Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

Riassunto di Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

1. 1

   When Prayer Circles Meet Policy Failures and the Doctor Who Witnessed Too Much

   

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   Ten Honduran migrants bow their heads in prayer at a Mexican housing complex called Solidarity 2000. It's August 2019, and they're thousands of miles from home but still hundreds from their destination. They share stories, swap memories of American detention centers, and pass around keepsakes-scraps of paper with phone numbers, faded photographs, rosaries blessed by priests they'll never see again. This scene captures something essential about modern migration: it's no longer about single men crossing borders for work. It's about families fleeing conditions so desperate that no wall, no policy, no threat of separation can stop them. Despite a century of enforcement efforts and billions spent on deterrence, people keep coming because what they're running from is worse than anything they'll face at the border. Juan Romagoza wanted to heal people, not become a revolutionary. Growing up in rural El Salvador, he watched his grandfather die waiting for medical care-an image that drove him toward medicine. But medical school in the late 1970s coincided with political awakening. El Salvador's grotesque inequality, where twenty-five families controlled ninety percent of the nation's wealth, was cracking open. When Juan saw soldiers execute a wounded student protester in his hospital in February 1980, everything changed. He found himself drawn to Archbishop Oscar Romero, the "voice of the voiceless" whose radio sermons condemned government violence. Romero enlisted Juan and other medical students as his eyes and ears, gathering evidence of torture that he cited in broadcasts heard across the nation. When Romero was assassinated while celebrating mass in March 1980, any hope for peaceful resolution died with him. Juan continued treating torture victims, learning to recognize the signature patterns of electric shocks and cigarette burns. Then his name appeared on a death squad list. Captured in December 1980, Juan endured twenty-four days of systematic torture-electric shocks, sexual assault, suspension by his fingers. His torturers shot through his left forearm, telling him he'd never practice medicine again. They were wrong, but Juan's personal nightmare reflected a larger tragedy: the Reagan administration was pouring hundreds of millions into supporting the very forces committing these atrocities, all in the name of fighting communism.

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   Underground Railroads and the Asylum System That Wasn't

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   When thirteen Salvadorans died crossing Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in July 1980, activists like Margo Cowan and Presbyterian pastor John Fife initially worked within the system. But as immigration authorities systematically rejected applications, Quaker activist Jim Corbett proposed something radical: become "pro bono coyotes," secretly moving refugees through safe house networks. Invoking the underground railroad and the church's failure to protect Jews during the Holocaust, Corbett convinced Fife to launch the sanctuary movement. The 1980 Refugee Act anticipated 5,000 asylum seekers annually. Weeks later, 125,000 Cubans arrived during the Mariel boatlift. The government's contradictions were stark: Cubans fleeing communism received immediate admission; Haitians fleeing dictatorship faced detention and twenty-minute deportation interviews without lawyers. While twenty-five percent of asylum seekers overall won approval, Salvadorans and Guatemalans faced rejection rates of ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent. The sanctuary movement's strategy wasn't winning individual cases but overwhelming the system through delays. By summer 1981, they'd secured release for 150 asylum seekers, requiring over $16,000 in bonds and $175,000 in property collateral - grassroots resistance revealing the gap between American ideals and Cold War realities.

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   Building Community from Broken Pieces

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   Juan arrived at Los Angeles' MacArthur Park, where Salvadorans had grown from 30,000 to 300,000 during the civil war. When a haggard man confessed nightmares of his brother-in-law's execution, Juan simply said, "Something similar happened to me, too." As conversation turned to mutual acquaintances killed or disappeared, others sought him out. Someone asked about his imprisonment, and he calmly recounted his torture. In San Francisco, Juan organized therapy groups in Dolores Park for homeless Salvadorans, forming CRECE, the Central American Refugee Committee. He arranged food from church kitchens, organized clothing drives, and coordinated legal consultations and healthcare referrals. With UC Berkeley psychology students, he learned about the emerging PTSD diagnosis. Known as "Doctor" in the Mission District, he became a community elder despite his youth. Asked if he feared deportation given his public activism, he replied, "Part of the therapy is shedding our fear." His transformation from torture survivor to community healer embodied the resilience defining a generation of Central American immigrants.

