Cariño Ramirez is as peculiar as his first name – he hums a tune I haven’t heard in ages, “Amigo” from Brazilian singer, Roberto Carlos, as he washes the dirt under his fingernails from working on a roof in Yardley and turtles his face into his shoulder to dry up the stray droplets that splashed their way onto his thick mustache. He pats his hands dry with the side of his Wrangler Jeans before he takes a seat and blows the dust off of an old photo album.

“You know, a very special nun once told me that everything happens for a reason and that no matter how bad you think you have it, it’s happening to make you a better person,” said Ramirez as he skimmed through the photo album, licking the tip of his middle finger before swinging one wide page to the next. He didn’t say much about the photographs, just silently gazed at them with worn out eyes that were itching for a nap.

On May 6, 1969, Cariño Ramirez was born in Barrio San Antonio in Nejapa, El Salvador, on the cusp of a revolution in which he would play a small part in just a few years’ time. His parents, Leonel and Fernanda Ramirez, were well known in Barrio San Antonio for their stance against the militant government of El Salvador. They were active members of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) which is now one of two major political parties in El Salvador.

Since 1932, after the El Salvadorian military executed an estimated 30,000 people in a peasant uprising led by Farabundo Martí, the country was ruled by a militant dictatorship in which opponents were punished through violence. Under this regime, education and property were reserved for the wealthy and the divide between poor and rich exploited. Archbishop Oscar Romero, of El Salvador, was one of the key figures who stood up for the poor of the country. He headed massive protests in the mid 1970’s, pleading for the government to adopt more humane practices.

In October of 1979, a successful coup d’état on President General Carlos Humberto of El Salvador was carried out by a civil-military group, alarming the United States government following the recent ouster of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. In the months and years that followed, the U.S. government supplied and embraced the El Salvadorian government, funneling $5.7 million to the regime as early as 1980.

In February of 1980, Archbishop Romero published a public letter to President Carter, pleading for the U.S. president to discontinue the military aid to the Salvadorian reign, reiterating the fact that political power in the country was being controlled by the military and that U.S. support will only “sharpen the injustice and repression against the organizations of the people who have been struggling to gain respect for their fundamental human rights.” After being ignored by President Carter for a month, Romero called upon Salvadorian soldiers to not follow orders to kill civilians. Romero was assassinated the next day, March 24, 1980, while he celebrated mass.

Shortly thereafter, the country became a chaotic war-zone between guerrillas and the Salvadorian army, which received continued support from the United States. The repression against civilians intensified. Ramirez said “they killed my uncle, Pepe, a professor of the university in the capital during one of his lectures – the violence never stopped.”

Ramirez explained that his uncle, like his parents, were of the people “who said what needed to be said and did what had to be done – my mother slept with a gun under her pillow and she wasn’t afraid to use it.”

“Papa and mama were strong, good people – they never meant nobody any harm, they were just tired of seeing the military ruin the country,” explained Ramirez. “They stood up for our people when nobody else did, not President Carter, not President Reagan, the Mexican government, the Honduran government – no one.”

He described a rough childhood, one where it was normal to “walk around a dead body just to get half a bar of soap from the bodega. It was a war, literally a war in my back yard – a war that didn’t end until ‘92.”

Ramirez recalls when a death squad went into the city, looking for his father on April 29, 1980. A death squad is exactly what it sounds like – except these paramilitary officers were rumored to be trained by U.S. operatives.

“I remember someone yelling papa’s name and banging on the front door. Papa whispered to my mother to hide me and my sister in the hole he made on the floor under the couch. Whenever the military was in town, that’s where we hid,” explained Ramirez, reaching for his wallet. As he unfolded it, some small receipts stumbled onto the tabletop. Ramirez, paying them no mind, pointed at a tiny-withered photo of his parents. As he silently reminisced on his short-lived moments with his family, a single tear slowly made its way down his face.

“This is the only picture I have of papa and mama,” he mumbled under bated breath right before balling his hands into two wrecking balls and crashing them down onto the table. “Papa yelled at mama to hide and then I heard the door crash, papa’s shotgun go off, ‘hijo de putas,’ mama screaming and more and more gunshots – I was only 10.”

He needed a moment.

