Dec 2, 2020
“Is this Mr. Jacobson?”
Things end. There is no avoiding it. Perhaps the details are acted upon, but the outcome of necessity remains the same.
Revolution and its violence were knocking on the door. One phone call changed lives. Things that couldn’t be ignored.
“Is this Mr. Jacobson? Yes, now listen carefully, I shall not repeat myself, I am Coronel Rosales with the revolutionary front and I am calling you to tell you that you must leave our country immediately. Do you hear me, Mr. Jacobson? This is no joke. We know where your child is in school and where your house is. We will go there tonight to make sure you have left. Do you understand me, Señor?!”
I was nearing the end of a two-year stint as manager of the Hotel San Salvador in El Salvador, Central America. I was around twenty-three and my Mother asked me to take over the hotel as her manager was leaving. I had been working in a large hotel in Traverse City, Michigan. My wife and first child were with me. We drove from Michigan to El Salvador, pulling our ancient, eight-cylinder Olds Regal 88 behind us. Joining us was Kitch our yellow lab.
El Salvador was in the midst of a country suffering the similar fate of several other Central American countries, political upheaval on a violent level. More accurately is to say that El Salvador was on the brink, so businesses continued on as always. Cuba doing Moscow’s bidding had entered into the Latin American theaters to foment communist unrest using all the terrorist and violent tactics. Bombs were going off almost nightly throughout the capital.
The Marxist rebels made it very clear they were coming. Many of the rich had already run to Miami, to their mansions there. This was the common practice. Kidnappings of the monied were an everyday occurrence, unfortunately ending in bloody tragedy. These were political kidnappings which contrary to criminal kidnappings odds of survival were notoriously slim.
Do not misunderstand my position on this. Change had to come. The citizenry had for too long been shoved underfoot and though they did all the hard work; they saw little for their efforts. The pro-American governments, dictatorships, were allied with the business owners. So change was needed. My point has always been that a non-violent approach is needed, no one wins in violence, it’s a temporary fix at best.
Many years later, I fell victim to a criminal kidnapping in Honduras. I was one of the lucky ones.
The day had begun like most others. Around 6 AM we saw our son off to school on the small bus. After coffee and some toast at our house, we jumped into our VW Beetle and drove to the center of town. We liked to start early, so we were at the hotel by 6:30. As we headed east, the tropical sun was blazing as it crested above the horizon. The bright rays collided pleasantly with the richly purple bougainvillea that tumbled over the walls towards the sidewalks.
We tried to get home by 6:30 PM.
Despite the early hour, I could already feel the humidity that was rapidly creeping in. The boulevards lined with coconut trees deceptively serene with breeze causing the palm fronds to wave ever so gently. Morning birds of all tropical variety from chattering parrots to croaking toucans, bluejays, zanates a kind of blackbird, and countless others were all in concert singing in the new day.
At that hour the city traffic was still sparse, on street corners, the tortilla ladies were ready for the morning movement, people walking to work stopped for coffee and tortillas and sweet bread. Early employees raised the roll-down covers of the storefronts creating a metallic racket that echoed down the still quiet streets. Bicycles and motorcycles were in greater evidence as the minutes progressed, people riding to their workplaces around the city.
After quick good mornings to the porters greeting us at the entrance, we went to the coffee shop for breakfast. This was the start of my work routine My wife and I went our separate ways as she went to accounting and I, coffee in hand, began my morning tour of the property. We agreed just before getting up from our table in the coffee shop that a trip to the beach this weekend would be perfect, maybe overnight.
“See you at lunch okay?” A quick peck on the cheek and off we went.
I’d taken the call down in my ‘cemetery’, which is what I called a large room in the basement storeroom where no longer functioning pieces of hotel equipment stored away forever. Along the shelves and hallways were innumerous old toasters, adding machines, several large NCR registers from the front desk, obsolete Teletype machines, slicers, unidentifiable parts to equipment. The place smelled of oil and old metal. Non-functioning, old air conditioners, pots and pans, mixers, stoves, and ovens, a true boneyard for obsolete pieces. It was one of my pet projects to see how many of these forgotten items could be resuscitated or sold, and the number was astonishing, which informed me of the caliber of the previous managers. The call reached me down here!
My head of maintenance came looking for me and told me I had a call in his office. I picked up the phone, and the man said what I said above. I was stunned, my mind immediately went into survival mode, okay how do I fix this? The man, Coronel Rosales, wasn’t done. “Mr. Jacobson, as proof that you are taking me seriously you will fire German Canales today, do you hear me, repeat to me that you understand.!!” His tone had grown anxious and angry.
“Surely Coronel we can talk this out, is there, some…”
“I am not Coronel Rosales and I have no time for this gringo, you heard me, you fire this man this morning so we can see then you and your family are gone from the country or we will come for you tonight.!” He slammed down the phone. These being pre-cell days, it was all dial from location to location.
It was dumb luck that the caller got to me down in my maintenance area. My telephone operator knew somehow I was down there, which wasn’t too much of a stretch. This was how she knew where to patch the call to me. Ever since I’ve always suspected the operator as an agent of the insurgency, I could be, and probably am, wrong. But one’s mind works this way when something like this happens.
It’s called survival. The mind goes into instant elimination mode, eliminate all the most improbable to be left with the most probable. What can be saved, what can be thrown out, sort of like the boneyard!
“German, I have something.” I paused, swallowed, ran my hand through my hair, and proceeded. “I’m afraid I have bad news, but I’m not sure we need to do this, I…”
“What is it, sir? Can I help? You look upset Señor, can I help?” German was one of my Executives, and a staunch anti-union man, as were all my administrative staff. In Central America, administrative staff are often designated: ‘employees of confidence’. These employees were in the same boat as the manager. When the yearly negotiations with the union were underway, it was these top staff who joined you at the table. Some hated the union, some knew they were necessary but were not a part of them. Through the years, I’d been a member of two unions myself and understood their value and purpose.
