juanzqui

The Houston Post                                                                                                                                        June 16, 1985

Thoughts on the Sanctuary Movement

Editor’s note: Jack Elder, a 41-year-old Vietnam veteran, went on trial Monday in Corpus Christi on charges of transporting illegal aliens. Elder, the director of Casa Oscar Romero in San Benito, is the second worker of the Catholic Church-supported facility to go on trial for helping refugees from El Salvador enter the country. His coworker, Stacey Lynn Merkt, was found guilty and given a probated sentence. A native of Connecticut, Elder lived for several years in San Antonio before moving to The Valley to work with refugees. Since Merkt’s trial, both have been arrested again on similar charges. They are part of the growing “Sanctuary” movement that helps Salvadorans remain in the country by housing them in churches, where officials are reluctant to apprehend them. Post reporter Juan R. Palomo interviewed Elder by telephone last week. The following is a portion of the interview:

Are you contending you did not break a law, or that you broke a law that is wrong?

I pleaded not guilty. I continue to maintain that I did not violate the law, either the letter or the spirit. The charge is transporting three illegal aliens. I’m saying that they aren’t illegal aliens and therefore the whole indictment is faulty.

In an editorial last year, The Post argued that citizens cannot select the laws they will obey.

I think the same responsibility they are putting on the burdens of the children also should be put on the shoulders of the government, that the government cannot selectively choose what it wishes to obey. International law says people fleeing man-made disaster – that is war, which is obviously going on and they’ll Salvador – are guaranteed certain rights.

There would be no need for all this apparatus to control migration were it not for the conditions in El Salvador, which are generating the refugees. Casa Romero would not have been established were it not for the fact there were a large number of refugees at the border. I would not be at the Casa Romero if there hadn’t been a Casa Romero, and refugees would not be at the border where not for the fact that there’s a civil war going on in their country.

U.S. Attorney Dan Hedges says the government is going only after the more blatant challenges of U.S. law.

The only challenge we may have attempted was by pleading not guilty. If that created a challenge, then I suppose it is. We are not like the professional coyotes. We’re not pleading guilty and plea bargaining, hoping for a fine so we can be out in the streets. We want to plead not guilty to bring up what the we think is the larger picture. We see clear attempts by the judge and authorities in general to kind of draw a curtain around El Salvador. They don’t want to confront the terrible atrocities, the pictures which show children victims of death squads. It’s very unpleasant, and it’s almost a natural reaction to not want to deal with it. We’re saying we have to deal with that because, in a sense in this country, we’re all responsible.

Hedges also says it’s not up to his office to draw the line as to whether Salvadorans are economic or political refugees.

But we are talking about a country whose own Air Force is bombing its own civilian population, whose army we are supporting to the tune of nearly $1 million a day to wage war against its own people. Something is clearly not right in El Salvador, and until we face up to our own participation in what could probably be called a slaughter, I think at least we have an obligation to those who are fleeing the situation. You can’t set a house on fire and then block the exit.

Hedges says he must prosecute people working with church groups because to do otherwise would be giving them preferential treatment based on religion and a violation of the First Amendment.

We’re not asking for preferential treatment. We are asking for the U.S to follow its own laws. Until he does that, he can expect one challenge after another.

Who are the people who come to Casa Romero?

The majority are Salvadorans, young men, primarily from the eastern department of El Salvador. We do have some women and children, some Hondurans and some Nicaraguans. Each group comes for its own reason. But the majority are from El Salvador, because they can no longer survive in their home territory.

You are now accepting Nicaraguans?

Yes, we are.

That’s a change in policy, isn’t it?

In practical terms, it’s not, because we’ve always accepted them. We’ve never turned them away but we have encouraged people who call who want to bring Nicaraguans here to take care of the Nicaraguans themselves. It’s very easy to do that because Nicaraguans generally have resources at their disposal, and they’re treated with more preferential treatment by our government. But we have had people here from Nicaragua, consistently at least for the last six months.

Many Americans think that because a moderate government was elected last spring in El Salvador, there has been an decrease in the activities of the death squads and in the number of other human rights violations, therefore there is no further need for political asylum.

First of all, they have to recognize that while José Napoleón Duarte was president during a previous term, four American churchwomen were murdered, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated and the leadership of the FDR – the Frente Democrático Revolucionario – were rounded up and killed. Duarte has publicly stated he is unable to control the death squads. And the majority of the deaths and human rights violations are attributed to the armed forces, which should be under his control. You’ve got a situation where you’re taking a man in a white suit and throwing him in a cesspool and saying, “don’t get dirty.” That’s what happened to Duarte.

