Enrique's Story Of Chiapas

1270 Words3 Pages

Sonia Nazario’s background is that she is the child of immigrants, her motivation for writing this story, and the process that she begins as she prepares to research and write Enrique’s story. Sonia Nazario tells how and where she finds Enrique and how he is a representative of the children whose story she needs to tell. She started with the story that her maid Lourdes told her about leaving her children behind in Honduras. She began to prepare for her research by spending two weeks with him on the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo. She followed him around day and night and was constantly interviewing him. In 1980 the refugee act was instated, this removed refugees as a preference category and established clear criteria and procedures for their …show more content…

He left Honduras with little money, one change of clothes, and his mother’s phone number written on a piece of paper and on the inside of his jeans. He attempts this journey eight times before he finally succeeds. During the first seven attempts he talks about how he was beaten, robbed, deported and constantly humiliated. Enrique has discovered several important things about Chiapas. In Chiapas, do not take buses, which must pass through nine permanent checkpoints, never ride alone, do not trust any authority figures, and even to be aware of the local residents. Gangsters aboard the train are seen in a negative way because they are ruthless, and have no respect for authority, others, or even their own lives. On the other hand, the positive view about them, is that they offer protection from the police. They even at point let Enrique join them, which benefited him as he did not travel alone and did not have to worry about …show more content…

Except it is Maria Isabel who leave their baby Katherine Jasmine behind with Maria Isabel’s aunt. I believe that the author ended her book this way to show that the efforts of the U.S. to stanch the flow of immigration, both in terms of the harm it does to humans and its futility. “When we build 700 miles of fence, honestly, we do not understand this kind of determination,” she said. Sonia Nazario also believes that mothers make mistakes especially in the eyes of their children when they leave them behind in order to give their children a better life. She also believes the best way out is to put resources and policies toward the goal of improving those circumstances in the countries of where all these undocumented immigrants originated

Open Document