By EFE
The journalist and writer Ivan Mejía published “Rebel Banda”, a fictional chronicle based on the experiences of the most important popular music group that emerged in the Civil War of El Salvador, with the idea of “rescuing historical memory” and establishing bridges with the new generations.
The book tells the story of the Cutumay Camones gang, formed in 1982 by order of the leadership of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), one of the five left-wing armed groups that formed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1980. ).
“Music was a very important part of that period in El Salvador. It is necessary to reconstruct the steps of this band to understand how these rebels managed to sing in the middle of a war and become famous,” said Mejía, 57 years old.
The chronicle is based on a series of interviews that the journalist did in hiding at the end of the 1980s with Francisco Antonio Manzanares Monjarás, the main voice of the band, who was murdered in October 1996.
Sifting through his notes, Mejía found in those interviews a treasure that, he says, “he needed to share.”
He explains that the Civil War in El Salvador (1979-1992) has been told from various points of view, from political to health, but the view of the conflict through music has been left aside.
Cutumay Camones was made up of six members, four of whom were not musicians before joining the band, including Manzanares, who defined himself as “a humble apprentice singer,” according to the novel.
But they managed to record four albums and tour throughout Latin America and Europe. “Within their circle, most of them were people from the left, they were very well-known, they filled concerts,” says Mejía.
The group took its name from the Cutumay Camones canton, in the department of Santa Ana (El Salvador), where in 1981 FMLN combatants were killed by the Army.
Living for almost three decades in Los Angeles, an area that hosts one of the largest Salvadoran diasporas in the United States, Mejía has closely followed the stories of Central Americans and assures that it is necessary for new generations to know about their past.
“We do not want the conflict to be repeated, and one of the best ways to teach about the lessons it left us is through stories like this. “Everyone is going to identify with the adventure of forming a musical band,” she said.
“Rebel Banda” is the second book that Mejía dedicates to rescuing the musical groups born in the Civil War in El Salvador. His first novel, “The Guitars of Yesterday’s Fire: Los Torogoces de Morazán,” was published in the mid-1990s.
“I think readers deserve to take a look at the past to understand the present,” he said.
“Rebel Banda” is available on Amazon.