43 pages • 1 hour read
Javier ZamoraSolito
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Latin American Immigration to the US
The numbers of Latin American immigrants in the US soared in the late 20th century, growing “from less than one million in 1960 to nearly 19 million in 2010” (Tienda, Marta and Susana Sanchez. “Latin American Immigration to the United States.” Daedalus, 2013). Latin America is a diverse region that includes Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean islands, and the United Nations identifies 33 Latin American countries. Spanish, with regional variations, is the predominant language in Latin America, but Portuguese, French, Creole, English, and Indigenous languages are also spoken by various populations in the region. Given this level of diversity, it is difficult to generalize about the experiences of people from this region of the world, yet Javier Zamora and other Latin American migrant writers recognize the commonalities of their experiences of crossing the border into the United States. It is the tension between the staggering diversity of Latin Americans and the universality of the immigration experience that Zamora and other Latinx and Latin American writers explore in their work.
Part of this tension lies in the gulf between the perspectives of the immigrants themselves and the US-born individuals who hear, read, or see their stories. Zamora’s memoir may be dedicated to all the migrants making their way to the United States, but his intended audience is the general American populace, especially those who know little about Latin American immigrants. The memoir is meant to reveal to these readers the difficulties a small child must endure when immigrating to the US, especially because current policy makes it nearly impossible to immigrate legally. Zamora points out that his family had attempted on more than one occasion to get the requisite paperwork but to no avail. Furthermore, though not discussed in the memoir, Zamora’s unauthorized immigration status haunted him for years while growing up in California. He wanted to be in the US legally, even a citizen, but politics made it extremely difficult. It wasn’t until 2018 that he received a green card.
The aftermath of the Salvadoran Civil War made it necessary for many families to migrate, as rampant violence and poverty made the country virtually unlivable. For Zamora, the politics at that time mattered little to him. The only reason for Javier to leave his home in El Salvador was to reunite with his parents. The reasons for his parents leaving were political and economic, while his was emotional; they were fleeing economic hardship (joblessness) and military and gang violence.
These conditions are not exclusive to El Salvador. The need to flee violence and economic stagnation are the primary reasons for the vast majority of undocumented Latin Americans who immigrated to the United States. Solito intends to point out the universality of the situation. Zamora accomplishes this by including the stories of the other migrants, who each have individual circumstances but are all fleeing violence and poverty to be with their families and find fulfilling work. Offensive, inaccurate terms such as “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” that proliferate in the media depersonalize the struggle of those who risk their lives to find safety for themselves and their families in other countries. Zamora’s memoir provides a firsthand humanizing perspective on Latin American immigration to the US, which is often seen as strictly a political issue.
The Strength of Family and Community
Even though Zamora titles his memoir Solito, which can be translated a few ways but basically means “alone,” Javier was never truly alone on his journey from his hometown to the United States. The title describes a child’s feelings upon being without his family for the first time in his life. Javier’s grandpa’s departure was so upsetting for him because his parents had already left him, in a sense, and his grandparents were his main source of emotional support. Despite his loneliness, Javier is quickly incorporated into the found family of migrants who are making the journey together. Though he left his home, grandparents, aunts, cousin, his friends, and toys behind, along the way, he meets a new group of people who become his second family. This is one of the strongest themes and provides most of the strongest emotional currents in the memoir.
By the time Javier begins his journey, he has not seen his father in eight years, and has not seen his mother in four years. Javier’s parents stay in close contact through regular phone calls, and it would have been expensive for his parents to call internationally in the 1990s. Though Javier led a relatively quiet and happy life with his grandparents and aunt Mali, he longed to be with his parents again, especially his mother. Because of this, he was solito in some ways even before he left El Salvador. Zamora uses an epigraph to highlight this longing, which describes the absence of his mother as a hole in his heart. He couldn’t wait for the day to finally come before they would send for him. Don Dago was not a friendly or loving character, but Javier was nevertheless excited to see him because it meant that he would soon be reunited with his family.
