Looking into the eyes of Dolores Callejas, one is automatically filled with instantaneous jubilation. That feeling of positivity, knowing something exciting will eventuate. At first, Dolores seems puzzled about what is going to happen next. An intricate glance into her life story is something she has not divulged to anyone bar her own children. With that in mind, her eyes immediately change, provoking mixed feelings. Embarrassment and nervousness consume her eyes, eroding her initial look of jubilation.
Dolores is careful when engaging questions, the concentration etched across her brow. Seemingly hesitant, Dolores remembers the past and her story of adversity. Tears streaming from her green eyes, Dolores goes back through time to the jungles of El Salvador, where an impending civil war looms in the background. Afflicted with personal loss and physical abuse, Dolores spent years of her life in refugee camps, surviving off donations and humanitarian aid.
Sprawled across a habitat of rainforests and jungles, Dolores and her family made a living as farmers in a small village called Acequalpa in El Salvador. Born in 1966, and growing up in the 1970s, Dolores was far away from the Disco lifestyle that most were privy to at that point in time. One of eleven children, Dolores didn’t grow up like most children today do. “I never received any Christmas gifts, my first present would have been from my own daughters in Australia.”
With six sisters plying their skills in the kitchen, Dolores was found out in the farm with her four brothers. “I hated being stuck in the kitchen with my sisters,” says Dolores with a scathing tone, undermining everything that was the societal norm for Females in such an era. Preferring to roam the forests and work on the farm, Dolores was viewed as ‘one of the boys,’ chopping wood, nurturing beans with her father and riding horses with her brothers.
As a child growing up, quality education was a rarity. Isolated in the rural area of El Salvador, teachers from the city would come and go, preferring to fraternise with the students as oppose to educating them. Incidentally, Dolores never bothered with schooling, preferring to contribute to the arduous task of the family business. The Callejas family made a slender living selling beans and White Corn, however a corrupt legal system and Government ensured that monetary rewards were minimal.
Amongst a village of approximately 200 people, days consisted of regular farming, and come nightfall, putting a meal in front of eleven children was a difficult proposition. As daily doses of beans and chicken wore thin, not just in terms of quantity, but the eyes of the Children would roll at the sight of another bean. “For my Family, an exciting meal was anything but beans. I remember the joy on the dinner table when something as simple as cheese was there.” With the closest supermarket over an hour away, Dolores found herself making the long journey on a weekly basis, just to make ends meet.
Without hot water and electricity, Dolores and her family survived on the water from the nearby river, and in the distance whilst political coups raged on, one would think the people would be heard, but life in Acequalpa seemed stagnant. “We had no money, my dad couldn’t afford to buy me glasses, and I couldn’t see the board for school.” A defunct and unethical education system, with seemingly nowhere to go, Dolores lived her life as if it were met with nothing but a mere dead end.
As the 1970s came to a close, Dolores claimed, “my best memories from my childhood were the horse riding.” One of the few pleasures growing up, Dolores and many in El Salvador, faced with the prospect of Civil war, left very few memories of a fond childhood. Politically people may differ, but according to Dolores and other villagers, the Government soldiers were seen as the Antagonists, raiding the rural villages acquiring soldiers and leaving many dead in their tracks, bringing the country to the brink of international sanctions and legal ramifications. Fighting back tears, Dolores says, “Government soldiers would kill or rape young girls, I lost my aunty and cousin because of this.”
“I was lucky to escape, the Guerrilla’s taught us how to protect ourselves and other evasion tactics.” Managing to relocate that beaming smile, she jokingly says “the soldiers probably didn’t find me attractive, so they spared me,” finding hilarity behind such a dire circumstance. With Dolores not knowing any different this was a period in El Salvador where hurt and suffering was so commonplace, it puts the sugar – coated lives we live today into perspective.
Before she knew it, Dolores and her family began lives as outlaws. Befriending the Guerrilla’s, Dolores achieved some degree of solace through the comfort of their protection, learning to live a life of evasion and deception, all in order to avoid the wrath of the government troops. Dolores, along with the company of the Revolutionaries, found refuge in a plastic shed, deep in the heart of the jungles of El Salvador, calling this place home. However, three months later, these areas were regularly ransacked by the Government troops who were hell-bent on seeing the demise of the Left-Wing Guerrilla’s and anyone who kept their company.
As the war continued, Dolores, at the tender age of sixteen began her first intimate relationship, and within no time, found herself lost as a young lady, without a place to call home and the news that she was pregnant with her first child. Dolores was forced to grow up faster than anyone, “I had to fend for myself, the Guerrilla’s helped me, but they were always a target for the Government.” After another Guerrilla post was destroyed, Dolores, along with the safety of Jose’ made haste for pastures new. “Jose was a general in the Guerrilla Army and the father of my unborn child, we walked for days from hideout to hideout, I started to feel as if everyday was my last.” Just sixteen years old, and pregnant, Dolores felt alone, scared and feared for not only her own life, but that of her unborn child, relying on nothing more than instinct and her own intuition.
