PEPE: We were right there when the riot started, bro.

We heard the shot, man.

Pop!

(gunshot echoing) NATASHA DEL TORO: On May 5, 1991, Daniel Gomez was shot in the chest by police officers.

LUPI: It was like lighting a match.

(Lupi imitates match lighting, sirens blaring) JAIME: The policemen, they'd been doing a lot of, a lot of crazy things on the street, you know.

DEL TORO: The community took to the streets.

QUIQUE: Everybody said, "We've had it."

DEL TORO: "La Manplesa: An Uprising Remembered," on America ReFramed.

♪ ♪ CROWD: Four, three, two, one.

Come on.

(cheer) (police sirens chirping) (over speaker): Attention, attention.

This is the Metropolitan Police.

Under authority of Title 24 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations, a curfew has been declared in this area.

You must immediately leave the area or go to your homes, or you will be arrested.

ANNOUNCER: This is an Eyewitness News Special Report.

REPORTER: In the district's Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods this evening, a curfew went into effect at 7:00.

REPORTER: There had been plenty of police on the streets all day here in Mount Pleasant.

And right now, just down this hill, there are 200 more officers standing by just in case.

REPORTER: The protesters who have been tonight demonstrating against this 7:00 curfew and chanting "Justice for Gomez," referring to Daniel Gomez, a 30-year-old Hispanic man who was shot Sunday night here on Mount Pleasant Street.

QUIQUE: Word spread.

Cops shot a handcuffed man.

(ambulance siren sounds) I think it was just a moment where everybody said, "(bleep)," you know?

"We've had it."

And (bleep) just broke loose.

♪ ♪ Here in the East Coast, we're the only city where the majority of Latinos are Salvadorians.

A Salvadorian was shot, so we fought.

(talking indistinctly) REPORTER: We were out in the community today, and the debate out there is just like the one that's taking place here.

Will there be more violence tonight?

If so, why?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (crowd cheering and applauding) (people talking in background) (siren wailing in distance) (vehicle passing) (plucking out notes) (guitar and bongos begin song) Home.

When it's time to leave it all behind, discard button, bead, or bauble.

(song continues) Leave all things unfamiliar.

But be sure not to miss the boat.

(song continues) People are moving.

Migratory birds in flight.

Many immigrants land in a city of so many places.

Everyone sooner or later finds one special they name home.

(song continues) (song ends, musicians speaking Spanish) (people applauding) Oye, oye, Quique, Sami, see if y'all know these people, man.

I got a picture that's gonna blow your mind.

(in Spanish): (laughing) (talking indistinctly) - (bleep) MAN: Yeah.

QUIQUE: Remember, you were over here, right?

- Yeah, we were right there when the riot started, bro.

We heard the shot, man.

So we were there, you know, we heard a bunch of commotion.

But, you know, you know, we hear a commotion.

In those days, you heard commotion all the time.

So we hear: pop!

(gunshot echoes) ♪ ♪ (speaking Spanish): ♪ ♪ QUIQUE: And then just kind of picking details like that, just the hands.

I like this one, with just the legs of the cops.

♪ ♪ This is the same image, but you cut it up in different pieces and stuff.

So they just see different things.

This is the same image happening over and over again.

Things get lost.

Memories are erased.

And I think that the role of the artist is to create that file of memory.

Oh, (bleep), I know a lot of these people.

(exhales) Oh, (bleep), Juan Lopez is in here.

That's Juan.

God, he looks like a (bleep) kid.

♪ ♪ It's hard to believe that 30 years have passed, you know, since, since this took place here, in the nation's capital.

♪ ♪ The sounds of explosions, you know?

The, the thuggery of the uniform, you know?

♪ ♪ Which for a lot of us felt like El Salvador, 'cause that's where the battles that brought us here were fought.

(siren wailing) REPORTER: Night in San Salvador is when the terror really starts.

There's a curfew at 9:00, but that's still two hours away when the ambulances are called to the first scenes of violence.

Brutal evidence of the civil war to which the United States is now committing weapons and advisers.

