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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Jasmine here.

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Speaker 2: One of the hardest things about making this show was

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Speaker 2: all of the things that I didn't get to include

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Speaker 2: in the podcast. To make this show, I went through

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Speaker 2: hundreds of hours of tape and recordings and interviews, and

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Speaker 2: there were so many details and stories that got cut

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Speaker 2: for time and experts that I wanted to spend more

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Speaker 2: time with in the podcast. So in this episode, you'll

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Speaker 2: hear from one of the experts that we heard from

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Speaker 2: an episode nine, Roberto Loberto, who gave us an overview

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Speaker 2: of how MS thirteen began in California. Roberto is a

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Speaker 2: professor of Latin American studies at the University of Nevada,

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Speaker 2: Las Vegas, and he was a huge source of inspiration

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Speaker 2: for me in making this show because he went on

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Speaker 2: a very similar journey to mine in writing his memoir

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Speaker 2: and forgetting. In his book, Roberto traced his own family

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Speaker 2: story across the generations in El Salvador, and he shared

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Speaker 2: some of that story with me.

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Speaker 1: Check it out.

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Speaker 2: And so you said your family migrated in the forties

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Speaker 2: and fifties when you were growing up. Did your family

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Speaker 2: talk about their life in El Salvador and their immigration story.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Maya Wilita was Mama t was the

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Speaker 3: first to migrate. She came, she grew up, She raised

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Speaker 3: my dad in San Salvador most of the time before

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Speaker 3: they were in the rural areas of Awa, Chapan and

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Speaker 3: in the city of Awa, Chapan, and then they migrated

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Speaker 3: to the city after La Matanza of nineteen thirty two.

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Speaker 3: My dad was then a nine year old boy and

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Speaker 3: my mama, the was a seamstress and a loner.

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Speaker 2: And La Matanza is something that I wanted to get

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Speaker 2: into in this series, and I never found the right

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Speaker 2: place to talk about it. But for anyone who isn't

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Speaker 2: aware of what it is, can you give us a

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Speaker 2: brief overview?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to remember this is during the Great Depression,

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Speaker 3: when you have genocides in Ukraine, in Haiti and other

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Speaker 3: parts of the world that are poor. And so the

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Speaker 3: Great Depression and the ships to the global economy as

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Speaker 3: it started moving away from agricultural life into industrial life,

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Speaker 3: displaced and destroyed indigenous and other communities throughout the world.

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Speaker 3: And so when I sat about the coffee economy was

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Speaker 3: the great destroyer of indigenous life. Before La Matanza, thousands

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Speaker 3: upon thousands of Indigenous children and adults were dying for

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Speaker 3: lack of food, lack of water, and eventually you say, well,

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Speaker 3: screw this, I'm gonna revolt. It was actually the first

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Speaker 3: modern revolutionary movement in the Americas, right, was organized like that.

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Speaker 3: But the story is that a guy named Parabundo Marti.

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Speaker 3: The traditional story is that he led the revolution. And

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Speaker 3: so this is how the indigenous now people's in is

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Speaker 3: SalCo and a Chapan organized themselves and thousands of them revolted,

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Speaker 3: and then the response of the state by a dictator,

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Speaker 3: Maximiliandro Nandez Martine, was to wipe out something on the

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Speaker 3: order of ten to fifteen all the way up to

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Speaker 3: maybe thirty or forty thousand. We still don't know. I've

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Speaker 3: gone to the mass graves. The bodies are still they're

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Speaker 3: iny SalCo in Awa, Chapan. And so I've talked to

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Speaker 3: scholars at Oxford who studied global violence, and those scholars

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Speaker 3: told me that in terms of the number of people

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Speaker 3: killed in a one place, in a concentrated space and

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Speaker 3: concentrated time, in modern history, you have things like World

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Speaker 3: War two, World War One, and then at the top

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Speaker 3: of the graph there's this little speck and guess what

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Speaker 3: that spec is it. Nineteen thirty two is arguably, I'm

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Speaker 3: told by these arts rich scholars, was arguably the single

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Speaker 3: most violent episode in modern history. I don't even have

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Speaker 3: the words for the weight that I felt upon me,

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Speaker 3: and I know my soul because of that, especially given

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Speaker 3: that I myself had an experience of violence and war well.