In an editorial, The Post said the United States cannot be a sanctuary for all those in the world who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances.

I’m disappointed in the wording of that because it’s like what Under Secretary of State Elliott Abrams claimed – that El Salvador is one of one hundred not-nice places in the world. Well, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people finding bodies in streets that have been eaten by dogs, of kids who are starving to death in great numbers, of families separated. We’re not talking just about not-nice people. We’re talking about a country where war is going on as a result of our intervention. The editorial is stating the obvious. Of course, we cannot be a sanctuary for everyone. But as long as we don’t recognize the tie between our influence and what’s going on in Central America, particularly in El Salvador, we can’t absolve ourselves of the responsibility.

What is your religious background?

Essentially traditional Roman Catholic. Recently I’ve been able to describe no religious background as being a conversion process where the faith journey I was in was pretty much stalled for a number of years and it got started up again, almost with a vengeance, as a result of several events.

What were those events?

When I was in San Antonio, teaching school, I was involved with a volunteer group called Latin American Assistance. In 1980, on Thanksgiving Day, the leadership of the FDR, the people who petitioned the Salvadoran government for reform, we’re rounded up at a Jesuit high school in the middle of the day, taken out and tortured. Their mutilated bodies were found the next day. To me it showed clearly that the road through reform essentially led to mass repression and that the powers had no interest in any kind of compromise. A year later I met a Salvadoran woman who called me from the airport. I brought her to the house and she was very nervous. She had about 40 photographs of human rights violation victims. I realized this is the way of life in El Salvador, and that was another jolting experience.

And in the summer of 1983, I visited in Mexico. I took a long bus ride into Chiapas and ended up in the refugee camps along the Guatemalan border. All of a sudden refugees became a part of my life. There’s something about refugees that impressed me. Not the poverty of the situation, but the strength they have in spite of all their hardships.

I thought to myself, these refugees are a window to what’s going on in Guatemala. When I came here and started working with Salvadorans in the INS detention center, I said these refugees, too are a window to what’s happening in El Salvador. Coming in contact with them was a religious experience for me, a conversion experience. Since that time, I’ve been drawn back to religion. I have been taught, I’ve been tutored, I’ve been led, by the folks who have been coming out of El Salvador and Guatemala.

The argument has been made that as a Christian, you have an obligation to obey civil laws.

I’ve been trying to deal with that, and it’s not comfortable. I understand that what Hitler did was entirely legal and good Christians kept their mouths shut. It was the good people – the ones who dissented and resisted – who saved the soul of Germany. The French resistance under the Nazis provided the French with pride after the war was over, that there were people who did not buckle and to the Nazis.

I’m not saying I’m only following a higher law. We feel righteous – that we are doing the correct thing – but at the same time there is not even a call to civil disobedience. That’s never been our intent. We’ve never intended to break the law. If the U.S. were obeying its own laws, laws that it subscribes to in international conventions, there would be no question about this case: It would be dismissed outright.

If convicted, you face 15 years in jail and a $6,000 fine.

And 30 years in the other case.

Right. You have a family. What would that do to them?

That’s important, of course. Diane and I thought about that way back in April when I was arrested, that it was a possibility. I think it is a mistaken impression that you take a person’s freedom away if you put him in jail. Should I go to jail, I will feel very free, because I haven’t given up my principles. What happened to Diane and the kids – I can only think that, based on the support we’ve gotten through this pretrial, there would be no problem as far as her having the moral support to keep on working here at the Casa and raising the family. Diane made a good point recently. She said that if I was a Marine, stationed in Lebanon for 18 months and left my kids at home, people would say to them, “You ought to be proud of your father because he’s serving the country.” And should I have to go to jail, it’s the same thing.

Haven’t you already served your country, in Vietnam?

Yes, I was in the army. But the whole world of service is becoming more and more central to my life, and serving the refugees here is probably the most rewarding.

What was your children’s reaction to your arrest, and to what you’re going through right now?

Fortunately, three of them were asleep, so I could just go in and kiss them before I was taken away. Jesse, the oldest boy – 11 – was the only one who saw me handcuffed. It was a jarring experience for him. But he said he noticed that as I was frisked, handcuffed and went into kiss the other boys, a tear formed in the marshal’s eye. The three older boys were in court for the pretrial hearings.

