Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

P

20

After buying the medicines and foodstuffs that the family 
needed in Las Cruces, Ramiro and Salomé Armando had 
bumped into Ramiro Aldana on their way back to Dos Erres. 
Ramiro Aldana frequently bought vegetables and poultry 
from their father and on this occasion he had asked them to 
go to their uncle Félix’s house and ask him for two turkeys. 

The two boys embarked on the ten kilometer walk back to 
Dos Erres without a care on their minds, without suspecting 
that they would find their uncle Félix distraught while the 
soldiers searched his home, smashing his belongings and 
throwing the contents of drawers and wardrobes on the floor. 

The soldiers forced them to dismount and led them to the 
school, where Salomé Armando had sat next to Ramiro on 
one of the logs used as makeshift desks. But a soldier had 
grabbed him, yelling that they didn’t want any kids there, 
and he had been dragged to the church where the women 
had been locked in with their small children.

He found his aunt Evangelina, who sat on one of the benches 
and was crying. Many terrified women had knelt by the altar 
praying to God to spare their lives. Then, a soldier who wore 
a red handkerchief around his neck and had a mole on his 
left cheek burst into the church, climbed onto the altar and 
started to jeer at them. “Come on, sing! Sing!”, he yelled. 

The soldiers beat them, pulled them out of the church in 
small groups and dragged them towards the shrubs. They 
cried and refused to leave the church. “If you’re going to kill 
ust, do it right here because we won’t be killed in a shrub as 
if we were dogs!” they pleaded.

Salomé Armando had been pulled out of the church with 
a group of women and he walked close behind the soldier