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Speaker 2: And there's so many echoes of that moment in the

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Speaker 2: storytelling of the Civil War, right the fact that the

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Speaker 2: FMLN is named after varreval no Marti, despite the fact

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Speaker 2: that that initial uprising in nineteen thirty two wasn't really

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Speaker 2: a communist uprising. It was an uprising of indigenous peoples

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Speaker 2: trying to better their living conditions, and it just happened

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Speaker 2: to fall under this sort of umbrella of communism, right

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Speaker 2: like communists revolts were happening around the world. The Bolshevik

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Speaker 2: Revolution is happening around the same time, but it's not

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Speaker 2: necessarily a communist revolution. But that's just sort of the

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Speaker 2: color that all of these revolutions get painted with me

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Speaker 2: And then you see the echoes of that in the

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Speaker 2: Civil War.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you see the narration of what happened very

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Speaker 3: different and tolt from a non indigenous perspective. However, it

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Speaker 3: was in part a communist rebellion. There was some coordination

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Speaker 3: in some places, and there were indigenous people who had

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Speaker 3: incorporated into the Sokoro Rojo, which was the communist structure

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Speaker 3: of the moment in Salvador. And you know, people in

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Speaker 3: in Sabado were in touch with people in the Soviet

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Speaker 3: Union and Mexico and organized in international kind of communist struggle.

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Speaker 3: So it was in part, but the majority of the

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Speaker 3: people that revolted were indigenous, and you know, people who

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Speaker 3: had complex reasons for revolting well.

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Speaker 2: And there's really an erasure of these indigenous stories throughout

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Speaker 2: Salvadoran history, and you know, there's under tones of racism

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Speaker 2: within all of these conflicts. I think there were several

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Speaker 2: death squads in the war, La Mano Blanca, Roberto Laisson's

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Speaker 2: death squad, which was named after Maximilian Hernandez, the dictator

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Speaker 2: who ordered the massacre in nineteen thirty two. Right, like,

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Speaker 2: these names are not accidents. They are meant to invoke

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Speaker 2: fear and specifically the memory and the fear for these

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Speaker 2: indigenous communities that were wiped out.

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Speaker 3: For the indigenous communities, but also for those of us

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Speaker 3: that revolted against the Salvadoran state in the late twentieth century.

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Speaker 3: I was I have the dubious distinction of being persecuted

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Speaker 3: by Esqualderonez de la Moerte, including the Maximiliano Ernandez Martinez

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Speaker 3: des Squad in El Salvador and in the United States

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Speaker 3: in Los Angeles where the desk squads were operating, and

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Speaker 3: you can find us in the La Time. The Only

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Speaker 3: Times reported, like I believe Hector Tobar when he was

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Speaker 3: at the La Times and others reported on this network

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Speaker 3: of Salvadoran desquad operatives that were persecuting us, shooting at

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Speaker 3: us in the streets of La and capturing people, including

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Speaker 3: women who were raped and tortured. This is why I

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Speaker 3: wrote my book. That's why I call it Unforgetting, because

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Speaker 3: a lot of the work of terror is to force

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Speaker 3: people to forget. And when you forget the bad things,

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Speaker 3: the tragic thing is that you also forget the good things.

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Speaker 3: And really my point of my book is to remember

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Speaker 3: the bad things in order to also get at the

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Speaker 3: beauty and the sublime and the powerful things that push

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Speaker 3: some of us to adopt a dream of revolutionary struggle.

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Speaker 2: Well, and it feels like we continually relive the past.