I think Jesse maybe understood what is happening. But Devin and Rich, they were six and four, are still too young. The youngest is 15 months old. There are people who would also say I’m being irresponsible as a parent. But when you’re faced with evil you can’t ignore it. We’ve got to an obvious choice: ignore it or do something about it. I chose to do something about it. Unless we’re going to entirely abrogate all our responsibility as Christians and as American citizens, the time has come to do that.

You grew up in an upper middle-class conservative family. You had a nice home and a decent job in San Antonio. Do you regret leaving all that behind?

Not at all. My life is fuller than I ever thought it would be. I continue to be rewarded with good friends. My family is, of course, my best reward. And I have been able to live with them while I was working every day.

Did your Peace Corps experience in Latin America influence your thinking?

Very much so. Besides allowing me to live in Costa Rica for two years and travel in Central America, I was able to gain appreciation for another culture. I was able to gain sufficiency in another language. That’s another blessing I’m constantly thankful for. It’s broken down barriers and I have been able to help people of other nationalities. When I left Costa Rica, going back to Connecticut, I always thought that in future moves I would gravitate toward the South again. Sure enough, I went from upstate New York to Central Texas, and here to The Valley. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to Central America, but certainly something was planted in me that has blossomed now into an ability to be able to care about – and fortunately be in a position to do something about – people in need from Central America.                      #

Is there a “th” sound in the Spanish language (aside from the weird way Castillian-speaking Spaniards pronounce the letter s)? Most folks would tell you no, and I was one of them until not long ago when I realized there most definitely is a “th” sound, and those of us who speak Spanish use it a lot, without realizing it. It is found in the letter d.

That letter can be pronounced as a hard d, as in ándale or bandera or comprender, but in about half of the cases, it is pronounced as “th”. As in madre, which is most often pronounced mathre.

Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I am not an expert on the Spanish language. In fact, even though it was my first language and I spoke and thought and dreamt in Spanish until sometime in my 20s, I have never really studied the language (high school Spanish doesn’t count). I have talked to no experts about this. Neither have I done any studying on the subject. So, what you are reading here comes from my personal observations. And it’s entirely possible that I’m full of mierda 

So, what determines when you use the d sound and when you use the th sound? Placement, it seems. Look at the examples I cited above. If the “d” comes after a vowel, or is between two vowels, it’s pronounced th. In “ándale,” the d follows a consonant. In “madre,” the d comes after a vowel, and in “estado,” the d is between two vowels.

But not all consonants call for a hard d. The word mierda is pronounced miertha, for instance. 

Originally, I had written that if the d comes at the beginning of a sentence, it more often than not is pronounced as a hard d. “Dame la mano,” for instance. Or “Dios te bendiga.” But the more I think about it, the more I realize that is not necessarily so. The d could just as easily be pronounced as th in both cases.

You can even have both pronunciations in a single word. Like “dedo” (finger) or dedicación. You pronounce them detho and dethicación. There’s an exeption here: if the article that precedes the word ends in a vowel, both d’s are pronounced “th.” Una thethicación.  Ese thetho.

Of course, there are always exceptions. The word doctor, for instance, is pronounced either doctor or thoctor. It’s “el doctor” and “la thoctora.” But I bet you nobody would notice if you say “el thoctor.” And if you’re addressing a female doctor, you’d probable say, “Doctora …”

There may be other unwritten rules or exceptions to those rules, but I can’t come up with any.

What is fascinating about this is that it is not something that is taught. Spanish-speakers seem to just automatically pick it up and figure out how to pronounce the letter on their own. It is absorbed, like osmosis. Which is why many non-native Spanish speakers, as good as they are with languages, have a difficult time sounding like a native speaker. I’ve known some non-native speakers who have spent years becoming experts in Spanish, learning the vocabulary and perfecting their accents. Yet, because they never understand some of the intricacies of the language, they will never sound like native speakers.

Next time, children, we’ll explore the b and v sounds in Spanish. Thanks for being so attentive.

(Recently, the San Marcos newspaper for which I worked a number of years, The Hays County Citizen, was digitalized by the San Marcos Public Library. I haven’t had a chance to read much of what is there, but this column, written on my 30th birthday, caught my eye. I thought I’d share it as I near by 77th birthday.)

TODAY IS MY 30th birthday. I don’t know how it happened but there it is. 

