November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

For Two Remote Salvadorian Villages, the Iraq War Hits Close to Home

(Page 10 of 10)

July 2005
By Jacob Wheeler 
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Overcome by guilt, I pull out a $20 bill and subtly hands it to the grieving mother. I am violating a cardinal rule of journalism, but the pain erupting inside of me at this moment overshadows my professional obligation. Guilt for reopening these wounds with his prying curiosity, guilt for the poverty to which she awakes every day, and guilt for the blue passport with the bold white eagle on the front stuffed in my back pocket. I want to tell her that this war is wrong, that she has every right to blame the United States for her son's death, and that someone, perhaps Donald Rumsfeld himself, should have visited her home the day Tivito was buried in Guaymango.

But I don't. I just hand over the $20 bill and apologize.

She thanks me and asks her two young boys to fetch a bag of sweet "hocotes" for us visitors before we drive off into the sunset.

A shorter version of this story appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 07/24/05.

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