(distant explosion echoes) REPORTER: The Reagan administration in Washington is backing the government drive with arms, money, and advisers, trying to halt what it sees as the spread of communism throughout Central America.

REPORTER: The latest and most bitter round of fighting in El Salvador's civil war has claimed thousands of lives.

(guitar playing) (singing in Spanish): (singing continues) LILO (in English): I was an elementary school teacher in, in El Salvador.

And so teachers, and, and union, and peasant, they, they killed them, you know, like, every day.

So there's a time when I... We, we decide to, well, we cannot live here anymore, and that's how we left.

(singing in Spanish): (different version of same song playing) (audio from second version playing) (second version continues) QUIQUE: You know, I came in the summer of 1980, and I came here because I had dared to join the student movement in El Salvador, you know, so, when I was 13.

(song continues) And so my family basically kidnapped me and took me out of the country, 'cause I didn't wanna come here.

You know, the United States was, was the enemy.

Yankee imperialism, you know?

RONALD: I grew up in the civil war in El Salvador.

We're the generation that came as children.

So we're caught between these, these worlds.

(song continues) MAN (singing in Spanish): LILO: Coming to Mount Pleasant was coming to my hometown.

To El Salvador, you know?

It was very, like, barrio-like, you know, everybody knew each other, and the buildings here were, like, mostly Latinos.

We came to Mount Pleasant because it was a place to start in, in the United States.

♪ No human being is illegal, te lo digo, compañero ♪ LILO: I remember this little store.

I go inside and find fruit, you know, jocotes, mangoes.

ARTURO: Yuca, ñame.

FELIX: Avocados and plantains.

LUPI: Crema salvadoreña, tortillas that you can make.

It's just, brings comfort at a time where you're trying to make sense, even as a kid, how you fit in and you're learning the language.

LILO: And that's what I think Mount Pleasant mean for us.

It was our little town, our little country.

(song ends) QUIQUE: There were group houses, you know, leftists, and hippies, and gringos, and Latinos, and Blacks living together, lesbian houses, gay houses.

It was kinda like a place, um, um, to mix, no?

LORI: In those days, DC was fairly segregated, but this community wasn't.

And I lived on almost every street in group houses.

BUTCH: For me in Mount Pleasant, it was the best years ever because we all was one family around here, you know?

We all grew up together.

We have a guy that lives right down the street named Pepe.

You know, he grew up with us, you know, he's Spanish.

PEPE: It was chocolate city, and my whole family was light-skinned.

But when they realized that we were the same folk, they took onto me and it was, like, the whole...

I mean, we knew everybody.

Moms up the way, down the way, "Now, you better behave, 'cause I know your mama.

"You know that I'll beat your butt, and when you go home, she gonna beat your butt."

It was that type of familiarity.

It became where we all took care of each other.

(people talking in background) (guitar playing, men vocalizing) (singing in Spanish): (vocalizing) (siren approaching) (mock-screams): It wasn't me!

(siren chirping) Today is not a good day to be a darker shade of white.

The skies are cloudy, the storm is near.

The most unwanted have understood that they're not wanted.

(in deep voice): "I'm sorry, sir, but today is not a good day "to be a darker shade of white.

"You will go to jail!

"You will be deported!

"Just thank God that you're alive today.

"Because honestly, sir, today you chose the wrong day to be a slightly darker shade of white."

(guitar stops) REPORTER: On paper, Hispanics make up ten percent of the district's population.

Most are concentrated in the district's Mount Pleasant and Adams Morgan neighborhoods.

Salvadorans are the biggest and most visible Spanish-speaking group.

They line the sidewalks and parks, bringing their entertainment, food, and beverages with them.

Other residents complain about the abuse of alcohol and drunken behavior that sometimes comes with it.

QUIQUE: It's very traditional for people in Latin America to just go to the plaza.

You know, you go to its corners, you know, and neighborhoods, and people in the afternoons just gather, you know, to get away from the heat, or just to chill, you know, when the sun is about to come down.

♪ ♪ PEPE: You started feeling this tension that you didn't feel before.

