Roadside

Between Saturday and Sunday, there were 45 homicides in El Salvador, a very small country. And every action brings an exaggerated and inhumane reaction.

Shortly after crossing the border by bus from Guatemala this afternoon, the big vehicle was waved to a stop by soldiers standing on a highway flanked by cornfields. A man who appeared to be the commander stepped up onto the bus and asked all adult males to come outside for a "revision."

There were eight of us and they put us in a line, looking out at those rows of corn and the mountains beyond.  They waved their machine guns around. They ordered us to spread our feet and out our hands on our heads. I ignored them and stared off into the distance, numbly contemplating the possibilities.

There were at least five soldiers, all heavily armed. There would be neither resistance nor reasoning. There was only the high noon sun, and eight of us trying to figure out what the hell was going to happen to us.

The soldiers moved from right to left, which meant I was the second to be inspected. I turned my head to watch as they emptied the pockets of the first man, who I later learned was a Salvadoran-born US citizen.

"Don't turn your head!" a soldier barked. "Put your hands on your head. And spread your feet."

To remind me of the law of force, he nudged the barrel of his rifle into my back.

They were asking the man on my right about his tattoos, which were innocent enough. A scorpion, put on his forearm perhaps 20 years earlier. In El Salvador, tattoos are associated with gang activity, and all I could think was, "Please, please, please don't let them see the skull on my forearm."

And then they got to me. When someone puts his hands in your back pockets, your natural reaction is to turn around, which is what I did. That earned me an even sharper poke in the back with a gun barrel. So I tried to concentrate on the crows, diving into and flying out of the corn field.

One of the soldiers looked at my passport and said, "Everything's in order here. Please get back on the bus."

We kept on toward San Salvador. But the men on the bus rode all the way to the capital in silence.