(Isn’t that a nice line? I wish I’d come up with it, but I stole it from John Steinbeck, who used it on his 60th birthday.)

If there is anything I feel on this first day of my 31st year on this earth, it is a disappointment. Not at my life, but at the fact that I have not changed at all now that I am 30. I was under the impression that at 30, one went through a radical change in lifestyle, philosophy and action.

Not so. I’m still me. And even though I am disappointed that there have been no changes, I am glad I still am me. For, you see, I like myself the way I was before I turned 30, and I do believe I would like to stay that way, at least for another 30 years.

What is there to like about myself, you may ask. To start with, I think I have been extremely lucky, especially over these last 10 years, when it comes to jobs, friends and things accomplished. 

I have not had to suffer or sacrifice much, or at least not as much as others, in getting to this point in my life. I have yet to have had to struggle to get my job and my friends. And, despite my arrogance and pettiness, the friends I have acquired have stuck with me. I don’t deserve them and they don’t deserve me, but there they are. 

That is a good feeling.

I GOT INTO newspapering rather by accident and I have learned to love it and the people with whom I have been associated in that field, and despite occasional feelings of self-doubt and restlessness, I feel I belong here, and that too is a good feeling. 

I have a good feeling about my family, both my natural family and the other people who have become members of the secondary family. They are loosely connected, and some of them are far away, but they are members of my family nonetheless. 

Nearly every day I hear stories of families where there is nothing but constant bickering and backbiting. I find that hard to accept because in my family all the fighting was done when we were kids, when fighting was what was expected of us and when it was fun. We don’t do that anymore.

While it was my immediate family that provided me with the love and nourishment necessary to go out into the world with a healthy mind and healthy attitude, it has been members of my acquired family who have provided me with something that is just as important: the confidence necessary to survive and compete in this world. 

I wish I could name all of them, but they know who they are and I hope that they will feel that what they helped create was not a monster, but rather a loving, caring person whose ultimate purpose was to make his world better. 

AS FOR accomplishments, I won’t deceive myself into thinking I have been important to this world. But I know I have mattered in some people’s lives, and that too makes me feel good. I do not wish to overestimated my own importance, but I also hate fake humility. Damn it, I have done some good in this world, especially in this community.

If nothing else I have acted as a lightning rod and a catalyst in the struggle for equality in San Marcos. My willingness to expose my feelings and leave myself open for ridicule and contempt have helped the lives of a few other people by making them realize their similar feelings are legitimate and important. Nothing has given me more pleasure than to have somebody come up to me and say, “Yes, you said it exactly as it is, thank you.”

I know I will never be a great columnist, but the people I care about the most know what I’m talking about, and that’s all that matters. My sentences may be a little crude, not quite as flowery as those of others, but people know what I mean. Considering that when I started out in the public school system, I had no idea what the English language was about, you must admit I have done well.

BUT WHAT I’M most proud of is that even though my body has begun the process called aging, my mind, my spirit, my soul, my heart – whatever you want to call it –  is still young. Perhaps too young, some might say, but I would rather be child-like forever if that means keeping my ability to become excited about the insignificant things in life, and if it means never becoming a grump. 

A man who would rather read a newspaper while in the car instead of enjoying the beauty of the countryside is a dead man, as is a man who would rather sleep in an airplane instead of looking out the window at the earth below to the clouds around him – and one who is afraid to cry or laugh or show his emotions in any manner.

If I can keep my enthusiasm over the small things for the rest of my life, then I know I will live a happy live a happy life forever.

My hope for the coming years is that I remain very much an alive man and that I retain my ability to laugh and cry. And feel – really feel – for other people. And that I can retain all my friends and gain new ones, and that someday I will be able to offer them as much as they give me.

(I was going through some old emails and found this bit in a long 2010 missive to a friend.)

I’M AT A Houston airport restaurant, sipping on a Cuba libre as I wait for my flight home to Washington to board.

It’s already 45 minutes late so this is not my first drink.

A cell phone rings nearby.

A woman sitting two tables away from me picks up her phone and listens. 

“You can’t be serious!” she finally gasps.

There is panic mixed with anxiety in her voice

“What happened?” she demands.  

“That is not supposed to happen,” she says after a while. By now she is practically screaming.  

“That is so wrong – so, so wrong!” 

Another lengthy pause. 

“OK, here’s what you do, honey,” she says. 

