Gualsinga Massacre Memorial
The Gualsinga Massacre was perpetrated by the Salvadoran Army Battalion Atlacatl and the Air Force on August 28, 1984. Approximately 78 civilians were killed in the forest and the river during this scorched-earth operation in the canton of Jaguatay (Nueva Trinidad municipality), near the border with Honduras. The victims were hiding from the military, but they were located due to the screaming and crying of children. The river was very full due to heavy rainfall which led to many people drowning whilst fleeing the attack.
Resonating with the way the massacre happened at the time, the commemoration happens in movement: from the big circular space next to a plot where a church used to stand, people march along the way up and down the hill towards the river. The concept of the commemoration is a kind of “shared table” where everybody brings something to eat and drink alongside the riverbank, which resonates with the Eucharistic rite of the body of Christ. An idea could be to design some kind of mobile furniture for the Stations of the Cross (see below) and the shared food and drinks.
After the Surviving Memory team and Asociación Sumpul [Sumpul Association] worked with survivors to develop an initial design concept for a permanent memorial, the private land initially earmarked for the installation was sold and the project was temporarily put on hold.
