an essay by Crystal Larios
The only way I can have my country is hanging around my neck. And even then, it’s just a punched out hole in the shape of El Salvador-- kind of just the silhouette of what it could be. It’s the empty space where experiences I could have had would be, where the hugs with my abuelitos would be. It’s not that I technically can’t go: I could hop on a plane there if I really wanted to or if it were necessary. But there’s never a situation where it’s important enough, or where it’s safe enough to go. So I just haven’t gone. Not to REALLY meet my grandfathers, and not for their funerals either. I only ever saw my grandmothers because they managed to get visas to fly here. It’s not that my grandfathers hated me, or that my parents hated my grandfathers. It was more an act of love, from both my parents' side and my grandparents’ part. My dad told me that he actually wanted to take me there at one point, and my abuelito Alejandro told him to not even attempt to do it; he loved me too much to bring me to a country where I could die, even if it meant he’d never see me again. And my abuelito Alejandro never did see me again.
It doesn’t bring me too much pain, surprisingly. I mean, it does, but at least I’m HERE and not THERE. I’ll always feel upset over the fact that I never met them, even though our lifespans overlapped for many years. I think that’s a given, really. But it’s the idea that people are forced to stay there, or that they do so much work to come here just to be deported back that upsets me. Had my dad not been a citizen and my mom a permanent resident, it could have been me. I watch stories on the news about kids being orphaned without their parents, and it could have been me. Older siblings just like me taking the role of the parent because they don’t have one anymore. I could have been a little kid walking into an empty home after school. It could have been me. It could have been me. It could have been me.
On July 4th, 2019, I sat on my couch staring at the television on the day I was supposed to be celebrating my freedom. I sat there on my couch calling my relatives and loved ones, telling them to be safe because I.C.E. was raiding people’s homes. I pulled myself together, so that they wouldn’t hear me crying over the idea of losing them. Then, it wasn’t a matter of “it could have been me”: it was that it could be them. “Know your rights,” I told them, on the day I was supposed to be celebrating the presence of my own.
I’m surrounded by people who are scared of deportation at any moment, or people who couldn’t handle the idea of going “back.” And, of course, I’m fortunate that of all of the worries I have, going back to a place where I don’t belong isn’t one of them. But I think about how I can’t go there because it’s too dangerous, yet people are sent back everyday and all they’ve done is work until they could be safe. I don’t mean to act like El Salvador is some kind of garbage country. It’s a gorgeous place torn apart by gang violence. Since I’ve never been there, so many of my school projects have been about El Salvador. I mean if I can’t be there, I might as well know everything about it.
All of us love the stories about Christopher Colombus sailing the ocean blue, and we love the stories of the hardworking Pilgrims coming here to make a life for themselves. But once it’s a brown family looking for a place to safely raise their children, then it’s no longer a sob story. It’s no longer inspiring. If they’re sent back, well they deserved it for coming here in the first place. I always think about what I would do if that were my family. What happens to those people who are sent back to a country my grandfather couldn’t bear to let me go to? It haunts me every single day of my life, that people just like my parents and I are sent back like they’re a shirt that’s too small.