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Speaker 2: I was looking at quotes from Anfdlo Christiani, who immediately

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Speaker 2: after the war starts saying, well, we should really stop

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Speaker 2: looking back, and we really need to leave the past

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Speaker 2: in the past, and we look and we need to

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Speaker 2: move forward and move on. And it feels like in

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Speaker 2: the current moment, President Bugle is saying, well, you know,

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Speaker 2: the past is a pass.

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Speaker 1: And we need to look at the future.

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Speaker 2: Which is why I think your book is so important,

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Speaker 2: because these stories do die because they don't get told.

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Speaker 2: And I think it is a common theme within Salvadorans

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Speaker 2: in particular that we are not taught our histories. So

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Speaker 2: can you talk a little bit about your inspiration for

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Speaker 2: writing the book.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a number of inspirations for me writing

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Speaker 3: my book. I don't know if other people how other

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Speaker 3: people work about it. Some people have one motive. I

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Speaker 3: had different motives. One of the motives, the initial motive was,

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Speaker 3: you see in the beginning of the book, I go

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Speaker 3: to an immigrant prison that is euphemistically called a detention center,

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Speaker 3: right where you have children and mothers being jailed, separated

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Speaker 3: from each other by the tens of thousands. As early

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Speaker 3: as twenty eleven, Actually I was documenting this, but some

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Speaker 3: of my editors would not publish it. You want to

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Speaker 3: know why, because a lot of those editors are liberal Democrats.

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Speaker 3: And who was president in twenty eleven when the mass incarceration,

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Speaker 3: mass separation of Central American children begins?

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Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's you know, people have a lot of

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Speaker 2: mixed feelings about Obama. He was really the UH supporter

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Speaker 2: in chief for quite a long time.

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Speaker 3: You know, I'll be given a speecher a talk somewhere

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Speaker 3: at university or Harvard or somewhere, and you know, see,

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Speaker 3: how many of you believe Donald Trump is a fascist

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Speaker 3: because he caged, jailed, and separated Central American children as

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Speaker 3: young as four to three four years old from their mothers.

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Speaker 3: How many of you believe that's fascistic? Almost every hand

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Speaker 3: goes up like a pledge of allegiance in kindergarten. Then

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Speaker 3: I go, I pivot, I say, well, how many of

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Speaker 3: you would say Barack Obama was a fascist? When he did?

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Speaker 3: And he began the practice by the tens of thousands

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Speaker 3: as early as twenty eleven. And I do have the receipts.

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Speaker 3: I'm a journalist. That's what we do is investigative you

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Speaker 3: bring receipts, hardly any hands will go up and you

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Speaker 3: get these awkward So that awkwardness is in the university,

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Speaker 3: that awkwardness is in the editorial, that awkwardness is in

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Speaker 3: your newspaper. That erases Barack Obama's nefarious contributions to the

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Speaker 3: destruction of Central American life. Erasure has profound implications. I'm

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Speaker 3: glad you're talking about it because something I've learned from

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Speaker 3: the warness Albadora is that you need to erase people's

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Speaker 3: humanity in order to kill them. There's something about looking

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Speaker 3: at somebody and if his him as a human, it's

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Speaker 3: hard to pull the trigger. So erasure of memory and

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Speaker 3: replacing it with you know, just look at like what's

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Speaker 3: happening with Palestine right now. It's obvious that you know,

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Speaker 3: you want to say history begins October seventh so that

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Speaker 3: you can justify the genocide against Palestinians. And if you

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Speaker 3: look at what happens to Palestinian bodies before that, it

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Speaker 3: speaks for itself. But also look at what happens to

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Speaker 3: the image of the Palestinian prior to October seventh. It

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Speaker 3: was denigrated and destroyed in global media, and so as

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Speaker 3: it said about Oureno. I'm like, oh, yeah, I know

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Speaker 3: this one. They try to do that to me, and

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Speaker 3: they try to kill me, right, even when there wasn't

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Speaker 3: any FMLN or LEAs not publicly about it. So yeah,

