The ‘Pride of El Salvador’

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Menjivar jokes that he may not remember what he ate for lunch yesterday, but there are some events you just never forget, some events that are so indelible they become a part of you, like blood. He was a child standing there in the street when, suddenly, people went scrambling everywhere like ants, as staccato fire was heard off in the distance:

“We heard these gun shots fired and people started running all over the streets. Someone grabbed me and pulled me in my mother’s restaurant. We closed the doors in the restaurant and we were there for two weeks. We lived there for two weeks; I remember we couldn’t go back to our house. We turned the tables over and pressed them against the walls and the doors to prevent the bullets from coming in.

“The gas station down the street, I remember, blew up. I heard the machine guns and explosions outside, but I was so young, around 9 years old. When you’re that young, you don’t know. I was afraid, but not that much afraid. I didn’t care about anything but playing with my little cars and fighting with my sister and brother. My parents are strong, good people. They tried to make something happen, and I remember they tried to make everything positive. My parents tried as much as they could to insulate us from what was really going on, but you heard it every day and night -- the bullets and the explosions. The ground used to shake when a bomb would go off.

“There were five of us in this tiny restaurant: me, my parents, my brother and sister. I remember people coming to the restaurant and my mother trying to help them. She’s such a special person. There was a war going on outside and she was doing everything she could to help people, but that’s my mother; she’s such a strong person. The funny thing is I was a kid living through hell, and I didn’t know it because I was a kid.”

It did get scary, though. One night, as the family huddled together bracing for what came next, the doorknob of the restaurant began to rattle. Menjivar’s mother apprehensively approached and asked who it was at the door, through the turned-over tables and pock marks and bullet holes. It wound up being government soldiers looking for food. Two nights later, the doorknob jiggled again. This time, it was the Junta. What struck Menjivar was how young they were: 15- and 16-year-old kids with guns.

“I remember the soldiers and the Junta telling my mother, ‘Don’t worry, madam, we’re looking for food,’” Menjivar recalled. “My mother sold them food, and she sold it to them at the regular price. Everyone around us was asking a lot of money for simple, everyday things. My mother didn’t, and I think that’s what saved her life, because one of the soldiers told my mother, ‘You know madam, you keep selling stuff at the regular price and if you weren’t selling at the right price, we would kill you.’ That, to me, was the scariest of everything.”

Eventually, Menjivar and his family peeked out of the restaurant as the firing and explosions began to die down. He noticed the bullet holes that ravaged the facade of his mother’s restaurant and how everything he once knew was destroyed. All utilities were gone. Those who remained in the area had to wash clothes in a nearby river for three months; it also served as a drinking basin and an area in which to dump waste.

It was difficult to erase the image of people he knew crying, normal people he used to see and wave to every day, their lives in tatters, stained in blood. The clean-up process was gradual and monotonous. His father and some city friends patched up the bullet holes with cement and tried to get on with their lives the best they could. Through the diligence of his mother and father, Menjivar broke free from El Salvador, and the family moved to Canada in December 1992.

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Today, Menjivar remains guarded over what happened. He will not mention his parents by their first names or the name of the city where he lived during the battle. He would, however, like to return to El Salvador and see long-lost relatives he has not seen in more 10 years. He says he never wants to forget homeland because it made him the man -- and fighter -- you see now.

Before he fights, Menjivar does not steal away into a hardcore focus cocoon, choosing instead to watch cartoons and laugh as often as possible. Part of him still yearns to be that 9-year-old boy running toy cars across a tile floor, before everything he knew was ripped away in a torrent of violence.

“But I don’t want to live like that again; no one would. It makes you see the real world, to realize what you have,” Menjivar said. “I’m lucky to be here now in Canada. I’m lucky to even be alive. Everything I do now is to have a better life. It’s why I appreciate everything that I have and everything that I do.

“Everyone has problems, and that’s normal. The thing is to continue and resolve what the problem is and then move on,” he added. “It wasn’t easy what my family did. We moved on and I had to learn a new language and a new culture here in Canada, but my family is strong and, more importantly, safe. I’m happy to prove to people that anything is possible. I think I prove you have to be happy and that life is easy when you take the time to live it.”

Then Menjivar, now 30, paused for a second. His mind raced back to a time when he lost his job at the airport. His wife was pregnant, his MMA future uncertain, but the “Pride of El Salvador” was prepared for whatever challenges life threw his way.

“I was OK with it, and the UFC called me,” Menjivar remembered. “One door was closed and another opened. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t remember everything from the war. I lived through it and suppose that’s all that counts. But I remember the good moments in war, if there is such a thing, when people were helping people.”