On June 18 more than 100 residents of Santa Marta commemorated the 37th anniversary of the campesina massacre, that took place on June 19, 1980 in Los Planes, El Picacho, and La Pinte. The community walked from Santa Marta’s Central Plaza to Los Planes, under the falling rain, remembering the lives of the martyrs with a ceremony and mass.

Father Alberto Quintanilla said, “With your blood they have fertilized the land, they have fertilized the fields. Long live the martyrs of Los Planes!”

The violent massacre was perpetrated by the Military Detachment No. 2 of Sensuntepeque, where more than 20 people, campesinas and campesinos, were assassinated. In 2003, the remains of four women assassinated during the massacre were exhumed from a communal grave in Los Planes.

The communal event has be organized for the past five years by a group of young people from Santa Marta, together with other communal structures. Leonel Rivas, one of the organizers, explained the importance of these commemorative acts in order to transmit history and consolidate community consciousness about Santa Marta’s roots.

"It is not a dialogue between two people, it is an act where the survivors have spoken with the rest of the population, with the rest of youth, and this has gradually consolidated itself and has allowed us to have better knowledge about these other historical moments like March, like October— equally decisive in the recent history of Santa Marta "; he shared.