Deaf, Mute, and Imprisoned in El Salvador

Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Efren Lemus

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The protagonist of this story stared at the floor of the police station without showing the slightest reaction. He barely raised his head to ask his mother, in signs, something that she interpreted as: “Why can’t I go home?” The protagonist of this story experienced something terrifying on June 22, 2023, when at the beginning of his workday he was arrested by the state of emergency and accused of being a gang member. He would be imprisoned for nine months in the Izalco prison, a place where men are known to enter and emerge as skeletons, only to die days later. We will call the protagonist of this story David; his family fears reprisals if he truly identifies himself. Though it was David who saw emaciated men collapse behind prison bars, this story will be told by his parents, because he was born 34 years ago with several disabilities: he is deaf, he is mute. And, due to those circumstances and his impoverished upbringing, he cannot read or write.

“He doesn’t understand anything said to him. He says yes to everything, even if he doesn’t know what it is. When they tell him something, he wonders what it actually is,” says his father, a man with wrinkled skin and white hair who, up until a few years ago, worked as a bricklayer. He gave up the job since losing mobility from the waist down. Now, he needs a cane to stand and walks slowly. “We understand him because when he is hungry he does this,” he explains, drawing with his wrinkled hands a circle to indicate a tortilla. Then, he crosses his index fingers and explains that this means his son wants to eat fish. “It is very hard to understand him,” he confesses.

On June 22, 2023, David left his house at 6:30 in the morning. Half an hour later he began his shift as a garbage collector for a town in the northern part of La Libertad. Then, without further explanation, the police arrested him for illegal association. His mother agreed to tell the story on the condition that her son would not be photographed or his identity revealed. She does not want to experience the bullying and merciless mockery that her family has received since the news about David, the father of a five-year-old girl, was spread on social media.

In addition to the bullying from anonymous accounts, his mother fears that the police will arrest another member of her family under the state of emergency. This fear is based on the arrest of David, a man who had a formal job, a work card that identified him as a person with a disability, and no criminal record or ties to any gang, according to police records and those of the Bureau of Prisons.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202412/el_salvador/27665/deaf-mute-and-imprisoned-in-el-salvador