The strenuous trekking, living in and out of Guerrilla Safe Houses and becoming more subdued with pregnancy side-effects, Dolores and Jose’ eventually reached the Honduran border. Having to cross Rio Lempa to get into Honduras, Dolores recalls the experience like it was yesterday. “I was 5 months pregnant and tied a rope from one end of the river to the other, I felt like the pain would never stop.” Upon reaching the river’s end, Dolores and the Guerrilla’s were surrounded by Honduran soldiers who co-operated with the Government of El Salvador, and were patrolling their own borders in the process. “There was a gun pointed right at my head, I was forced to witness the murder of others.” Seeing first hand the execution of family and friends, Dolores and Jose’ were thrown into a camp full of escapee’s from El Salvador, where the fates of these captives were seemingly sealed. Conditions likened to Nazi Concentration camps and behaviour so inhumane, Dolores knew her only way to survive, was to escape.
With family and friends being executed more regularly, Dolores had no choice but to escape back to El Salvador. “I couldn’t stop crying. I had left my parents, and I had no idea whether they were still alive.” Torn between her duty to Jose’ and yearning the love of her parents, the two of them fled, re-convening with the Guerrilla’s.
A devout soldier, Jose felt compelled to continue the fight and along with his fellow revolutionaries, they once again trekked for days, making their way back to Honduras, this time, to drop Dolores off with her family. An ecstatic Dolores recounts, “We found out my parents were in a refugee camp in Honduras. Naturally, I wanted to be with them, so relieved to hear that they were alive.”
Filled with anxiety, Dolores and the Guerrilla’s made their way back to the Honduran border, where disaster struck. “There was shooting from all corners, Jose pushed me down a steep hill, but everything went by so quickly. The bullets, the screams and the bodies, it was all a blur at the time.” Despite making it out alive, Dolores was able to escape and make her way to the Refugee camp, re-uniting with her Family. Jose’s fate however, was sealed on that hill. Whilst rolling down the hill, Jose was caught in the cross fire, and he along with other Guerrilla’s perished as a result.
On the run in the Honduran Jungle, Dolores, along with other escapees, scurried toward the Refugee camp, hoping in desperation, for a saviour. “I was now nine months pregnant, my eldest daughter, Morena, was born in the Jungle. We spent our first night together on the dirt of the Jungle, the refugee camp was less than a day away.”
Spending the first eight years of life through the wired fences of a Refugee Camp would usually make one cringe. Morena recalls this experience vaguely however, saying, “Mum always told us that these were her most comfortable years, prior to coming to Australia.” Constant aid from the Red Cross enabled Dolores to establish some form of life in this camp that saw the birth of three more children, and more food on her table than ever before. “Mum was at ease here, the conditions were not different to home and her Parents were there, it was a welcome change from the gunshots and death she experienced from the war,” says Morena.
Eventually after eight years of trying, Dolores and her four children made their way to Australia. With a feeling of surrealism, Dolores, once again scared at the change, tackled the greatest challenge of her life. Entering a country with no idea on the people and the language. Leaving her parents behind, all to start a new life with her family.
Settling in Melbourne’s South East suburbs, Dolores and her children struggled for years living in a two bedroom flat, barely making ends meet. Everyday she would walk her children to and from school regardless of rain, hail or shine. While the father of her children sat and watched, wasting himself and their Government handouts on drugs and alcohol. Morena recalls these nights well, “Mum and I bailed him out of jail on several occasions, for years we tried to escape his habits, and his physical abuse.” Dolores struggles as she recounts the incidents where this man would hurl abuse at her and the children, drowning himself in litres of liquor.
Morena, sympathetic to her Mother’s situation knew what was required. With the turn of the new millennium, Dolores finally achieved what so many young families crave. With the help of her kids, Dolores settled on a property in Melbourne, away from the traumas of El Salvador and the abuse of her former partner.
Working multiple jobs and sleepless nights just to get her kids through school and meet utility payments, Dolores can be proud of what her sacrifice has achieved. Morena, now 28 years old is the proud owner of a home, Daisy her second daughter is due to be married later this year, whilst nearly all her children have completed degrees and produced grandchildren for Dolores. Re-defining not just her life, but having given her children the opportunity many people would die for, Dolores and her children have all embraced their opportunities with open arms, ensuring that the legacy Dolores created, lives on.
Sometimes people rescind at the sight of adversity, whilst others true colours can shine when called upon. Dolores is not only a lesson, but also testament to the will and power of the human spirit. Like anything in life, you must earn your keep, whilst remembering what it took to get you to wherever you may be. Do not ever let anyone tell you that something cannot be done, unless you try it first. Dolores’ story of triumph over adversity is one of many, but now 44 years later, the beautiful, beady green-eyed Dolores, is a rarity in this world. That rare commodity that spruces to life like a flower in spring, bringing hope to all that is desolate in today’s world.