“I tell you this story about my family so that you can follow the string of stories,” Salvadoran human rights activist Ester Alvarenga told a University of Minnesota Audience on October 2. Her father was a leader of a leftist agrarian movements in El Salvador. Ester herself had responsibilities organizing her community and fighting injustice since childhood. At age 18, Alvarenga was captured and tortured by the Salvadoran police.
In 1980, with her own eyes, Ester Alvarenga witnessed 600 civilians being murdered in one of the war’s greatest massacres. She was only 14, she tells the audience of about 50 attentive listeners; she watched murdered people wash down the river.
Today Alvarenga is the director of the non-profit organization, Pro-Busqueda, whose mission is to find children that were kidnapped during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war and connect those children with their families.
She is on a tour of the United States to raise awareness about the still-relevant issue of missing children. Pro-Busqueda hopes to create a network of people that willcontinue to look for these children in the United States.
During the civil war, the army kidnapped children whose parents were killed or who were separated from their families when they tried to escape the soldiers. These children, and others orphaned or separated from their families by the war, were placed in orphanages world-wide. Some of those children, who are now mostly in their 20s, have begun to come forward about what happened to them during the war. The number of known cases, which was 800 in 2009, grows annually, according to Alvarenga. The Pro-Busqueda website and its 2010 report have more information.
Alvarenga said Pro-Busqueda has confirmed the identities of about 300 children, and continues to locate about 10 children each year. The work of Pro-Busqueda focuses on investigations to give families closure, present cases of disappeared to the courts, and provide psycho-social support to families.
SIDEBAR Getting involved There are direct ways that Minnesota citizens can aid this human rights battle, said Alvarenga. Suggestions given in a hand-out distributed at the talk include: - Donate material to support the investigation team. Pro-Busqueda has an urgent need for video cameras, digital recorders, DSLR cameras, memory cards, projectors and computers. - Consider interning with Pro-Busqueda in El Salvador and become a human rights activist like Ester Alvarenga. - Visit Pro-Busqueda in El Salvador - Host a fundraising event to support Pro-Busqueda. |
“I consider myself a defender — no — a militant of human rights” said Alvarenga. “It is a matter of conviction and also the knowledge that it’s necessary. As defendant of human rights, you have to be willing to lose things.”
When the war ended, Alvarenga’s work turned toward finding the disappeared children. Her job, she explained, is to empower people so they can claim back the rights that were taken during the war; to remind families that their lives didn’t end during the war. Alvarenga has been working at Pro-Busqueda since 1999. She started off as a worker in investigative research. Recounting an episode of a found child, Alvarenga said, “I cried with the family when I gave them this information. This time not out of sadness but of happiness. Because I have also cried a lot out of sadness.”
Now, she is the director of the Unit of Investigation and has been working on outreach. She has travelled to Minnesota and across the United States to raise awareness and seek material support for Pro-Busqueda. The Salvadoran government has long denied the disappearances and provides almost no help today; that, she said, is why international support is so vital.
What is the role of the United States in the lives of these children? Through investigative DNA work, Pro-Busqueda has identified some of the children living in the United States. For example, Julie Miller, a 32-year old woman living in Florida was re-connected with her biological family earlier this year. A Pro-Busqueda publication also tells of another U.S. citizen adopted from El Salvador during the war, Christopher Roulin. Creating a network of awareness here, said Alvarenga, would provide means for finding the disappeared children.
She also said that the United States provided billions of dollars during the Reagan administration to the right-wing military forces responsible for the slaughter of 75,000 Salvadoran citizens and the disappearance of children.
“The U.S. has a great debt to Salvadoran people” Alvarenga addresses the audience, “I want to thank you all for being here for that reason — so we can make changes.”
The University of Minnesota event titled “Kidnapped and Sold: The Adopted Children of El Salvador” included context on El Salvador by Francisco Segovia, a presentation by Alvarenga, a showing of the documentary Donde Estan (Where are They) by Katherine Pyle, and a question-and-answer session. The event was co-sponsored by the Global Studies and Chicano Studies departments at the University of Minnesota. Alvarenga spoke in Spanish; any quotes attributed to her in this article are as translated by Rachel English.
