Across San Francisco’s Mission District, many walls are covered in brightly painted murals – and nowhere more so than Balmy Alley.  Here, we meet musician and SF native La Doña, who connects the story of Salvadorans finding refuge in the Mission in the 1980s to the continuing struggle of the Latino community to try and preserve their San Francisco neighborhood in the face of relentless gentrification.  

We wind back in time, learning about the deep connections between El Salvador’s coffee oligarchy, San Francisco’s early 20th century coffee businesses, and the brutal exploitation of Salvadoran workers. When Civil War erupts in 1979, thousands of refugees fled north from El Salvador arrive in SF.

Among the refugees arriving from El Salvador to settle in San Francisco was poet Jorge Argueta. He tells us about the pain of his exile – but also how he found a new family in the Mission, where every weekend huge crowds gathered to demand asylum for Central American refugees, finally leading San Francisco to declare itself a Sanctuary City in 1985.