The Border Patrol Ate My Dust

This book is a superb collection of real-life adventures. Some are a few pages, while others are several pages. All share a common theme: In first-person narrative, they tell the story of a person from Latin America who is heading to the USA to find a better life. Each story is quite distinct, due to the narrators' age and gender differences, their available resources, their life experiences they have left behind, and what they expect to find awaiting in the USA. In each story I became acquainted with a unique person of different aspirations. Translated from the Spanish, these are day-by-day accounts from good storytellers, describing that important transition of their life when they left poverty behind. Entering the USA illegally is difficult, expensive and dangerous. Some have died trying. In these stories, we read about tragic situations and even some comical ones, as our narrators do everything they can to evade capture from the ever-present border patrol. Though sometimes it looks like capture is imminent, the reader keeps in mind that these are the lucky ones that made it. They arrived here safely, and now have quite the story to share with us. Regardless of one's opinions concerning the "immigration issue", anyone reading these stories would want these people to make it safely across. They describe their hopes and dreams that any normal person could relate to. They also describe terrible economic hardships in their homelands. It would seem there is no other option than to go to the USA. In one particularly memorable story, a young narrator describes leaving his mother and little sisters behind. The mother and girls were crying. The narrator told them not to cry and promised to send back money after he reached the USA. He set out on foot and had food for barely two days. Many weeks passed before he could send back word that he had arrived safely in the USA. It was enough time that his family feared he had died. The truth was that he almost had, after several days in the desert! In conclusion, these are fascinating stories, and I highly recommend them. But how much better the world would be if they were only fiction...

Southern California radio personality Alicia Alarcon invited her immigrant listeners to call in and share their stories: The Border Patrol Ate My Dust (translated into English by Ethriam Cash Brammer de Gonzales) is her recorded collection of these stories of hardship and deprivation suffered by those who struggled to enter this country. Natural and man-made obstacles are recounted in recollections of making it across the border and making a new life in America.