The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

A Honduran family of three sits outside the Belen migrant shelter in Tapachula, Mexico. The shelter is a safe house run by nonprofits—one of many throughout Mexico’s migrant trails. Immigration forces have an agreement with advocates to ignore the shelters. Half the people at this shelter are heading to Baja, Mexico, not the United States. The United States has been deporting people too frequently; it’s too dangerous.

Ernesto and Sofia only have sex a few times, but on one occasion the condom breaks. They want to buy the morning after pill, but they don’t have enough money on them. She takes the pill two days later, but it’s too late—she’s pregnant. Ernesto and Raúl had just taken on more hours at work and received raises. The month before, they sent back over $1,000 for the first time. Now, their debt must again be put on the backburner. Sofia won’t give her baby up for adoption and both are too religious to consider abortion. Raúl is angry, “Didn’t Ernesto know how much harder he had just made everything?” (233).

In La Colonia, Maricela is suspicious of Cesar. He isn’t calling or visiting. She inquires and Cesar tells her he is living with an old girlfriend and is in love with her. Markham comments, “That was that. One day he was a devoted father and loving husband-to-be to Maricela, and the next he was shacking up with this bitch from his past” (234). Maricela thought Cesar was different, but she’s in the same situation as with Sebastian.

Ernesto hasn’t yet asked Sofia’s mother for permission to date her and now they must tell her Sofia is pregnant. Katerine is furious. She had Sofia at 15, Sofia’s father abandoned them, she brought Sofia to the United States and raised her herself, and she wanted a better life for Sofia. She laments that “in spite of all her efforts, the cycle was repeating” (236). She says the baby is their problem and she won’t support it. Ernesto takes responsibility for the baby and communicates to everyone—Katerine, Sofia, Raúl—that he is committed to providing for his child, even more than paying his debt in El Salvador: “The twins sent only four hundred dollars home in January. In February they sent nothing” (238).

In La Colonia, Cesar stops paying Maricela child support, and the creditors insist they sell one of the Flores’ parcels of land unless they pay cash on the debt. Markham explains, “The debt was likely to eat the Flores family, to cover them like dirt and roots surround a coffin” (239).

Ernesto and Sofia’s relationship is complicated. They are on-again off-again, but more off than on. Ernesto is devoted to Sofia and their baby, even when their relationship is off. Markham explains:

But Sofia and his baby needed him, he knew, and this trumped their day-to-day drama. If it was hard for him, he could muster the maturity to see that it was a thousand times worse for her: fifteen years old, carrying a baby. He would never walk away from his child, but he would always have the option to do so. She never would (243).

Ernesto does not return to school in the fall. He enrolls in a part-time adult school in Alameda and picks up shifts. He stops sending money home and tells Raúl he must focus on his own family. Ernesto’s cavalier attitude angers Raúl: “Raúl didn’t have that kind of luxury. Now with Ernesto, like Wilber, focusing on his own small world, he’d have to assume the burden of the debt. Of saving the family” (245).

In April 2016, El Salvador’s president declares “a national water shortage emergency” (249), the first in the country’s history. The drought is killing cattle, withering crops, and combining with other environmental conditions to create dust clouds. Wilber Sr. is alone in the fields and feeble from chikungunya. Ernesto and Raúl’s debt climbs. It is now insurmountable. Both their younger sisters leave home for a convent. It is now Wilber Sr. and Esperanza—both ill—Maricela, Ricardo, and their younger brother Pablo at home. Ricardo is frequently drunk and berates Maricela for her children and the financial strain he perceives they cause to the family. Markham explains, “Ricardo still hadn’t forgiven Maricela for her second pregnancy; he pinned everything on her, it seemed, from the family’s financial circumstances to his own lack of options in life” (252). The gangs are recruiting Ricardo and he sees it as a way out, but as initiation they want him to kill his father. Pablo begins parroting his older brother and abusing Maricela, at times assaulting her physically. Like a battered wife, Maricela “stayed fearfully quiet, avoided eye contact, and whisked the kids away when they were fussy lest they enrage one of their uncles. She tried to become invisible in her own house” (252).

