As a kid, Mariella Guzman loved playing with her cousins on the quiet, sand-colored street where she lived. They spent their time playing imaginative games, pretending to be witches in Mariella’s backyard garden (which worried her Catholic mother) or acting out the Narnia books on her grandmother’s front porch down the street, shaded by the dark red house. Concealed from the world on the periphery of their dead-end street, Mariella and her sister would hide from the cars that would occasionally venture down.
This was Mariella’s childhood in El Salvador. Now she lives in Eugene, where she loves writing poems and listening to music. Through her poetry and after-school activities, this 15-year-old strives to make a difference in the world for Hispanic communities like hers.
“Right now my country is struggling, and I want to make the world a better place,” Mariella said.
The Guzman family lived in Santa Tecla, …