Cenia Elizabeth Muñoz and her husband Angel feared becoming statistics of the widespread gang violence in their native El Salvador. After fleeing to the UK – arriving just before Covid-19 did – a university bridging course and a friendly welcome has helped the family to feel safe and hopeful once again
When they lived in El Salvador, Cenia Elizabeth Muñoz and her husband Angel would turn off the lights every evening and hide from the gangs that operated near their house. “We had to be so quiet. If they know you are listening, or watching them, you are in trouble,” she says. “Our lives were always at risk.”
One night, the couple heard gunshots and crouched under their kitchen table to shelter while awaiting the police. “A young man had been killed near our house. We could hear his family crying. We could see his dead body lying in the street.”
After the couple wed in 2014, they had built their two bedroom house on land given to them by Angel’s father in San Pedro Perulapán, in the central region of Cuscatlán, hoping to have children one day. “But the gangs grew like a plague,” Muñoz recalls. “And our home was a bit isolated. We never felt safe. Gangsters hid around our house and our car. They controlled the city where we lived. You couldn’t go to the park or visit a friend in a different city that was controlled by a rival gang. They would make you show your ID card, and they might kill you.”
In the 1980s, Salvadorans who had fled civil war in their home country formed gangs in the US, especially in Los Angeles, originally to defend their communities in deprived neighbourhoods. After the war ended in 1992, the US deported thousands of gang members back to El Salvador, where they created a stranglehold of terror. In 2015, the Central American nation had the highest homicide rate in the world.
“It’s sad, because there are many positive things about my country,” Muñoz says. “People are very friendly, the weather is almost always sunny, and there are the beaches, the rivers, the mountains. But we have not had good governance. Corruption destroys countries, and that was the case for many years. Over time, crime and poverty got worse, and the police [force] was very weak.”
One day, Angel was on his way to catch a bus when two gangsters demanded to see his ID, holding a gun to his head. He panicked and sprinted away until he reached a shoe shop where he hid for six hours. “He was lucky,” Muñoz adds. “We know so many people – friends, our parents’ friends – who have died at the hands of gangs.”
The loneliness of lockdown was the hardest part, but we knew we were safe. So, we focused on our hopes for the future
The couple knew they had to leave El Salvador to survive. Muñoz explains: “If we had moved [within the country], the gangsters there would know we came from a rival gang’s city.” They flew to Heathrow in early 2020 to begin their asylum claim, just before the Covid-19 pandemic set in, and were taken to Cardiff, where they were shifted between nine hotels. The loneliness of lockdown was “the hardest part”, Muñoz says, “but we knew we were safe. So, we focused on our hopes for the future.”
After they were moved to a small studio flat in Reading a few months later, the family were finally able to settle into life in the UK. Eager to learn English, they took online courses, and sought advice from what they found to be a “really amazing” refugee support centre, Sanctuary in Chichester.
The couple were overjoyed to welcome a daughter, Grace, in 2021. “She has been the happiness in our lives,” Muñoz says, beaming. “I have really enjoyed going to playgroups with her and I have learned so much vocabulary from nursery rhymes and baby books. She inspires us to be better because I want her to feel proud about who her parents are.”
She inspires us to be better because I want her to feel proud about who her parents are
In El Salvador, Muñoz had abandoned her dreams of training as a teacher in order to earn money at a call centre. “[Then, in the UK,] I was only expecting to do something like cleaning houses – to survive,” she says. But since taking the 12-week From Adversity to University course at the University of Chichester to help people without qualifications ‘bridge the gap’ into higher education, she is now newly confident that she can achieve her ambition, and plans to teach children Spanish one day.
Last year, the couple’s asylum claim was finally accepted and they were granted refugee status, allowing them to work. While her husband is currently a delivery driver, Muñoz is studying for an English language qualification and looking for part-time work.
“I feel like this country has embraced me. I always find British people very friendly,” she says. “I am very grateful to [the UK]. We have opportunities that we did not have in El Salvador. We have realised that we can be more than just refugees living in this country; we can be more than immigrants. We have the opportunity to take part in this community.”
Photography: Alexander Thomas
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