There was, it's a different tension.

♪ ♪ What happened was that we started to see a... A white movement, and then the dynamics changed.

They were bringing in cops, they were no longer the cops that had been in that neighborhood for a while, that we knew each other by name.

A new set of cops coming in.

There was a little more aggression between the cops and the Hispanics and the Blacks.

♪ ♪ And then you could see how the cops started imposing their will on people who just...

They called them vagrants.

But they weren't vagrants, we, we all hung out in the street.

SAMI: Like every neighborhood, we have our own rituals, you know?

And that those rituals don't necessarily, necessarily mesh with yours, then that's where more conflict begins, right?

Whether it's music that's playing or the restaurant options that there are, these are the things that I moved into.

But rather than that being the situation, it becomes, "So I moved here, so you need to, like, accommodate me."

PEPE: On Saturdays, we would get a bunch of drummers and start hitting.

"Uh, uh, it's too loud."

It ain't been loud for 20 years, now y'all talking about it's loud.

ROLAND: And the white folk in Mount Pleasant were disturbed.

Latinos were making too much noise.

♪ ♪ Understanding nuances of the immigrant community was not part of the training program.

And these cops felt emboldened and rightful.

RONALD: I was a skater, so I hung out at the Latin American Youth Center's Teen Center, and they would come all the time to try to disperse us aggressively.

Batons, you know, like if we were rioting or something, you know?

I got my share of (bleep)-whippings.

Um, no weapons on me, no drugs on me, got my (bleep) whipped.

It, it was normal.

In el barrio, it was constant, you know?

♪ ♪ I mean, everybody knew everybody, you know, on the street, and we enjoyed each other's company.

But we always had that fear of la chota, la jura.

♪ ♪ (stapler clicking) It just felt like you had your back against the wall, and there was nothing you can do but fight.

PEPE: It's, like, (bleep) it, it's about time that we take accountability.

And if it means riots, that's what it means.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ PEPE: I was literally on Mount Pleasant that day when all of it went down.

BUTCH: I was on Mount Pleasant when it happened.

ARTURO: The barbershop that was right beside Mount Pleasant, I went to cut my hair.

BUTCH: It was Cinco de Mayo, and they were in Don Juan's.

And the two guys, I guess, got to fighting in there.

ARTURO: I said, "What, what happened?"

So he cut my hair and I went and I saw the, what happened.

♪ ♪ QUIQUE: The story as we heard it that night, you know, because we saw it on the news, was that a man, a Salvadorian man, gets belligerent.

They tell him to calm down, he doesn't.

And what my uncle recalls was that he was, uh, in the park, he was a little drunk.

FELIX: Either drinking in public or creating a nuisance.

ARTURO: He was a little bit under the influence of liquor.

LUPI: And then it was made into a big deal, like, "Oh, you know, he was drunk."

Like, if that was justifiable for what happened.

♪ ♪ BUTCH: There was two police ladies, there was two women officers that got there first.

There was a female officer, African-American.

(siren wailing) She attempted to handcuff him.

BUTCH: They had, had him, and they had one handcuff on him.

RONALD: He had one hand handcuffed.

BUTCH: He broke away.

And when he broke away, he really lost it.

♪ ♪ QUIQUE: The official story was that he had a knife, and he lunged at them.

HAYDEE (in Spanish): QUIQUE: To this day I don't know whether that was true or not.

RONALD: He takes out his belt, and then the policewoman shoots at him.

(gun fires, sirens blaring) LORI: We got a phone call that, you know, someone had been shot.

(gun fires) And we immediately went out to the street.

HAYDEE: QUIQUE: The story got out that he was already handcuffed when the cops shot him.

I don't know where the-- I think the guy survived.

LORI: You know, was he handcuffed?

Wasn't he handcuffed?

Had he died?

Hadn't he died?

You know, Daniel Gomez, the gentleman that had been shot.

RONALD: The rumor or the story of what, what had just happened just immediately spread-- everybody was telling everybody.

And eventually, there was too many people to just stay on the sidewalk, and people started just taking over the street.

