They’ve been waiting for something like this for a while.
The Unión Salvadoreña de Estudiantes Universitarios is a student organization that offers information about El Salvador’s current political scene and recent history. The group also provides discussions for students of Salvadoran origin who are interested in learning more about their culture.
Fifth-year chemistry student Nancy Zuniga has found in USEU the answers to many of her questions about her past.
“Our identity is so fragmented,” she said. “This is very unique to us to be able to learn and talk to other people that have gone through the same story. It sounds so cliche, but it’s really a dream come true for me. It just feels like home, and that’s a great feeling, especially in a university setting.”
This organization is “one of the first of its kind,” said Ivan Peña, a California State University, Los Angeles graduate student and a board member at USEU’s statewide level.
Ernie Zavaleta, USEU signatory and third-year political science student, said that motivation to start a group like USEU was drawn from the fact that the Latino groups offered by UCLA and other college campuses are not specific enough to truly serve Salvadoran students.
“Nothing was reflective of our generation,” he said. “This was an opportunity to create something that was for us.”
The self-motivation that it takes to found a binational organization for students, maintain involvement in the current events of another country and give a voice to a generation that knows only pieces of its own history is rooted in its members.
Zuniga recalled gaining insight into her origins from her own research, because she couldn’t get much out of her mother, before becoming a dedicated member of USEU this fall.
“When I first heard about it, it drew me in right away,” Zuniga said. “A lot of our generation doesn’t know what really happened. This brings us together to talk about issues that we haven’t had the space to discuss.”
Zavaleta went through a similar experience with his father. He said that many of these students’ parents came to the United States from El Salvador during the civil war that lasted from 1980-1992. Their experiences, however, are often not passed on to their children.
“There are problems like postwar trauma,” Zavaleta said. “Our parents have things in the backs of their heads but didn’t want to tell us our stories, because to recall those memories would be traumatizing.”
One of the stories his father did tell him, he said, involved a couple on a bus being brutally slaughtered by Salvadoran government troops because they didn’t have their identification cards with them during a routine ID check.
As a result, involvement in the creation of USEU at UCLA and other universities has become part of “a big wake-up call to discover who you really are,” Zavaleta said.
The young organization, officially founded in 2007, focuses on educating and encouraging Salvadoran students, both in the United States and at four universities in El Salvador, to preserve their history and play an active role in the Salvadoran community.
“A lot of the issues of students in El Salvador are similar to the ones experienced over here,” Peña said. “Lack of access to education, tuition. There’s the plight of not having an identity in the U.S. We’re trying to rescue that identity.”
He added that “constant communication” between the two nations’ chapters has helped USEU to flourish.
Peña said he is responsible for putting together a delegation of USEU members who will travel to El Salvador at the end of February as official pre-electoral observers.
The Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, a conservative party that founded death squads during the civil war, has been in power since 1989. The capabilities of ARENA are well-known by the Salvadoran people, but Zavaleta said the party may be voted out of office. He called the March 2009 election “the most important in El Salvador’s history,” and he expects a revolutionary movement.
Though it is too dangerous for the delegation to go in March, Zavaleta said, late February offers them an active agenda: meeting up with different sectors of workers’ unions, displaced communities and members of USEU in El Salvador as well as visiting the legislative assembly.
“As students, you can still make an impact,” Peña said. “Our main message to the Salvadoran people is: Don’t go to the polls fearing anything. As Salvadoran students in the U.S., we support their right to vote freely without fear of repercussion.”
Besides preparations for the delegation, USEU meetings consist of discussions about Salvadoran politics or history to tie current events and the students’ legacy together as well as time for concerns or questions.
Zuniga added that the group has recently started a tradition of opening its sessions with the poetry of Roque Dalton GarcÃa, a Salvadoran writer.
As USEU grows, Zavaleta said that he hopes to expand the current 15-16 person membership to more students at UCLA, especially younger ones.
Meanwhile, Peña talked about USEU growth on other campuses such as UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara and UC Riverside as well as development in other parts of the country.
He shared that the organization currently has connections with students in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., though its first American home was at Cal State Los Angeles.
USEU is also concentrating, he said, on work within the Salvadoran community through access to higher education. By providing students with information about scholarships, USEU leaders hope to stifle community problems like gangs and encourage Salvadoran students to realize their potential.
“We want to transform reality not just here but in El Salvador,” Zavaleta said. “Right now, for USEU, it’s important for us to get the word out, to start work with the community, understand what our historical impact is now and to grow as much as we can.”