Background
Berenson was born in New York City to Rhoda and Mark Berenson, both college professors. On her web site, she states that she volunteered for soup kitchens and blood banks and also worked as a mother's helper in the Hamptons as a teenager. While an undergraduate at MIT, she volunteered with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Before graduating, she left MIT to work with CISPES. Later she went to El Salvador and became secretary and translator for Leonel González, a leader of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), during negotiations that achieved peace in 1992. FMLN was at that time an umbrella organization associated with various leftist guerilla organizations and the Salvadoran Communist Party and working to overthrow the Salvadoran military dictatorship. FMLN transitioned during the peace process to a become a legal political party. Gonzalez (aka Salvador Sánchez Cerén) is currently the Vice President of El Salvador.
After political reconciliation came to El Salvador, Berenson moved to Peru. During her travels and political activities, she claims she was supported by an educational trust fund established by her parents.
Read more about this topic: Lori Berenson
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)