There are more than 20 countries in the span of land that constitutes Latin America, and all of them have a rich and beautiful cultural history. The lands are full of stories. Scary ones, sweet ones, moral ones. Everyone knows “La Llorona” but there are so many more out there.

When my father was growing up in El Salvador, in the city of Usulután, he heard these stories. Every once in a while I like to ask him about these figures, and do my own research into this aspect of the country. Here I’ve written down the stories he remembered best.

Over the past fifty-five years, Sarah Lawrence has supposedly been a haven for student voices to be heard, and our history has shown an illustrative example of the power of student activism. It takes persistence and insistence for change, but Dark Phrases is living proof of that legacy. On our thirty-fifth anniversary, we wanted to share Sarah Lawrence’s history of student activism until 1989 and our origins.