The Third Interrogation

Jennifer Jean Casolo, who worked in El Salvador for Texas-based Christian Education Seminars, was arrested on November 26, 1989, and falsely accused of harboring weapons for leftist rebels. She was kept in Salvadoran police custody for 17 days before being released. Below are her reflections on a part of that experience, given at a service in New York City's Riverside Church on January 7, 1990. -- The Editors

I WAS INTERROGATED A VARIETY OF times, but I want to share with you my third interrogation. This is a faith journey. It may not teach you a lot more about El Salvador, but it will teach you why the people there are able to hope against hope in the face of death.

I ask you to remember that, unlike the Salvadorans who are in the barracks of the National Police, I had all of your prayers behind me. I had the blue passport behind me. I had the pressure laid upon the government of the United States and then relied upon the National Police to ensure that my life be protected. So I wasn't beaten. And I was rarely blindfolded.

Imagine being blindfolded like a Salvadoran; the only thing you know about the interrogation booth is that the walls are fuzzy. They call them the "hairy rooms. " Each is 6 feet by 6 feet, and there are about eight in a row. They're carpeted with shag carpeting for soundproofing.

For four days and four nights I had heard the sounds on one side and the other in the adjacent booths. I heard moans and cries. I heard flesh hitting furniture. I heard flesh hitting flesh. I heard screams, muffled of course. I heard choking. I heard vomiting.

It was about eight o'clock on a Thursday night. The lieutenant, a handsome guy, younger than me, had on a T-shirt with the Tasmanian Devil, that awful-looking beast from Bugs Bunny cartoons, wearing black Ray-Bans and beach shorts. The T-shirt said "Sun Devil." The lieutenant's first question to me was, "What does 'Sun Devil' mean?" I told him it was "diablo del sol."

The lieutenant brought in two other interrogators. They fired questions and accusations at me, always the same, accusing me of hiding the weapons, trying to get names. I was frightened; they were being rough in the interrogation. But I felt strong in what I knew was the truth, and I just had to communicate that to them.

Maybe an hour into the interrogation, the screams and cries from the booth next door became unbearable for me. I crossed my legs and closed my eyes, and I said what I say every time I need strength. The words are part of the vows of a Salvadoran religious woman who was killed in a massacre in 1981. She left her religious congregation and took vows to the poor. And in those vows she said, "Before a society that lives the ideals of power, pleasure, and possession, I want to be a sign of what it truly means to love." I let the tears flow, and I said that over and over to give me strength, and to give strength to whoever was crying, moaning, screaming, being hit.

Then I looked up at my interrogators and said, "I thought you didn't do this to people." Because, you see, every time I had questioned the cries and the moans, they had told me that they didn't mistreat people.

And I looked the lieutenant straight in the face, and I repeated those vows. I said, "I want you to know what I am saying," and I let the tears fall again.

The lieutenant motioned to the others to go and tell whoever was beating up the man next door to stop. You see, they know how to stop the evil when they have the will to do it.

The two tough guys came back and started mocking me. "Oh, so you're crying for your terrorist friends," they said. And I looked at them, and with all sincerity I said, "I would shed the same tears for you and you and you."

Soon after that, the lieutenant said to the other two, "You guys go, and I'm going to keep her up until at least 6 in the morning, even if she's not going to say anything." And so I was left. Just me and the Tasmanian Devil.

We began to talk about who we are. I asked him about himself. You see, our paths were somewhat similar. We'd both grown up in poor families where our parents had struggled to put food on the table. And we both had been youth who had dreams.

My dream had been to go to some elite university, then go on to graduate school and work for change, because I thought things were a little bit unfair in the world. Work for change from the top down, that had been my dream.

His dream -- well, he had always wanted to join the military academy. He had seen it as the best way to improve oneself in his country if you came from a poor family. When he turned 18, he joined.

He had heard my story of coming to El Salvador and giving up the opportunities of that elite education, and he asked me, "Why? Why are you going to go to prison? Why won't you help yourself?" You see, it was the devil offering me that temptation.

"Look, just name a name," he said. "Just say you're guilty, and you can be free. You can have what was once yours. Why won't you help yourself?"

And I said, "All I can say is that you have stripped me of everything." You see, I had no idea how many people outside cared. And I was there in prison without anything from my past and without any idea of the future. I said, "You can't take the last thing that I have -- the truth inside."

"But why?" he said. "Why do you want to suffer?"

To tell you the truth, knowing what the Salvadorans were going through in those interrogation booths, seeing them crouched on the floor, day and night, waiting to be interrogated, barefoot and in ragged clothes, I hadn't really thought of myself as suffering. When he said that, I saw over his shoulder Christ on the cross. For one moment I understood the hope of the Salvadorans.

You see, at that moment I understood that my life wasn't mine. I had given it over as all Salvadorans who struggle for a better life for their children choose to do.

You don't just face death. You give your life over to the oneness with God, and to the oneness with your brothers and sisters. That's what comes out of the suffering.

And I said to him, "You know, suffering isn't the worst thing. Being cruel is a lot worse."

It was 3 o'clock in the morning then, and he said, "Why don't you get some sleep? I don't know who is going to be interrogating you in the morning." And we said goodnight.