“That’s how I lost mama and papa…” Ramirez said as he buried his face in his handkerchief. “After that, Consuela, a nun from church, took care of us until the guerrillas came and brought everyone hiding out in the church to Guazapa, one of the guerrilla settlements.”

Unlike many other El Salvadoran boys and girls, Ramirez wasn’t forced into being a soldier – he chose to be one. His sister Lourdes, 12 at the time, stuck close to the nun that picked them up from Nejapa, eventually becoming one herself. At the guerrilla settlement, Ramirez continued his education as they gave classes to children and adults on how to read and write. He remembered being particularly interested in the conversations the head guerrillas had right before their insurgent attacks against the militia.

Ramirez described his role in some of these attacks, often being one of the many child scouts who would venture into an area to identify any soldiers on the roofs. “All I had to do was make sure the roofs were clear of soldiers and help out with getting as much supplies as possible,” said Ramirez nervously, head down as he raced his blistered fingers through his darker than black hair. He, along with a few other boys his age, would accompany the insurgents and make sure the coast was clear for them to attack but being so close to the fireworks meant his time to pull the trigger was just around the corner.

“You know, the hardest thing I ever did was shoot – no, not that; the hardest thing was swallowing the fact that I destroyed that man’s family…like they did mine,” Ramirez explained. “Understand I was still a boy and I had to shoot a soldier who I saw make a signal with his hands – I think he saw one of us. From the position I was standing in, I had the best angle and our jefe told me to take a shot – it was my first time using a gun on someone so I fired like 3 or 4 times and he just dropped. I had to check if he was really dead by checking his pulse on his neck and if his chest moved, I was supposed to shoot him in the head.”

“I saw that man’s face, eyes still open along with his mouth, I started to strip him of everything he had when I started thinking about what I really had done, I ended someone’s life, that’s it, no more.” Ramirez’ tone became somber.

Ramirez said he “promised Consuela and Lourdes that he wouldn’t kill again” over a meal on March 16, 1981. Ramirez’s lips quivered as he looked up at the ceiling fan as its shadows gyred over us. “The next day, we were crossing the Lempa River into Honduras with women, children and grandparents, somewhere away from all of this chaos when two helicopters flew over us and they killed everyone!” Ramirez yelped as he buried his face into his palms, crying violently over his remembrance of the Rio Lempa Massacre of 1981. “They dropped bombs on us, they kept shooting well over an hour – so many people died, Consuela died in my sister’s arms…we all died on that river, including me!”

After the massacre, violence intensified on both sides, forcing Ramirez to break his promise over a fight that many others didn’t truly understand.

In time, Ramirez explained that the Americans didn’t know what was really going on in El Salvador when they aided the Salvadoran government. The U.S. government supplied the Salvadoran government with weapons and supplies to curb the spread of communism during the civil war. “We had an American doctor with us that explained how Americans thought the guerrillas were the bad guys – the communists; it wasn’t their fault,” explained a more relaxed Ramirez. “We were fighting to end the 50 year military dictatorship over the country – since before my parents, everyone was being oppressed and something had to be done.”

The civil war didn’t end until Jan. 16, 1992, a year before Ramirez immigrated to the United States with his sister, more specifically to Brooklyn. “I lived in Brooklyn for maybe nine or 10 years and then I moved to Bensalem, PA,” said Ramirez as his youngest son, Michael, 3, climbed into his arms, putting a smile on his face wider than Cheshire the Cat’s.

Because of such a strenuous past, Ramirez suffers from sleep apnea and from time to time breaks into cold sweats in his sleep after reliving his past through recurring nightmares. “Thank God I don’t suffer from any major injuries or other trauma but the nightmares have never gone away,” said Ramirez. “They come once a month, sometimes twice, and when they do, I fear I won’t ever wake up.”

Today Ramirez uses his hands as a freelance carpenter and handy-man, working to rebuild a better future for his lovely wife and three children. He often helps out Habitat for Humanity in building homes, free of charge, and is an active member in his local church.

“I saw that the church were the only people on our side, the people’s side and I would never forget that; I always strive to make sure our friends from church are okay, I help them out in whatever way possible. They fought for us when we needed them most and so I will fight for them.”

As per request, some names have been changed in order to protect the identity of those involved.