José Amilcar López 

Portrait by: Leopoldo Peña

33. A Broken Dream: The Story of a Salvadorian

“I’m going to tell you why I arrived in the US and how I got there from El Salvador. I was a guerilla soldier when I was 12 years old. I joined the Popular Liberation Forces “Faribundo Marti” hoping to defend our people. I didn’t know what war was. They seized my town, San Marcos, which is about 15 minutes from the capitol. It was easy to be a guerilla, shouting and hanging banners. Twenty-six of us from our town joined, and only three survived. The army arrived with orders to kill everyone they found in the streets.”

33. A Broken Dream: The Story of a Salvadorian