She’s apparently figured it out and her voice is now calmer, as if she’s decided the emergency can only be taken care of with serene firmness. 

“Now, pay attention; this is important,” she says. 

In my mind I can see and hear a surgeon on the phone with a medic out in some remote area, offering instructions on how to remove a bullet lodged in some poor innocent victim’s guts.

I stare at the woman, wondering what her next words will be.

“You go to the Domino’s website and you go to the very top of the page and you click on ‘Coupons’…”

Problem solved.

I only read eight non-fiction books this year. Of those, by far my favorite was Solito by Javier Zamora. I read it first for a book review I wrote and then I went back and listened to it in audio because he did the narration and I wanted to hear him utter those sentences that captivated me. I was not disappointed. 

As I wrote yesterday, Solito is a well-written and compelling memoir by Zamora, a poet, detailing his months-long journey from his home in El Salvador to California to join his parents. He was 9 years old and  travelled alone, with no other family members.

My other favorite non-fiction books:

• Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, by Andrew Kirtzman, listed by the New Yorker as one of the best books of the year.  Although Kirtzman (a former Houston Post reporter) is a dear friend, I hesitated to read this book. I didn’t want to risk having to read something redeeming about Giuliani. My hatred for the former New York mayor is that intense, that deep. I am so happy I read it, for this book offers the reader a stark portrait of a corrupt, immoral two-bit politician. 
• Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff. There’s been a lot written about this sad era in American politics, but this fresh new look offers a lot that I didn’t know, and Graff’s style of writing is compelling. 
• Chasing History by Carl Bernstein. I really enjoyed this book by former Washington Post reporter Bernstein. It wasn’t that he has much new to say about Watergate. It’s what he writes about his young days as a reporter, starting at the Washington Star. I don’t mean to in any way compare my journalistic career to Bernstein’s but newsrooms are newsrooms they are all great sources for compelling stories. Good newsroom storytelling like this is addictive.
• Somewhere We Are Human, edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca. I’ll let Goodreads tell you about it: “A collection of 35 bold, important, and groundbreaking essays and poems by migrants, refugees and Dreamers—including award-winning writers, artists, and activists—that illuminate what it is like living undocumented today.” Powerful essays.

The other non-fiction books I read this year: Atlas of the Heart (Brené Brown), Happy-Go-Lucky (David Sedaris) and Regarding the Pain of Others (Susan Sontag).

Poetry:

I also read a lot of poetry books this year. so many I didn’t keep track of them. Many were good. Some were very good. A handful were very, very good. One stood out, reached out and grabbed my heart (it still hasn’t let go): These Trees, Those, This Flower, That Fruit by Hayan Charara, who teaches at the University of Houston and is one of my favorite poets. A kind and generous soul, he is. The book has gotten numerous rave reviews. Here is the latest, from the Los Angeles Times.

WITH ONLY a few days before the new year arrives, it is time to let you know which books I enjoyed the most this year. As if you gave a hoot!

There were a lot of books released this year, many of them very, very good. I read or listened (mostly listened) to 36 books. Twenty-eight of them were fiction. I know non-fiction books are valuable, but I’m at a stage in life where I choose entertainment over education. Actually, the truth is that I’ve always preferred to read about made-up people in a made-up world.

Two of the books I consumed this year (Como Agua Para Chocolate and Y No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra) I had read before. I re-read them because my Spanish book club chose them. I had also already read Solito and even though it was a book-club selection, I listened to it because I wanted to. It’s that good!

In fact, Solito topped the list of my favorite books this year, fiction and non-fiction. It’s a well-written and compelling memoir by the poet Javier Zamora detailing his months-long journey from his home in El Salvador to California, where he joined his parents. He was 9 years old and  travelled with strangers, who were to become like a family to him.

Not all the books on my list were published this year. My second-favorite book, Apeirogon by my new favorite writer, Colum McCann, was published in 2020. Had it not been given to me as a Christmas present last year, I may have missed it. I had never heard of him.

“Goodreads” has this to say about Apeirogon: “an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss.” It continues: “McCann crafts Apeirogon out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material. He crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate, and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our time.”

