El Salvador's Missing

While yesterday's post dealt with the missing from Argentina's dirty war, El Salvador still has its share of families searching for missing loved ones from its civil war. Christopher Roulin is one person who recently reconnected with his Salvadoran family with whom he was separated thirty years ago.

In 1979, Roulin [then known as Porfidio Lopez] was living in Tenancingo with his parents and three siblings as the conflict between El Salvador’s military-led government and a coalition of left-wing militias ravaged small towns. He still remembers the day when, at age 7, he walked outside and found his father dead on the side of a dirt road; he’d been attacked by national guards and left to die.

His mother died of natural causes shortly afterwards and he and his three younger siblings were left orphaned. Roulin was then adopted by a single mother from Syracuse, New York.

In 1993, Roulin returned to El Salvador on what would be an unsuccessful trip to to find his relatives. He did, however, find that his adoption paperwork had been forged. While Roulin was searching for his family, his Salvadoran family was also searching for him. In 2007, his grandmother approached Pro-Busqueda for help in finding the whereabouts of Porfidio.

Finally, Pro-Busqueda reunited Roulin with family members who had resettled in another area of Cuscatlan during the war. Roulin met his grandmother, aunt and cousins in January 2011 (no word on his three younger siblings in the article).
For the past sixteen years, Pro-Busqueda has been the Salvadoran organization most active in trying to find the missing.  To date, 881 people have registered missing-persons cases and 363 have been resolved, including 52 in the United States. Some of the resolutions have reconnected family members, as in the case of Roulin. Others have simply brought about closure through the confirmation of the missing individual's death. Finally, there is another group of cases where the individual decides not to reconnect with their Salvadoran families.