Categoría: Inglés

A Sprig of Mint

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Translated by Marvin Najarro It was eleven thirty in the morning when, after the rain had stopped, Sabina got a whiff of fresh mint, and of freshly cut sprigs of cilantro wrapped in a tortilla fresh from the comal; the taste of tomato juice dripping from the corners of her lips, made her miss her native Olopa, Chiquimula, Guatemala, immensely, as well as her childhood years when the family was together. It is a hot day at the beginning of May, a rare thing, since summer arrives in June with its dog days and heavy rain. The hot weather makes her travel…

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From Dusk ‘Till Dawn 

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Francisco is lucky enough to have work from Monday to Sunday, no matter what weather. This is what he tells his mom back in his native Morazán, El Salvador, every time the talk on the phone. The work is hard, but not too different from his farming days back home, where he grew up plowing the earth with a pair of oxen. When his friends told him they had decided to migrate to The North he didn’t even think twice and went too.This was thirty years ago. He left the hills and rivers to go and…

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Early Morning Shift 

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Translated by Marvin Najarro She takes the avocado from her lunch box and cuts in half, takes out the bag where she has the toritllas that she had wrapped in aluminum foil, and then removes the lid from the plastic food container where she has fried beans and three boiled eggs. Wrapped in a napkin is a fistful of salt and a jalapeño pepper. She has coffee in the thermos bottle. It is mealtime.  Calandria Guadalupe, began working at age five, making comales from clay in the village of Santa Maria Magdalena Tiltipec, Santos Reyes Nopala, Oaxaca, Mexico, she was the fifth of twelve…

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Light Through The Window

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Translated by Katrina Hassan He draws the curtain and opens the blinds, sunbeams criss-cross the dust in the room. Marcelino lives in an old derelict building. The owners never fix anything because they rent it out to undocumented Latin American migrants. This being the reason why they’ve never done the required upgrades. The more he cleans, the more the dust builds up, like roaches or ants. Marcelino rents a studio apartment. It’s a small room where he has a stove, a small fridge, and a small bathroom. He barely has any room to move. After 12 years of living in…

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The Return of Silverio 

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Translated by Marvin Najarro Silverio was two years old when his father immigrated to the United States as an undocumented immigrant, his sisters Bartola and Chucita were three and four years old. For a long time, they only knew his voice through the phone calls he used to make on weekends, and the two pictures their mother had next to him; there were no family pictures.  By the time technology arrived in their native Lelá Chancó, Camotán, Chiquimula, Guatemala, they did not have money to buy a cell phone to make video calls, until their father who lived in Washington,…

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The Stilts of Cecilia 

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Translated by Marvin Najarro Cecilia never imagined that after working in a maquila in her native Puerto Lempira, Gracias a Dios, Honduras, she would end up painting houses in the United States. She did not land in a fast-food restaurant or in some maintenance job, but rather it was gardening and construction that awaited her.   Although women in her native country besides looking after their family are accustomed to perform tasks that by gender correspond to men, painting house ceilings on stilts was something new for her. When she emigrated, she was told that there was plenty of work in…

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