Re-connecting con su tierra nativa

Roberto Salomon discusses his college years in the States and his return to El Salvador as a young adult at age 24.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(You say that you really got to know Salvador when you returned at age 24. When you finished college, did you come straight back?)

I did do one thing in college, which after two years, I transferred to American University to be with my friends Boris Gabay and Jack Davidson. Because Boris came by where I was, perfectly peaceful, and said, “I’m transferring to American University,” and he said, “Come with me.” You know, I’m always very adaptable, so I left Dickinson and transferred to American, thinking—because I had been trying to please my father since day one, but of course this was an impossible task, because I could never please him. And so I decided to go and study business administration and accounting at American University for one semester, and of course it was a disaster. It was a complete disaster, because Jack was getting C’s and D’s and I was copying off his tests. So I was getting F’s.

(So you only stayed there for a semester?)

I stayed a semester and then I went back to Dickinson and finished my two years there and was completely, completely involved in theater.

(And then what happened?)

Then what happened is, I came back here for a summer vacation and my father asked me what was I gonna do now that I had my B.A. I said I wanted to go and study theater. “Of course absolutely not!! I’ll never support you,” etc., etc. So I let them know that I was going to do it anyway. And finally what happened is, they decided since I—when he saw that I was going to do this anyway, and there was no stopping me, he decided to help me, which was nice. So I went to New York and studied theater. I studied theater for two years, doing nothing but theater, trying to get a career started and everything. Then what happened is, there was the escalation of the Vietnam War at that time. This was 1968-69. People—when you asked for residence, you were sent off to Vietnam, especially if you were from Latin America. So I was sort of at a crossroads there, because I had finished studying theater. I was ready to start on a career in New York, living in the house your parents lived in, with Ricardo Rosenberg from here, from Salvador. And I was stuck in very complex emotional relationships with several people in New York, and I was depressed. And my father flew up. It’s the time that my father really stood by me. He brought me back to Salvador. I was really in bad shape. It was the whole sex-and-drugs scene in New York.

He brought me back here, and I was here and I was trying to decide what I was going to do with my life, and I saw this person who had been extremely important to me when I was twelve years old, who was Walter Benecke, who was at that moment Minister of Education. I met Walter when I was ten. He’s probably one of the people who have most influenced my life choices. I met him when I was ten because he was chargé d’affairs in Japan for Salvador when the first businessmen started going to Japan for business with Salvador. My father met him over there and brought him to the house for dinner. I remember him asking me when I was ten, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And I said I wanted to be a film actor. And of course, my father laughed, like he did whenever I said that I wanted to be an artist. And I remember Walter saying, “Why are you laughing?” This is a very early memory, I said to myself: “This is somebody who’s really—” you know, for me all of a sudden he was God. He could talk back to my father! (laughs)

He started talking to me about films, about theater, etc. I didn’t even know what theater was. He’s the one who really got me saying—after that evening of course I would say that what I wanted to do was theater, even though I didn’t know what theater was. Then I met him several times because he would always come over to the house when I was growing up. This is a person who was, what?... thirteen years older than I was. But talks with him was always like these things adolescents need, a grownup that listens to them and is really listening to what they’re saying and not judging them from their point of view. So when happened was, when I came back after New York and San Francisco, where I had been doing theater, what happened is, I ran into Walter one day and he said, “So what are you doing now? Salvador needs you.” He was Minister of Education. I said I was swimming laps. He came over to say hello to me, started talking to me. I remember saying, “You know, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m certainly not gonna live here. I’m going back to the States as soon as this stupid war thing is over.” So he let me swim a couple more laps and he came back to me and he says, “You’re staying here. I’m offering you a job. You start next week. Come see me at the ministry on Monday morning.” So I did.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.