The flying bullets, economic chaos, and violent repression that engulfed El Salvador in the late 1970s prompted many social activists to flee their homeland for the United States. Those experiences still resonate for Salvadoran Americans in places such as Los Angeles, which became a hotbed for a generation in exile from the Central American nation mired in a disastrous 12-year civil war.
That generation’s resilient spirit, and its legacy of striving for social justice and united community action, will form the backdrop for Salvador Day this Saturday and Sunday, unfolding at the corner of Avenue Normandie and Boulevard Venezia, in heart of the central city center. American Diaspora.
Inaugurated in 1999, Salvador Day blends a strong political component with cultural and religious elements in a powerful affirmation of collective identity. Community leaders and left-leaning politicians regularly show up to proselytize.
This weekend’s activities will include a music festival, typical Salvadoran food and, to close on Sunday, a religious procession dedicated to the Divine Savior of the World, which will depart from the Catholic Church of St. Kevin on Beverly Boulevard. It will be followed by a mass similar to those held in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, since 1525.
While the occasion will be celebrated in other US cities, Salvador Day has clear LA origins. It was born out of a resolution passed by Congress in July 2006, supported by then US Representative and current LA County Supervisor Hilda Solís, taking into account the request of LA community leaders.
“With Hilda Solís, we did it at the federal level. This is why it is celebrated everywhere,” said Isabel “Chabelita” Cárdenas, an activist and co-author of the text of the congress.
One particular organization played a central role in the establishment of Salvadoran Day: the Salvadoran American National Association (SANA), whose members included Cárdenas and Salvador Gómez Góchez, Mario Fuentes, Mario Beltrán, Fidel Sánchez, Werner Marroquín and Raúl Mariona. They were looking to create an annual event that would express the traditions and desires of the Salvadoran refugees who began arriving here by the thousands during the war era.
Currently, 2.3 million people of Salvadoran descent live in the United States, closely tied with Cubans as the country’s third-largest group of Latin American descent, after Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Many of them are concentrated in Los Angeles, Washington, DC and a handful of other cities.
“Salvadorans have made a contribution to law, medicine, activism, science and some other disciplines that we don’t get much credit for,” said Salvador “Chamba” Sánchez, a political science professor at Los Angeles Community College who arrived from El Salvador. in 1982 amid the migratory wave that followed the assassination of the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, on March 24, 1980.
Cárdenas, who arrived in LA as a 9-year-old with her family in 1948, said that for many years the only Salvadorans she knew were relatives. Many Angelenos didn’t even seem to know the place.
“When we said we were from El Salvador, they asked us, ‘What part of Mexico is it in?’
She did not begin dating other Salvadorans until she joined the Committee of Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, which was founded by Juan Ramirios, Ricardo Zelada, and Ana Gloria Madriz to denounce human rights violations and provide aid to Salvadorans escaping fratricide. the war that left more than 75,000 dead and about 8,000 missing.
Cárdenas also co-founded the Monseñor Romero clinic in the Pico-Union neighborhood—it now has two facilities, one in the MacArthur Park area and one in Boyle Heights—and the organization El Rescate, which provided health services and legal advice to migrant refugees.
Salvadoran trade unionist Yanira Merino arrived in Los Angeles in 1978, was deported two years later, and returned permanently in 1984, when she was 19. Four years ago, Merino, 57, became the first woman elected president of the Labor Council. for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) after spending more than two decades organizing workers and serving as national immigration coordinator at the International Labor Union of North America.
She believes the “Justice for Janitors” campaign, which was launched in 1990 by the Service Employees International Union and included activists and organizers from El Salvador, opened the door to US jobs for Salvadoran workers.
“This is where new leadership emerges,” said Merino, whose organization represents the interests of more than 2 million Latino workers.
In the mid-1990s, Merino organized her co-workers at a seafood packing house in downtown Los Angeles. After six months of effort, they managed to form a union, enter into a collective agreement and obtain a contract that improved their working and economic conditions.
“I got fired twice during that campaign,” Merino recalls.
Many migrants who had been persecuted and imprisoned in El Salvador for their trade union activities brought developed organizational skills and a fierce commitment to the growing labor movement of the 1980s and 1990s.
