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

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No news is good news

It is a vicious cycle, these soldiers going off to war and then returning six months later, if they are lucky, so others can take their place. Tivito's battalion represented the second Salvadorians to land in the Middle Eastern sands. The third group, which just came home two months ago, is still gallivanting around Tacuba with smiles beaming across their faces and welcoming parades of extended family and friends into their USAid-funded houses to show off their war trophies.

In the corner of Private Wilfred Galese Amagoña's living room is a display reaching clear to the ceiling that could belong to any middle-class Middle Eastern family: stuffed camels and tigers stare down from the upper level of a green and yellow shelf table. Below them is a strategically placed Amstel beer can that was purchased in Kuwait. Behind the table on the white brick wall hangs a flowery curtain from the orient, and above that framed tapestries of the holy mosques at Mecca and Medina, lit up at night. Off to the right are posters of the Real Madrid and Barcelona professional soccer teams, and above that a plastic replica of a Kalashnikov rifle.

Amagoña's wife sits on a couch watching an old re-run on a poor quality, black and white television, and occasionally entertains her impatient young children. The soldier is not home. He went off with buddies to throw back a few beers.

But outside of town at the home of Hilda Dalila, whose sweetheart Juan Antonio Gonzalez shipped out to Iraq in February, and isn't expected back for another four months, the scene resembles that of Herminia Ramos, the mourning mother of Tivito. Worried anticipation and sleepless nights plague Hilda, who lives with her father, Angel Cortes Zacarias, and her and Juan's children, Mario Adilson, 4, and Elvis Aviel, 2. She only hopes she will be able to celebrate like the family of Private Amagoña when her own returns to Tacuba, unscathed.

Like Herminia, Hilda's family lives in a virtual shack under a sheet metal roof far enough outside of the village that one needs a durable jeep, hiking boots and a body slender enough to fit through the narrow opening in the barbed wire fence to access it. They all but live on the soldier's salary, which is deposited monthly into a bank account in Ahuachapan. If something were to happen to Juan, that money would dry up and leave the family in trouble. But right now they aren't thinking about finances, they just miss him.

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