I’ll bathe in warm water
and have a washing machine.
“I just want to work
and send money to my mom.
She’s really old and has no pension,”
says a boy
who is walking by my side.
“I’m going to start college.
Maybe I could be a lawyer
or a teacher or a doctor.
Well, I’ll settle for just getting there
and then we’ll see,” says another boy.
Caravan
“I just hope
my shoes hold up,” says
a lady, and she laughs.
Some have taken buses
to get farther ahead.
Others would rather keep
the little money they have with them.
You have to eat along the way.
I sold my computer
and my cell phone.
Matilde bought them from me.
No way in the world
would she leave El Salvador, she said.
Now that we’ve started
on this caravan,
I wish I had my cell phone
to take pictures.
I never left
my town before.
El Salvador is beautiful.
What a shame
that we have
to leave.
We’re crossing the border.
“This river is called Peace,”
my papá tells me.
I look at the water running
silently and slowly.
I want to turn back,
go back to El Salvador.
My papá is looking forward.
He says to me
in a happy voice, “Over there
is Guatemala,
and then Mexico,
and farther on,
the United States,
where we are going to live.”
I breathe deep and look at the sky.
I think about Christmas
on its way
and all the mamás
who came to say goodbye
and were left alone crying
in the Plaza Divino Salvador
del Mundo.
The mamás who couldn’t come
but sent their children.
Some men
and women in the caravan
say they’re going to go
toward a town
called Arriaga.
They say a train
passes through it
called The Beast.
It makes me kind of nervous
but it doesn’t matter
if we’re going.
We’re going, no matter how.
We are in Chiquimulilla.
Stone-paved streets,
people watching us walk by.
They greet us with smiles
and wave at us.
Women and men
dressed all in colors.
They look so beautiful.
They look like birds.
They give us water and food.
The smiles that people give us
taste best of all.
I wear my scapular
and a fist of courage in my heart.
Nothing can stop us.
We’ll sleep here tonight
and early tomorrow, again,
we’ll go on.
I’m tired.
I hear voices
saying names
of towns and cities
I’ve never heard of before.
Zacapa,
Tecún Umán,
Tapachula,
Mapastepec,
Querétaro,
Irapuato.
I’d like to hear
the name of my friend
back in El Salvador.
For over a week
we’ve walked.
We’ve ridden in trucks
and buses.
We’ve slept in parks, in streets
and in shelters.
In some places
In others they chase us away.
I don’t know where the North is.
It’s like they pull it away, or hide it.
I don’t care anymore.
Sometimes
I’d like to close my eyes
and be back at my house, in the yard.
In the caravan
we’ve walked
I don’t know how many kilometers.
Some say thousands.
In caravan we’ve cried.
In caravan we’ve sung.
The cold is so cold.
Mexico City
is icy
but the buildings
are so pretty
and the tacos
are so delicious.
The ones I like best
are the fried pork tacos.
I wonder about my house —
the walls,
the windows,
the shadows,
the trees —
everything that
I don’t have anymore
but that has built a nest
in my heart
and sings torogoz torogoz
torogoz torogoz.**
* * *
** The national bird of El Salvador, the torogoz has a striking, repetitive call.
“Watch out for hawks,”††
says a man.
I look up in the air.
I want to see them flying.
I can only see threads
of rain
falling
from the top of the sky.
* * *
†† Hawk (halcón in Spanish) is a slang term for a human trafficker.
I’m happy
in Mexico.
A man at the shelter
tells us stories.
I like them.
They make me happy.
The story
about the wind —
nothing and no one
can stop it,
no one can see it —
you only hear
zuuummmmm laugh
zuuummmmm sing
zuummm zuuummm.
Another man
we call
el carnal‡‡
because we like him.
He makes us pupusas.
“The pupusas are ready,”
he tells us.
He stands on a chair
in the shelter
and cups his hands
like a microphone
and calls really loud,
“Come get your pupusas!
Pupusas filled with dreams,
pupusas filled with rainbows,
pupusas filled with song,
pupusas filled with love.”
Mmmmm. The pupusas
are a little square
but delicious.
* * *
‡‡ Carnal is slang for friend.
It keeps raining
in the shelter yard.
I watch the rain.
In every drop
I see my friends,
my relatives,
the streets of my town.
The rain
makes me shiver.
I sigh and cover up in a blanket
next to my mamá
and my papá and my brother Martín.
In
a few days
we’re going
to Tijuana.
It’s not that far
from here.
“I’m staying there,”
says one lady
from Guatemala.
“They say there’s work.
They’ve got nice beaches.
They speak English,
and if you decide to go on
to the real North,
it’s just a step away from Tijuana.
I like that and I’m tired
and so are my kids.”
Christmas All of a Sudden
Christmas took us by surprise
in the shelter.
I didn’t even realize
it was Christmas already.
I miss the burst
of fireworks
and hugs all around, ummm,
and the chicken stew
and the posadas.§§
* * *
§§ In the Latin American tradition of posadas, groups of people go from house to house, replicating the journey of Joseph and Mary, asking for shelter. The groups sing as they go and are sometimes received with gifts or piñatas, and sometimes turned away.