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Speaker 3: there's a there's a theorist. You know, she's kind of

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Speaker 3: a liberal, but I still kind of like some of

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Speaker 3: her stuff. Uh, Hannah Aren she's a philosopher who most

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Speaker 3: famous book is on totalitarianism. It's a standard book in

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Speaker 3: political science, and she had some really interesting and sometimes

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Speaker 3: profound things to say, including like seeing memory as a

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Speaker 3: theater of political battle. You have to fight it out

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Speaker 3: in the theater of memory so that the present can

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Speaker 3: be psychically you can arm people in the psychic present

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Speaker 3: to be able to carry on a struggle, and so

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Speaker 3: and so when I came for a title in my book,

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Speaker 3: I wanted to make a contribution to the fight against fascism.

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Speaker 3: That was already clear to me when I wrote it

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Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen. The book is really about and I

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Speaker 3: don't say it in directly, but the book is really

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Speaker 3: about what I call the tenderness that survives the terror.

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Speaker 3: There is a terror that we carry in our families

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Speaker 3: and in the state, you know, and in different places,

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Speaker 3: and we lose the touch with the tenderness in ourselves.

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Speaker 2: After the break, Roto tells me about reporting on the

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Speaker 2: gangs in Al Salvador and a standoff with the salvador

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Speaker 2: In police. Yesterday, I was talking to Terry Carl who

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Speaker 2: is a scholar and a professor. Not Terry, she's fantastic.

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Speaker 2: I completely fell in love with her. But we were

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Speaker 2: talking about how the war not only dehumanized the victims

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Speaker 2: but also the perpetrators, and how the violence on both

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Speaker 2: sides really there was this there was trauma on both

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Speaker 2: sides when when you're committing violence and when you're on

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Speaker 2: the receiving end of violence. And there's a passage in

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Speaker 2: your book that really chilled me. And it's the story

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Speaker 2: that you tell about the cab driver who was a

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Speaker 2: member of the military. And I'm wondering if you can

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Speaker 2: just give us a quick overview of that story.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I changed his name to I s Sois. You know,

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Speaker 3: was a guy I met through my cousin. You know,

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Speaker 3: I told her I'm going to go to some scary

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Speaker 3: ass places, right and so she understood what I meant

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Speaker 3: and she got me this guy isis who's ex military

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Speaker 3: Because we know I was going to the interview top level,

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Speaker 3: mid level and low level MS thirteen and eighteen street

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Speaker 3: members in rural areas, in hideouts in urban areas, in

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Speaker 3: suburban areas, and so and you know we had the

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Speaker 3: police as well, who are not exactly choir boys. Sois

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Speaker 3: like any trained military person has these qualities that are

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Speaker 3: actually like for me as a journalist, helpful. He's always

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Speaker 3: on time like a clock, and most importantly, very loyal.

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Speaker 3: He and I went to mass grave sites in gang

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Speaker 3: controlled areas. We went to places where gangs came out

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Speaker 3: started getting ready to shoot at us, and we just

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Speaker 3: we booked it before getting into a gunfight with them,

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Speaker 3: and so like you know, all kinds of stuff. I mean,

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Speaker 3: he actually there's a scene in my book where I

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Speaker 3: go to mass grave site and then I returned to

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Speaker 3: the camp because you got to you gotta go to

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Speaker 3: a drive to a camp and then hike for an

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Speaker 3: hour and a half to two hours to go to

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Speaker 3: places where there's like this layered history of mass murder

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Speaker 3: and mass graves where the gang killings and victims were

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Speaker 3: buried on top of places where des squads were taking people.

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Speaker 1: Right, you don't need to do metaphors like that.

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Speaker 2: It's literally history on top of history, on top of

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Speaker 2: history's mass murders in Ossala.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I've actually traveled across the entire continent

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Speaker 3: going to mass grave sites, including like Iguila, Mexico in

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Speaker 3: Colombia and other places, because mass graves show a lot.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, I'm at this mass grave site. I hiked back.

