Categoría: Inglés

Translated by Katrina Hassan Silvestre switches on the grass cutting machine. He feels as if he is atop a tractor, but is an industrial grass trimmer. He had never been atop a machine like this before in his life. In the United States, he has had to work in fields that have nothing to do with his master baker job he had back home in Nayarit, Mexico. Now he works as a gardener. He is in charge of working the grass cutting machine because of 20 years of experience on the job. The newbies start off by blowing the cut…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Begoña wraps herself in a blanket that she takes from her sofa and goes down the stairs of her building. She lives on the 3rd floor. She starts her car and comes back to her apartment. She puts 4 spoons of coffee in the coffee machine and two cups of water. She takes a shower in order to wake up properly while the coffee is ready. The clock says 3:15 a.m. It is Saturday, the beginning of spring. She is expected at her restaurant job at 4 a.m. She puts her wet hair into a ponytail,…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan It is June, around lunchtime and the heat is infernal. I observe the labourers from the window facing the street as I go upstairs at my place of work. Their bodies are drenched in sweat. With a pick, they open the earth to dig a trench all along the side the house in order to fix the plumbing. In the morning, the owner of the company, a Polish man of about 60 comes to show his face. He gets in his latest model double traction pick up truck and leaves. I serve two glasses of ice…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Yeyo grew up watching his dad break his back from carrying so many green banana bunches on those infernally hot tropical days in Chiapas. He saw his mom fill her arms with burn marks as she cooked potato turnovers to sell on the outskirts of the farm. Jacks of all trades, they juggled what they could to survive, being undocumented in Tapachula, Mexico. They always worked in precarious jobs, badly paid, without any benefits. They crisscrossed the state but the pay and treatment was always the same. They worked during the picking season on the coffee…

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Translated by Marvin Najarro It is 11:00 p.m., they have spent 16 hours amid the waste; mountains and mountains of it, looking for copper, glass, cardboard and plastic scraps. When they are lucky, they found packs of cookies and candies, which even if they get intoxicated, as has happened may times, they eat them in one bite, since hunger is stronger. That’s the waste picker’s life, ponders Calixto Sisto, who has also heard his parents and his neighborhood’s neighbors say the same thing. His hands and feet are covered with scars as a result of the many wounds caused by…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan The only times that Nía Chenta’s daughter Caya had ever heard the sound of horse hoofs over cobblestones, were the nights she would stay at the pharmacy owner’s house to keep her company while her kids were away in the capital. The pharmacy lady asked Nía Chenta as a favour to let Caya stay the night until her kids would come back. This is how Caya first heard the sound of water running through the PVC pipes, she saw her first toilet, bath and a refrigerator. She also saw the electric iron, TV, remote control and…

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Translated  by Katrina Hassan She takes her son Yeyo, wraps him in her shawl and puts him on her back. On the table, Isaura sets down two changes of clothes, her barrette, the baby’s talcs, a pot of face cream and a pair of shoes with broken soles. She believes she can fix them when she arrives to her destination. She also has an envelope with pictures, and a few scraps of t-shirt that she turned into diapers. In a kitchen towel, she gathers a bag with a handful of salt, some pishtones, fat tortilla like patties filled with beans, she…

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Translated  by Katrina Hassan I am in a hurry. I am only buying the utmost necessary items at the Mexican supermarket. I go to the cash register and am surprised to see long lines at every register. It is Thursday evening and the weekend starts for a lot of people. Although for the undocumented Mexican, any day is a taco and beer day. More beer than tacos, the poor man’s medicine. I notice that the man in front of me in line has as his only purchase a bag of prickly pears. In Guatemala we call prickly pear or cactus’ fruit…

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Translated by  Marvin Najarro The alarm rings insistently, Cheyo turns and look askance at it, tired, he wants to keep sleeping, it has been just three hours since he got home; he has worked all day, he wants to sleep, nothing more, it has been many year since he does not sleep more than four hours, and not because he does not want to, but because he cannot; the pace of work does not allow him that.  The back pains have taken their toll on him, and the toothache torments his head, he can barely chew and every time that…

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Translated  by Katrina Hassan The Little Pine Tree became a point of reference for giving directions in my hometown of Ciudad Peronia. “Two blocks from the little pine, up the road from the little pine, down the road from it, the houses in front of it, the houses closest to it, the little pine bus stop or drop off.  The Little Pine or “El Pinito” was a tree that survived the division into lots of our neighborhood back in the late 1980s. When that happened, the plains near the local hamlets of El Calvario, La Ceiba and the residential neighborhood of…

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Translated  by Katrina Hassan When Victoriana came to, she was already perched upon an inner tube crossing the Bravo River. The screams of other migrants brought her back to her senses. What time was it? One or two a.m? How could one know if the sky was dark and cloudy? It could even be 3 a.m, time for the rooster’s call in her native Honduras. Not the cold or the almost frozen temperature of the water could stun the senses of the surrounding commotion of seeing so many terrified families. They didn’t know how to swim and they were trying to…

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Translated by  Marvin Najarro It was three in the afternoon when he finished work at his second job; he had worked from five to ten in the morning in a furniture factory cutting wood; from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. he works his second job, cleaning offices. In his way for the third job where he works as a busboy in a Lebanese restaurant, he stops at a Mexican supermarket to send his weekly remittance to his family in San Sebastian, Retalhuleu, Guatemala. It is Sunday, but where he lives, he works seven days a week, no matter what.  A…

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