Enrique’s
whole journey began with his wish to finally reunite with his mother once
again. Lourdes left Honduras, a world that without a husband was no place to
raise a family as a single mother. Lourdes made the trek to the United States
in hopes to have the resources she needed to provide for her two children whom
she left in Honduras. This first departure is what I believe to be the first
divide. Although Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, leaves at the beginning of the
novel, the families in both Honduras and now the United States have to undergo
a complete transformation. After Lourdes’s boyfriend in California didn’t come
back from a trip back down to South America, Lourdes took her now newborn baby,
Diana, to North Carolina in search for a more accepting work force and community.
Even though Lourdes was sending money to her family back in Honduras, she also
had Diana to take care of. While she was in North Carolina, Lourdes found a
boyfriend who also had a family in South America. They soon lived together and
he helped a lot when it came to taking care of their family in North Carolina
and in South America. When Enrique finally made it into America, Lourdes’s
boyfriend was the one who drove Enrique from Florida to North Carolina:
“’Are you Lourdes’s
son?’ the boyfriend asks.
Enrique nods.
‘Let’s go.’ They
say little in the car, and Enrique fell asleep.
By 8 A.M. on May
28, Enrique is in North Carolina.” (Nazario 189)
This quote
means so much more to me than Enrique reaching North Carolina. It is the end of
a journey and the beginning of another life. To me, it feels like Enrique and
Lourdes are leading two very diverse lives. Enrique left his pregnant
girlfriend, María Isabel, in Honduras to have the baby. María Isabel soon has
her child, Jasmín, in Honduras and Enrique isn’t there to enjoy it. Lourdes has
long left her family in Honduras and has now made a family in the United
States. Although both Enrique and Lourdes try to make a living for their
families back in Honduras, they can’t help but settle in and make relationships
in America. The barrier built between
the two worlds is not penetrable anymore. If it hadn’t taken Enrique so long to
come to his mother, the damage may have not been very bad, but because Lourdes
missed so much of her kids’ lives, they learned to move on without her.
It’s funny how life works in that
way: Lourdes is in the United States trying to make a living and have a family
while her family back in Honduras learns to live without her. Life never stops.
As humans we learn to adapt to changes and live without things that we once
lived with. While America adapted to have Enrique and Lourdes in it, Honduras
adapted to living without them. Have you ever had to adapt to something that
changed everything? Was there ever a time where you wanted to stop
life from happening in one place and keep it going in another?
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