Hector Tobar: An unforgettable graduate continues his journey

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We need Luis Peñate, a thinker and a fighter, and others going away to college to come back to L.A. to help solve our many problems, writes Hector Tobar.

‘We need Luis and all the other college-bound members of the class of 2009 to come back to Los Angeles one day. We need their brain power to sort out the messes we older generations are leaving them.

‘Luis is one of those young people who was gifted to us by El Salvador, a little Central American republic that has lost too many of its brightest and most ambitious people to the United States.

‘His mother, a legal U.S. resident, had spent much of her life traveling back and forth between the two countries. When she brought Luis to the United States, at age 11, he was already a precocious reader. He had just read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in Spanish.’

Read Hector Tobar’s complete column.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City