Enrique's Writings

 In Canada, Easter is celebrated, not commemorated. It’s a time of sweetness and joy, marked by hot-cross buns and chocolate eggs left behind by a cheerful rabbit. The origins of this celebration, however, reach far back, long before Christianity. In the Northern Hemisphere, Easter echoes ancient traditions linked to Ishtar, the Mesopotamian Akkadian goddess of love, fertility, and war, venerated as the “Queen of Heaven” and associated with the planet Venus. At its heart, Easter is about renewal, the awakening of spring, the return of life after a long, cold winter. In El Salvador, things were very different. We didn’t celebrate Easter. We commemorated Holy Week. It was a time devoted to the commemoration of Christ’s martyrdom. It was solemn, somber, and filled with silent reverence. There were long masses and slow processions. Sonsonate is one of the places in El Salvador where Holy Week commemorations are known for their historical significance. It was a place where the symbols o...

My grandmother Virginia, my mom’s mom, had a deep and enviable devotion to the Catholic faith. In Chinameca, our small town, the leadership she shared with her husband, my grandfather Miguel Enrique, from whom I was named after, made her an influential figure in many decisions surrounding church life. Although my grandfather wasn’t particularly devout, he rarely attended Mass or any other religious services, his voice carried remarkable weight. So much so that Father Montesinos and later Father Ventura often relied on my grandparents’ judgment when making important decisions about church events. I was about seven years old when I first witnessed the preparations for the Good Friday procession during Holy Week. That year, however, something unexpected happened. One afternoon, I was sitting in my grandparents’ living room, absorbed in old comics, my grandfather, who was a typographer who owns the only printing press in town, had collected over the years, from the pages from Sunday papers...

Lisa, a young Trinidadian immigrant living in Toronto, moved to Montreal with one clear intention: to learn French, a dream she had carried since childhood. Back in Charlotteville, in Tobago, she used to play with the children of Haitians working there. She had always thought the way they spoke to one another was beautiful, melodic. After, her family immigrated to Toronto, her connection to her French-speaking friends quietly faded away. After graduating from University of Toronto, Lisa decided to dedicate a year of her life to learning a second language. What better way than to immerse herself completely? She moved to Montreal, determined to live and work in a French-speaking environment. She relished her newfound independence as a university graduate. For the first time, she truly felt free, eager to explore her adopted country and embrace a new, official Canadian language. Montreal, one of Canada’s most vibrant bilingual cities, seemed perfectly suited to help her become the biling...

Definition: A chafarote is a broad, short, and often curved sword. Informally, particularly in Central America, it is used as a derogatory term for a crude, ignorant, or uneducated soldier or officer, often referring to a pompous member of the military. That is to say, every single one of them. To friends who ask me, “What’s happening in my homeland, El Salvador?” The situation is complex, painful and deeply rooted in history. To understand it, we have to look back a bit. Since independence from Spain in 1821, Central America has experienced a strong concentration of power in the hands of the Creole families who led the break from the crown. That power was never truly shared. It remained with the elites who controlled the land and the means of production. El Salvador was no exception. Even so, there was something resembling a bourgeois democracy, with civilian presidents backed, and monitored, by the military establishment. Everything changed in December 1931. The Minister of Defense o...