Salvadorans in Orange County Engaged in Own Struggle Over Helplessness

When Fernando Jacob, a recent emigre from El Salvador, walked into a popular Salvadoran restaurant and meeting place Friday afternoon, he wanted a lot more than lunch.

The 34-year-old Santa Ana resident was looking for fellow countrymen to talk about the violence in their war-torn country and to curse the hundreds of miles between them and loved ones back home.

“My dream, now more than ever, is to have my family here with me,” said Jacob, whose wife and three children live just outside the battlegrounds of San Salvador in Sonsonate.

Speaking through an interpreter, Jacob and other Salvadorans from Orange County crowded around tables at El Carbonero restaurant and talked about how troubled they are by bloody events in their country. All said they are fighting feelings of helplessness and loneliness as family and friends struggle with the renewed fighting in El Salvador.

“I call my wife every day,” said Jacob, who left El Salvador three years ago after rebel forces demanded the crops of a farm where he was an accountant. After he gave in to the rebels’ demands, the government’s military threatened his life.

The recent offensive by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the killing of six Jesuit priests Thursday only confirmed his belief that “neither side is fighting a just cause,” he said.

To make matters worse, Jacob said, he is worried about his wife, whose life recently was threatened by government troops. “What can I do? I feel alone, very alone.”

Others at the table shared his feelings, saying they could not reach relatives back home because of jammed phone lines and a mail service shutdown.

Antonieta Chinchilla, who has lived in the United States 14 months, said she has a plane ticket to go to El Salvador on Monday to visit her mother and sisters.

“I can’t go now,” the 29-year-old Santa Ana resident said. Over a plate of pupusas , she added, “If the rebels take over, I will never go back. . . . This violence is not logical.”

Most of those interviewed Friday said they cared more about a peaceful resolution to the conflict in their country than about the politics of the struggle.

“I don’t support either side,” said Jose Sanchez, who lives in Los Angeles and works in Santa Ana. “They both persecute people.” Then he smiled and said that someday, when all the fighting is over, he will return to El Salvador. “It is my homeland,” he said. “I love it.”

Several said they fear the slaying of the religious leaders means that a resolution is nowhere in sight.

Jacob said Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the Central American University who was shot to death Thursday, was a “very brilliant man and a great loss to the country.” Because of his murder the violence may “go on for a long time,” he said.

Next to the Santa Ana restaurant on Main Street, at the El Salvador Imports shop, manager Flor Sandoval, 32, said the news from the country has “gripped everyone in the community.” It is all her customers have talked about lately, she said.

Across the street at El Cairo Express, a mailing service that specializes in sending letters to El Salvador, secretary Miriam Aquino said: “Business is real slow. . . . People know that the mail is not being delivered and is sitting at the airport. . . . This is a real sad time for all of us.”

Dorothy Edwards, executive director of the American Immigrant Foundation, said her office has been flooded with calls and visits from worried Salvadorans. “Most of them just want to know what is happening back home and how their families are doing,” said Edwards, who acted as interpreter at the restaurant.

She said the conflict has a bittersweet side effect for many Salvadorans who are living illegally in the United States. “With the violence going on, it will be harder to deport them,” she said, adding that it might even make it easier for them to get political asylum.

“It’s ironic that it takes something like this in their country to make it a little better for them here,” she said.