"When I saw that my car was blocking no one, I knew something was wrong. I turned around to see the man trying to grab me from behind and I quickly pushed him to the ground."
It was of little use. Soon Mauricio was surrounded by 16 members of El Salvador's infamous death squad - plainclothes military officers slinging M16s.
"I shouted for help, which made the guys angry because I was making such a loud noise," he said. In a desperate move to save himself, Mauricio grabbed the bumper of his old Ford jalopy. After failing to pry him off the bumper, the officer in charge took the butt of his rifle and proceeded to crush Mauricio's hands. Mauricio fell to the ground and was kicked around, whacked with more rifles, and dragged to a waiting car.
Such was the story that Mauricio unfolded before 80 students and faculty Thursday night. Most of the audience packed into Higgins 310 sat in captivated silence as Mauricio continued to recount his nine days spent in prison.
"When they blindfolded me, I knew death was a matter of time," he said. As he was driven around for hours, Mauricio said he accepted his fate: "The reality is they can do nothing if I am dead already." He hoped this attitude would keep him from revealing anything during his interrogations. Although he was not a member of the guerrilla army, someone close to him was, and her survival depended on his silence.
They were lovers. She worked for the guerrillas in San Salvador, the capital city, organizing their operations. Mauricio said that it was so secret that even he didn't really know what she did.
Prior to this incident, the government had offered him $50,000 for information leading to her capture - 35 times the average Salvadoran income in 1983. His greatest fear in his captivity was that he would reveal her to the officers and be the one confirming her identity when they captured her.
Mauricio spent the next nine days being beaten, electrocuted, and cut, but revealed nothing.
They accused him of all manner of "crimes," from being a peasant sympathizer to being a guerrilla general who went to Cuba for training. "I would tell them no, I had never been to Cuba," said Mauricio. "They would say I must be a guerrilla general who was trained not to confess, then they would torture me some more."
"The next day, they would ask me if I had been to Cuba - this time I said yes. They would ask me what military camp I had been at. I would say 'I don't know, I've never been to Cuba!'" Carlos related this anecdote to show how torture is ineffective: "Torture doesn't work - I just told them whatever they wanted," he said.
"The worst was being forced to listen to other people being tortured and knowing I was next," he said. Never once allowed to sit, he would stand falling asleep to the sounds of women being raped. His blindfold only added to the terror: "After a while, I did not know who I was. I had no sense of time or space. I lost contact with my environment and I lost my humanity."
Mauricio was lucky. When the blindfold was removed on his ninth day, he realized he was in the National Police headquarters in downtown San Salvador. His release in 1983 coincided with the Ronald Reagan administration's decision to suspend the $1 million-a-day military aid to the Salvadoran government due to its rampant human rights abuses. Mauricio's liberation through the Red Cross was part of a good-faith measure by the government to appease the United States. At least 70,000 other victims of the 12-year civil war would not be so lucky.
Since his experience, Mauricio has sought to become an advocate for torture survivors and social justice in all of Latin America. In 1999, Carlos and two other torture victims won a lawsuit against two of their former torturers, a pair of U.S.-trained Salvadoran generals residing in the United States. It was a groundbreaking step to bring those responsible for human rights abuses during the Salvadoran civil war to justice, though impunity remains rampant today.
Most recently, as part of a School of the Americas Watch delegation, Mauricio toured the new International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador, an institution sponsored by the United States designed to train Latin American police officers.
He believes the ILEA is training police officers in the same way the School of the Americas trained his torturers. "It is a police branch of the School of the Americas," he said.
Mauricio was quick to note that the recent events have felt hauntingly similar to his experience. "Now, four activists have disappeared," he said. "The police are once again becoming more and more repressive."
Mauricio believes the new repression is linked to the actions of the government, led by the pro-United States and long dominant Nationalist Republican Alliance, also known as the ARENA Party. "A new generation is asking for justice, and the government is only offering oppression," he said.
Mauricio believes there is progress being made: On a recent visit to South America, he was part of a delegation that dissuaded five nations from sending their soldiers to train at the School of the Americas, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
Mauricio was brought to campus by Boston College's Pedro Arrupe trip to El Salvador and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). CISPES is a United States-based group, founded in 1980, "dedicated to supporting the Salvadoran people's struggle for social and economic justice," according to its mission statement.
Next week, Mauricio plans to stage a hunger strike at the U.S. Capitol to promote a bill that would eliminate the WHINSEC.
Asked what promoted him to live a life of advocacy after his torture, Carlos responded, "I realized there is a limit to therapy. There is also a need of justice in me."
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