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Speaker 3: He says, yes, he's waiting for me. He says, hey, boss,

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Speaker 3: let's go, let's go, let's go. I'm like, no, I

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Speaker 3: have to say bye to the police and the forensics

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Speaker 3: people that brought me. So in the forensics people. I

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Speaker 3: didn't listen to easis and then the forensic people just

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Speaker 3: say hey, by it later boom and they left. An

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Speaker 3: FMLIN attorney. This is the electoral period. This is not

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Speaker 3: the heroic era of the FMLIN that I belonged to.

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Speaker 3: This is the post war election f miline two different

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Speaker 3: entities that I wanted to make clear in the book.

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Speaker 1: So right, they become politicians.

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Speaker 3: And many not everybody, but many did, and kruptos to boot.

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Speaker 3: So then the lawyer walks up to me and says,

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Speaker 3: you you're going to erase your pictures. And I've just

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Speaker 3: come back from this scary ass place at the mass

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Speaker 3: graves where there's you know, cops in military there's military

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Speaker 3: tanks and heavily armed gang members duking it out so like,

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Speaker 3: and this lawyer is forcing me to erase my pictures,

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Speaker 3: and I got mad. I said hell no, And then

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Speaker 3: she had the police that were protecting me on the

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Speaker 3: journey to the mass grave site bring their guns and

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Speaker 3: surround me at gunpoint and force I said, well, you guys,

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Speaker 3: fucking erase it. I'm not going to help you. You know,

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Speaker 3: I can be kind of angry sometimes, not like I

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Speaker 3: used to be, but I was angry because they I

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Speaker 3: took a risk of my life only to have them

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Speaker 3: erase my work product what I risked my life for.

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Speaker 3: So then they forced me to erase the pictures. Said yes,

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Speaker 3: was trying to protect me from that. So then, you know,

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Speaker 3: I've known them for a couple of years. I've had

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Speaker 3: dinner with his kid and his wife, played soccer with them,

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Speaker 3: and he was a genuinely decent person to me in

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Speaker 3: the time that I knew him. And then we're at

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Speaker 3: mister Donuts, right, which is a Salvadoran franchise. It's coffee

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Speaker 3: and food. It's a nice they have good food actually.

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Speaker 2: Too, but.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a don't duncan don'ts like donuts.

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Speaker 3: And it was actually where we would have commando urbano

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Speaker 3: meetings that actually put in the book as well. We'd

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Speaker 3: have clandestine meetings at Mister Donuts about planning offensives and stuff. So, like,

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Speaker 3: you know, I'm at mister Donut and I'm with Esis

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Speaker 3: and he's telling me, hey, boss, you know, I know,

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Speaker 3: I see you're doing stories. I have stories, Like what

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Speaker 3: do you mean? They starts telling me stuff about he

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Speaker 3: was in the army and he was in special Forces,

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Speaker 3: you know, and you know he was a I mean

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Speaker 3: he was a capable guy. I mean he when we'd

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Speaker 3: be like about to have a fucking shootout with the gangs,

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Speaker 3: he would get this like laugh that I know, it's

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Speaker 3: a nervous laugh in danger. The guy like he knew

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Speaker 3: how to deal in danger. And he saved my life

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Speaker 3: literally like and looked out for me. And then he

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Speaker 3: tells me he was in the military and special Forces

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Speaker 3: and that he had actually killed a guy that I

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Speaker 3: probably knew in char Laatenango and that he was in

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Speaker 3: something called sexion Dos, at which point my fate, you know,

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Speaker 3: because if he was in the military, Okay, man, you

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Speaker 3: were in the military. But sexion Dos was the official

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Speaker 3: name of the escualdn LA. It's where they operated. And

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Speaker 3: at that point, I'm like, you know, but I want

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Speaker 3: to bring the reader on that journey because it shows

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Speaker 3: you the moral quagmire that is Salvadoran culture in life, Like,

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Speaker 3: here's a guy who had all these qualities and he

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Speaker 3: was did all these things for me, but in a

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Speaker 3: previous life he was my enemy.