“I tell you this story about my family so that you can follow the string of stories,” Salvadoran human rights activist Ester Alvarenga told a University of Minnesota Audience on October 2. Her father was a leader of a leftist agrarian movements in El Salvador. Ester herself had responsibilities organizing her community and fighting injustice since childhood. At age 18, Alvarenga was captured and tortured by the Salvadoran police.
In 1980, with her own eyes, Ester Alvarenga witnessed 600 civilians being murdered in one of the war’s greatest massacres. She was only 14, she tells the audience of about 50 attentive listeners; she watched murdered people wash down the river.
Today Alvarenga is the director of the non-profit organization, Pro-Busqueda, whose mission is to find children that were kidnapped during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war and connect those children with their families.
She is on a tour of the United States to raise awareness about the still-relevant issue of missing children. Pro-Busqueda hopes to create a network of people that willcontinue to look for these children in the United States.
During the civil war, the army kidnapped children whose parents were killed or who were separated from their families when they tried to escape the soldiers. These children, and others orphaned or separated from their families by the war, were placed in orphanages world-wide. Some of those children, who are now mostly in their 20s, have begun to come forward about what happened to them during the war. The number of known cases, which was 800 in 2009, grows annually, according to Alvarenga. The Pro-Busqueda website and its 2010 report have more information.
Alvarenga said Pro-Busqueda has confirmed the identities of about 300 children, and continues to locate about 10 children each year. The work of Pro-Busqueda focuses on investigations to give families closure, present cases of disappeared to the courts, and provide psycho-social support to families.
SIDEBAR Getting involved There are direct ways that Minnesota citizens can aid this human rights battle, said Alvarenga. Suggestions given in a hand-out distributed at the talk include: - Donate material to support the investigation team. Pro-Busqueda has an urgent need for video cameras, digital recorders, DSLR cameras, memory cards, projectors and computers. - Consider interning with Pro-Busqueda in El Salvador and become a human rights activist like Ester Alvarenga. - Visit Pro-Busqueda in El Salvador - Host a fundraising event to support Pro-Busqueda. |
“I consider myself a defender — no — a militant of human rights” said Alvarenga. “It is a matter of conviction and also the knowledge that it’s necessary. As defendant of human rights, you have to be willing to lose things.”
When the war ended, Alvarenga’s work turned toward finding the disappeared children. Her job, she explained, is to empower people so they can claim back the rights that were taken during the war; to remind families that their lives didn’t end during the war. Alvarenga has been working at Pro-Busqueda since 1999. She started off as a worker in investigative research. Recounting an episode of a found child, Alvarenga said, “I cried with the family when I gave them this information. This time not out of sadness but of happiness. Because I have also cried a lot out of sadness.”
Now, she is the director of the Unit of Investigation and has been working on outreach. She has travelled to Minnesota and across the United States to raise awareness and seek material support for Pro-Busqueda. The Salvadoran government has long denied the disappearances and provides almost no help today; that, she said, is why international support is so vital.
What is the role of the United States in the lives of these children? Through investigative DNA work, Pro-Busqueda has identified some of the children living in the United States. For example, Julie Miller, a 32-year old woman living in Florida was re-connected with her biological family earlier this year. A Pro-Busqueda publication also tells of another U.S. citizen adopted from El Salvador during the war, Christopher Roulin. Creating a network of awareness here, said Alvarenga, would provide means for finding the disappeared children.
She also said that the United States provided billions of dollars during the Reagan administration to the right-wing military forces responsible for the slaughter of 75,000 Salvadoran citizens and the disappearance of children.
“The U.S. has a great debt to Salvadoran people” Alvarenga addresses the audience, “I want to thank you all for being here for that reason — so we can make changes.”
The University of Minnesota event titled “Kidnapped and Sold: The Adopted Children of El Salvador” included context on El Salvador by Francisco Segovia, a presentation by Alvarenga, a showing of the documentary Donde Estan (Where are They) by Katherine Pyle, and a question-and-answer session. The event was co-sponsored by the Global Studies and Chicano Studies departments at the University of Minnesota. Alvarenga spoke in Spanish; any quotes attributed to her in this article are as translated by Rachel English.
