Thursday, October 22, 2009
Sonia Nazario took risks to write an authentic account of what Enrique, a youth from Honduras, and thousands like him experience when they try to reach the United States by traveling through Mexico. Imagine riding on top of a train while constantly concerned about bandits robbing you of your mother's telephone number in North Carolina or the police catching you to bribe you for your freedom or beat you before deporting you. Imagine being raped and left without clothes by the train tracks hundreds of miles from home. Imagine begging for scraps of food or searching through garbage for other people's leftovers. Imagine trying to keep clean and trying to be unnoticed while sleeping in a cemetery. Imagine losing a leg or a hand or your life when you're pulled under the train while trying to board it. Imagine a desire to see your mother that is so strong, you try to reach her three, four, eight or more times, boarding the train again and again to make the serpentine journey that leads to El Norte. And Sonia Nazario experienced as much of Enrique's hardship as she could to tell the story. With over 40,000 children immigrating across the border into the United States, having endured what Enrique did, it's a story we should all hear and be changed by.