4. Capitolo 4

   Exporting Violence, Importing Consequences

   Eddie Anzora navigated LA's gang landscape-Bloods, Harpys, and Mara Salvatrucha-before being sent to El Salvador for a year after multiple arrests. Returning in 1993, his graffiti crew ATR had evolved into something darker. By 2001, his attorney warned him not to appear in court-he'd face immediate deportation. As fugitive "Fast Eddie," he built a surprisingly successful life: buying a house, opening recording studios, launching Above Ground Entertainment, and becoming a Latino heavyweight in hip-hop. In January 2007, ICE agents caught him. That September, he was deported-one of nearly 22,000 Salvadorans sent back that year. Landing in San Salvador, stripped of everything, Eddie confronted his reality: "This is my life right now?" His story illustrated American immigration policy's cruel irony-people raised in the United States, shaped by its culture and struggles, expelled to countries they barely knew, carrying the very gang culture American streets had cultivated.

   Capitolo 5

   Facing the Torturers

   In June 2002, Juan testified against Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova-El Salvador's former defense minister and National Guard head-who'd lived comfortably in the U.S. since the late 1980s. Attorney Shawn Roberts recruited Juan in 1999 for a landmark civil case. Despite family objections, Juan agreed. For two days, he recounted his journey from medical training to witnessing hospital killings to enduring torture-suspension by his fingers, sexual assault, the bullet through his forearm. The generals remained emotionless. The trial became a community event. Juan flew to Washington on weekends to update fellow Salvadorans, bonding with survivors and creating humorous lyrics mocking the generals' denials. As the trial concluded, Juan and Neris Gonzalez showed their scars to the jury-a powerful moment connecting Juan to all who'd died. The jury ordered the generals to pay $54 million, including $20 million to Juan. Beyond money, they'd forced accountability-a public reckoning with American complicity in Central American violence, proving U.S.-funded torturers could no longer hide behind diplomatic immunity.

   Capitolo 6

   The Cycles Continue

   When sanctuary activists faced trial in Arizona, the judge barred them from explaining their motivations. The prosecutor used testimony from the very refugees they'd helped, like Alejandro Rodriguez, jailed and tortured in El Salvador. Convictions came quickly, though sentences were only probation. Doris Meissner, a rising INS official, compiled a report documenting asylum approval disparities and was told to "deep six it." She resigned in 1986. By 2020, little had changed. The Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols enrolled 64,000 asylum seekers by March-only 517 received relief. When COVID-19 emerged, Stephen Miller invoked Title 42 to close the border entirely to asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children. Deportation flights spread the virus throughout Central America. Guatemala's health minister confirmed that fifty to seventy-five percent of deportees on certain flights were infected, calling the United States "the Wuhan of the Americas." In April 2021, Keldy Mabel Gonzales Brebe de Zuniga, separated from her children during family separation, received unexpected news-she would cross into El Paso on May 4. The Philadelphia reunion brought tears and embraces, a small victory against a system designed to break families apart.

   Capitolo 7

   The Border That Never Closes

   In April 2022, the author met Juan in Usulutan. Now seventy, he was preparing to sell his family's home, in their possession since 1824. "The one thing that's been constant in all my years practicing medicine is that people want to talk. Their symptoms are only half of it," he reflected. In the garden stood the mango tree where Juan had hidden before fleeing in 1981. The tree had witnessed everything-Juan's childhood, the violence that shattered El Salvador, his escape, and his return. Looking at that tree, you could see the entire arc of Central American migration compressed into one life, one family, one piece of land that survived wars and dictatorships but couldn't survive twenty-first-century economic pressures. The United States and Central America share a destiny forged through intervention, migration, and deportation. Reagan's support for Salvadoran death squads created the 1980s refugee crisis. American deportation policies exported gang culture to Central America, destabilizing entire nations and creating new asylum waves. Yet within this trauma emerges remarkable resilience-people like Juan rebuilding communities, activists creating underground railroads, survivors confronting torturers in American courtrooms. The border may close and reopen, but people will continue coming because what they're fleeing remains worse than anything they'll face heading north.

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