LUPI: It was like lighting a match.

(Lupi imitates match lighting, sirens blaring) PEPE: And then when the cops started coming en masse, I mean, like, paddy wagons... (imitating cars arriving) ...surrounding all the area, you know, blocking off all the other people... You, you put a rat in the corner, that rat's gonna jump on your (bleep), and that's what happened.

We, the rats, jumped on their (bleep).

(explosions pounding) (siren blaring, flames crackling) (police radio running) (helicopter blades whirring) LORI: But the first night was really crazy, really chaotic.

I think we were probably out there all night, and more and more people kept coming out.

RONALD: I was angry, I had... My, my hands were...

I remember being in fist modes, you know what I mean?

LORI: Of course, I knew a lot of young people out on the streets, you know, 'cause they were kids that, that came to the youth center.

So I just remember, you know, rallying the youth center staff, opening the doors of the youth center, offering a place of refuge.

So I grab a bottle and then I put it back.

(laughs) But this police officer comes to me, grabs me, handcuffs me, around the back.

Puts me in the paddy wagon, and before he takes me inside, he grabs the baton and smashes me in the face.

So he hits me in the face with the baton and smashes my lip, and then puts me in the paddy wagon.

And I was handcuffed, both hands in my back.

♪ ♪ QUIQUE: For a lot of us, it was kinda like reliving Latin America.

Those in power fetch the goons on you.

♪ ♪ And how do you live with this anger that makes its own decisions?

How do you cure this rage that pounds angrily in the heart of the stomach?

How do you stop my suicidal hands when the anger decides that there is no answers?

How do you talk to it, to let it know that it's surrounded?

How do you manage not to scream?!

♪ ♪ PHYLLIS: Chaos reigns in Mount Pleasant, with the violence spreading to Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights.

Mack Lee is standing by live in Mount Pleasant.

He has the latest-- Mack?

MACK: Phyllis, as the daylight arrives, once again, the streets of Mount Pleasant and Adams Morgan are calm this morning.

PHYLLIS: Mack, some of the community leaders we talked with yesterday expressed concern about the shooting that took place Sunday night that apparently sparked the initial violence.

What is the condition of Daniel Gomez today?

MACK: He remains at the Washington Hospital Center in critical condition.

ALICE: I think that there are very valid concerns that the Hispanic community have, have raised, but I don't think that, that certainly any of this rioting is justified.

My gut reaction is, enough is enough.

That we are going to put an end to it and we're gonna put a end to it tonight.

PHYLLIS: Any presence yet of community leaders at all, as well as police?

- Not at this point, but police are here in force and they're maintaining a presence in this community.

PHYLLIS: Thank you, Mack.

PEDRO: The following morning, the mayor's Office of Latino Affair was calling different members of the community for a 8:45 meeting with the chief of police, where the police was going to inform us about the riots of the previous night.

So they already, um, uh, forecast the, the kids were gonna come out and prepare for that, that day.

(siren blares) QUIQUE: So I was at work, so I was dealing with the kids after school and hearing all this.

I'm, like, "Okay, these, these mother(bleep) are not kidding."

They were putting the word.

(bleep) gonna go down tonight again, and it's gonna be even worse.

(officer speaking Spanish on speaker) (siren wailing) LUPI: I was in high school, and you sorta just don't put the story together.

You don't think that that can happen.

It was like, okay, you're closing school and everybody's dismissed, buses weren't coming.

And then the helicopter kept going around really low throughout the whole community.

And then we were just trying to get home.

♪ ♪ LILO: I remember being outside with my guitar, and I remember we were playing guitar, singing, and, and that's when I start thinking the whole boiling start boiling, and boiling, and boiling.

(man speaking indistinctly) MAN: You can go home, okay?

You can go home.

Where?

- Just, we're trying to get everybody to honor the curfew, please.

- ...now that the curfew has gone into effect, and they have to prove that they live in the neighborhood.

If they can't prove that, they're gonna be arrested.

♪ ♪ QUIQUE: Mount Pleasant Street is still open, though.

But around, I don't know, 5:30 or something like that, people start to move in.

