On Friday, February 21, the IU South Bend Spanish Club hosted “El Salvador in Exile” with Professor Nelson López Rojas as a guest speaker.
This presentation explored the current post-war situation of this Central American nation through the eyes of an exile. In his biomithographical book Semos malos (We’re Evil), Nelson López Rojas surveys the different facets of what it meant to grow up in a country at war and what people can learn of his experiences in his country now “at peace.”
Semos malos
“Yo no tengo patria: mitos e historias del terruño olvidado”.
In 1932, Salvadoran writer Salarrué was confronted by the rest of the academics of his country in order to get him react to the killings of thousands of peasants in western El Salvador. His answer was, “I don’t have a country, I have a piece of land that I call Cuscatlán.” A year later, Salarrué published a book of short stories that tell the life of these indigenes before the massacre. One story is Semos malos, and Nelson López Rojas borrowed the name of this story for his book in which he describes that so many years after The Massacre, still, “Semos malos” (We’re evil).
Mindgames/ Juegos de la memoria
Mindgames is a collection of poems that depict the life of an immigrant in the U.S.: having one leg here and one leg in their country of origin.
Nelson López Rojas is a Visiting Professor of Spanish at Marquette University. His interests range from Latin American Studies to Translation Studies. He is currently working on a translation of a book about the aftermath of peace in El Salvador.
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