Randy Jurado Ertll is a Salvadoran American author and political activist. He and his family fled the civil war in El Salvador by coming to the United States. He grew up in violence-torn South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s but managed to avoid gang life through the intervention of the A Better Chance Scholarship program. He wrote about his experiences in his memoir, “Hope in Times of Darkness.” Latinopia asked Randy about his book and the future of the Salvadorean American community in the United States.