Author shares immigrant boy’s stirring story of courage, perseverance

By Erika Palma

About 150 students sat in rapt attention at J.K. Mullen High School on Sept. 25 to hear award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario share the true story of a Honduran boy who braved a modern odyssey to find his mother in the United States.

Nazario’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning series, “Enrique’s Journey,” was later made into a book of the same name (Random House, 2006).

At the age of 5, Enrique was left by his mother, Lourdes, back in Honduras to be raised by his grandmother. Lourdes promised Enrique they would see each other soon. Her plan was to make enough money to send back home so that Enrique and his sister would have something to eat.  But years passed and she did not return.

“All Enrique wanted as his Christmas present during (those) 11 years was to see his mother,” Nazario said.

Desperate, Enrique determined he would take on the perilous voyage that would, hopefully, lead him to his mother in North Carolina. All he took with him was a slip of paper that had his mother’s telephone number.

On the journey he dangerously smuggled aboard freight trains and faced harsh weather, border patrol agents, deceitful smugglers and gangsters. His hope to see his mother got him through.
Born to Argentinean parents, Sonia Nazario is an adventurous bilingual journalist for the Los Angeles Times. In her professional career, she has focused on investigating and writing about social issues with a special emphasis on immigration topics.

Nazario was driven by the desire to educate Americans about the complexities of immigration and the human stories behind the headlines.

“I wanted to take people inside their lives through the story,” she said, “to understand what it is all about.”

To write the book, Nazario followed Enrique’s quest herself.

“I wanted to explain to people what (immigrants) really go through,” she said. “So I went to Honduras and I took the journey step by step.”

Throughout her risky journey, Nazario met a host of men and woman, including 12-year-olds who were migrating to the United States.  One aspect she was stunned by was the resolve that motivates the immigrants.

“I think when we think of determination we think of it as something that is all together different from trying 28 times to get through Mexico,” she said. “I think people think of determination like ‘I am going to get through the school year,’ or ‘I am going to work 10 hours today.’ It is a different mindset than this determination that is not even in their worldview, doing something like this.”

Nazario said she had never seen people live their faith the way people do in Veracruz, Mexico. There, when trains pass by “good Samaritans” lacking enough food for their own families share the little they have with those hanging on to the trains for dear life; complete strangers they will likely never see again.

“That is the Christian way to do,” Nazario recalled them saying. “We are sure that this is what Christ would do.”

Nazario said she wants readers to remember the immigrants’ plight.

“Ninety-nine percent of these people are good people who come here for very legitimate reasons,” she said. “So, I want to educate people about who are these other people, why they are coming—that they are not the devil. You may disagree with them politically, that we are a nation of laws, but that doesn’t make them evil.”

Nazario’s talk was sponsored by a grant from the Facing History and Ourselves and the Allstate foundations.