Documenting the Salvadoran Diaspora in Canada
Through a long-term collaboration with the Salvadoran Canadian Association (ASALCA), the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project has been documenting the experiences, histories, and contributions of the Salvadoran diaspora in Canada. Through interviews, oral history recordings, and community conversations, the project explores migration histories, the political and social drivers of displacement, cultural identity, and the ways Salvadoran communities in Canada have preserved historical memory while building new forms of community life. These interviews highlight personal narratives of migration, solidarity activism, cultural heritage, and the ongoing connections between diaspora communities and El Salvador.
This research contributes to multiple community-based outputs developed in collaboration with Salvadoran community organizations. One major outcome will be a collaborative community book that documents the history, resilience, and cultural contributions of Salvadorans in Canada through testimonies, archival materials, photographs, and historical reflections. The research also contributes to the development of a future digital museum dedicated to Salvadoran migration and heritage in Canada, which will bring together oral histories, photographs, archival documents, and multimedia materials to create an accessible public resource preserving the collective memory of the Salvadoran diaspora.
The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.
“The Lasting Legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War on Environment and Health,” an essay by Amaan Thawer
Surviving Memory research assistant Amaan Thawer has published the essay “The Lasting Legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War on Environment and Health” on the Planetary Health Alliance website this November 2025.
In the piece, Thawer examines El Salvador’s ongoing environmental crisis and its deep connections to the country’s Civil War (1979–1992). He analyzes the current state of pollution, deforestation, and intensive agrochemical use, arguing that these problems cannot be understood in isolation from the violence and displacement of the war. “Much like other social and ecological vulnerabilities, El Salvador’s current environmental fragility is deeply rooted in the trauma and destruction of its civil war,” he writes.
The essay also highlights the work of the Centro Salvadoreño de Tecnología Apropiada [Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology,CESTA], which denounces environmental harm caused by industries and governments while promoting practical alternatives such as cycling, composting organic waste, recycling, and forest protection. Thawer draws on insights from CESTA director Dr. Ricardo Navarro, who has long documented war-related environmental damage. “Among the most destructive tactics employed during the war was the scorched-earth strategy – an ecocidal approach involving widespread aerial bombardments using napalm and white phosphorus to incinerate forests and campesino farmlands,” Thawer notes. “Ecological destruction wasn’t incidental; it was instrumentalized to break communities’ capacity to survive.”
Photo by Amaan Thawer during his time on Tasajera Island, El Salvador.
“Con un gran amor”: Photos, Stories, and Reflections from Postwar El Salvador — CRS/CERLAC seminar at York University, November 12
Members of the Surviving Memory team will present “‘Con un gran amor’: Photos, Stories, and Reflections from Postwar El Salvador” in a hybrid seminar at York University on Wednesday, November 12, 2025. Speakers include Adriana Alas, Giada Ferrucci, and Amanda Grzyb (Western University); Morgan Poteet (Mount Allison University); and Jocelyn Torres (York University). The event is organized by the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS) and the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC). Join in person or via Zoom.
Abstract
This seminar explores the use of Photovoice as a creative participatory research and community engagement method within the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project. Photovoice is an accessible and flexible method that allows participants to document issues, identify strengths, and direct action within their communities. We engaged with survivors and community collaborators using Photovoice to explore memory, identity, and resilience in postwar El Salvador. This presentation will show and reflect on Photovoice projects from three different communities in El Salvador that highlighted themes of mental health, community and gendered memory, urbanization, and the natural environment variously within each context and the wider historical context of El Salvador.
Event details
When: Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. (Toronto).
Where: In person – Room 280N, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University; Zoom (registration required): https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/H2uotL1VRxiLZGGTjE_qBQju
Women Embroiderers Gather Regularly in Las Vueltas
Every Thursday, women embroiderers from Las Vueltas gather in the municipality in Chalatenango. The meetings are part of the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen’s [Museum of the Word and the Imagen, MUPI] project “Cartografías Femeninas del Exilio y la Repatriación” [Women’s Cartographies of Exile and Repatriation]. The initiative is being carried out with women embroiderers in the department of Chalatenango, with support from the Surviving Memory project and the AECID.
The photographs are courtesy of Olvin J. Abrego, a young intern at MUPI who completed his bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies. He is currently conducting research with support from Dartmouth College’s Olga Gruss Lewin Fellowship Program and a Fulbright research grant.
The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.
Join Joel Martínez-Lorenzana’s PhD online public lecture about Salvadoran community music on October 15
Innovative approaches to Salvadoran community music are the topic of Joel Martínez-Lorenzana’s PhD public lecture on Wednesday, October 15, 2025. He will give the presentation, “Community Music, Peacebuilding, and Historical Memory in El Salvador: Three Case Studies,” online, starting at 11:30 a.m. EDT (UTC−4).
RSVP to jmart488@uwo.ca for the videoconference link.
About Joel
Joel Martínez-Lorenzana worked for ten years as a faculty member in the Art Department at the National Autonomous University of Honduras and coordinated its Bachelor of Music program from 2016 to 2019. In May 2021, Martínez completed a master’s degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at Arizona State University, U.S. In the fall of the same year, he began a PhD in Music Education at Western University, Canada. His research explores innovative approaches to music teaching and learning, imagining ways to transform, transgress, and delink music from practices that oppress and render diverse groups invisible.