During the first portion of the trip, Javier was given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow closer to his grandpa, whom until that point Javier had viewed as being rather aloof and scary. On the trip, Javier learned just how much his grandpa loved and cared for him, further strengthening his ties to his family in El Salvador, which he addresses in the epilogue to his memoir. Javier was forced to be separated from his parents, and later because he lacked documentation, he was unable to travel back to El Salvador until decades later. Nevertheless, he and his family maintained close ties with one another, displaying how politics, distance, war, hardship, etc., cannot break the ties of a strong family.
Javier’s found family with the migrants was crucial to his survival, as his biological family could not be with him on his journey. Specifically, Patricia and Carla, but also, later, Chino. These three act as a family as their cover story, but they become a de facto family that looks out for and cares for one another. Zamora readily admits he would not have made it without their help. Even though they had to part ways in Tucson and lost contact over the years, Zamora’s gratitude to them has not dwindled, nor have his feelings for them. He states that a part of his reason for writing and publishing the memoir was that it might provide the opportunity to reconnect with his second family, as he calls them, or at the very least to tell them thank you, which as a nine-year old, he had not thought to do.
Language as Identity
The title of Javier Zamora’s memoir already alerts the reader to the fact that the Spanish language has great importance in his story. However, Zamora does not simply compare the similarities and differences between English and Spanish. Language plays a role in defining a person’s perspective on defining themselves, others, and the world around them. It also marks them as a member of a specific class, community, and cultural group.
One of the ways Zamora signals that Javier is shifting his sense of identity is by having him repeat the words adults are saying. For example, early in his journey, he learns that migrantes is a word with derogatory connotations: “‘You migrantes are like this,’ ‘those migrantes are like that,’ migrantes, migrantes” (79). Javier is parodying the people he hears harping about migrants, but the repetition of the word “migrantes” also shows that Javier is learning, or memorizing, it, just as children learn most words by repetition. Rather than simply being a new piece of vocabulary, the word “migrantes” has complex cultural, political, and now personal meanings to Javier that extend beyond the reach of his young intellect. However, he understands on an emotional level.
Zamora not only interjects Spanish words into his predominantly English-language memoir, but he also blends Spanish language and punctuation with English. This often happens during moments of excitement or crisis. In Chapter 3, when Don Dago comes to wake everyone up to so they can catch their boat, chaos ensues, and Patricia yells at Carla and Javier: “Ya, bichos, ¡wake up! ¡wake up!” (79). Here, the slang term “bichos” most likely translates to “brats” since she’s talking to the kids, but the term also has more vulgar connotations. The mixing of Spanish slang, punctuation, and English words reflects the chaos and urgency of the situation.
Salvadoran slang terms play an important role in the narrative and mark Javier and the others as different from the other Latin Americans (specifically Guatemalans and Mexicans) with whom they come in contact. One of the most notable examples of this is the Salvadoran word for drinking straw (pajilla) when the Mexican word is popote. It is not only specific words that separate him and the others from Mexicans or other Latin Americans. Zamora also points out that the Salvadoran accent differs significantly from the Mexican one, which proves an obstacle when his group tries to pass as Mexican.
Language, however, does not only mark people as similar to different in the memoir. For Javier, it also provides him with a means to name and codify the world around him. While he is in the Sonoran desert, he gives names to the cacti around him, whose real names he doesn’t know. At first, the cacti are imposing silhouettes in the darkening night’s sky, threatening and frightening. However, as he begins to name them according to their specific characteristics, the cacti become less threatening. Even La Migra is a name given to the US Border Patrol by the migrants in an attempt to define them from their own perspective. La Migra is usually a term infused with negative connotations and fear. However, when Javier and his second family come across the agent who helps rather than arrests them, they no longer associate the term La Migra with him and give him the epithet “Mister,” connoting respect and admiration.
