Los Angeles Times Festival of Books - Roberto Lovato, Author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family Migration Gangs and Revolution in the Americas

The Los Angeles Times has their annual Festival of Books, which is occurring over multiple weeks versus just a two day festival. This year, of course, the discussion panels are being held online. That's my favorite part of the book festival so I have a list of 9 panels I plan to watch online. Hopefully, I'll get to watch all of them. The second one was called, "Roberto Lovato, Author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family Migration Gangs and Revolution in the Americas." 

This is what the Youtube video had as an introduction:

Roberto Lovato presents an urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador in his beautiful and wrenching new memoir. L.A. Times staff writer Esmeralda Bermudez, who was born in El Salvador and raised in Los Angeles and who writes on the lives of Latinos in L.A., will guide the conversation.

And here are my notes:

The machete is the symbol of El Salvador. It is both symbolic of the agriculture era as well as the violence in the country. It is a way to represent memories: both the good and the bad. 

The author, Roberto Lovato, was always curious about his family. His father was at the center of the the criminal contraband market in San Francisco. His mother was a former beauty queen in El Salvador. She worked as a maid in San Francisco. His father used to work for prostitutes as a kid in El Salvador. In San Francisco, he got to work for United Airlines.   

Due to this airline connection, the family got great discounts on travel. So they got to travel the world for free. So he had the strange situation growing up where he grew up in the poor section of San Francisco, the Mission District. And even though most of his friends never got to leave the San Francisco area, he got to travel to Europe and South America. He had rich hands, but lived in the hood. His travels and love of books while living in the hood gave him a unique perspective.

He was called Mr. Peabody as a kid, because he was in the gifted program. Around the 6th grade he began to rebel and the nick name Tito took the place of Mr. Peabody. He went around robbing people and stealing cars. 

He started to write his book 15 years ago by visiting an immigration prison in Texas. He noted that it was President Obama who started the caging of children. In El Salvador, terror is a fact of life. But love is also a given in the country. There is also great food in the country such as pupusas. The country had to deal with the violence of a military dictatorship. He learned that the United States was involved in supporting this dictatorship. He got pissed off and joined the FMLN guerilla movement. He now wants to be a poet warrior, one who is committed to the revolution. He thinks that many of those who were part of the FMLN guerilla movement have sold out once the movement became a political party after the peace accords.

My opinion: I need to read this book.