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, and family separations, the joy of reunion and the arduous process of reintegration.
Barnert works alongside Jesuit priest and Pro-Búsqueda founder Father Jon Cortina, former rebel fighters, and reformed gang members. She meets an eight-year-old journeying north to reunite with her mother and a young woman returning to El Salvador twenty years after her adoption abroad. Reunion includes a foreword by renowned anthropologist Philippe Bourgois, along with his firsthand account of fleeing a Salvadoran military raid, and never-before-published photos and children's drawings from the war. Told through the voices of activists and survivors, this groundbreaking ethnography illuminates the cycles of poverty and violence driving immigration and ongoing separations around the world.
Reunion Finding the Disappeared Children of El Salvador
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About the Book
Reviews
"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
"Reunión 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