Walking in the caravan
reminds me of the posadas
and that song that says,
“In the name of Heaven
I beg you for shelter …”
Here we’re all walking,
asking for shelter.
Some women
have come from the shelter.
They’ve made turkey for us.
They have books, they read to us
stories and poems.
They also bring us piñatas
and candy and little presents.
We’re all happy
with the piñatas.
They’re red and blue and yellow
with green fringes.
They remind me of the kites
we used to fly in my town.
Voices from the shelter
rise and fall.
Sometimes I feel sadness.
Sadness makes me sad.
Now I know, sadness
is like not seeing, not hearing.
It seems like everything stops,
even the air, even the North,
and your heart leaves you
sigh by sigh.
I’d better sing
and keep dreaming.
Almost There
Tomorrow we’re going to Tijuana.
Some buses and trucks
are coming to take us
to Tijuana.
“Tijuana is no-man’s-land,” Don Agustino shouts.
“What does that mean?”
I ask him.
“It’s that Tijuana
is sort of a bridge.
There are people from all over the world.
It’s like a port.
It’s like an airport.
Even people who live there
speak English.”
“Ahhh!” I say, but I don’t understand.
I look at the sky.
The freezing rain keeps falling.
On the road
to Tijuana,
we pass through Querétaro.
“It’s beautiful,
all the colors and the stone,”
my mamá says.
“Can’t we stay here?
There’s so much peace here.
Is there work, too?”
she asks, sighing
through the bus window.
I distract myself
watching the cars
and the buses go by.
The wind whistles
and the rain
never stops.
Tijuana is
so far away.
It feels like it’s
as far away as
El Salvador.
In the back of the truck
some people are silent.
Maybe they’re praying.
Maybe they’re tired.
Maybe they’re scared.
The name Tijuana
is kind of funny to me.
Maybe it’s just my nerves, but
it sounds like “Tía Juana.” ¶¶
* * *
¶¶ Spanish for Aunt Juana.
Back at my house
no one waits for me.
We’re all here.
My papá, my mamá
and my brother.
I think about good things.
Those nice ladies.
The Santa María patronas,***
the patronas
all made of
love and sweetness,
then I’m not lonely anymore.
* * *
*** The patronas are rural Mexican women from Guadalupe (La Patrona), in Amatlán de los Reyes, Veracruz. For over twenty years they have given food and water to migrants traveling on La Bestia, or The Beast, also known as the Train of Death.
On the bus
a Mexican man
starts singing,
“I’ve come back from where I was …”
We all know
the song,
and we sing,
“Fate allowed me to return …”
The bus is named
El Ausente — the Absent One —
like the song
José Alfredo Jiménez sings.
I fell asleep.
I don’t know how much
time has gone by.
A Honduran man,
Don Miguel, keeps saying excitedly,
“Tijuana, Tijuana, Tijuana!!!”
The bus
comes to a stop.
The driver
says,
“Ladies and gentlemen,
we have arrived in Tijuana.”
Tijuana
Ufff.
At last we are here, in Tijuana.
It’s filled with lights.
The lights are beautiful
like stars, and there are so many buildings.
But it’s so cold here too,
and raining so hard.
First they brought us to a shelter
but it was leaky.
Everything got all muddy.
It reminds me of the downpours
in El Salvador,
except there
the rain was warm.
The children cuddle up
in their mother’s arms
like baby chicks.
They’re cold and they’re coughing.
We’ll be going to a different shelter,
the Mexican authorities tell us.
I’d like to go back home.
I’m tired.
They say that in the United States
the cold is colder,
but who cares?
I’ve already made it and gone through the worst.
I’m going forward,
we’re going forward.
We’re going to get to the North,
wherever it is.
In the shelter
some Mexican men and women
brought us
toilet paper, diapers for the babies
and other supplies.
This night we eat really well —
beans, eggs, tortillas and bread.
Everything is nice and hot.
Tonight I’ll sleep in peace.
From here it’s only
a little bit farther to get to the North,
and he
re in this new shelter
it’s not as cold, there’s not as much mud.
Suddenly there are screams,
shouting and crying,
and a strong smell of pepper.
It wakes us up.
“What’s happening? What’s happening!!!???”
asks my brother Martín.
“There’s chile in the air,
in the air,”
he keeps saying desperately.
“What do we do?
What do we do?”
“Close your eyes,
close your eyes!!!”
We hear desperate
screams
from men and women.
The children cry and cough.
The smoke is a black cloud.
It covers the whole shelter.
We cover our heads with our clothes.
We pour water on our faces, we’re cold,
the water is cold, but it helps.
Little by little, things calm down.
We can only hear murmurs
and sighs. No one knows
who it was.
We just know it was
tear gas.
“Like we were at war,”
says a lady from San Salvador.
“I lived through the war in the eighties
and that’s how the national guard attacked
the student demonstrations.
It’s horrible, it’s sad.
We’re not criminals, we’re migrants.
We just want to get to the North.
We want to work.”
People pray
and hug their children.
“How awful, how sad,”
I say when I hear
what the lady said about
our countries,
that they persecute us.
And in the North they don’t want us.