The political has long been the personal for those who decided to abandon all they knew in El Salvador to search for a safer, but uncertain, future up north. The atrocities committed by its American-backed government during its war against leftist guerrillas in the 1980s spurred an exodus whose legacy is reflected in today’s migrant crisis.

The political narrative dominating the news includes scenes of desperate, weary souls seeking asylum and alarms over an impending — albeit unproven — invasion of hordes bringing crime and disease. Anita Pouchard Serra, who had been photographing news events along the border, thought the flood of images coming from there failed to capture the profundity of the crisis. That uneasiness eventually led her and two other like-minded journalists to Intipucá, a town in El Salvador transformed by remittances sent by untold thousands of its absent sons and daughters working in restaurants, hair salons, stores and offices in the Washington, D.C., area.