The mayor of Santa Maria, a member of the right-wing ARENA party, offered his childhood friend Miguel Montero a job. But Miguel believed ARENA worked closely with the death squads. He called ARENA “assassins and robbers” – to the mayor’s face, in front of others.
When some men shot Miguel, his wife, Laura, saw their faces clearly. She identified one killer in a photograph at the police station. The police told her to keep quiet.
Miguel’s killers came to his wake. When their eyes met Laura’s she turned her face down and cried. “They knew I could identify them,” she says.
To men began to watch Laura’s house night and day. She moved to another town. Then, on the bus one day, she saw them and grabbed her two children and ran. One man followed, but she lost him in the crowd. Her choice was clear. Laura brought her children to their aunt, then left El Salvador.

Laura’s Dream
I am so afraid of these dreams I try not to sleep. People are chasing me. They think I know why my husband was killed. They are yelling at me, “Tell the truth!” I cry, “I don’t know anything.” A good friend of my husband’s, who was killed by the National Guard, is very angry. He swears at me. I don’t know if he is alive or dead. I cry and scream, “Leave me in peace!”
I travel each night in my dreams to see my children; I am afraid they are suffering, that they are ill. I tell them we will soon be together. The older is very happy to hear this, but the little one cries. And the older says, “Mama, take me with you.” And sometimes I wake from this dream reach him by phone, and I hear these same words, “Mama, take me with you.”
I dream we are all together in our home, as we were before. Then they arrive, and the children’s screams begin. My husband falls on top of me and I fall to the floor with him in my arms. I look at my hand and I see blood on it. And I wake up in horror.  Because this dream is exactly what happened.