Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic violence and violent death.

Juan Romagoza is the central figure of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here. His story starts and ends the text and provides much structure and context for the more than 40 years of history that Blitzer covers.

Juan was born in Usulután, El Salvador, in the 1960s. As a boy, he watched as his family members suffered and even died from lack of access to medical care. He became committed to the view of medicine as a basic human right. Juan received a scholarship to study medicine in San Salvador, but his studies were often interrupted by the protests and strikes preceding the country’s civil war.

By 1980, Juan was attending demonstrations with his medical bag to assist injured activists and traveling to remote villages to provide care to rural Salvadorians, many of whom the government believed were dangerous subversives. This activity put his name on a government hit list, and in December 1980, he was taken by government troops. Juan was interrogated and brutally tortured for nearly a month, including by the ruthless head of the National Guard, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova. His torturers wrecked his left arm, ensuring he would never perform surgery again.