The Price of Dignity chronicles the extraordinary life of Patrocinia Polanco Rivas, a Salvadoran peasant woman whose personal story embodies the Central American struggle for survival and justice. The narrative follows her from a childhood of desperate poverty in the 1970s, through her family’s involvement in grassroots movements inspired by liberation theology and the murdered priest Rutilio Grande.

As civil war engulfs El Salvador, Patrocinia’s family is drawn into the conflict. She experiences the horror of scorched-earth tactics, lethal aerial bombardments, and the trauma of forced displacement (guindas). After losing her father to a bomb and suffering severe injuries herself, she leaves the war at her mother’s request. The postwar period, however, brings new struggles. Despite the hope of the 1992 Peace Accords, neoliberal policies and enduring poverty force Patrocinia’s family into a relentless battle for survival, cutting sugarcane for meager wages.

This economic desperation ultimately dismantles her family, as her husband and, one by one, her six children are forced to migrate illegally to the United States. The book’s second half becomes a searing indictment of U.S. immigration policy. It juxtaposes the dangerous journeys of her children—marked by cartel violence and exploitation—with the cruel, dehumanizing rhetoric of Donald Trump, who labels them “criminals” and “rapists.” Patrocinia is left alone in El Salvador, her utopian dream of dignity replaced by the anguish of a separated family, haunted by a past of war and a present of political disillusionment under Nayib Bukele. Her story is a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the ongoing price of dignity.