In August, Sebastian’s Barrio 18 affiliated brother is released from prison. MS-13 wants to kill Sebastian’s brother and another member of his family. Sebastian is in Houston, so they decide to kill Maricela and Lupita. There is nothing Cesar, Wilber Sr., Ricardo, Pablo, or even the police can do to stop it. Maricela and Lupita stay inside, effectively on house arrest. Her only option is to go north with Lupita. Ernesto, Raúl, and Wilber have a family conference. Getting Maricela and Lupita north isn’t an easy proposition. No one has money and entering the country is as difficult as ever. Maricela believes she must get to the United States before President Trump takes office because he will stop granting permisos—permission to enter the country. Permisos were never granted. Coyotes tell prospective migrants that permisos are real to convince them to make the journey, but the United States did not have a policy of permitting undocumented border entrants before President Trump and it has not since.

In mid-October, Sofia gives birth to Isabella. Markham writes, “As Ernesto held his daughter for the first time, he was overcome with the realness of her, the delicate little body that marked an unfathomable shift in who he was” (256). Ernesto takes an unpaid week off from work to be with Sofia and Isabella. He drops his classes in Alameda, and after his week off picks up another job. Sofia has been taking classes at a school for teen moms and will return in January. Raúl remains in school “for his future,” but he is trapped in a vicious cycle: “he wasn’t going often enough to actually earn the credits he needed to move toward his goal of graduating, let alone become fluent in English” (258).

Raúl has assumed responsibility for his and Ernesto’s entire family debt, but he wants to maintain hope for a better future. Markham elaborates, “For two months he ate little, bought nothing, paid his rent, and sent money home” (258). He knows though, that it is too late. The money barely makes a dent in the debt, and it is not just the land at risk anymore—Maricela and Lupita’s lives depend on it. Esperanza makes the decision to sell their land. Wilber Sr. and the rest of the family go along. Markham writes, “It pained Wilber to sell the land, which meant so much more than money. But it had to be done” (259). They sell the land for $30,000—enough to pay their now $24,000 debt and have some left.

Ernesto cries when he learns that his family sold their land. Raúl and Ernesto “through a series of sucker punches […] had kept uncovering more of the secret, beating heart of the world: its vastness, its cruelty, and now the interdependence of things” (260). Raúl no longer feels nauseated or angry when he thinks of his past: “The terror and the rage had faded. But this came at a price: he was also forgetting […] The thing about growing up and moving on was that you also had to let some good things go” (260). Donald Trump’s presidential victory affects Wilber Jr. After almost a decade in the United States, he feels deportation is eminent. He makes life changes: he breaks up with Gabby and proposes to his brothers that they find an apartment together, to “make a real home together” (261). This would also give Maricela a place to stay if she comes north. With the debt erased, the brothers reunited, and a new baby, “[t]hey were getting another chance, and they’d do it right this time […] they could hold on to that notion of possibility. This, they supposed, was the irresistible tug of the American Dream. For a sunny instant, they were pulled in” (265).

Few migrants want to leave their homes. They “leave because something there has become untenable” (266). Global poverty creates many conditions which drive migrants north, including violence. The United States government is fearful that young male migrants from the Northern Triangle are gang affiliated, but most are fleeing gang violence. Markham explains that the United States can assist these desperate young men by improving conditions in migrant detention centers and providing better educational opportunities for newly arrived immigrants. Education can provide immigrants connections to their community in the United States, belonging, and purpose. Markham notes, “when young people feel excluded from society they seek belonging in its fringes, among its shadows” (269).

Markham believes that the United States’ exclusionist policies ignore its own responsibility for global catastrophes. Markham further explains how the United States supplied guns and trained government death squads in the Salvadoran Civil War, and she emphasizes that the United States’ free trade policies are disastrous for small farmers south of the border. Markham elaborates, “The United States cannot at once be isolationist […] and global, selectively reaping the benefits of an international economy” (271). Markham believes that if the United States has helped create the problems in South America, it must help solve them.