MY OTHER favorite fiction works of the year were (in no particular order):

• Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra. The NYTimes called Zambra “a writer of startling talent,” and he is (although I was not as enthralled by a more recent novel, Bonzai). This book made it into a number of best-of-the-year lists. According to Goodreads, Chilean Poet is Zambra’s “most substantial work yet: a story of fathers and sons, ambition and failure, and what it means to make a family.”
• Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski. From Goodreads: Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut.
• Young Mungo by Douglas Stewart. Goodreads: Mungo and James are born under different stars –Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic – and they should be sworn enemies… Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong … 
• In the Distance by Hernan Diaz: This is a much better, and much more fun, book than Diaz’s latest novel, Trust, which has gotten a lot of praise. Goodreads: A Swedish boy finds himself penniless and alone in California. He travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the west. Driven back over and over again on his journey through vast expanses, Håkan meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend.
• Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty: If you’re a fan of “Reservation Dogs,” you’ll love this short-story collection. Goodreads: Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the 21st century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
• A Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande: Thoroughly enjoyable. Goodreads: A Long Petal of the Sea meets Cold Mountain in this sweeping historical saga following a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier who must fight, at first for their survival and then for their love, amidst the atrocity of the Mexican-American War.

HERE ARE all the books of fiction I read this year, listed in alphabetical order:

1. A Ballad of Love and Glory     Reyna Grande
2. Amor y Otros Demonios         Gabriel García Márquez
3. Apeirogon                               Colum McCann
4. Bonzai                                     Alejandro Zambra
5. Chilean Poet                            Alejandro Zambra
6. Como Agua Para Chocolate**Laura Esquivel
7. Demon Copperhead               Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Devil Takes You Home     Gabino Iglesias
9. Dos Crimenes  *                      Jorge Ibargüengoitia
10. Fishing the Sloe-Black River    Colum McCann
11. French Braid                           Ann Tyler
12. Harlem Shuffle*                      Colson Whitehead
13. Hola Papi                                 John Paul Brammer
14. In the Distance                        Hernán Díaz
15. L.A. Weather                           María Amparo Escandón
16. The Last Chairlift                     John Irving
17. Let the Great World Spin        Colum McCann
18. Less Is Lost                              Andrew Sean Greer
19. My Name is Lucy Barton*       Elizabeth Strout
20. Night of the Living Rez            Morgan Talty
21. Portrait of an Unknown Lady María Gainza
22. Swimming in the Dark            Tomasz Jedrowski
23. The Town of Babylon              Alejandro Varela
24. Trust                                        Hernán Díaz
25. Venice Beach*                        William Mark Habeeb
26. El Viaje del Elefante                José Saramago
27. Y No Se Lo Tragó La Tierra**  Tomás Rivera
28. Young Mungo                         Douglas Stuart

*Print

**Re-read

***Print and audio

Solito, A Memoir, by Javier Zamora (Hogarth, 381 pp)

By Juan R. Palomo

[Note: this review is being published by “Voices de la Luna,” a San Antonio literary magazine]

AS A YOUNG boy growing up in his grandparents’ home in La Herradura, a Salvadoran fishing village, Javier Zamora dreams of flying over mountains. His destination: a land where everything is new, garbage is collected by trucks, water comes out of silver faucets, and it snows the whitest snow.

In his dreams, he joins his parents in “la USA,” where they show him their living room, swimming pool and other American luxuries. He pictures himself cuddling between his parents in clean sheets, and he dreams of eating orange sherbet. 

He also has bad dreams, including one about growing a beard with his parents still gone.

Zamora’s father and mother are in Northern California, two of the thousands of Salvadorans who made their way north in the aftermath of the bloody U.S.-funded civil war of the 1980s. His father left when Zamora is still a toddler and he has no memory of him; pretty much all he knows about him is that he sounds nice over the phone, his voice soft “like a sharp stone skipping over water.”

 “There was a war and then there were no jobs,” is how his aunt Mali explains his parents’ absence to Tontito, as his grandmother calls him. It’s a word he likes because it sounds “like rain slipping through holes in our roof.”

Zamora’s fear of growing a beard before seeing his parents does not become a reality. In 1999 – four years after his mother had made the journey to California to join her husband, promising the 5-year-old Javier she would be back for him – Zamora begins his own journey north in the care of Marcelo, a family friend, and Don Dago, a coyote.

The plan was that it would take them a couple of weeks to travel – with other Don Dago clients – through El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, and that he would cross the border at Tijuana, where his parents would pick him up. 

But plans do what plans often do – they change – and he ends up crossing instead in the Arizona Sonoran Desert. On foot. Three times. And by the time the 9-year-old is at last reunited with his parents, nine weeks have gone by.

