Dreamland: Part 1: Enrique Alone Summary & Analysis

Enrique eventually arrives at the bus terminal in Tijuana. He doesn’t have his uncles’ address and he fears calling home and returning a failure, but he eventually caves and calls his mother, who gives him the phone number for his uncles in LA. They retrieve him from Tijuana and bring him back to the US using a fake ID. Enrique and his uncles arrive in Canoga Park, but his uncle plans to give him some money and send him home to Nayarit. Enrique resists. Enrique’s uncle opens a closet and Enrique sees many pairs of brand new Levi’s 501s. The uncle offers him a pair; Enrique later remembers the first time he was able to buy his own pair of 501s.

Enrique and the other villagers assumed the uncles were making a living with “some honorable trade,” but Enrique’s uncle shows him a box full of black tar heroin rolled up in balloons. The heroin is harvested from poppies grown in Xalisco’s mountains and smuggled across the border to LA. Enrique’s uncle explains the business to him, and Enrique begs to be a part of it. His uncle protests at first, but finally caves. Enrique begins as a delivery driver in the San Fernando Valley. Soon after, his uncles promote him to an apartment where he takes calls and gives drivers orders. The apartment’s closets are full of stolen 501s. Enrique sees selling drugs as “his pathway” out of the problems of his past, and he works for his uncles for seven months before they send him home to Nayarit. He returns home a hero, with people “coming to him for favors.”