This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Micahutrich, associate editor at Jacobin.

The word sanctuary has been on many people's lips in the wake of Donald Trump's

Muslim ban and other xenophobic immigration policies. But beyond statements of

solidarity and maybe hanging an immigrants from welcome sign in the window, what could a 21st century

sanctuary movement look like?

For some answers, we can look to the Central American sanctuary movement of

the 1980s. In a recent piece for Jacobin, a demand for sanctuary,

Hillary Goodfriend tells the history of that movement and explores what lessons could be

taken from it for today. Goodfriend is a researcher based in San Salvador, El Salvador, the street

sounds of which you can hear in the background. Here she is.

So why did the Central American Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s come about in the first place?

Sure. Well, sanctuary movement and the sanctuary activists were really responding to a crisis of escalating violence and refugees from

escalating violence from Central America. You know in 1959 the Cubans led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara overthrew the dictatorship there and this sort of sparked a whole series of social movements and leftist

insurgencies pushing for democratic reforms

and even revolution throughout the region.

And in 1979 in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas overthrew the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship

and established a revolutionary leftist government there.

At the same time, this, you know, energized further forces

throughout Central America, and you had leftist

insurgencies in El Salvadoran and Guatemala, in Guatemala,

increasingly pressuring these right-wing

U.S-backed regimes.

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