath brown waves. Only the tips of streetlamps marked where roads had once been. She remembered when spring used to mean planting season and flowers. Now it meant alerts and emergencies. All of a sudden, her father said: “Pack what you can,” his voice was calm and yet firm. It was the tone he always used in emergencies, as though his steadiness could hold back the flood. But Anna could see the fear on his face. Her father was aware she knew they were running out of places to go. The family had fled three times in the last few years. Each time they fled they were searching for higher ground, safer gr...

 Since the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in March of 1980, El Salvador had been under a “state of siege.” The military dictatorship, through the Legislative Assembly, declared measures to suspend civil liberties, strip away basic rights, and instill fear among the population. It was enforced by a strict curfew from six in the evening to six in the morning. Anyone caught on the streets during those hours risked being shot on sight. That was the context in which I got married, and the context in which my first son was born, in December of 1981. It was around two in the morning when Ana Maria woke me up and told me the baby was coming. Neither of us had gone through this before. We were still newlyweds, and this was our first child. Her pregnancy had been healthy, but we had been worried early on due to a previous miscarriage. Under normal circumstances, labor pains might have filled us with nervous excitement. But the curfew, the soldiers in the streets, and the constant t...