Photo By Staff Sgt. Aaron Rognstad | U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Danilo E. Figueroa from Houston, with the 451st Civil Affairs...... read more read more
By Sgt. Aaron Rognstad
207th Public Affairs Detachment
EL COCO, El Salvador - Although he only has a couple distant cousins still left in the country, Sgt. 1st Class Danilo E. Figueroa jumped at the opportunity to come back to his native land of El Salvador.
As a medic with the 451st Civil Affairs Battalion, working more as an interpreter for Beyond the Horizon 2015, Figueroa is in the midst of a 99-day tour in of his Central American birthplace. BTH 15 is a humanitarian and civic assistance mission designed to help build schools, clinics and provide medical aid for the people of El Salvador.
“I heard about this mission two years ago and was excited to be a part of it from the get-go,” Figueroa said. “I got sentimental and mushy when I knew I was coming to my birth country. Even though it has been more than 40 years since I migrated to the United States , it’s always going to be a special place for me.”
He was born in the bustling capitol city of San Salvador in 1959 to an absent mother and a father who orphaned him at a young age. After an emergency tracheotomy that saved his life at an age he can’t recall, his father took him back from the orphanage after picking up a more stable job and a new wife.
At age four Figueroa’s father died of pneumonia, and he and his step-family moved into one of his aunt’s homes where he shared a corner of a room with a bedroll strewn about on a tile floor until he was 10.
In addition to attending grade school, he worked as a paperboy selling newspapers for three cents a copy on the streets of San Salvador and would routinely come home with no more than a dollar in his pocket after a hard day’s work.
“I would buy pupusas (a popular Salvadoran dish consisting of tortillas with cheese, beans, meat or a combination of all three if you’re lucky) and a cup of hot chocolate for dinner and give my step-mom the rest of my earnings,” Figueroa said. “I couldn’t even read the papers I was selling and had to ask friends who knew what the headline of the day’s paper said so I could yell it out to people on the street.”
Figueroa had an interesting introduction to television he said. He and his friends would crowd around and pay to watch another family’s TV set through their living room window.
“We didn’t have a TV growing up, so it was a treat when we got to see it,” he said. “I remember watching the mass exodus of Salvadoran immigrants from Honduras during the war in 1969.”
Figueroa is referring to the brief 100-hour war known as the Soccer War fought between El Salvador and neighboring Honduras – a conflict surrounding issues of Salvadoran immigration to Honduras, sparked by a World Cup Qualifying soccer match between the rival nations.
At age 10, Figueroa moved from the city to the countryside where he connected with his grandmother and biological brothers: Luis, Freddy, Fidel and Carlos, outside of Santa Ana, a smaller city in the western part of the country.
He began working with one of his uncles on a coffee plantation clearing plots of land for later plowing; planting and harvesting anything from corn, wheat, beans and tomatoes during his free time after school.
“It was hard work, but at least I had a bed to come back to after the day was over,” Figueroa said. “The pay was better than selling papers and I felt better because I was now making a connection with my siblings and my large extended family.”
Unbeknownst to him, his biological mother had moved to the U.S. somewhere in 1966/67. After laying the groundwork by securing a job, she moved him and the rest of his siblings and grandmother to East Harlem in Manhattan, New York, in January of 1975.
One might think moving from El Salvador to New York would be a safe call, but Figueroa said there was more crime in Harlem than back home.
“New York was a totally different place in the ‘70s, just as El Salvador is today,” Figueroa said. “The Renegades of Harlem were one of the big gangs on the streets there just as MS-13 is here (El Salvador) now.”
By spring of his initial year in New York City, Figueroa, knowing little English and having had a hard time fitting in, was jumped for money he didn’t have by some gang members. The end result was a strike to the shoulder via golf club and a heightened sense of awareness for his new rough surroundings.
After graduating high school in 1978, Figueroa became the first of five boys to go off to college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison on a partial academic scholarship, great financial aid packet and contributions from the Alumni Club of Wisconsin. Unfortunately the Big 10 academic competition was too tough and he dropped out after his first year.
Shamed at his failure and not wanting to return home with his tail between his legs, Figueroa worked as a dishwasher and later as a cook at a restaurant on the UW campus.
He met and married a young woman named Frances and soon after had two daughters, Miriam and Jacquelyna, before doing a three-year stint in the active-duty Army as a medic.
He joined the Army Reserves in 1990 and has been in five different units, spanning a career lasting more than 26 years combined with his active-duty and Reserve time.
Central American humanitarian missions are no stranger to the veteran medic. In addition to a previous tour in El Salvador, he’s been to Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama. It was in Panama where he met his second wife Sonia, and fathered two sons, Danilo Jr. and Diego with her.
Figueroa said he especially loves coming to Latin America because it allows him to introduce his native foods and fruits to all his fellow brothers and sisters in arms from the U.S., especially the tropical fruits that aren’t common back home.
But it’s the mission that Figueroa truly holds in high regard
“We are going to leave lasting impressions with these people,” Figueroa said. “Not only by the schools and clinics we build for them, but how we carry ourselves. As an ambassador for my homeland, it makes me proud to return here and give something back.”
“To be a part of it means a lot to me and I just really love interacting with everyone from the villages to the cities to the soldiers here on base. These people look at me not so much as a hero, but as someone who was fortunate enough to have made it.”
| Date Taken: | 05.04.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 05.04.2015 11:35 |
| Story ID: | 162148 |
| Location: | SV |
| Hometown: | HOUSTON, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 196 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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