To see a translation of one version of the song, click here ; "No Nos Moveran" is the 10th song from the top.]
I walk outside and sit on the front steps afterward with a father who because he has a pending asylum case asked that I not use even his first name. With us are his 9-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. His own father, like thousands of other Salvadorans, disappeared during the civil war in the 1980s. His wife and daughter, after paying $6,000 to smugglers, were brought over the Mexican border. The man and his son, after being robbed of $6,000 by a smuggler, paid another one the same amount and crossed into the United States. The family was captured by the Border Patrol. They are free pending applications for asylum; the mother was forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor for several months.
"We had a food stall in the market [back in El Salvador]," he said. "The gangs demanded we pay $3,000. I did not pay this money. They threatened to kill me and rape my daughter. We sold all we had and fled."
He takes out his phone and shows me a picture of his former food stall.
"We only want to live in peace," he said, "work, have a home, be a family."
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