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Speaker 1: What do I do well?

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Speaker 2: And that's the thing I mean. Alsadra is such a

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Speaker 2: tiny country. Everybody's related to everybody. Everybody knows everybody. You know,

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Speaker 2: you can't whether it's on the FMLN or on the

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Speaker 2: military side, like everybody is mixed in. And the amnesty

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Speaker 2: law that is passed after the civil war means that

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Speaker 2: all of these guys go free, you know, all of

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Speaker 2: these crimes go unpunished, and everyone's impugne and so it

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Speaker 2: really sets the stage for what comes after because these

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Speaker 2: guys have had their humanity rob from them in their

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Speaker 2: military training, in the things that they've been asked to

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Speaker 2: do for the state.

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Speaker 1: You know, it really goes back to this.

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Speaker 2: Thing that one of the Jesuits of Laoka talked about

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Speaker 2: might think about, oh, the militarization of the mind. Right,

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Speaker 2: It's a country that is collectively traumatized and now is

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Speaker 2: asked to move forward as if nothing has happened.

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Speaker 1: The thing that I think that I've come.

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Speaker 2: Away from this whole journey understanding is that when you

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Speaker 2: don't know and understand your history, you really repeat it,

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Speaker 2: not in the exact same way, but in different ways.

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Speaker 2: It's the same story playing out over and over again.

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Speaker 2: It's the same characters, they just have different faces and

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Speaker 2: different names.

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Speaker 3: Well put, my life is a testament to that. I

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Speaker 3: was in a clique, you know, and I did violent

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Speaker 3: things and I didn't know why because I didn't know

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Speaker 3: my history. And I learned my history little by little,

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Speaker 3: and then I channeled the energy in a way that

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Speaker 3: took me to the greatest adventures of life that I'm

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Speaker 3: still living, which is being in a revolutionary journey, being

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Speaker 3: in a truth telling journey as a journalist, and now

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Speaker 3: being in a different kind of truth telling as a author.

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Speaker 3: You know, I'm still optimistic, hopeful, and despite everything I've

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Speaker 3: seen so yeah, what her rent told us about fighting

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Speaker 3: fascism in the theater of memory really is the real deal. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean, like, throughout this series, I've interviewed, you know,

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Speaker 2: people who are human rights attorneys and who are out

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Speaker 2: there like going to war zones and you know, defending

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Speaker 2: the powerless and actually.

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Speaker 1: Doing the work.

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Speaker 2: And I'm like, man, what am I doing, like making

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Speaker 2: my little podcast? And I have to you know, continually

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Speaker 2: remind myself that, like, these stories are important, and it's

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Speaker 2: we as humans search for meaning and try to create

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Speaker 2: meaning out of the things that happened to us and

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Speaker 2: if and that's what our job is as a writer,

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Speaker 2: as a podcaster, as you know, telling these stories is

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Speaker 2: important because it's the only thing that gives our lives

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Speaker 2: and these these sacrifices and these deaths meaning. You know,

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Speaker 2: one of the episodes in the show is about my

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Speaker 2: mom's sister who was killed by one of the death squads,

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Speaker 2: and it really feels like throughout our entire family history,

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Speaker 2: this person, my aunt, died and it happened in the

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Speaker 2: middle of the war, and so it was never given

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Speaker 2: this importance. It was you know, her name was never

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Speaker 2: printed in a new paper, her name is Margher, and

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Speaker 2: there's thousands of people like her whose names never get

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Speaker 2: printed in a newspaper and whose stories never get told.

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Speaker 2: And at the very least, in this small way, I

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Speaker 2: can tell my family, Hey, this person was important, their

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Speaker 2: story mattered.