LILO: They were coming in, coming out, going out, coming in, going out, you know?

Some of them with no shirt, you know, some of them with... You know, with bandanas on top.

♪ ♪ And all of a sudden, people start running and coming in from Irving Street, and, plus people from the school, from Bell, were coming out, too.

And the other, the other people coming from el Parque de las Palomas.

And I remember coming right to the intersection.

♪ ♪ QUIQUE: All of a sudden, they close off all the streets.

But by this time, Mount Pleasant is a mass of people.

All Argentinians, young Salvadorians, Blacks, you know, the lefties are there.

And this is when my brother, and a priest from Sacred Heart Church, the community leaders, get mobilized.

RICK: There had been a line of community leaders.

Two priests from the Sacred Heart Church and some Latino leaders had kind of locked arms and had gone to talk to the police or something.

I don't know if they ever made it to the police.

QUIQUE: People took over one of the buses, one of the 42 buses, they were clinging onto it.

And then, (bleep), the street is closed.

And okay, so, it's on.

So there was nothing that the community leaders could do.

(laughing): So...

I'm, I'm with the-- I'm around with a bunch of people rioting.

And we were, like, we were ready to throw down, as well.

(crowd shouting) (shouting continues) LILO: And I remember exactly when they started, you know, throwing and burning Church Fried Chicken.

(shouting) LILO: And we're trying to stop it, you know, but that's what I'm saying, because we knew all these kids, you know.

♪ ♪ And we were right, right there, right in front of that stuff, you know, but...

But, but no.

You know, it's, it's something... ...that's come, come from deep.

You know, and they were trying, to me, bring all this anger, you know, that they had, you know, you know, as a way to tell the people, "Look," you know, "we exist."

♪ ♪ ROLAND: For how many years we had this contentious relationship between police and community?

Sometime you have to burn stuff in order to bring attention and force negotiations with you in order to avoid more fires.

♪ ♪ RICK: So, when the curfew time happened, the police decided that they were gonna take back the street.

QUIQUE: And then all of a sudden, you start hearing this sound of... (imitating marching) REPORTER: Police are walking across 16th Street.

A number of young people are running away.

QUIQUE: And there's riot police coming from Pigeon Park with their helmets, their gear.

As soon as they come close to Irving Street, people just start hurling (bleep) at them.

I mean, anything you could get your hands on.

And then that's when the tear gas start.

(imitating firing) REPORTER: ...to block passage, obviously, these police are on foot.

Sounds like tear gas going off, and I just hope we can survive it.

Obviously, that is tear gas, tear gas has been... ROLAND: And the crazy thing about tear gas is that, because it's a neighborhood, the tear gas would go inside the apartment buildings, and so people would come out into the streets because they couldn't stand the tear gas inside their homes.

And so, that created more people on the street.

(crowd shouting) (tear gas canisters firing, siren wailing) (siren continuing) (canisters firing) QUIQUE: You know, it was a, it was a, a life-changer for a lot of us, in a sense of, a feeling and a sense of, of... Perhaps ownership.

It was saying, you know, "This is our home now," you know?

"And we're part of this city."

You know, "We live here, we work here.

"We pay taxes.

"Whether you like it or not, we're stuck together, and you have to listen to us."

In the nation's capital, the mayor is vowing to prevent a third straight night of violence.

She says residents of a Hispanic neighborhood have legitimate frustrations, but lawbreaking will not be tolerated.

REPORTER: Mayor Dixon spent most of her day and night at the command post set up on 15th and Euclid.

DIXON: I understand the frustration, and I guess in that moment of frustration, sometimes people just express a lot of unfocused anger, and we hear them.

I mean, I think their concerns are legitimate.

It is a fact that the Spanish-speaking people in Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant do have the attention of the mayor, of the police department, and others.

Only time, perhaps, will determine if their dreams, some of the demands that they have made on city officials, are realized.

DAN RATHER: Thank you, David.