Merino remembers attending union meetings as a child with her parents, who were also active in their community and within their Catholic parish. Before leaving El Salvador for good, she became involved in the student movement, an experience she used when she saw the working conditions in the packaging factory.
“In my house, I saw the need to organize and join with others,” said Merino, who moved from LA to Washington, D.C., a few years ago.
Celia Lacayo, a sociologist at UCLA, believes Salvadorans “have made this society stronger and better” through their work in social justice causes.
“The efforts of the Salvadoran immigrants who came out of the war in their country gave more strength to the American labor movement because they already had experience,” Lacayo said.
Another native El Salvador who arrived in the middle of the larger migration wave was Oscar Chacón, who came to New York in 1980 as an 18-year-old and joined the Action Committee for the Salvadoran People’s War and participated in Casa El Salvador. Chacón, now 60, moved in 2001 to Chicago, where Alianza Américas, a coalition of 59 organizations, is based, and became its executive director in 2007.
The origins of Alianza Américas date back to the work done by the Salvadoran American National Network to support beneficiaries of the first Temporary Protected Status granted by the US government to Salvadoran migrants in the 1990s in response to the devastation of war.
“The great wave of Salvadorans that came out in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a generation that came with a good foundation of training in organizational processes, and that is what has led us to position ourselves in leadership roles in areas of numerous,” Chacón. said.
American Salvadoran activists were again spurred into action in January 2018, when then-President Trump announced he would rescind TPS affecting nearly 200,000 Salvadorans. That’s when Evelyn Hernández joined the protests and caravans of Salvadorans traveling to Washington to raise awareness of the dangers facing deportees.
“When I started, I didn’t even know I could be the voice of our Salvadoran community, which was in the same immigration limbo as I was,” said Hernández, 47, who entered community service when her oldest child was in kindergarten. Los Angeles. In her neighborhood, Latino families facing a school deficit mobilized around a 2004 initiative that resulted in the establishment of at least three new high schools. Currently, Hernández is an organizer and coordinator of the TPS committee in Los Angeles.
Despite their long history of struggle for social justice, Salvadorans have not gained widespread power in the political arena. Only three Salvadoran women hold elected office in California: Reyna Díaz, president of the Duarte school board; Wendy Carrillo, state assemblywoman for District 51; and Myrna Melgar, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
And only four others of Salvadoran descent have held political office in the Golden State: former city council members Mario Beltrán of Bell Gardens; Victor Martínez of Mendota, in the San Joaquin Valley; and Cecilia Iglesias of Santa Ana; and former state Sen. Liz Figueroa, the San Francisco-born daughter of Salvadoran immigrants.
In metropolitan Washington, DC, Salvadoran women are represented only by Rocío Treminio-López, mayor of Brentwood, Md., and Celina Benítez, mayor of neighboring Mount Rainier, Md. In past years, six other Salvadoran Americans have held various public offices. such as city council members, school board members, county supervisors and state legislators.
“We are invisible. Salvadorans have not had the political and civic sense to participate,” said Ana Sol Gutiérrez, 80, who served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 2003 to 2019.
“There are smaller groups from other countries that already have members in Congress, like the Colombians and the Dominicans, who have organized and supported candidates with donations, and we’re just getting started,” Gutiérrez added.
Political strategist Luis Alvarado believes that a new generation of officials is gradually emerging from the ranks of local and state officials and their staff, as well as social justice activists.
“These young people, the second generation, who are educated in American schools and understand the political process, have the enthusiasm to participate,” he said.
Jesse Acevedo, a political scientist at the University of Denver, said Salvadoran candidates for public office in cities like Houston and Los Angeles have faced an uphill battle competing against more established Mexican-American political networks.
Acevedo, who taught at UCLA from 2015 to 2018, said the fervent social activism that characterizes the Salvadoran community will be key to increasing its political power and influence in the coming decades.
“You can’t talk about Los Angeles and Washington without the Salvadorans. This is the result of decades of activism as a foundation,” he said. “We will see many politicians of Salvadoran origin in the coming years. It will be very soon.”
