Against perils and odds Nazario says that 48, 000 children, some as young as 7,
make the journey alone each year. Writing for the los angeles times in 2003,
nazario researched and wrote a series feature articles about enrique, a honduran
boy desperate to find his mother, who had left home when her son was 5. As a
teenager, enrique finally decides to travel to america himself, taking with him
the only clue he has to his mother's whereabouts:A north carolina phone number.
Nazario's articles, which resulted in a pulitzer prize, form the basis of
enrique's journey, along with photographs of enrique's struggle(The series also
won a pulitzer for feature photography). The boy left behind The boy does not
understand. His mother is not talking to him.She will not even look at
him.Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do. Lourdes knows.She
understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache
enrique will feel, and finally the emptiness. What will become of him?Already he
will not let anyone else feed or bathe him.He loves her deeply, as only a son
can.With lourdes, he is openly affectionate. "Dame pico, mami.Give me a kiss,
mom,"He pleads, over and over, pursing his lips.With lourdes, he is a
chatterbox. "Mira, mami.Look, mom,"He says softly, asking her questions about
everything he sees.Without her, he is so shy it is crushing. Slowly, she walks
out onto the porch.Enrique clings to her pant leg.Beside her, he is tiny.Lourdes
loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word.She cannot carry his
picture.It would melt her resolve.She cannot hug him.He is five years old. They
live on the outskirts of tegucigalpa, in honduras.She can barely afford food for
him and his sister, belky, who is seven.She's never been able to buy them a toy
or a birthday cake.Lourdes, twenty four, scrubs other people's laundry in a
muddy river.She goes door to door, selling tortillas, used clothes, and
plantains. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she
finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown pizza
hut and sell the items to passersby.The sidewalk is enrique's playground. They
have a bleak future.He and belky are not likely to finish grade school.Lourdes
cannot afford uniforms or pencils.Her husband is gone.A good job is out of the
question. Lourdes knows of only one place that offers hope.As a seven year old
child, delivering tortillas her mother made to wealthy homes, she glimpsed this
place on other people's television screens.The flickering images were a far cry
from lour des's childhood home:A two room shack made of wooden slats, its flimsy
tin roof weighted down with rocks, the only bathroom a clump of bushes
outside.On television, she saw new york city's spectacular skyline, las vegas's
shimmering lights, disneyland's magic castle. Lourdes has decided:She will
leave.She will go to the united states and make money and send it home.She will
be gone for one year less, with luck or she will bring her children to be with
her.It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still she feels
guilty. She kneels and kisses belky and hugs her tightly.Then she turns to her
own sister.If she watches over belky, http://www.irmina.co.uk/ she will get a
set of gold fingernails from el norte. But lourdes cannot face enrique.He will
remember only one thing that she says to him: "Don't forget to go to church this
afternoon. " It is january 29, 1989.His mother steps off the porch. She walks
away. "Donde esta mi mami? "Enrique cries, over and over. "Where is my mom? "
His mother never returns, and that decides enrique's fate.As a teenager indeed,
still a child he will set out for the united states on his own to search for
her.Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48, 000 children who
enter the united states from central america and mexico each year, illegally and
without either of their parents.Immigration and naturalization service. Many go
north seeking work.Others flee abusive families.Most of the central americans go
to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in texas where
the ins houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches.Of
those, the counselors say, 75 percent are looking for their mothers.Some
children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them.A
priest at a texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their
mothers' arms. The journey is hard for the mexicans but harder still for enrique
and the others from central america.They must make an illegal and dangerous trek
up the length of mexico.Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them
get help from smugglers.The rest travel alone.They are cold, hungry, and
helpless.They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits, and gang
members deported from the united states.A university of houston study found that
most are robbed, beaten, or raped, usually several times.Some are killed. They
set out with little or no money.Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way
through mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.Since ralph lauren sale
UK the 1990s, mexico and the united states have tried to thwart
them.Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart. They navigate by word
of mouth or by the arc of the sun.Often, they don't know where or when they'll
get their next meal.Some go days without eating.If a train stops even briefly,
they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands, and steal sips of water from shiny
puddles tainted with diesel fuel.At night, they huddle together on the train
cars or next to the tracks.They sleep in trees, in tall grass, cheap ralph
lauren sale or in beds made of leaves. Some are very young.Mexican rail
workers have encountered seven year olds on their way to find their mothers.A
policeman discovered a nine year old boy near the downtown los angeles tracks.
"I'm looking for my mother,"He said.The youngster had left puerto cortes in
honduras three months before.He had been guided only by his cunning and the
single thing he knew about her:Where she lived.He had asked everyone,"How do i
get to san francisco? " Typically, the children are teenagers.Some were babies
when their mothers left;They know them only by pictures sent home.Others, a bit
older, struggle to hold on to memories:One has slept in her mother's bed;Another
has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes.One is old enough to
remember his mother's face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick,
how her dress felt as she stood at the stove patting tortillas. Many, including
enrique, begin to idealize their mothers.They remember how their mothers fed and
bathed them, how they walked them to kindergarten.In their absence, these
mothers become larger than life.Although in the united states the women struggle
to pay rent and eat, in the imaginations of their children back home they become
deliverance itself, the answer to every problem.Finding them becomes the quest
for the holy grail.
Related Articles:
Linked Articles
http://www.peopleandpicks.com/blog/asuka0327/4652309/collection-michael-kors-online-outlet-comes
http://asuka0327.glxblog.com/post/7/de%20un%20ralph%20lauren%20donna%20big%20pony%20polo%20compaero.htm
http://blog1.de/asuka0327/3510294/uniform+ralph+lauren+bambini+con+cappuccio+lesson.html
没有评论:
发表评论