IGNACIO MIRANDA: FROM THE WAR HE NEVER CHOSE TO THE COMMUNITY HE HELPED BUILD IN THE BERKSHIRES
Ignacio Jesús Miranda was watering plants on the porch of his home in San Vicente, El Salvador, when a soldier pointed a rifle at him. He was ordered to come outside. The army needed men, and there was no room for refusal. Ignacio left the plants half-watered and obeyed at gunpoint. For years, he had resisted pressure to join the guerrillas. Now he was being forced into the opposite side of a war he had never considered his own.
He thought of his mother and sister as he followed the soldier. He was the only son, his father no longer lived with them, and much of the household depended on his wages. If he died, who would pay the electricity bill? Who would put food on the table?
Fortunately, when he arrived at the military compound, he recognized a sergeant who knew him. The man asked whether he wanted to stay or leave. Ignacio asked to go home. Five minutes later, he was free. But something had changed. He could no longer convince himself that his country would allow him to live the life he wanted.
More than four decades later, from the Berkshires, where he settled in 1982, his life reveals a striking paradox: the young man whom armed groups tried to recruit by force would spend years bringing people together by choice. Not to fight, but to pray, play soccer, and help one another begin again.
Ignacio grew up in San Antonio Caminos, a rural community in the department of San Vicente, where he remembers fishing with other children and venturing into the countryside to hunt squirrels and iguanas. They wandered freely, without soldiers or national guardsmen demanding to know where they were going. That simple freedom remains the measure against which he judges the world that followed.
Then came the bodies.
"I once counted 30 bodies along a stretch of road about a mile long," he recalls. The dead lay in the streets, sometimes without burial. "That is deeply traumatic for everyone: children, young people, and the elderly. For any human being."
Ignacio wanted an education. He had completed high school and hoped to earn a university degree, but doing so would have required moving to San Salvador, where violence had also reached university campuses. Meanwhile, guerrilla members who wanted him to join their ranks had threatened his life.
"If you want to be a guerrilla fighter, that's fine. That's your decision. But I want to be a student. I want to work," he remembers telling them.
His refusal was not merely political. It was a defense of his right to determine his own future.
"I wanted to be a student and earn a degree," he says, recalling the opportunity he lost.
Instead of attending university, he found work on a hydroelectric project along the Lempa River. He counted truckloads and kept records of the machinery operating at the construction site. He earned 380 Salvadoran colones every two weeks. With his first paychecks, he bought beds for his mother and sister and replaced some of their worn-out kitchen utensils.
It was not the future he had imagined, but at least he could support his family through his own labor.
Then the construction project ended. He later lost another job at a sugar-processing plant. Military recruitment and violence continued in the countryside, making it increasingly difficult to find work or pursue agriculture.
His sister, who had already settled in New York, offered to help him immigrate to the United States. Ignacio resisted.
"I honestly didn't want to come. I wanted to work in my own country."
Even after so many years in the Berkshires, he still thinks about the life that never happened. He imagines the livestock he might have raised and the stability he could have built if the war had not interrupted his plans.
"If we hadn't had those problems with the guerrillas, I wouldn't have come here," he says.
Eventually, he left El Salvador, traveled through Mexico, and crossed the U.S. border hidden beneath the false floor of a van.
"The van had a hollow space in the middle where they put us. Three people could fit inside. It had a false bottom, and then they placed the seats and the floor over us," Ignacio recalls.
Asked whether he was afraid during the crossing, he admits that he was.
"A little. I kept thinking, I hope this vehicle doesn't crash into another car or overturn."
His fear was not simply of being discovered. If the van crashed, he worried that the passengers hidden underneath might be trapped, unable to escape or breathe properly.
"But it was quick," he remembers.
About ten or twelve minutes after crossing the border, the vehicle stopped behind a McDonald's on the American side. There, the hidden compartment was opened, and Ignacio stepped out.
He eventually reached New York, where his sister was waiting. Just a week and a half later, he accepted a job at a restaurant in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
"The big city wasn't for me," he recalls. "I'm a country boy."
The mountains and rural landscape of the Berkshires reminded him of parts of Central America. But familiarity with the scenery did little to soften his isolation.
Without a car, a driver's license, or sufficient English, he spent nearly two years moving between his workplace and his home. He knew almost no other Latinos and remembers encountering only one Colombian family. His connection to his sister in New York depended on telephone calls to the restaurant where he worked.
He had escaped the danger of war, but he had not yet found a place where he truly belonged.
Ignacio says he never personally experienced racial discrimination during his early years in the Berkshires. He remembers being treated kindly by his coworkers and believes mutual respect helped him build relationships with local residents. Still, language barriers, limited transportation, and his immigration status created obstacles that shaped his everyday life.
Over time, relatives, friends, and other Salvadorans began arriving in the region. Some sought him out because they knew his address. Ignacio, who had spent years teaching Catholic catechism in El Salvador, realized that the growing Latino population could accomplish something together that individuals could not easily achieve alone: become visible.
"We need to go to church together," he proposed.
At first, there were about twelve of them. According to his recollection, the group gathered at St. George, later attended St. Mary, and eventually became involved at St. Joseph in Pittsfield. As the community grew, Spanish-language religious services and a dedicated worship space became possible.
"We never believed they would assign us a priest, much less that they would give us a church," he recalls.
Being able to celebrate baptisms, weddings, and Mass in their own language did not erase homesickness, but it made the Berkshires feel less foreign. Although Ignacio later left Catholicism and became an evangelical Christian, he still considers those early religious gatherings an important step in building a visible Latino community.
Soccer offered another opportunity to bring people together.
Ignacio initially played on an American team. As more Latino players arrived, he helped organize a club called San Vicente. A second team, Internacional, followed, bringing together players from different backgrounds, including Caribbean and Haitian immigrants.
His cousin took charge of one team, while Ignacio managed the other, attending league meetings and handling registrations. Eventually, the two clubs found themselves facing each other in regional competition.
"Things got really good when the tournament brought the two of us together," he recalls.
His original team won more of those matches, he admits with a laugh. But the rivalry represented something larger than a score. The community had grown enough to field two teams of its own.
Beyond the soccer fields and churches, Ignacio's contributions often took quieter forms. He taught immigrants how to drive, accompanied them to driving tests, lent his car, helped complete job applications, and drove people to medical appointments. When he obtained better immigration documents and secured factory work with benefits, he tried to help others gain access to similar opportunities.
"If I was already here, then I had to serve those who came after me."
The young man who never had the opportunity to earn a university degree now sees possibilities unfolding across his family.
His daughter helps patients navigate health insurance paperwork at Community Health Programs. A nephew is studying to become a doctor. Ignacio speaks of their accomplishments with an emotion that needs little embellishment.
"Sometimes I don't like using the word pride," he explains. "The word I prefer is grateful."
Today, he no longer organizes soccer teams or religious groups and is less active in community affairs than he once was. He calls old friends to ask how they are doing and continues offering advice whenever someone needs it.
When asked why he has devoted so much of his life to helping others, his answer is simple.
"Because others did it for me. So I did it for them."
Sometimes, Ignacio takes a soccer ball to the park with his grandchildren. He no longer runs the way he did when he played for San Vicente or Internacional, but he still puts on his soccer shoes and kicks the ball around.
In that house in El Salvador, an order from a soldier forced him to put down his watering can and step outside.
Here, more than forty years later, Ignacio is the one who decides when to go outside and play.