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Speaker 3: It's unforgetting. It's that fight against fascism in the theater

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Speaker 3: of memory. It's critical with the rise of fascism, or

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Speaker 3: even without fascism, with climate change alone and the seriously

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Speaker 3: apocalyptic things that are happening around the globe and even

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Speaker 3: in the northern countries, we need the right story to

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Speaker 3: That's one of my main points in life in the classroom,

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Speaker 3: in writing is the story getting helping people think about

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Speaker 3: their story in a certain way. So that I mean,

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Speaker 3: I don't have a bullet in my head because I

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Speaker 3: transform my story from one of self hatred into one

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Speaker 3: of self love by understanding my past. It's difficult one.

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Speaker 3: It's hard to love yourself as a sad about eno

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Speaker 3: to be frank, I mean like you have a culture

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Speaker 3: where a political culture, especially where for example, as recently

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Speaker 3: as two thousand and seven or ten, there are polls

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Speaker 3: that say that most people supported the exteminacion of the

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Speaker 3: gangs as a solution. It's that foundation, that fascistic history

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Speaker 3: in the culture, not in the US only or in

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Speaker 3: a savadorin government, but in the culture itself, in our families,

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Speaker 3: like in those right wing evangelical churches right now. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I have a word find as Christo Nazis, and I

402
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Speaker 3: don't I tell my students. Look, you saying, Professor that

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Speaker 3: my family that supports Trump is a fascist. I said, well,

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Speaker 3: I'm not going to call your family fascist. But if

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Speaker 3: it was my family, but yeah, it was my family,

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Speaker 3: I'd call them fascists. Put it that way. Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 3: but you know that's the story. That's the story.

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Speaker 2: After a quick break, Provetto and I talk about our

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Speaker 2: shared hatred for the writer Joan Didion and how to

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Speaker 2: reclaim our narratives.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, and a lot of the literature

413
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Speaker 2: around the salvador and Civil War, you see people sort

414
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Speaker 2: of saying like, well, why are Salvadorans so violent? Well,

415
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Speaker 2: why is it that these people can't get it together?

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Speaker 2: Why do they love killing each other? It's like it

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Speaker 2: completely misses even in Joan Didion's book, which I read.

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Speaker 2: It was one of the first books I read, and

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Speaker 2: I was like, what the fuck is this? Like she

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Speaker 2: at some point she uses like the word savage or

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Speaker 2: barbarian or something, and I was just like, this really

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Speaker 2: is how they tell our stories. And I guess that's

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Speaker 2: how you would interpret it if you didn't know the

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Speaker 2: history of this place and how for generations there has

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Speaker 2: been violence imposed on these people and it has completely

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Speaker 2: transformed the way that they can operate. Like violence was

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Speaker 2: the only way that people could operate. They were so deep.

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Speaker 2: It's the textbook definition of generational trauma. And if you

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Speaker 2: don't understand that, then yeah, it's easy to view people

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Speaker 2: as well. They're just savages. They just love to kill

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Speaker 2: each other.

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Speaker 3: Dideon features in this book my book, I see, my

433
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 3: book is the antidote to the colonizer kind of narration

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00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,120
Speaker 3: of our stories at salad. One of my students discovered

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00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:40,400
Speaker 3: that Joan Didion when she wrote Salvador did not even

436
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 3: speak Spanish. She spent about and I know from research

437
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,800
Speaker 3: she did about two weeks, mostly in the air conditioning

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00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 3: air conditioned rooms of the US embassy. All the Savadorn

439
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 3: figures in the book are two dimensional. So as a

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00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 3: student of literature, I know when I see a two person,

441
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 3: They're not really there to be human. So she went

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00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 3: to El Salvador and didn't have any Salvagno humans in

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00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 3: her book. And at the same time, that book gave

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00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 3: us what was the most popular phrase to refer to

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00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 3: Salo's up until maybe recently, which was and talk about

446
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 3: El sal b and Salinos. Terror is a given of

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00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 3: the place. That's why I've written in the San Francisco

