The Only Road

The time the children spend at Padre Kevin’s church introduces them to the hardship and desperation of the migrant experience. Jaime is overwhelmed by the number of people who are sharing cramped spaces with no running water and barely any food, united by the simple fact that they cannot go back to where they have come from.

Diaz uses the people the children meet to explore the various reasons people go north. They speak briefly with a young woman carrying a baby who says she is fleeing her daughter’s father, who tried to take the child away. Jaime notices “the bruises on the girl’s arm, the cut almost hidden under her hair, her feet wrapped in scraps of cloth instead of shoes” (55). As the people gather for breakfast, he looks around and sees “[s]ome people were barefoot; some sported raw bruises on their faces; some looked like their soul had left their body and all that was left was a corpse operated by memory” (56).

Jaime realizes he and Ángela, with just their backpacks and the food they have left from home, are comparatively well off. This feeling is confirmed when they meet up with Xavi, Rafa, and Joaquín, who represent different archetypes of immigrants. Xavi is 17, a strong young man with integrity and potential; he is from El Salvador and wrestles with terrible guilt over not having helped the woman on the bus whom he recognized from his village. Xavi represents the difficult choices people make on the journey and how much they will let go before they sacrifice themselves. Xavi will die or be captured on his way north, which is symbolic of all the of young immigrants who have hope for—but little possibility of—a better future.

Rafa is overly confident and full of bluster, claiming to be headed north to find his father though more likely he is fleeing crushing poverty and violence as one of 10 children of an alcoholic prostitute. He makes rash decisions and covers his fear with laughter, treating the whole experience like a lark. Under that laughter is a darkness, an awareness that he was doomed from the beginning. His ultimate fate is probably no different from Xavi’s, though Xavi behaves with integrity and thought for others. The migrant’s life does not discriminate between good people and bad people; both will be captured or killed before they complete their journeys, no matter how well they conduct themselves along the way.

Joaquín, who is traveling alone and just 11 years old, is a girl dressing as a boy to protect herself. Her story is a mystery, as she does little and says less. She is the featureless face of the invisible children who are born and either live or die uncounted, uncared for. Her eventual fate is also a mystery. The point, Diaz seems to say, is not whether she survives the journey to reunite with her family but that she must make that trip at all. Diaz wants the reader to consider the circumstances that would send a girl on such a terrible journey, alone, with nothing but two coins and the clothes on her back.

Diaz shows how resilient children are in how quickly they embrace a rousing game of fútbol, but they can only lose themselves in play for so long. They are twice disturbed: first by the discovery of the bloodied and broken puppy and then by the arrival of El Gordo. The puppy brings the children together in a common cause, and they find hope in the success of their efforts to save the poor creature. They see themselves in the helpless dog, who has been terribly abused then miraculously rescued, and naming her Vida reinforces their renewed confidence.

This confidence is quickly destroyed when El Gordo arrives. The first thing he says is, “They breed like rabbits and infect us like parasites, don’t they” (72), and the children quickly realize he is no savior. El Gordo is motivated exclusively by greed; he smells of sulfur and has a Satanic laugh. Diaz gives him no redeeming qualities, making it clear she has no sympathies for those who profit from the suffering of others. Diaz also uses El Gordo’s appearance to expose the uncertainty and terrible costs of the chain of migration: A man who believes he and his wife sold everything they had to pay for him to be smuggled discovers his money has been stolen, and now he has no money and no passage. Jaime and Ángela learn their parents paid nearly double the fee El Gordo is asking and yet they are still among the lucky ones.

As dark as these stories are, Diaz reminds the reader that children are resilient: They can still find joy in a game of fútbol played with a barely-inflated ball on a dirt street, they can still find compassion for an injured animal, and they can still find a spark of hope in a teenage crush.