We Are Not from Here

“She turns her gaze back toward the streets and lets out a loud painful wail, as if she had been on the shores of grief for just a moment, and now the ocean has come to take her back to the deep again. Sometimes it feels like the ocean won’t rest until it takes every last one of us.” 

Pulga hears Doña Agostina’s expression of grief as she sits outside her house, where women make tamales for the wake of her husband Don Felicio. Doña tells Pulga the vision she had the night before in which her dead husband says he, Chico, and Pequeña must run. This news surprises and worries Pulga, and he wonders what his mother would say if she knew. An oppressive and almost claustrophobic feeling of hopelessness is conveyed by Doña Agostina’s wail.

“We should run.” 

Pequeña says little else to Pulga and Chico after the wake of Don Felicio, except a cryptic statement that something very bad will happen to them soon. She does not tell them about her vision in which they bleed from the throat like Don Felicio; as Pulga does not tell her about Doña Agostina’s vision of Don Felicio telling them to run. This dramatic irony results in the reader knowing both Pequeña’s and Pulga’s full motivations for fleeing although the characters do not.

“As I grab my bag and turn to leave, I wonder how many girls before me have come to Leticia asking for the same items. I wonder if it’s coincidence that the razors and switchblades are in the same area of the pharmacy as the birth control and morning-after pills.” 

Pequeña’s tone of an everlasting hopelessness is conveyed when she makes desperate requests of Leticia at the drug store. In order to have the slimmest chance at a future with freedom, Pequeña must leave her mother and home behind. There is little opportunity for young women and especially young mothers in her town, as Pequeña is reminded with the sight of Leticia, whose baby’s father disappeared to America ten years before.

“And my heart, as if in one last desperate attempt to make me stay, cramps tight, like it’s just been punched, making it difficult to breathe. You can outrun danger, it tells me. But you can’t outrun the pain.”

Pulga’s guilt and grief at leaving his mother and hometown behind is not going to depart any time soon, as he is made aware by a notable, physical pain in his chest. He has committed to fleeing, however—he made the decision from which he cannot turn back in the instant he threw the backpacks from the window—and watches as the bus pulls in that will take him, Chico, and Pequeña north toward the infamous train La Bestia.

“I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why I thought I could do this. I don’t know.” 

In a pivotal moment, Pulga must admit that despite gathering information, he is not fully prepared to lead the trip north. No taxis or buses await the migrants after crossing the river into Mexico, and as the sun sets rapidly, the three teens find themselves walking into obvious danger. Pulga’s doubts grow as Chico, afraid, takes matters into his own hands and runs toward a house where a man with a shotgun is not sympathetic to their plight.

“We’ll call when we’re closer.” 

Pequeña defuses the potential destruction of their hoped-for freedom when Pulga wants to call home. She knows that if Pulga and Chico hear Consuelo’s voice, they might be impossible to convince to keep going. Returning home means utter submission, injury, and possibly death at the hands of Rey for each of them, so Pequeña offers this compromise to keep Pulga going.

“It’s okay […] It’s just because it’s the first jump, that’s all. It’ll get easier.” 

Pulga, notably trying to regain some sense of leadership, tells the others this as they pause to catch their breath in the woods, having just leapt from the first white van helping them to Arriaga, where the train waits. He coaches Pequeña and Chico that they will have to walk for a few hours, evade the checkpoint, then hop a new van and start the process again.

“I watch the world outside, people in other cars, headed who knows where. While we head to the beast. The beast who will deliver our dreams.” 

In the last white van of the highway journey, Pulga asks the driver to take the three of them to the start of La Bestia’s route, where they hope to board the train for a fast commute north. The driver agrees to do so for a price. This line is significant because Pulga feels the stirrings of hope with this line of interior monologue, with the train almost within reach, and a small amount of pride, having accomplished much on the journey so far.

“We are luchadores. We are fighters. We are those who dare to try against impossible odds.”

Pequeña feels a moment’s hope and pride as well, once the three of them are relatively safely on the train. It is notable that she sees the happiness and hope in the faces of the boys before she welcomes any feelings of freedom and hope in herself; this distinctly maternal reaction is ironic as she willingly left her own infant behind in Puerto Barrios.

“The world thinks we are ants. Fleas. The world thinks they are gods. My father was a god. Someday I’ll be a god, too.” 

Pulga is atop La Bestia finally, after a journey to Arriaga that had its own perils. He recalls that he had promised himself the simple reward of listening to his Walkman, but the reader discovers that this music is no ordinary mixtape: The sound of his father’s self-recorded messages for his mother is endearing and bittersweet, both heartbreaking to Pulga and inspirational. His father met a tragic end on his rise to a hoped-for successful career, life, and stardom; Pulga seeks the same kind of dreams.

“You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off.”

The teens hide after fleeing the train the first time, fearing discovery; Chico is hurt badly and Pequeña is wounded. Pulga’s fear escalates as someone nears, but it is the man with his girlfriend he saw on the train. The man bears a gun but lowers it when he recognizes them. This moment is ironic as the man, whom they look to for help, not only almost shoots them but also convinces them they must not go on.

