Coming to America

In 1983 Sandra made a difficult decision. She bought a fake visa, left her two-year-old son with her mother in San Vicente and flew to Boston, MA where her older sister had emigrated years before. Her hope was to make money to support her mother and son and return home in a few years once the war ended. But the fighting never stopped. In 1985 at the age of twenty-five Sandra got a receptionist job in Cambridge working for Centro Presente, an advocacy and aid organization working for immigrants fleeing the conflict in Central America. Centro Presente would become a new chapter in Sandra’s education as she began to become aware of what was really happening back home in El Salvador.

A Growing Understanding

As the war continued to rage in El Salvador, the United States positioned itself as a third key player. Deep in the midst of the Cold War, the United States, with Ronald Regan at the helm, came to see the rise of the socialist FMLN as a communist threat. As it did in many countries across the globe, the United States began funneling millions of dollars of economic aid, as well as military arms and training to the JRG military government to fuel the elite’s war against the masses.

Sandra became one of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict, many, like Sandra, slipping into the US illegally. Two years after settling in Cambridge, Sandra paid to bring her two-year-old son into the country. In opposition to American involvement in Central America, particularly El Salvador, cities across the U.S. chose to create protective policies for refugees. As more and more refugees from Central America and particularly El Salvador came to Cambridge, the city declared itself a sanctuary city in 1986.

Centro Presente was founded the same year Sandra came to Cambridge, opening in Central Square, only a few blocks away from where Sandra was living. The organization grew out of the wave of Salvadorian refugees flooding into the country and it became a leader of the movement fighting for the rights of Latin American immigrants. Sandra joined the organization first as a receptionist, but within a number of months she took over as the Woman’s Refugee Coordinator working with recent women immigrants primarily from her home country.

Back in El Salvador, it would take a dozen years, the condemnation of the international community, the widely publicized massacre of six Jesuit priests by US trained militia, and the brokering power of the United Nations, to finally bring about an end to the El Salvador Civil War.

In 1992, with the peace accords signed, Sandra decided not to return to El Salvador, but instead start a new chapter of her life: teaching young refugees in the city of Cambridge.