Turning Points

by Jose Chacón

This is the English version of Historias para ser Contadas. These stories are the voices of Salvadoran people. Walking along the path of migrants and refugees, here in the far north, they had to gamble on a daily basis to survive, shaping their identities. All the stories are real for those who lived through them or as real as they were told to me. These are not stories about ghosts or witches, but of people of real flesh and bones. These are the key moments when they wrote their own history; turning points that moulded their lives into whom they are today. People who needed to leave their homes, their love ones, in moments of struggle for freedom in their home country. Fighting outside the borders for their own freedom, just for the right to be. Some of them followed in detail the struggle of their country. For others, their own struggle took priority and their focus was surviving, day by day, in the new culture without losing their own. In the stories that you are about to read, I have changed most of the names and places to give a sense of confidentiality to those who trusted me with their story. I have also changed the dates in which the stories occurred without losing the historical moment that gives a specific context to each story and each character.

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