Three Books on Migration

Every day, desperate, determined Latin Americans attempt to cross the United States’ southern border in search of economic opportunity and political security. Three recent books reveal how such migrants are making their voices heard in literature and the visual arts.

Somewhere We Are Human is an extraordinary anthology of short, largely autobiographical essays by undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants, mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean. The stories add to a rapidly expanding body of literature that explores the stresses and opportunities of the migrant experience. Many accounts record the psychological trauma experienced at the hands of the muddled, understaffed, and often cruel U.S. immigration system. Hiding in the shadows of illegality, the authors experience rejection, isolation, and dreadful anxiety; some developed a lasting hostility toward U.S. society and institutions. As arrestingly portrayed in several vignettes, even those immigrants who successfully climb the career ladder may harbor a great deal of guilt and shame and feel that they have never fully belonged to the United States. Contributors also often have contradictory feelings about their homelands: they remember the warmth of family but also recall debilitating poverty and demeaning social hierarchies. A few return to these countries only to discover that time has erased the homes and communities frozen in their memories.

Zamora’s deeply moving, highly personal memoir details his arduous, heroic trek, at age nine, over seven long weeks in 1999, from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico to Tucson, Arizona. A top student at a good Catholic school, Zamora was not among the poorest of the poor; rather, he journeyed to the United States to reunite with his parents, who lived undocumented in California. He undertook his treacherous odyssey more or less on his own and most likely would not have survived without the loving compassion of other migrants who took him under their wings. In this Homeric epic, Zamora graphically describes the many daunting obstacles migrants must overcome, including the extreme, blistering weather of the Sonoran Desert; the corrupt, brutal Mexican military; and the pitiless U.S. border patrol agents (the “Migra”). The overcrowded, degrading detention centers are especially traumatizing. The professional smugglers (“coyotes” and polleros, or “chicken herders”) work with businesslike efficiency in Guatemala and Mexico but prove to be less reliable at getting their cargo across the U.S. border; Zamora had to attempt multiple crossings. He makes no effort to analyze U.S. immigration policies, but his American readers will surely feel that there must be better, more humane ways to safeguard the southern border.

As evident in You Know Who You Are, the catalog of an extensive exhibition at the Espacio 23 museum in Miami, Cuban artists have long explored the trials and promise of migration. Standout works include Abel Barroso’s humorous wooden sculptures wryly satirizing the Kafkaesque U.S. immigration system. René Francisco Rodríguez and Luis Cruz Azaceta contemplate the mortal dangers encountered by migrants braving the Florida Straits. With stark simplicity, Julio Larraz captures the duality of the blue seas, as both path and barrier, while also suggesting the nostalgia of the departed and the longings of those who remain. Enrique Martínez Celaya, Iván Capote, and William Osorio visualize the pathos of family separation and of memories fragmented over space and time. Other noteworthy paintings are by Wifredo Lam, justifiably renowned for blending exuberant tropical motifs with European cubism and surrealism, and by Belkis Ayón, who dramatically explores gender, race, and Afro-Caribbean rituals. The exhibition amply demonstrates the technical virtuosity and revelatory insight of a host of graduates of top-tier Cuban arts academies who have gone on to work both on the island and abroad.