Solito

Solito: A Memoir (2022) by Salvadoran poet Javier Zamora follows Zamora’s immigration from El Salvador to the United States when he is nine years old. There, he will reunite with his parents, who immigrated to California years earlier. As the title suggests, Zamora uses Spanish throughout the text to highlight complex feelings of both loneliness and community. Solito was a New York Times bestseller and won numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography and The American Library Association’s Alex Award. Zamora’s first collection of poetry, Unaccompanied (2018), follows his immigration journey from a more interior perspective.

For the sake of clarity, this guide refers to the author as “Zamora” and the nine-year-old protagonist as “Javier.” This guide uses the Hogarth 2022 edition of the text.

Content Warning: The guide contains descriptions of gang violence, biased language against Latin American migrants, and child endangerment.

Summary

The memoir is divided into nine chapters and an epilogue, and each chapter and section break is marked by a date, as if Javier is keeping a journal. The memoir is narrated by Javier in the first-person present tense.

Nine-year-old Javier Zamora lives with his grandparents and aunt Mali in La Herradura, El Salvador. He lives a relatively happy life, but he misses his parents, who migrated to the US years ago. Javier has attempted to join them twice already: They first tried to get him a visa, so he could travel by airplane, but his visa application was denied. Next, they tried to get a visa by lying about his identity, but that failed too. Now, their only recourse is to hire a coyote to smuggle him into the US with other migrants. He has to wait until he is nine years old, as that is the minimum age for migrants allowed by the local coyote, Don Dago. Eventually, the day arrives, and Javier is taken out of school on the pretext that he is going on vacation for a week; the nuns have the reputation of reporting anyone they think might be leaving the country. His grandpa will travel with him as far as the Mexico–Guatemala border. After that, Javier will have to go on without him.

Javier’s companions on the bus are Marcelo, a young, rebellious man from La Herradura, Patricia and her daughter Carla, a skinny young man with tattoos named Chino, and his friend Chele. Once they arrive at the Guatemalan border, they must wait weeks to cross into Mexico. The waiting gives Javier a chance to get to know his grandpa better, but when the day to leave finally arrives, Javier and his grandpa must say a difficult goodbye. Javier travels with Patricia and Carla for the rest of the journey. The group first transfers to a Mexican-run boat for an 18-hour trip to Oaxaca, where the soldiers inspect their papers and take their money. The coyote pays a ransom, and the soldiers let them go, but with the bus gone, they must walk to their next destination. Luckily, the coyote is able to flag down a minibus, and the driver takes them to Acapulco.

In Acapulco, they have a chance to eat and rest. They take a bus to Guadalajara, then a taxi to a rough-looking apartment on the outskirts of town. Again, they wait many days for more instructions. After a while, the coyote takes them by bus to Nogales in Sonora, their last stop before they will cross into la USA.

During their first border-crossing attempt, with a group of about 50 other people, they are arrested by US Border Patrol, which the migrants call La Migra (from the Spanish inmigración). La Migra takes them to a holding cell, where men and women are separated. After a long wait, Patricia, Carla, and Javier are deported back to Nogales. Chino eventually arrives, and the four make their way to a refuge established for migrants. Fortunately for them, they already paid for a second attempt, and Chino contacts the number Mario gave them in case they are arrested.

During their second attempt, they cross the border easily but must walk for hours until they run out of water. They eventually find a ranch house, where they drink from a garden hose, but soon a white man with a shotgun appears. He calls La Migra, but the border agent who takes them this time is kind and speaks Spanish. He gives them something to eat, drives them to the border, and tells them whom to contact for their next attempt.

Their third attempt, this time with a new guide and a group of about 30 other people, goes much more smoothly. Once they cross the border, vans take them to a crowded hideout in Tucson, Arizona. Javier is sad to have to say goodbye to Patricia, Carla, and Chino, who are going to Virginia, but his parents soon arrive and take him home to California.