In the Los Angeles police brutality case, Chief Daryl Gates today fired one of four officers... (people talking in background) (sirens wailing in distance) SAMI: A lot of it came down to, like, really, for the first time, seeing Latino folks really saying, "No, "uh-uh, not this time-- you need to listen."

(sirens wailing in distance) It's, like, when I think about the uprisings, I think about them as the beginning of the conversation.

It was a violent beginning to the conversation, but it was a beginning to the conversation.

REPORTER: By day, the people of Mount Pleasant explained the reasons behind their nights of violence.

(speaking Spanish): MAN (in Spanish): The policemen, they'd been doing a lot of, a lot of crazy things on the street, you know, and the Spanish people never say nothing to about it.

Everybody just keep quiet and, and... Now is the time to everything come out, you know.

Many of the young people do feel that they are mistreated by the police.

LORI: We had been saying that the Band-Aids were gonna fall off, and I think the shooting, in some level, offered an opportunity for the community to then get organized to speak to government.

(cameras clicking) PEDRO: For the first 48 hours or more, we didn't have a spokesperson.

And then somebody say, "Pedrito should be," and everybody said, "Yes, you're right."

Salvadoreño, I speak English, I grew up in the neighborhood.

ARTURO: The task force got the Human Rights Commission to come in and do hearings with the Latino community about the issues of Mount Pleasant.

And they had lots of big meetings, and people went to testify, to talk about what is happening with the Latino community.

(whistle blowing) (people talking in background) JACKIE: On the government side, they say, "Oh, there's a Latino community.

Maybe there is a community in need here," you know?

It trigger for the government to pay attention to us.

PEDRO: The riots were in May.

In October, we had the Latino Blueprint for Action, and that framed the underlying reasons of the riots and made a set of comprehensive recommendations to the city, sector by sector.

And of course, police-community relations was one of them.

We want this, we want that, we want this, we want that, we want this, we want that.

With the civil unrest, we have a very strategic opportunity to increase the number of Latino organizations to provide services to the Latino community.

And I think that that was fair, but we have to be honest and address the issue of racism.

Did you know that there was this kind of powder keg with a lid on it in your ward?

- Well, I certainly didn't, and if I had known it, I obviously would've tried to do something about it.

A neighborhood like this, that is so diverse, with Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics all living very close together and working together every day, and mostly we get along well together... REPORTER: Community activists say the confrontations with police are symptoms of deep anger and frustration.

In Washington, where most of the focus is on Black-White relations, the Hispanic community-- now about ten percent of the population-- feels ignored.

LUPI: There just always seemed to be this black and white.

And so you see the racism, And at some point, then, you're sort of seeing that you're that brown kid, too.

(chuckles) And then trying to understand my own personal journey.

So I was always left with more questions than answers.

♪ ♪ SAMI: It was a Black woman who shot a Latino man who started the uprisings in Mount Pleasant.

So, who are we rising up against?

♪ ♪ ROLAND: There were Black cops and Latino cops who were more loyal to the concept of blue than showing cultural competence towards a minority group.

So it's like this, this chaos that really is caused by, by white supremacy.

Because you can't deal with the oppression of another if you're still being oppressed.

♪ ♪ ARTURO: We need to deal with this in a broader level, because it's not only the police.

In all the areas of a society, we have problems, and racism is in the middle of all those questions.

How are we gonna solve that?

♪ ♪ SAMI: I think at times, we don't pay attention to the stories that aren't seen as spectacular.

(rubbing) And I think the things that led up to the uprisings were not spectacular.

They were everyday occurrences that just piled up and piled up and piled up.

They were little things that became big things because they weren't addressed.

Poverty, housing, all the issues that cause those little stories to keep happening to people.

(whirring) Memory is necessary.

It allows you to feel again what you felt and remember what you have to fight for, too.

If we don't start really looking back and remembering why things occurred, then we'd also don't see how they're still present.

♪ ♪ (bell tolling slowly) (bell continues) CROWD (chanting): George Floyd!

George Floyd!

(crowd shouting) ♪ ♪ CROWD (chanting): Don't shoot!

Don't shoot!

Don't shoot!

Don't shoot!