Zamora, whose 2017 book of poems, Unaccompanied, garnered widespread acclaim, has no idea how harrowing his journey will be, nor how long. His mother had told him about her own relatively quick trip to cross the border. Her use of the word cruzar, invokes in his mind images of a fence made up of hundreds of little crosses.

In his new book, Solito, A Memoir, Zamora provides the account of his experience that Unaccompanied, because of its format as a book of poetry, could only hint at. It fills in the blanks.

Long before Zamora is finally picked up by his parents at a Phoenix safe house, both Don Dago and Marcelo have disappeared and he is left to fend for himself. Until he hooks up with three fellow travelers: Chino (whom Zamora comes to regard as the older brother he never had), Patricia and her daughter Carla. These three are to become Javier’s traveling family, providing assistance, companionship and compassion. 

ZAMORA DEDICATES the book to his temporary family. 

“I wouldn’t be here without you,” he writes. He probably wouldn’t, for the book is replete with account after account of how his adopted family helps shepherd him along when his quest seems utterly hopeless. 

Solito offers many stories. Some are humorous:  the Salvadorans’ awkward attempts to speak like Mexicans (“practicing my Mexicanness”) to avoid the Mexican hostility towards Central Americans; learning the meaning of a new English word that sounds like faak; and Zamora’s amusing himself by naming trees in the monotonous desert based on their looks: Lonelies. Spikeys. Fuzzies.

Some are moving. A Latino U.S. border patrolman takes pity on the group and, instead of detaining them, drives them back to the border, where he releases them, allowing them to try crossing again a few days later. And there’s the touching scene of Chino carrying an exhausted Zamora on his back during one particularly treacherous desert hike.

The most harrowing passages describe the group’s being held up, at gunpoint, by Mexican soldiers, and the hikes across the unforgiving desert, lost, without water or food, and constantly on the lookout for snakes, la migra, angry ranchers ­– and angrier bees. 

More than anything, this book is about family: family left behind, family waiting at the other end of the line, and the family that sustained Zamora along the long journey.

In one of the most poignant passages, Zamora describes the early-morning departure of his “pretend family” for Virginia after they finally make it across the border: 

“I think I watched them leave. The room was dark, a lot of people standing up with their backpacks, waiting in line. Patricia kissed my forehead. Chino combed my hair. ‘The van is here,’ they both said. ‘Salú,” Carla waved at me. Then they each hugged me one by one. The door closed, and I closed my eyes and slept. I thought it was a dream.” 

For seven of the nine weeks he is on the road, his family does not hear from Zamora, nor of him. Everyone fears he is dead and so relatives at both ends pray for his soul. The fear of death is always constant on the journey, as is the fear of being jailed, robbed or killed by men with badges on both sides of the border. Zamora describes his brief time in an Arizona immigration jail as like being in a cage, “a monkey with at least twenty-one other monkeys.”

Yet, there is also humor, even in the direst of moments, offering temporary relief from reality.

“Rest,” a coyote tells Zamora’s group as they stop to rest before crossing the border. “Tomorrow you’ll be gringos.”

The author describes his unforgettable journey in intricate detail. This is a fascinating book; one readers will find it hard to set aside. And it might force them, as it did me, to look with a different perspective at stories of immigrants found dead in the desert or in unvented trailers, for Solito reintroduces the human factor that is often missing from the immigration saga as it has become just one more political football. 

ZAMORA IS FIRST and foremost a poet and his talent shines through in practically every page. For instance, in describing the riveting scene of the immigrant party’s cramming into a van for the final trip from their desert pickup point to the safe house, Zamora writes:

                                    We look like a matchbox

                                    Sticks on top of each other.

                                    A human cake.

When the reality that his long saga will soon be over hits Zamora, he becomes concerned that without Chino, Patricia and Carla as witnesses, no one will believe what he went through. 

“No one else will understand the bees in the desert,” he thinks. “The flying fish, that fried fish in Acapulco, getting dragged out of the bus, learning what faak means.”

Zamora needn’t worry. Countless news accounts have made us way too familiar with the horrors undocumented immigrants endure in their quest for a new life in this country. This evocative, skillfully crafted narrative is all the witness he needs.  

Juan R. Palomo is a former columnist for The Houston Post and USA TODAY. His poetry chapbook, Al Norte, was published in 2021 by Alabrava Press.