"The Wind Knows My Name" by Isabel Allende

I just finished this remarkable novel that intertwines the lives of Samuel Adler, placed in a Kindertransport train and sent to England by his mother, days after Kristallnacht in Austria, where he loses his father in a rampage of destruction and cruelty by the Nazis, and Anita Diaz, a young child from El Salvador who many years later was ripped from the arms of her mother as they fled across the border into the US.

As Isabel Allende points out eloquently in this novel, many children have been ripped away from the arms of their parents: Black children during the times of slavery in the US, Indigenous children when they were sent to orphanages or to Christian based schools in Canada, the US and Australia....and certainly the children from Central America who, until 2017, were separated cruelly from their parents on the orders of the US Administration and in many cases, were placed in cages as a deterrent for others thinking about crossing the border in the same way. Many of them have not been accounted for.

Here is the interesting thing about the plight of refugees from Latin American countries seeking a new life in the US, so topical now with talks about a "border wall" to keep them out, like they are savages to be kept at bay.

The flight of the refugees really began to swell in the aftermath of the military regime's atrocities in El Salvador, which was backed by the US administration. In fact, many Latin American regimes were backed by the US, financially and with the assistance of military advisors. So here is the irony: refugees fleeing from their home countries to save themselves from despotic regimes that were heavily supported (and funded) by the US government.

The massacre of El Mozote in 1981 was highlighted in Allende's novel. What is little known and has just come to light is that Army Sergeant Major Allen Bruce Hazelwood accompanied the Batallón Atlácatl in December 1981 during the operation in the Departamento Morazán — and was on site in El Mozote. There is evidence that Hazelwood had knowledge of the military's mission. It is this massacre , of over 1000 people, men, women and children that is the springboard for the refugees' flight mentioned in this novel.

Before we start building walls and treating those fleeing regimes like this as criminals, we should carefully examine why this flood began in the first place. We need to uncover the truth, as unpleasant as that may be.

And then we need to exercise both justice and compassion.