Nayib Bukele Archives

May 12, 2020

La Hermandad es Primero

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha creado mucho sufrimiento alrededor del mundo, pero también ha creado oportunidades para solidarizarnos. Hoy nosotras – mujeres trans de El Salvador – venimos a informarles de la situación dolorosa que vive nuestra comunidad en estos momentos y para pedir su apoyo.

Yo, Naty, soy una mujer trans buscando asilo en los Estados Unidos. En este momento vivo en el oeste de Massachusetts, pero nací y me crié en El Salvador. Yo, Aislinn Odaly’s, soy una activista trans basada en San Salvador. Desde hace 21 años me he dedicado a luchar por el bienestar de mi comunidad en una sociedad violenta y discriminatoria. Juntas, tenemos profundas raíces en las comunidades LGBTQI+. Conocemos muy de cerca las necesidades de la comunidad trans, que ha sido una de las comunidades más vulnerables del país durante muchos años, aún antes de esta pandemia.

May 11, 2020

by Trans Asylum Seekers Support Network

La Hermandad es Primero

The COVID-19 pandemic has created much suffering around the world, but has also created opportunities for solidarity. Today we – trans women from El Salvador – come to share about the painful situation our community is experiencing right now and to ask for your support.

I, Naty, am a trans woman seeking asylum in the United States. Right now I live in western Massachusetts, but I was born and raised in El Salvador. I, Aislinn Odaly’s, am a trans activist based in San Salvador. I have dedicated myself to fighting for the well-being of my community in a violent and discriminatory society for 21 years. Together, we have deep roots in LGBTQI+ communities. We are very aware of the needs of the trans community, which has been one of the most vulnerable communities in the country for many years, even before this pandemic.

March 7, 2020

by Lupita Romero

The continental repression of Central Americans: interview with Víctor Interiano

I feel that within the imagination of most people who are neither Salvadoran, of Salvadoran descent, or Central American, El Salvador as a nation, people, and culture is a blank book with only four bookmarks for reference: the civil war, present-day mass migration, MS-13, and pupusas.

One of the greatest misconceptions and purposeful misrepresentations that has been constructed around El Salvador (and in general, Guatemala and Honduras) is a perpetual and contradictory dichotomy of simultaneous victimhood and criminality.

In the United States we are either pitiable victims of war, political repression, or poverty as long as we remain within our lands. But the moment we migrate, we become MS-13 terrorists and invaders that merit no asylum.

What is known about Salvadoran history and culture, even among progressive or leftist circles in the U.S., is largely informed from solidarity work around the 1980s civil war and interactions (between mostly white college students) and representatives of various liberation fronts.

Today, at times, it feels like many of our friends and allies still don’t know us.

This characteristic of being unknowable is not of our choosing or making. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the willful ignorance that comes with being absorbed into and propagating the hegemonic white supremacist culture of the United States.

Which is unfortunate, because to know us is to understand that Salvadorans are born fighters. Resistance is in our blood, from the anticolonial rebellion led by Anastasio Aquino in the 19th century, to the 1932 Indigenous Uprising, to the 1944 National Strike that brought down a dictatorship; we are a people in continuous mobilization for justice.