I also knew when a union went way over the top in unrealistic requests and demands. I had witnessed companies get pressed out of business as a result of the strangling union demands. The result was that everyone except perhaps the monied owners wound up on the street. In El Salvador, the hotels union and I got along famously. They assured me many times they had never enjoyed such productive relations as when I came along. You might smile, hear and say under your breath: ‘sounds like they snookered the guy…’ No, it wasn’t that.
This call was the real thing. It wasn’t the union pulling an ancient scare tactic, the last thing they wanted was to oust the manager that most supported them.
Christmas was almost upon us, and now the nightly firecrackers and festivities provided perfect cover for the increasing gunfire around the city. Even the big bombs sounded a little like those massive though harmless mortars blown off during non-stop celebration. After a while, one gets quite adept at recognizing gunshots and bombs versus fireworks. It was non-stop, which stepped up at night. It still hadn’t spilled into the streets as it would in just a few short months after our departure.
“Sir, I resign right now. I am so sorry this has happened. These people are getting out of control. I will go to accounting right now and put in my resignation.” I reached out and placed my hand on his shoulder, his face downcast, staring at his boots. No words to fill the pain.
“I’m so sorry, German. I can’t imagine what this could be. I mean, I have to leave as well. His threats were quite clear. Perhaps you don’t have to go German once I’m gone, do you think…”
“No Señor, we cannot play with these people, they are deadly. For some reason, they had me in sight, but you sir, you must do as they ask, think of your family, I will be okay, now you need to care for your family.” We shook hands down in the machine room, I turned and left his office. It was the last time I saw him.
Some years later a source told me it was possible German was an ‘oreja’, an ear. Someone who reported on the radicals and insurgents to the secret police and that he was a member of Orden, a group formed to fight the growing Marxism. I had no way of proving any of this.
“Hon, we have to go home, meet me in my office right now, okay? Please bring whatever you want to take with you. We won’t be back soon. Something’s come up and we have to leave. Nothing to worry about right now, but we do have to leave…”
We left the hotel quickly, no goodbyes. On our way through the city, we got stuck in a protest march which were daily occurrences now. These could have been teachers or nurses or transportistas. Everyone was out to get a piece of the pie, just as I would’ve done. We were almost through the slow-moving crowd which was screaming and waving all sorts of banners, Marxist elements always made sure to be present with flags of the hammer and sickle, red flags, and chants against imperialist Yankees, us. Fortunately, no one showed the least interest in us.
About half a block left to get out of the crowd, we heard gunshots and I put my foot on the gas and finally broke free. I called the hotel when we reached the house and someone confirmed to me that there were two dead in the protest. The thing was beginning.
We went directly to our sons’ grade school, a small school made up of two former homes nestled in a pretty neighborhood now well removed from the racket downtown. Even the birds in the trees along the quiet streets were singing!
My wife insisted that before going home we go first to the US embassy. After all, she was a US citizen whereas I was Guatemalan. She wanted to see what ‘her’ people recommended.
Not very surprising, we were let right in.
“Folks, we’re really sorry to hear about what happened to you.” The young man talking looked like right out of the special forces, it was obvious, can’t hide the fact. There were three others. They all had rather hurried looks in their expressions as though they were just hanging on until the next ‘incident’ struck. After grilling me several times, writing everything down, the special forces guy finished the meeting by saying: “So you folks need to leave the country as fast as you can. These people are not playing games, and we don’t want a tragedy. I don’t mean to scare you, but you really do have to go.” And that was that.
No suppositions as to why it happened, no opined ideas as to what happened, just ‘get out now’. I’m a little stubborn and had my doubts, plus I hate being told what to do by government types, always have.
My wife didn’t care. “We’re leaving now, Tommy. So let’s go home and pack some things and go.”
There were no flights available to Guatemala that day. We were stuck in the city for the night despite that the supposed Coronel Rosales threatened that ‘they’d’ be by the house to make sure we’d left. We stayed awake all night. On my lap were a shotgun and a pistol. Laughable after all these years, had they really come in force that would’ve been the end. They never came, and a taxi took us to the airport.
At the airport, soldiers were now manning the many airport positions normally filled by civilians. They went through our luggage before departing. Much to my shock, a soldier reached into my suitcase and pulled out a board with about fifty different bullets wired to it as a sort of bullet display. It looked like something a trainer of insurgents might use to train newby rebels about firearms! Oh shit!
Our son had a bullet collection and didn’t want to part with it and stuffed it into my suitcase just before going out our front door.
In a moment other soldiers surrounded us, other passengers passed us on the way to the gate. Before long an official appeared, the man may have been a captain. A bit of gray hair told me he was a career soldier. Before they started asking me questions, I blurted out that I was the manager of the Hotel San Salvador. I looked directly at the aging official and asked him if he knew Eldridge Sinclair. From night to day. The career soldier’s expression changed.
“Sinclair is probably my best friend, we go drinking and chasing women together, you must be the new manager yes?”
Sinclair was a man who along with my parents and older brother running our business. He’d made it his business to know, on a personal level, every government official in most of the Central American countries.
We were free to go.
Several days later I flew back, ‘quietly’, hired a mover to pack our stuff for the States. I closed up the house, said goodbye to some wonderful staff, and left. I went back many years later after a massive earthquake caught my father in his now empty hotel building. My brothers and I went back to dig him out.
