The year was 1988 when my mother, Maria Banegas, left us back in Tegucigalpa in search of a better life and to escape a more acute type of poverty. I was five years old when we had an emotional goodbye as she got in a car that began her journey north. My mom had followed my aunt’s lead when she left Honduras a year before. A few months later, she began sending money which improved our quality of life. Despite the betterment of our household economy, I missed her every single day.
Starting life in a new country at 36 was hard for my mother. She did not speak English so there was a language barrier. Also, L.A. was much bigger than Tegucigalpa, and getting to places took longer, especially since she did not drive. Months after arriving, by a stroke of luck, she met a lawyer who needed a housekeeper and was hired to clean her house once a week.
Leaving two kids back home is hard on anyone. But she was determined to be reunited with my brother and I. Having a steady income in dollars meant that our future reunion had to occur in the United States, because going back to Honduras meant taking a step backwards and that was out of the question.
On a November day in 1991, I heard my older brother, Lenin Dubon, yell, “It’s my aunt Digna, my aunt has returned!” My aunt had surprised all of us by coming back after four years. Just like my mother, my aunt had also left two sons behind and had come back for them. A few days later, her husband, a Mexican man she had married in L.A. named Roberto, joined her. They were going to take one of my cousins to L.A. and my mother asked them to bring me as well. We were going to travel 3,000 miles by land, what could possibly go wrong?
It was one week before Christmas when my aunt, Digna Dubon, said, “We are leaving on the 23rd and if all goes well we will be in L.A. by New Year’s Day.” We left for L.A. on Monday, Dec. 23, 1991. My grandmother, my aunt Auristela, and my brother Lenin came to the bus terminal to say goodbye to us and I cried a lot. It was the last time I saw my grandmother. That day the four of us took a bus from Tegucigalpa San Pedro Sula. From San Pedro we took a bus to the border with Guatemala. We crossed and took a bus from Esquipulas to Guatemala City, and then we took a bus to Tecun Uman, a town on the Guatemalan and Mexican border. We spent Christmas eve there and were fortunate to befriend a Guatemalan man named Hugo.
Our journey resumed on Christmas day and we reached Mexico in less than 48 hours after leaving Tegucigalpa. Not bad. Little did we know the hardest part of the journey was waiting for us. We took a bus from Ciudad Hidalgo to Mexico City. An hour into the bus ride we reached a checkpoint somewhere in Chiapas, when Mexican federales boarded the bus and asked us for our documents. I had been instructed to say I was from Mexico and that it’d be all good. Easier said than done because as soon as I opened my mouth the agent told me I was lying and that I was a foreigner. It was the first time I realized I was a migrant and I had an accent.
While we were detained, an agent pulled me to the side and started asking me questions. I responded in my best “chavo del ocho accent” to sound as Mexican as I could. El Chavo del Ocho is a hugely popular comedy TV show that aired all over Latin America and Brazil. It is still airing somewhere. The agent pointed at random things and asked what they’re called. I answered the first five things correctly until he picked up a straw from the ground. “What do you call this?” he asked. “Pajilla,” I replied. Big Mistake. In Mexico they call it “popote.” “Eres extranjero,” he realized. “You’re foreign.”
Unfortunately we didn’t have enough money to bribe them to continue heading north. So they put us on another bus headed south and we were deported back to Guatemala. Bad luck. We made it back to Tecun Uman and had no money for a hotel. Luckily, we had a friend in Hugo and thankfully he took us back in. Hugo worked as a bicycle repairman and had a wife named Sonia, and two kids around my age.
I really wish I could track Hugo or his family and thank him for what they did for us. They did not have a phone, and there was no email or social media in those days and unfortunately we lost touch. I hope he and his wife are still around. His kids are my age by now. I think about them often. I’d like to visit Guatemala soon and make it my mission to find them.
Our trip to L.A. was poorly planned. We had no money to cover the bus fares and we relied on whatever money my mother could send us. Days passed and we welcomed 1992 in Guatemala. A week later my mother wired us some money and we immediately bought bus tickets. We thanked Hugo and his family and continued our way north. We made it past the first checkpoint, where we got stopped the previous time, but then we reached another checkpoint in Oaxaca, where our luck quickly ran out and we were sent back to Guatemala. And back to Hugo’s it was.
This happened to us several times and it was demoralizing. The weeks flew by, March arrived and we were still in Tecun Uman. Hugo felt bad for us and put us in contact with a family who had relatives in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. They were very generous and agreed to host us. Our buses for transportation strategy was clearly not working but my aunt did not want to risk it by taking “La Bestia.” La Bestia is a cargo train that runs through Mexico that many migrants hop on, risking losing their limbs or life in the process. We were going to wait for my mother, whom I learned was pregnant at the time, to continue sending money.
The southern part of Mexico is a migrant corridor where most of the Mexican immigration authorities are concentrated. Their checkpoints work to filter out the amount of migrants that will make it to the Mexico-U.S. border. Their agents are good at what they do and can easily spot anyone who is not Mexican. Unfortunately, like in many Latin-American countries, they are susceptible to corruption and bribes.
It was late in April when TV images showed burning buildings and chaos unfolding in Los Angeles during the riots, or as some like to now call, the uprisings. I couldn’t believe that was where we were headed and I worried about my mom. The month of May saw us take a new strategy in our quest. We split our traveling quartet. My uncle and I took a bus to Veracruz, Digna went in a private car to bypass all the checkpoints that targeted buses filled with migrants. A couple of months in Mexico allowed me to lose my Honduran accent and adopt a more Mexican-sounding one.
The four of us reached Veracruz successfully. The hardest part was over. The bus ride from Veracruz to Mexico City
went smoothly. We were in the capital city for a few hours before we took a bus to Morelia, Michoacan, my uncle’s hometown. There we stayed with Roberto’s family for what seemed to be the longest month ever.
In the last week of June, my cousin and I took a bus to Tijuana. After a long bus-ride we arrived at the bus terminal where Roberto was waiting for us. I remember being car-sick and throwing up as soon as I stepped off that bus. I was exhausted. Never did I imagine it would take so long.
A man named John had come with my uncle and my cousin’s aunt. We got inside John’s white Cadillac and they took us to eat and bought us new clothes in a Tijuana shopping center. Shortly after we made our way to the border. They told us to pretend we were asleep and we crossed. While passing through San Diego Roberto told us “Bienvenidos a Estados Unidos.” I was relieved that our six-month traumatic odyssey was finally over.
As we approached L.A., the downtown skyline looked so beautiful. They dropped me off in Echo Park and left me with my mom’s neighbor. A couple of hours later, my mom opened the door and I ran towards her. We hugged and cried. My mother said, “Te he extrañado mucho, gracias a dios que ya llegaste,” or “I missed you a lot, thank God you arrived.” Together at last after four years.
