ECOS DE LA MEMORIA: ÓSCAR TORRES Y EL ENCUENTRO CON VOCES INOCENTES

Description

Conflict and art tend to go together. The projection of conflict through provocative forms of artistic expression such as literature, painting, music, and filmmaking, often emerge from a personal experiential space. The film is based on the real life story of Salvadoran screenwriter Oscar Torres, and it specifically focuses on his early life as an 11 year old child trapped in the civil war (1980-1992) in El Salvador, a war that claimed approximately 75,000 lives, and displaced more than one million people. The film presents the impact on children of the war between government military forces, supported by the U.S. government, and guerrilla forces known as the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional).

Topics explored in this book include El Salvador’s socio-economic and political institutions from a historical perspective which immersed the country in a civil war, the author’s role and relationship to the events in the film (fiction vs. reality), the development of the characters in the film, changes suffered from childhood to adult life as a result of war trauma, the significance of the film’s title, women’s roles in Latin American struggles for liberation, social changes in El Salvador and other countries in the region, American military presence in Latin America in general and in El Salvador and Central America specifically, the use of metaphorical images which provide a more artistic perspective of the civil war, the screenplay and meta-fiction, state or self imposed censorship, the role of the church in Latin America specifically as it relates to socio-economic and political struggles, morality, ethics and national reconciliation, and Salvadoran national identity in El Salvador and as it continues to develop in the United States among the political and economic refugee community that comprises more than one million inhabitants in Los Angeles.

This scholarly research represents the foundation of an in depth analysis of the simultaneous connection and disconnection between the immediate reality of a child and the larger forces that shape his/her destiny. The contrast, as well as similarities, between a microcosm inserted in a complex macrocosm reveal universal themes on the human condition. At the same time, these universal and human experiences emerge within a context informed by economic and political realities that shape transnational identity within a postcolonial condition.

Volver a ver nuestro pasado no es algo fácil, especialmente cuando el pasado te ha dejado con tanto que tienes que perdonar y con tan poco para olvidar. La vida es difícil para todos pero especialmente para los niños, que a una temprana edad están tratando de encontrar su voz y su lugar en el mundo. Yo crecí en medio de una guerra, pero la guerra no necesariamente significa balas volando por el aire y penetrando en las paredes, la guerra también existe en nuestro interior. Ahí es donde debemos comenzar si en algún momento deseamos encontrar la paz que buscamos.