El Rescate, a 42-year history of struggle, resistance and support

Since its founding in 1981, the nonprofit El Rescate was created to fight for justice and immigration rights for the thousands of Salvadorans who fled to the United States after the civil war that bled the Central American country bloodless, killing 75,000 and killing 15,000. missing.

At the 42nd anniversary celebration, Salvador Sanabria, executive director of El Rescate, and Francisco Rivera, among other board members, reviewed the organization’s history as conceived by members of the Santana Chirino Amaya Central American Refugee Committee (SCARCC) and the Ecumenical Council of Southern California.

Historically, El Rescate was the first agency in the United States to respond with free legal and social services to the flow of thousands of refugees fleeing the bloody war in America’s Little Finger.

“The mission was to rescue entire families who in the United States were captives of the so-called Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the “migration” of those years, and which today is the USCIS,” he told La Opinion, Sanabria. , executive director since 2007. “We were a legal lifeline for those who wanted to be deported and who experienced social, political and military upheaval in Central America.”

Since the certification of Rescue in May 1981, Sanabria has served on the Santa Ana Chirino Amaya Committee of Central American Refugees, which was named after a 24-year-old Salvadoran youth who was denied asylum in the United States and deported. .

In June 1981, this social fighter was assassinated near his hometown of Amalupapa, San Vicente. His body was beheaded and found a month after the deportation.

“He was on a bus returning home and was detained at a military checkpoint; Six people who were in this transport were detained and killed,” Sanabria recalled. “Those who practiced terror against the Salvadoran people’s aspirations for freedom were killed in a rural town.”

Between 200,000 and 300,000 Salvadorans left their country and became the diaspora of a nation whose population did not exceed five million.

Although internal war was never declared, the United States-backed Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES), which commanded death squads, carried out numerous massacres and faced a response from the rebel Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. FNOMN).

Both the polarizing kidnappings and murders of businessmen in the 1970s by the radical left and the assassination of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero by the right-wing political class in 1980 – with the help of their death squads – deepened the war, social unrest and civil war that continued from 1980 to 1992.

In El Rescat, characters such as Eduardo Gonzalez, Roberto Alfaro, Oscar Andrade, Celia Graal, Juan Carlos Cristales, Richard Mendez and Salvador Sanabria not only witnessed the terror that Salvadoran families experienced in their homeland, but also fought against double victimization.

In the United States, President Ronald Reagan’s administration rejected claims that thousands of Salvadorans were refugees fleeing persecution and insisted they came to the country for economic reasons.

However, in a controversy of the same nature, those seeking a second term passed the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, which legalized 2.7 million immigrants, including tens of thousands of Salvadorans.

With the passage of this law, three things happened in favor of the Salvadorans: they saved their freedom by paying a migration deposit and getting lost in a country where they could not be found, and they even went on a hunger strike in the immigration center in Calexico, which marked the beginning of the creation of the Central American Refugee Committee Santana Chirino Amaya (SCARCC).

This strike created the need to organize to defend our rights. Everyone was wary of the “migrants” and the raids they carried out on the streets and alleys surrounding MacArthur Park, in the Pico Union area of ​​Los Angeles, or where immigration authorities believed Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans and Hondurans were meeting . . .

“The people lived in great fear and ran everywhere when they carried out their raids,” said Salvador Sanabria. “We were there to protect our people from deportation.”

Additionally, the human reality of solidarity occurred with then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of current Minister Justin Trudeau, who opened the doors of his country to Salvadorans who had not received asylum or refugee status in the United States. Joined.

“Many have decided to take advantage of this opportunity, and with the help of SCARC, we have supported those who have decided to take advantage of this help from Canadian society; So they crossed the border because they had an integration program, an education to learn English or French; They also offered professional careers or support for technical jobs equivalent to medical and nursing degrees,” Sanabria recalls.

“Many others have chosen to remain in the United States to face the INS beast and risk deportation. In this struggle we have received the full support of Eugene Boutelier of the Ecumenical Council of Southern California.

Under the financial auspices of this organization and before obtaining legal status, El Rescate was born. And two years later they gave birth to the Monsignor Romero Clinic with characters such as nurse Aurora Martinez, who was the founder, Dr. Jack Kent, Mr. Ricardo Cartagena, Juan Ochoa, Francisco Rivera, Dr. Mercedes Mendoza and Ann Mello, who received the first grant for the clinic in 1984

At the LA River Center & Gardens in Los Angeles, where the El Rescate celebration took place, Carlos Vaquerano, executive director of Clínica Monseñor Romero, was recognized for 40 years of service to the community and helping 18,000 health care users annually. services at six clinics, two of which opened in the last year and a half, in the San Fernando Valley and Montebello.

“I am honored to continue the legacy of El Rescate, from which Clínica Monsignor Romero emerged,” said Vaquerano.

During the celebration, the Jorge Nunez Public Service Award was presented to Los Angeles Councilman Kevin de Leon. Nunez worked very closely in El Salvador with Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who influenced his actions through liberation theology.

Along with other activists, Nunez founded COSIES (Committee of Solidarity with the Church of El Salvador) in Los Angeles and was a member of the Farabundo Martí Solidarity Committee in Los Angeles.

The El Rescate project was called “wonderful” by El Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa Jr. “because it increased awareness and solidarity in the Los Angeles community” after the creation of the Santana Chirino Amaya Committee.

“It’s easy to say 42 years, but along the way there are thousands of stories of people marked by the work of El Rescate,” he added. “This is a 42-year story that represents a different El Salvador, thousands of Salvadorans who were forced to emigrate in the 1980s due to the violence of the civil war and later, in the post-war period, due to an economic model that closed the agricultural industry; In addition, the violence has forced people from rural areas to emigrate to big cities or to the United States.”

Although a ceasefire was signed on December 31, 1991, the El Salvadoran civil war ended with a peace agreement signed between the government and the FMLN in January 1992 at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City.

Before the launch of the founding party, El Rescate, in the John Ferraro Chamber of Los Angeles City Hall, Councilman Eunisses Hernandez and Councilman Bob Blumenfield introduced a motion to declare recognition of the immigrant advocacy organization.