He came here in 1990 seeking refuge from a brutal civil war that tore apart his native country. Immigrant rights activist Salvador Sanabria stands beside a mural dedicated to the victims of the civil war in El Salvador. In the 1972 presidential contest in El Salvador, pitting José Napoleón Duarte against Col. Arturo Armando Molina, a sudden power outage caused election polls to shut down. The colonel’s victory was denounced internationally as fraud, helping to set the stage for the 12-year civil war that broke out in 1980 and ultimately took 75,000 lives. His father, who was kidnapped Usulután, El Salvador, was among the 8,000 Salvadorans who disappeared during the 1980-92 war.

Source: Los Angeles Times October 28, 2020 13:02 UTC