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"This is a profound and moving exploration of the causes of the separation of thousands of children from their parents and relatives during the civil war in El Salvador, and of the efforts of a small nongovernmental group, Pro-Búsqueda, to find them and to support both the childrens' and families' choices to be reunified. The author's engagement with each child or family and her writing is informed by her immense compassion and care as well as by her human rights and medical training."—Thomas J. White, coeditor of Silent Witness: Forensic DNA Analysis in Criminal Investigations and Humanitarian Disasters
"Reunion reveals the lesser-known separations that have shaped many Salvadoran families. The stories in the book are rich, powerful, and deeply moving. Reading these unfiltered stories in the voices of the people who have suffered infinite pain is impactful. Elizabeth Barnert's writing is eminently engaging, accessible, and poignant."—Cecilia Menjívar, Professor, Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
List of contents
Contents
Author’s Note
Foreword: Historical Accountability for Crimes Against
Humanity in El Salvador, by Philippe Bourgois
Introduction
Part 1 Pro-Búsqueda and the DNA Bank
(Summer 2005)
1. Arriving
2. Guarjila with Father Jon
3. At the Nunnery
4. Guerrilleras
5. Morazán
6. Gunshots
7. Sonsonate with Ceci and Lucio
8. Fathers
9. Sonia’s Reunion
10. Carmen’s Reunion
11. Suchitoto with María Inés
12. Isabel and Gloria’s Reunion
13. Meeting Angela
14. Meeting Pedro
15. Sandrita and New Separations
16. La Esperanza
17. Coming Home
Part 2 Fifty Interviews (Winter 2005–2006)
18. Father Jon’s Legacy
19. Back at Pro-Búsqueda
20. Pedro’s Testimony
21. El Norte
Part 3 Angela’s Story (2006–2020)
22. Angela’s Phone Reunion
23. Return to El Salvador
24. Angela’s Reunion
25. Blanca and Ricardo
26. Remittance
27. Home to California with Angela
28. Berkeley Days Between
29. Angela’s El Salvador
30. Onward
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: Photo-Ethnographic Testimony of a
Salvadoran Military Scorched-Earth Operation
(November 1981) by Philippe Bourgois
Appendix B: Refugee Children’s Drawings of the
Salvadoran Civil War by Elizabeth Barnert and
Philippe Bourgois
Notes
Index
Contact Information
About the author
Elizabeth Barnert is a pediatrician and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research, grounded in human rights and social action, examines children affected by violence, family separation, and incarceration.
Summary
This captivating ethnography reveals the immediate and persisting impact of forced family separations and the eventual reunifications in communities affected by El Salvador's civil war.
In 2005, medical student Elizabeth Barnert traveled to El Salvador to build a DNA bank for reuniting families forcibly separated during the Salvadoran Civil War. Based on fifteen years of interviews and field notes, Reunion chronicles families' experiences with military attacks, child disappearances, family separations, joyful reunions, and arduous processes of reintegration.
Barnert worked alongside Jesuit priest and Pro-Búsqueda founder Father Jon Cortina, former guerrilla fighters, and reformed gang members. Told through the voices of activists and survivors, the book accompanies young adult children seeking biological kin, including a young woman returning to El Salvador twenty years after her adoption abroad to meet her mother and brother. This groundbreaking ethnography illuminates the cycles of poverty and violence driving immigration and ongoing separations around the world. Reunion includes a foreword by renowned anthropologist Philippe Bourgois and his firsthand account of fleeing a Salvadoran military "scorched-earth" operation, with never-before-published photos and children's drawings from the war.
All book royalties of Reunion will be donated by the author to Pro-Búsqueda and related causes.