448
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:36,320
Speaker 3: Chronicle Another Place about her. The way I grew up

449
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 3: reading her and trying to fit my life into that phrase,

450
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 3: like terror is a given to the place. As an undergrad,

451
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 3: I was like, Wow, that's deep. John Didion's deep, because

452
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 3: she is a deep stylist, but at the level of

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00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 3: understanding Saladino culture in history. I eventually woke up as ad, shit,

454
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 3: she knows nothing about us. She writes about us two dimensionally,

455
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 3: and that I idea that terror is a given of

456
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 3: the place is barbaric to do to us in narrative terms,

457
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 3: and so I like, that's why I came up with

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00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 3: the idea of what my book is really about, and

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00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:16,960
Speaker 3: that's terror and love is a given of the place.

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00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 3: Is about the terror that survives the tenderness. My books

461
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 3: primarily about the tenderness, like the gaze I give to

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00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 3: my driver. He'saiahs. I don't look at him as just

463
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 3: a killer, because my experience of him was not just

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00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 3: a killer. I meet one of the top level gang

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00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 3: leaders of both gangs of seventy thousand, and I try

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00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 3: to show the guy's brilliant. He reads the Spanish Rare

467
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:49,479
Speaker 3: Academy Book of Etymology and Language for the Spanish language.

468
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 3: The guy reads Garcia Marquez, Galliano and the Hunger Games.

469
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 3: He reads voraciously, and he's a killer. His tongue has

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00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 3: at the same time, his tongue can kill somebody at

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00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 3: one or two words, and his tongue can also quote Galliano,

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00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 3: and his tongue describes his first his love of books

473
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 3: while reading under candlelight in a maison in a shanty town.

474
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 3: So like, you know, that kind of complexity you're never

475
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 3: gonna get from John Diddy, even though she's a better

476
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 3: stylist than me. Right, but I got experience on her.

477
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 3: She'll never have it. She never did, even her California

478
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 3: is not my California. She writes about California home to

479
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 3: like thirty million latinos, and she erased us from California history.

480
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 3: So whether it's in a settle bat out of the US,

481
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 3: you know, I'm trying to write the antidote to colonizer narratives.

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00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for taking this time with

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00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 2: me to talk about your book, to share your experience.

484
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 2: I mean, it was really a pleasure to read and

485
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 2: definitely a point of inspiration for me making my own

486
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 2: series and telling the story of my own family.

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00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: So it's it's been a pleasure.

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00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 3: No pleasure of mine. You have my failty to your

489
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 3: project because the work you're doing is very important. It's

490
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 3: it's the same work I'm doing is unforgetting. Basically, we've excavating,

491
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 3: you know, the past to fight fascism and other challenges

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00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 3: in the present. So you don't have to thank me.

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00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 3: It's my pleasure and and it's it's you know, I'm

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00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 3: it's honored. I'm honored that my story, my book and

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00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 3: my own story are of interest. So thank you.

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Speaker 2: Sacred Scandal Nation of Saints is a production of a

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00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 2: ha podcast in partnership with Iheart's Mike Wildura podcast Network,

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00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 2: and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero. Produced

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00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 2: by Jasmine Romaro with help from Alvaro Sesbeles. Research and

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00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 2: reporting by Jasmine Romero, edited by sare Kevelo. Nation of

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00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 2: Saints was recorded in New York City at the Relic Room,

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00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 2: with engineering by Brett Tugan, mixing and sound designed by Pacchiquinones.

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00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 2: Original music by Golden Mines, Darko and Ieme based on

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00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 2: Patrick Hart's original composition.

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00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Erendidra Aquino Ayala.

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Speaker 2: Executive producers are Carman gerterol Isaac Lee Rose Reed, and

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00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 2: Nando Villa. Our executive producers at iHeart are Giselle Bansis

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00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:36,959
Speaker 2: and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley

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00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 2: and Paula Vadros. For more podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio

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00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 2: app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts