By Gretchen Keiser

Out of the bloody fighting in El Salvador, which has killed 49,000 in the last five years, a shoot of courage and hope has taken root and is growing.

It’s rooted in the terrible suffering of families from El Salvador, whose relatives have vanished at the hands of roving clandestine bands who use violence to terrorize their fellow Salvadorians. Wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, children 12, 13 and 14 years old, have been snatched off street corners and buses, out of homes and factories. Those never seen again are the “disappeared.” Some are found months later in prisons, torture victims, and eventually are released. Others are only found after death, their mutilated bodies thrown in a public place in a different section of the country to terrorize the people who might be able to speak out against the violence. Families are terrified to pick up the bodies because of reprisals.

But despite the terror, a small group of women gathered in 1977 who are mothers of the slain and the “disappeared” of El Salvador. With the support of Archbishop Oscar Romero, of San Salvador, who was assassinated himself in 1980, the women formed a group known informally as the CO-Madres, the Committee of Mothers. Although they themselves have become the targets of the country’s civil violence, the CO-Madres – mothers and relatives of the killed and missing – have grown in number and continue to demonstrate publicly and petition for justice and peace in their country.

Emelina Panameno de Garcia, who is 42 years old, married and the mother of eight children, is a tiny figure standing under five feet tall. She was in the United States, in the last few weeks, accompanied by an Irish missionary priest from Latin America, to stand in the place of the 500 or so who make up the CO-Madres. They had been chosen to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Wards, in Washington, D.C., an international prize to honor those who work against injustice.

Mrs. Garcia was the only one of four women invited who was given a visa from the U.S. State Department to come and receive the award. With her on the stage were empty chairs during the ceremony.

Last week she came to Atlanta to be part of a public hearing on Central American policy. Through a translator, she explained the simple outfit which the CO-Madres have chosen to identify themselves and express their beliefs.

Her white mantilla symbolizes peace: a white flower pinned to her dress represents the 6,000 “disappeared” of El Salvador: a red flower stands for the blood of the people of El Salvador. The green leaves represent hope. The black dress of the CO-Madres is their sign of mourning for the 49,000 who have been assassinated.

Mrs. Garcia became involved with the CO-Madres in 1978, when her 14-year-old son, who was a catechist in a Christian community, was taken from a bus by members of the National Guard because he was carrying a Bible. “He was ‘disappeared’ for six weeks,” Mrs. Garcia said. Eventually, he was “found” in a prison in another part of the country after he smuggled out a message to Archbishop Romero through a prison visitor. The efforts of the newly formed CO-Madres, who mobilized support for him, won his release. “He was tortured with electrical shock and wires,” while in prison, his mother said.

Both Mrs. Garcia and her husband were actively involved with the Catholic Church and the formation of Christian communities in areas outside of San Salvador. Their older children also worked as catechists and, apparently because of this work, the family was singled out for violence. Three of the children, 13, 14 and 15 years old at the time, were forced to flee El Salvador because of threats against them. Another daughter and her husband, married three months, were taken into custody at the factory where they worked during a work stoppage. The husband was assassinated. Mrs. Garcia’s daughter, who was 17, was released after being beaten and tortured.

Two of Mrs. Garcia’s brothers also vanished. One was found decapitated in another section of the country. The second is among the “disappeared.”

Finally, in October 1981, a group of 20 armed men stormed the Garcia’s home in the daytime, beating her husband in one room and terrorizing Mrs. Garcia and three small children in another room. One of the men began to assault their 12-year-old daughter and threatened to rape her. A gunshot distracted the rapist and the daughter ran out of the house, and escaped. Mrs. Garcia was raped repeatedly and assaulted by the men in front of her two other children. Only because of the pleas and turmoil caused by her neighbors did she escape being taken away in a truck by the band.

The family immediately left their home and stayed in the woods for several days, terrified that if they ever returned they would be murdered. Eventually they were helped out of the country into Guatemala and then Mexico where they now live.

Although Mrs. Garcia told, through a translator, much of the story of the violence done to her family, she stopped at the events of October 1981. Her eyes filled with tears and she asked the priest, Father Patrick Rice, to tell what had happened.

They described a situation in which many groups of men – some officially a part of the military, and others part of paramilitary groups or death squads – murder and kidnap at will.

Those in government in El Salvador deny that the violence occurs with government approval and say that it is the result of illegal death squads and guerrilla groups.

However, in a major study of violence in El Salvador in 1983, Amnesty International, the human rights organization, noted the “blatant failure of the authorities to investigate (the) deaths and bring their perpetrators to justice.” Although the government denies involvement, this failure to prosecute people is a “major circumstantial factor” suggesting that “it is the authorities themselves who lie behind the wholesale extrajudicial execution of people from all sectors of Salvadorian society,” the report said.

Mrs. Garcia said that the CO-Madres is a politically neutral group, unaffiliated with either the government or left-wing guerrillas who are trying to overthrow the government.

“The hope of the CO-Madres would be a change in the situation of the people of El Salvador,” she said. “The committee searches for peace for all people in El Salvador.”

The CO-Madres conduct marches and prayer vigils for peace and circulate petitions for peace, she said. When the women march together in their distinctive garb, Mrs. Garcia said, “often people seeing these processions join in to show their support.”

Part of the demonstration is regular prayer vigils at the Cathedral in San Salvador where Archbishop Romero was assassinated.

The CO-Madres were also present at recent reconciliation talks between the government and guerrillas in La Palma, she said.

The CO-Madres have sought a meeting with President Jose Napoleon Duarte, she said, but have not received one. “When he was campaigning, he said he would resolve the cases of the disappeared,” she said, “but the disappearances continue, arbitrary detentions continue.”

But the number of the CO-Madres also grows, from seven in 1977 to over 500, even as the violence continues. And the women in black continue to ask for what they had which is lost.