Salvadoran surfer, bronze medalist at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, Bryan Pérez, was the protagonist from an extensive note in the international magazine Vice in its Spanish version in which he talked about how surfing saved him from the gangs that abounded in El Salvador, especially at the time he started surfing.

“The only thing that saved me from being a gang member was my parents and surfing. But many of the best surfers, even some better than me, were swallowed up by the gangs,” says Bryan, who gives the example of one of his friends from when he was a kid: “I had a friend who always beat me when we competed in the waves. He was my same age. We always went to the finals together. He always beat me. All the old surfers said he was going to be very good. Then he got involved in gangs and ended up fleeing the country. His mother took him because they wanted to kill him here.”

In the note, looking back to his beginnings, Bryan says: “There we had the path of being a gang member or being a surfer. All my friends chose the path of being gang members. There were only a few of us who stayed. Some were killed, others are on the run. I once saw one of them who was my friend when he was little. He had already become a gang member.”

The Salvadoran tells of his difficult beginnings selling bread to help his family, going to championships with the food prepared by his mother and how a great change occurred when he began training with Marcelo Castellanos.

Pérez tells us that in 2014, when he was 15 years old and had already achieved significant results in championships, his family experienced the tragedy of the death of one of his sisters due to a stray bullet that went through the roof of their house in a confrontation between two gangs. “She was a baby. She was barely turning two years old. The attack wasn’t for us, but… It killed her. I always think about her. That is a hard part of my life. I think it is the hardest part I have ever lived through,” says the Salvadoran star, who explains that this is why she wears the number 14 on her social media IDs.

Bryan reflects that surfing changed his life and he is giving surf lessons to Salvadoran children as a way to keep them away from violence and closer to the sea.