Una hora con Hector Tobar Oriel Maria Siu University of California Los Angeles The blood of Los Angeles was colorless in the black- and-white light of the tunnel. The blood of Guatemala was crimson under a tropical sun. The blood of Los Angeles might soon begin to fade. The blood of Guatemala was indelible. Hector Tobar, The Tattooed Soldier The Central American civil wars, heavily funded by the United States government in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, left us with painful and traumatic memories of bloodshed, genocide, atrocious human rights violations, and a postwar reality of an impossible path to peace. In the postwar period, the inheritance of violence, the Central American states’ official will to impunity, and the entrance of the Neoliberal economic order, –added to fragmented family structures–, have in fact exacerbated the social and economic conditions that once gave way to the upheaval of wars. The streets of Central America are today more violent than they were during that tumultuous second half of the 20 th century. Resulting from this continued violence and insecurity, more than 3 million Central Americans (in a region of approximately 12 million) have left the region since the 1980s. Thousands continue to flee, escaping hunger, ever-rising unemployment rates, and the daily menace of death. Among the sites of refuge has been Los Angeles, the city now home to the majority of people comprising the Central American diaspora. Far from representing a safe haven however – as The Tatooed Soldier so vividly explores–, for many people Los Angeles signifies the continuation of the struggle to survive. A place of multiple desencuentros –or failed encounters– with that longed peace, paradoxically and in a parallel, Los Angeles is also a place for fortuitous encounters; it is the place where we have come to share and learn from our collective experiences, it is where we have been able to shatter our silences through the creation of community and Mester, Vol. xL (2011–2012) 115