The Daily Campus

Issue date: 3/28/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Dan Gindraux

A gritty determination to be with their mother is what drives some children to travel thousands of miles and come to the United States illegally, according to Sonia Nazario, who spoke at Konover Auditorium at the Dodd Center Tuesday night.

Nazario won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "Enrique's Journey," a non-fiction work that details the journey of one child who traveled through Central American countries and then through Mexico to find his mother in the United States. The book is the basis of a six-part HBO mini-series that will go into production soon.

"I hoped to humanize immigrants because it's so much easier to demonize them in this country," Nazario said. "I want people to put themselves in the shoes of these women and children."

Nazario's inspiration to research and write about the journey came from her housekeeper, Carmen, who left four children behind in Guatemala with a relative so she could work in the United States and send her children money. Carmen's son made the journey to the United States a year later, and Carmen described part of the journey to Nazario.

According to Nazario, approximately 48,000 children enter the United States alone and illegally each year, many of them in search for parents that left them.

"Most of the children I spoke to said that their mothers left them with one promise, and that was that they come back in one or two year max," Nazario said. "But what they find is that the United States is harder to live in than advertised, and many, like my housekeeper, end up staying for as long as 12 years."

Nazario went to Honduras to get a better understanding of the conditions that drive women to leave their families.

"The incredible desperation that drives immigrants out of the country is unbelievable," Nazario said.

According to Nazario, Honduras has a 42 percent unemployment rate, and women over age 28 were too old to get a job.

"One woman I met lived in a wooden shack with a dirt floor, and that was nice compared to other women who lived under sewn together rags flung over a teepee," Nazario said. "Women feed their kids one or two pieces of bread a day and watery coffee because they have nothing else."



Nazario said she was judgmental of women that leave their children to come to the United States, before gaining a personal experience.



"After I saw for myself the consequences for mothers who decide to stay, I changed my mind," Nazario said. " Some mothers and children are forced to pick through a dump on a mountain, looking for tin and scraps they can sell. Since the dump comes from the hospital, children and women are picking through blood and placentas."

Continued...

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