Muriel Hasbun: Pax Tecum Filomena: Una Cancion Para Ti

Muriel Hasbun grew up in El Salvador. Her paternal family was Christian Palestinian. Pax Tecum Filomena: Una Canción Para Ti is an ode to her paternal cousin, Janet Samour Hasbun, who joined the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) during the Salvadoran Civil War.

“Janet’s photograph had come into my consciousness like a lightning bolt. It was then, as I stared at it, dumbfounded, at the Museo de la Revolución, that I remembered what my father had told me. That he had been asked to identify Janet’s body after she was captured, tortured, and killed in 1984. But his dental archive could not produce casts or X– rays of her smile. She had not been his patient.

I only remembered Janet through the eyes of a ten-year-old. She had been a beauty queen, with long, black hair... But the way she held the M-16 in the photograph was an utterly different reality, unspoken, untold. Janet had become Comandante Filomena.

Years later, I discovered Janet in my father’s family photos. This new album finally brings together Janet and Filomena amidst our family and our country.

May you rest in peace, Filomena.

Here’s a song for you.”
—MH