migration and violence in Central America and Mexico, Frank-Vitale has documented the dangers facing people migrating across Mexico and the strategies they develop – including coming together in caravans – to manage those risks and defy restrictions on movement. Her new book, Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds, examines how Honduran youth navigate life after deportation, illuminating the changing nature of deportation as a consequence of the externalization of borders and connecting regimes of mobility control - and the creative ways people challenge them - across scale and space.
Frank-Vitale applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds, and shared the following:
Page 99 includes this quote, first in Spanish, then in English:Visit Amelia Frank-Vitale's website.Si a mí, un niño me dice, “Profe, yo me voy,” yo lo que puedo hacer es tomar su mano, si tengo dinero, dárselo, decirle que le vaya bien, que Espero que Dios lo cuide, lo guarde en ese camino, y que llegue. (If a child comes to me and says, “profe, I’m leaving,” all I can do is take their hand, if I have money, give it to the, wish them well, and say that I hope that God protects them and takes care of them on this journey and that they make it.)The Profe here is a teacher at two elementary schools in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He makes multiple appearances in the book, but the scene on this page is of a day I spent with him during which he was participating in a government-NGO pilot program to teach children about the dangers of migrating, aimed at reducing out-migration. Page 99 begins halfway into another lengthy quote in Spanish, but the English is there in full, telling me how he feels about having to participate in these activities:“I’m giving this talk here, telling the youth not to go. But this is a hypocritical talk, I feel like a hypocrite… the government comes and says to me, give this talk so the children don’t migrate. But what opportunity does the state give to this child? There is no opportunity. I feel like a hypocrite…You can tell people that they are going to get taken by the Zetas. You tell them that they’ll fall from the train, that they’ll lose a leg. You tell them that in the United States they are going to be in prison… but the people say I prefer that to staying here… I go because in Honduras they chop people up, they leave them in sacks along the side of the road… How am I going to tell a young person not to migrate, with what moral authority?”This quote, on this page, is a remarkably fitting condensation of the themes this book addresses: young people growing up in a Honduras surrounded by the ever-present possibility of extreme violence and a negligent, abandoning state; youth leaving Honduras, again and again, and knowing exactly why they are leaving without imagining that migration will be easy or safe; and, finally, that the punitive and violent immigration enforcement of the United States does not deter people from trying to get to the place where they feel like they’ll have a better chance of making the life they want for themselves. There are other dynamics also present in the book – the nature of border externalization, the history and impact of migrant caravans, the relationship that gangs have to neighborhood-by-neighborhood territorial control, the ordinary violence of mass deportations – but the core argument of the book is that deportation produces more movement, not less. Page 99 captures both that essential assertion and the way in which it is grounded throughout the book in the close up, fine grained ethnographic field work I did in San Pedro Sula.
Another aspect of the book that this page brings out: the interspersing of the original Spanish quotes followed by their English translation. Though this is not necessarily standard form for books like this, I wanted to retain the Spanish for two reasons. First, I think it’s a way of bringing more readers with varying degrees of bilingualism more directly into the social worlds depicted in the book. Then, while all the fieldwork for the book was conducted in Spanish, it is not my first language. I wanted to ensure that Spanish-speakers, especially Honduran Spanish-speakers, could access the words and stories in the language in which they were spoken as much as possible. We carry a lot of responsibility to tell the stories that are entrusted to us in the most responsible way possible; including the original words, as I did with the Profe on page 99, is one way I try to do that.
--Marshal Zeringue
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