“Here I leave more of my hair. Here I leave bits of my teeth. Here I leave more of who I used to be. And there, somewhere in the face reflected in the mirror, is who I’ll become once I cross the border. Somewhere inside me, Flor waits to be born.” 

Pequeña, prompted by Soledad at the shelter, realizes she has a stronger identity, Flor, waiting to be revealed. She recognizes that she is already transcending above the old Pequeña as her hair is cut away and her broken teeth particles go down the drain. Pequeña literally means “small” and does not fit her strength and resilience, so she tells the woman what her new name will be.

“I don’t know how to make any of this stop. All this life, always draining. And nobody cares.” 

Pulga, holding Chico as Chico bleeds to death, is reminded of watching Don Felicio die in a similar manner. The violence against people—especially people as young, innocent, and kindhearted as Chico—that is present in his country and on this trip roll over Pulga with the intensity and ferocity of the train itself. It is significant that he cannot acknowledge anyone’s pain but his own, despite Pequeña’s evident grief.

“And I feel myself falling, falling, falling. Through darkness, through imaginary worlds with water and spiders, and stars—where witches who are also angels watch over you.”

This is Pequeña’s interior monologue as she watches Chico’s blood seep through the white sheet. Her visions often interweave with reality, but this time, though she wants La Bruja to come and take her away to a place where Chico’s death is not real, she cannot escape what has happened or what she sees. She cannot transport herself to the worlds that have saved her so far, referencing the water vision that prompted her to run from Puerto Barrios and the spider vision that saved the migrants from the attacking kidnappers.

“And I cry, shedding the tears I need to shed in order to go on.” 

Pequeña washes clothes with a young mother at the shelter where they recently buried Chico. Feeling an inexplicable connection with the woman, Pequeña knows the woman’s advice to leave on the next day’s train is sage. Facing the moment of saying goodbye to Chico’s physical body prompts weeping in Pequeña, but she knows that crying these tears helps along not only the end of the trip north but also the reinvention of her identity.

“This is the last one.”

Pequeña tries to tell Pulga they have boarded the train to Altar, but as he has no reaction, she more bluntly tells him this line, indicating that they will not have to board or flee any more trains. Pulga, though, is emotionally paralyzed with grief and remorse over Chico, and cannot feel the joy and relief he expected and hoped for. Ironically, though Pulga was the most informed and eager to lead them on leaving home, it is Pequeña who navigates and names the end steps in their long, heartbreaking trip.

“Altar. Where we get on our knees. And pray.” 

Almost immediately upon walking into town, Pequeña’s internal alarms go off; the town of Altar is clearly dangerous and no one seems to have the migrants’ best interests in mind. The name of the town is so ironic that it might be funny if Pulga and Pequeña were not already exhausted and saddened. Pequeña means here that they are at the mercy of others in this town, and that the only thing they can hope for is God’s help and watchfulness.

“Here, hold this. It’s not real.” 

The nun who comes out of the church to save Pulga from the dog says this line of dialogue to Pequeña. She references a shotgun that she holds and uses to threaten the dog’s owner. That a holy woman of vows thinks nothing of lies and threats is another irony; her toughness and willingness to sin a little for the sake of saving migrants from harm is another mark of the difficult, strenuous trip.

“How many die back home, in Honduras?” 

Alvaro says this to Nilsa when Nilsa points out how dangerous the desert crossing will be; his point is that the attempt to cross into the United States is less dangerous for many compared to their chances of dying in the violence and conflict of their home country. His comment is ironic, though, as Alvaro is implied to have died in Part 5 during the desert crossing.

“This ring is your destiny.”

Pequeña hears in her memory the words that Rey spoke when he pressed the ring upon her early in the story. Its double meaning now clear, Pequeña intends to use the ring to pay off the coyotes who will hopefully help them get across the border. It is ironic that Pequeña’s suffering of Rey’s advances makes it possible for her to have a realistic attempt at freedom.

“I’m saying your brother is not gonna make it. And you have a tough choice to make.” 

Gancho, the coyote leading the small band of seven migrants across the desert, tells this to Pequeña on the third and last night of walking. Though they have come so close, Pulga is giving up, and Pequeña must decide whether to leave him behind or not. It is a notable line because to Pequeña, there is no choice to make at all; she stays with Pulga and attempts to pull him from the shelter.

“I am a flower sprouting from ashes. I am life in the desert, and they pluck me and carry me to their car.”

True to her chosen new name, Flor, Pequeña feels like a flower pulled from the desert when Marta and a second woman rescue her along the road. The line of interior monologue is also significant because it brings to mind the imagery of a phoenix with accompanying imagery of burning and ashes. A combination of her hard-as-nails endurance, will to live, and luck save Pequeña and allow her to begin life as Flor.

“I nod and grab my backpack—my whole life.” 

Pulga’s last stop before meeting his aunt and the lawyer is this symbolic moment in which he reclaims his backpack—a steady companion throughout the trip and representative of the life he had to leave behind. Taking possession of his backpack is symbolic of Pulga’s eventual first step in reclaiming his own spirit.