Unforgetting by Roberto Lovato

Author:Roberto Lovato
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

16

San Salvador

1939

Marcos Elizondo, Ramón’s boss at Muebles Alonso, one of the best furniture makers in the country, told him to prepare the big order he’d been working on. It was going to a special address: Casa Presidencial, also known as La Casona, the Big House of the nation.

Seventeen-year-old Ramón was now living and working as a furniture maker and delivery person in San Salvador. A few years earlier, Mamá Tey had packed their things and moved Ramóncito and her mother, Mamá Fina, from Ahuachapán to live full-time with her boyfriend Chico in Mesón San Luís. Mesón San Luís was situated on land that had once been part of the stately homes of Salvadoran elites. These abandoned elite mansions began as temporary homes for squatters and eventually the land was parceled into housing for the poor. This need for housing had come about due to the industrialization of the country, one of the reasons for a mass migration from rural to urban areas. La Matanza had also played a role, as families fled to the city to escape the mass killings of indigenous people in western El Salvador.

Mamá Tey knew that moving away from Barrio Santa Cruz in Ahuachapán would come at a high price for Ramón—being uprooted and cut off from a slower, more rural life. He also left behind many friends, though so many boys and young men, Alfonso Luna included, had been killed by the Guardia Cívica and the soldiers, themselves boys barely big enough to carry the Mauser metralletas they used to commit adult atrocities. Tey wanted to cast all this violence and tragedy into el olvido, and keep her children far away from that deep hole. But Ramón made friends throughout the mesón and used his wits to secure himself and several of his friends jobs at Muebles Alonso.

However, leaving Ahuachapán for good didn’t solve all of Mamá Tey’s worries for her eldest son. Ramóncito had started drinking at only twelve years old. By the time he was seventeen, Ramón was constantly drowning himself in guaro, El Salvador’s cane moonshine, its cheapest alcoholic drink. Seeing Ramón come home borracho from a night of drinking, dancing, and puteando didn’t fit the life Tey had imagined for her eldest.

To deliver the big order for the Casa Presidencial, scrawny Ramón brought Chacaz, the most muscular—and meanest—of his friends, and another young man from the mesón. Under Ramón’s supervision, the two men carried the bulky load of furniture through the doors of the immaculate white building. Inside the house were sparkling clean brown floors, big French chandeliers, and cascading curtains, like nothing the three teens had ever seen before. Straining under the weight of the heavy oak, the young men were directed by a military officer up a winding marble staircase and into a large, stately bedroom.

As soon as they entered the elegant room, the three young men received a massive shock. There, next to a canopied mahogany bed, stood a commanding presence, El General.

“Welcome, jóvenes,” El General said. This

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