Mark Menjivar collaborated with former refugees from El Salvador's civil war to make portraits that convey their strength and dedication to their homeland.

The towns of Santa Marta and Valle Nuevo in Cabanas, El Salvador. After almost 10 years in the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras, people began repatriating on Oct. 10, 1987. More than 4,000 men, women and children returned to El Salvador, in what is said to be one of the largest repatriations in the history of Latin America.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Juana, a former Mesa Grande refugee. She is a member of Valle Nuevo Directiva and of the Woman's Farming Collective.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Farmers leave sicahuate trees in their fields in order to prevent soil erosion.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Pedro and Evangelina, former refugees at Mesa Grande and current members of the Valle Nuevo Directiva.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

A shipping container used by the United Nations to store firearms that were turned in after the signing of the peace accords in 1992.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Oneyda, studying to be a veterinarian at the National University.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

A cave that families hid in during the war.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Israel, born shortly after repatriation in Valle Nuevo, works in the greenhouses.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

A bomb crater that remains from the civil war fills with water during the rainy season.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Manuel, a law student at the National University.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Polo, Osman and Tony tend to tomatoes in a greenhouse.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Tomasa, former Mesa Grande refugee and current president of Valle Nuevo Directiva.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Don Antonio, a farmer and resident of Valle Nuevo, El Salvador.

Courtesy of Mark Menjivar

Photographer Mark Menjivar has spent five years exploring the concept of returning home. His portraits of former Salvadoran refugees delve deep into the yearning of the human spirit to return to one's homeland, even after many years away.

Many of the people in these portraits lived in a Honduran refugee camp called Mesa Grande from 1980-1989, during El Salvador's civil war, leaving and returning under threat of extreme violence, both from their own government and a guerrilla group called the FMLN.

Menjivar's photos explore what has happened in the years since their return — both to the refugees, and to their children.

To Menjivar, the desire to understand their story is deeply personal, and requires some historical context:

Menjivar's father, Col. Milton Menjivar, was head of the U.S. military in El Salvador during the late '80s, and the two lived together in San Salvador during a period of intense urban fighting. At the time, the U.S. was backing the Salvadoran government against the FMNL.

As Menjivar grew up, he began to question his father's role in the civil war, and engaged him in a number of discussions about his family's legacy.

Still curious, Menjivar returned in 2009 with World Hunger Relief to document a community of repatriated Mesa Grande refugees. That's when this project, Retorno, was born.

"[You] know, you read about refugees," he says on the phone, "but what happens 10 years after, 20, 30 — seeing the next generation is very interesting to me."

Menjivar has since made five trips to Santa Marta and Valle Nuevo, two of the repatriated communities. And he's made portraits of three distinct groups: the refugees who returned, youth running a sustainable organic farm, and young adults studying at the National University in San Salvador.

His portraits are a collaboration — he asks people to show him a place that's important to them in their history, and then listens to their stories as he makes the photos. He says he sees it as "making the portraits together."

Menjivar is ultimately fascinated in exploring not only the history of the refugees, but his own personal story as well — and within both, the power of a place that draws one to return.

(To see some historical pictures of the repatriation, check out these images by photographer Linda Hess Miller taken in 1987.)

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