New Postdoc Dr. María Laura Flores Barba joins the Surviving Memory Team
“Serendipity.” That’s how Mexican art historian Dr. María Laura Flores Barba describes first hearing about Surviving Memory. In September 2017, while teaching a beginner Spanish class, project founder Amanda Grzyb audited a few sessions. They stayed in touch. Dr. Flores Barba became a research assistant, joined fieldwork, and began rethinking how her work connects past and present—treating people in historical records as members of real communities.
In El Salvador, she spoke with survivors and families about what they lived through. The experience highlighted how local networks help people process the past and organize for the future. “I started talking to people, understanding what happened to them. And I loved doing fieldwork,” she says. “As a Latin American, I knew about Central American conflicts in general, but I learned about the Salvadoran Civil War directly from those who experienced it.”
Back in Canada, she revisited her PhD on colonial Mexican painters with a focus on relationships and networks, not only artworks and dates. That shift led to a digital database mapping 17th–18th century Mexican painters through their social ties, so they appear as people, not just subjects of study. You can explore the research outline and interactive map here.
With her PhD completed in June 2025, Dr. Flores Barba is beginning a two-year Western Postdoctoral Fellow with Surviving Memory. She is working on three connected projects:
1) Community-sourced photo archive
She is coordinating crowdsourced metadata for a digital archive of photographs of the Loreto Sisters, a Toronto-based group of nuns that supported community rebuilding in El Salvador. The archive will let Salvadorans identify people and places and add context and stories.
2) Copapayo Village history book
She is supporting local community leader and historian Otilio Ayala on a book about the history of Copapayo, a village destroyed during the war and the site of a massacre, with an emphasis on accessible documentation that centers community accounts.
3) Virtual reconstruction
Working with the map librarian at Western University Libraries, she is helping turn Copapayo’s community memory into structured data—where houses stood, how streets were organized, and what daily life looked like before the war. Community workshops will present and discuss previews to help ensure a faithful virtual reconstruction of the village.
Among learning from different experiences, hearing tough stories of the past and finding creative ways to represent them and bring them to the present, Dr. Flores Barba is most excited to keep creating connections and working with the team. “As a historian, I used to work individually. We just go to an archive and write our things, and we don't really share much,” she remembers. “Now, I have discussions with the team, we think together and try to solve a problem together. It is teamwork and collaborative work to the fullest. And I love it. I like people and I like connecting.”
Surviving Memory Presents the Draft Community Strategic Plan in Santa Marta
Members of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador team from the Santa Marta Historical Memory Committee, Ferris State University, and Western University presented the Community Strategic Plan to the wider Santa Marta Community. This plan is the result of a deeply collaborative process involving more than 40 community members. The work began long before the Surviving Memory project arrived, and our role has mainly been to accompany the process, listen, and help shape what was already taking root.
We are grateful to have shared this journey and to continue learning from the collective strength of Santa Marta.
The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.
Threads that Unite Us: Collective Art Gathering with Salvadoran Artist Teresa Cruz at Western
Western University will host Salvadoran embroiderer and visiting artist Teresa Cruz for a drop-in collective art gathering on October 2 and 3. The atrium of the FIMS and Nursing Building (FNB) will transform into a studio where participants will help create a large tapestry of resistance.
Participants are invited to stitch a small piece of the tapestry. Through the slow, mindful act of embroidery, craft becomes both solidarity and defiance – against fascism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, escalating attacks on trans lives and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, and the persistence of misogyny. Each stitch is personal and communal – an image, word, or symbol of resistance – woven into a larger fabric that unites shared struggles.
Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to create art that both resists and heals, regardless of embroidery experience.
This is a drop-in collaborative event: arrive at any time, begin a new piece, or continue one left by another participant. Accompanying artists Soheila K. Esfahani, Tricia Johnson, and Kayla MacInnes will also join the gathering.
Event Details
What: Threads that Unite Us — Collective Art Drop-In Gathering
When: Thursday, October 2 (10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.) & Friday, October 3 (9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.)
Where: FIMS and Nursing Building (FNB), Western University
The event is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, the Rogers Chair of Studies in Journalism and New Information Technology, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Visual Arts, the Department of Languages and Cultures, the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project, the Liberia CRSV project, and Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen. It is supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Embroidery and Historical Memory Workshop in Toronto
If you are based in the Toronto area, the Salvadoran Canadian Association (ASALCA) invites you to an embroidery workshop where participants can learn about and share the history of our Salvadoran community. All members of the Salvadoran diaspora are invited to participate. See the poster for more details.
The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.
Students from the University of El Salvador at the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Students from the University of El Salvador (UES) photographed the exhibition “Memórias del T-zumpul” [Memories of T-zumpul] during their visit to the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen [Museum of the Word and Image, MUPI] in the morning of September 23.
The exhibition commemorates the more than 600 civilian victims of the massacre perpetrated in Las Aradas, Chalatenango, on May 14, 1980.
Historical memory, community resistance, and the design of the Las Aradas Memorial are explored through architectural drawings, models, ceramics, paintings, embroidery, videos, and survivors’ archives.
The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.