Rosa Anaya Perla, a human rights activist who found refuge in the San Geronimo Valley after witnessing her father’s assassination, is receiving the Hillary Clinton Award for Advancing Women in Peace and Security in Washington, D.C. on Friday for her work in El Salvador’s prisons.
When Rosa was 10 years old, her dad, activist Herbert Anaya, was gunned down in a parking lot outside their home in El Salvador during the heat of a civil war in 1987. The country was unsafe for their family, so Rosa’s four younger siblings and their mother, Mirla Perla, left the country for Canada, where they found political asylum for several months. The family moved to the valley for six months in 1988, staying with host families while the children attended the Open Classroom program at Lagunitas School.
Rosa’s mother returned to Central America to continue her father’s work, but the five children stayed in the valley. There, they were nourished back to life and given a feeling of hope, Rosa said. The school even flew a Salvadoran flag at their graduation. “I had no concept of what a refugee was,” she said. “All I knew is that we were safe.”
Rosa was already connected to the valley: when she was 4 years old, she survived a serious car accident that left her without a right arm. From El Salvador, she visited Shriner Hospital in San Francisco every year to be fitted for a prosthesis, staying with valley resident Kate Bancroft, an ally of Herbert Anaya who was involved with the sanctuary movement for Central American refugees through the Marin Interfaith Task Force.
The warm embrace she received in Marin throughout her childhood challenged Rosa’s notion of the United States. Growing up, she had viewed the United States as a monster for supporting the murderous Salvadorian military. But she learned to separate the role of a government from its people. She appreciated the lush vegetation and redwoods—unlike anything she had seen on the deforested mountains of El Salvador—and the racial and cultural diversity of California.
After six months in the valley, Rosa and her siblings moved to Costa Rica, where her mother was serving as the coordinator of the Community for the Defense of Human Rights in Central America. They lived there for four years. During that time, Rosa’s future in human rights work continued to mature.
In 1992, the Chapultepec Peace Accords ended El Salvador’s civil war after 12 years of fighting. The family returned, but found that the violence continued. One day, Mirla Perla was driving with her son Miguel and an American nun when she was stopped by what she thought were police. When she saw the two men were masked, she sped off and their car was shot at. Miguel was shot in the hip. Rosa was in California for one of her prosthesis fittings when she heard the news. Once again, the family sought refuge abroad.
They returned to Marin for another six months. It was an easier adjustment, but this time Rosa was older and felt the urge to return to El Salvador to help. “It felt wrong for us to have privileges that other children in my country didn’t have, but at the same time, we felt safe and felt good,” she said. “I personally had to struggle with how I was going to use this that was given to me so that I can give it back to my people.”
In 1993, Rosa was a freshman at Drake High School when she was invited by the United Nations to address a conference on human rights in Vienna. “Please stop the violence that surrounds the children of the world,” she said in her speech, during which she showed a photograph of her father’s body in a pool of blood. “This may be just a picture to you, but to me it is my reality and the reality of many children around the world… I’m hoping you’ll hear with your heart. I am asking for love and hope in the face of brutalities to children.”
After the conference, she flew back to El Salvador, where she finished high school. She went on to major in international relations at the Universidad del Salvador.
Now, her work centers on prisons in El Salvador. There are few resources for prevention and peace building in the country because necessities like food and health care come first. But as the program coordinator for Segundas Oportunidades, she tries to reframe how prisoners see themselves and give them the context of peace.
When she started her work, it was outside prisons with troubled youth, but she realized those on the path to illicit activity had connections to people in prison. By working with inmates every day for years, she’s been able to turn violent gang members into advocates for peace.
Rosa wants to exchange the notion of the “bad apple” for a consideration of the factors that lead people to behave violently. Then, she said, “We create an experience that is completely opposite of what they have experienced.” She has implemented education methods taken from Lagunitas’s Open Classroom program: You can’t learn peace from a book, she said.
While she is helping inmates find a job, start a business or go to school, she is also attempting to break down the system that brought them to prison in the first place. Her organization is working with Central American University to build evidence that inmates can change so that society will give them a second chance.
Since her work has been quiet, she said, when she received the email about the Hillary Clinton Award, she disregarded it as a scam or hoax. Then, Kate Bancroft called her crying. “My first reaction was, ‘Who died?’” Rosa said. As is required, she was nominated by a former award winner: Claudia Paz y Paz, the first attorney general of Guatemala.
The award ceremony at Georgetown University will feature remarks from Hillary Clinton and a panel conversation with the three awardees. Valley residents Alan Charne, Amy Valens and Marty Meade, all members of the families who hosted the kids, will attend. They have remained close with Rosa through the years. “To this day, they are still my safe place, so I know if I get into any trouble I can always go back,” she said.
Rosa’s family, who have all become human rights activists in their own form, will also join her. “All of the sudden it’s like this big fiesta,” she said.