Susan Freireich went to El Salvador for the first time in 1986 as part of a delegation with the SHARE foundation. She is one of the co-founders of the Sister Cities Project in Cambridge, a project that pairs up towns in El Salvador and the United States to foster cultural exchanges and provide poor communities with humanitarian aid. She led several delegations later herself to El Salvador and investigated on human rights abuses, particularly in San Jose Las Flores, sister city to Cambridge, Mass.

In 1991, she went to live in El Salvador with a Master's in public health and worked as a health promoter in remote villages. This interview focuses on the idea of neutrality and how in a war civilians often become enemies to both sides.

Susan is now writing a memoir of her experiences and the essay on which this interview is based on, "Which Side Are You On?"  (available here in full for download) was published in the Best Women's Travel Writing collection of 2008.