Tempered Will, Unfaltering Strength

By: Mario Chavez

          When faced with hardships, people must change and adapt to survive. While this is true for many people across the world, there is one case that is quite interesting. Born in 1963, Leda Fuentes, a rather gentle-hearted mother of 4, she has the ability to achieve anything she lays her eyes upon, whatever it may be. With an attitude as sharp as a Japanese Sword, going against her will is like trying to separate the Red Sea. God help you if you do. However, like any fine blade, it must first go through a thousand hells in order to be forged and tempered.

         

During the Civil War in El Salvador, Leda went through many hardships. At this time, she was as old as any average high-school student, but her life wasn’t nearly similar to a normal 21^st Century teenager’s. For starters, she didn’t really have the commodities your average teenager would have. She didn’t have any way to entertain herself other than school and going out with her friends. Oh, wait. Forget the “going out with her friends” part. There was a war going on. Anyone could be murdered at any time. Nothing personal, you were just in a bad place at the wrong time.

The reason as to why this was happening is not as relevant to this story as much as to what happened to this story’s main character. On top of this story’s Vanilla sundae (which was of course, the war) there was a juicy cherry on top. The setting, the place, the location, whatever you want to call it. We called it: “La Zacamil.” This neighborhood was as bad as bad could get. Just living there meant you had barely any money to even get by, and the whole place was just terrible. And if this wasn’t enough, whoever the ice cream man was, he was kind enough to even add sprinkles a.k.a. family.

Leda’s family wasn’t something you could call large. Two older brothers, one older sister and her mother. That was it. No father to be seen, but about three times a year. However, she still lived in La Zacamil, so you could actually call it . huge. Leda’s mother was always working for the sake of her children, so she did not really have any chance to spend time with them and raise them properly. A good example of this would be the second brother, Hamlet, who also is my uncle.

Hamlet did not really have anyone or anything to teach him right from wrong, so one could clearly expect what was going to happen. From time to time, he and his younger brother, Juan, enjoyed showing who was boss to their sisters, one of them was, of course, Leda, the other’s name was Cecilia. Hamlet and Juan would give those (oh, poor, poor) two orders in a daily basis, and, when they did not obey, they would beat the helpless sisters. Leda’s mother did not do much about this, whether it was out of lack of interest or she just didn’t have enough time to step in. And of course, Leda had to endure all of this.

          To further spice this up, it would of course have been imperative Leda’s brother, Hamlet smoked marijuana at the young age of 12. He even got arrested several times for doing so. And who could have guessed, most people preferred to sleep in a rat hole than one of the local prisons. Not only did the prisons reek of malice and piss, but getting a little cut from anything could have most likely meant you had to bid farewell to that finger without proper medical attention. Adieu.

          And guess who it was had to take food to her brother while he was in prison, yelling and cursing at the wardens? You guessed it, none other than Leda. She and her mother not only had to cook for her (oh, so macho) older brother but also for the prison wardens. Apparently, if there was not enough food for them in addition to the prisoner, the poor offender had to watch disdainfully at the wardens feasting on it.

          Once, in her way back from the market, she was put in front of a life or death situation thanks to a cruel twist of fate. I hope you hadn’t forgotten the War was still raging on, as when she was about to hit the exit, gunshots could be heard all over the market. People being hit, collapsing to the ground, never to open their eyes again and Leda. Leda was still there. Doing the only thing she could do, she hid. She hid as well as she could and waited for the grim skirmish between both factions to end. Bullets flying everywhere, unrelenting and uncaring of who it was that stood in their path. The perpetrators, both factions, did not really care as to who and what was there, as they simply fired. Bang, bang and one final bang. Thanks to some unknown force, Leda was able to survive, to tell the tale some other day.

          For most people, this would have scarred them for life. But, for Leda, whether she never showed it or I never noticed, there was nothing inside her, just a dark memory from her past. But what was it that made Leda into who she is today? What was so special about her that she survived all she went through and was able to become whom she now is? Well, Leda was an outstanding person when it came to studies, but as she never had any kind of discipline, she never knew what a great tool education could become in the future she was about to live.

Everything that happened to her, everything she had to endure, everything she lived has served to form a person whose strength never falters, and whose will burns like the sun. Her name is Leda Fuentes, I am her son and I’m proud to be.