WOMAN: Say his name!

CROWD: George Floyd!

- Say his name!

- George Floyd!

(carriage returns) How late will I be allowed to be a revolution before they tear gas my path home, before a rubber bullet road is built to guide me away from the chorus of voices I have added mine to?

(tear gas launchers firing) (keys clacking) Before pellets are fired into my eyes so that I cannot see?

How early will they decide that rubber must turn to metal, fatal, instead of wounding?

That my body is only of value as an example of what will happen when you disobey, when you oppose, when you wake up?

When you stay past the time they believe a revolution should live on streets stained with our bodies?

REPORTER: It's in two languages, and we have been asked by authorities here to repeat at least part of it.

They're very concerned that Spanish-speaking people get the word about this curfew.

(speaking Spanish) MURIEL BOWSER: Tonight, I'm ordering another curfew in Washington, D.C. We want your voices to be heard, but we also want to protect the safety of everyone in our city... ♪ ♪ CROWD (chanting): I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

I can't breathe!

WOMAN: Stop, they're getting closer, come on, back up, back up.

(people clamoring) REPORTER: This is an extraordinary escalation on the streets in front of the White House right now.

Within the last 15 minutes, mounted police have been... (crowd clamoring) WOMAN: Don't run, don't run, don't run!

(weapons firing, exploding) (crowd shouting, whistles blowing) PEPE: I come from a very violent past.

Very violent past.

But I cannot look at any of those videos of my people getting killed, 'cause like a baby, I start... Like a baby, I cry.

'Cause ain't nothing changed, man.

Ain't nothing changed.

♪ ♪ (weapons firing, people shouting) RONALD: 'Cause when the riots in D.C. broke out, the Mount Pleasant riot broke out, it was, it was just pure, raw anger... ...pouring out of people.

♪ ♪ And I think that's the same feeling that I had this time.

That same feeling, that same anger just kinda took over me, you know?

♪ ♪ I grew up in the civil war in El Salvador, and we came to this country running away from that, you know?

And there was another civil war here.

(chuckles) ♪ ♪ Policemen and the people.

Every time, everything repeats itself and repeats itself.

♪ ♪ (birds chirping) QUIQUE: So, you know, here we are.

2020.

And what happened on the streets, it just felt like... (bleep), you know?

I was reliving this thing.

It just brought back all these memories.

Well, this is two letters that, um, I just found recently, 'cause I've been going through a lot of, like, my old stuff, and... (sniffs) I left in July... (sniffs): ...of 1980.

This one is from the 15th of August of that year, so, not even a month after I left.

And she says... (sniffs) It said, "Dear son..." (sniffs) (crying): I can't do this.

(voice breaks): I can't.

(sniffling) (sniffling): Yeah.

Well, but both letters basically say, "I'm glad you made it out."

(sniffs) You know, "The town, the town has been taken over, a lot of your friends have disappear."

(sniffles) Salvadorians, we are at a cross here, in the United States.

I think that we finally have grown up.

We, we understood that we're not just peons, you know, the servants.

We are peons and servants.

You know, we're working-class folk.

But we're also intellectuals, you know.

We are poets, we're artists.

(percussion playing, people speaking Spanish) (playing steady rhythm) (people talking in background) (crowd applauding) QUIQUE (over speaker): Bueno, bienvenidos.

Welcome to our celebration of Día de los Muertos.

What you see here is el barrio.

(crowd applauding) (band playing) LILO, JR. (speaking Spanish): (audience cheering) (cheering continues) (band continues) Oye, oye.

(song fades) ♪ ♪ QUIQUE (speaking Spanish): Bleak or bright, rise and shine, gun or knife, and yet we prevail.

(speaking Spanish): In the midst of poison or blight, spit or spite, black and white, and yet we prevail.

(speaking Spanish): (bleep) (drum tapping) Nah, son.

Nah, son.

It don't matter.

(speaking Spanish): ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Lilo singing in Spanish) (song continues) (upbeat bass music) (upbeat Latin music) - [Performer] When it's time to leave it all behind, discard button, bead or bobble.