Enrique’s Journey: 1. The Boy Left Behind Summary & Analysis

Enrique is five years old on January 29, 1989, when his mother, Lourdes, leaves Tegucigalpa in Honduras. He does not know what is going on, and Lourdes cannot bring herself to say goodbye or to tell him where she is going. At the age of twenty-four, with her husband having left her, and her two children (Enrique and his older sister Belky) hungry, Lourdes has decided to leave behind her state of impoverishment in Honduras in the hope of finding something better in the United States. She hopes to make money to send home, and to return in one year to bring her children to the United States. Despite her plans, Lourdes never returns to Honduras.

Enrique’s separation from his mother defines his life, and his desire to see and reconnect with his mother drives Enrique to set out to find his mother at the age of 17. As such a migrant, Enrique is one of approximately 48,000 children from Central America and Mexico who immigrate to the U.S. illegally and alone. They come for different reasons—some to find employment, others to escape abuse—but the majority are seeking to reunite with their mothers. The trip is very dangerous; dodging the police, bandits, and gangsters, most are robbed, beaten, or raped. On average, they are teenagers, but some are as young as seven.

Lourdes makes her journey by bus through Mexico with her smuggler—a person who helps illegal immigrants make the trip and cross the border into the United States—during one of the largest immigrant waves in U.S. history. She plans to travel to Miami, but her smuggler abandons her in the Greyhound bus terminal in L.A., and after three days, Lourdes begs for work at a nearby factory where she gets a job sorting tomatoes for $14 a day. Finally, she is able to obtain a fake Social Security card and a job. She moves to Beverly Hills, where she works as a live-in nanny and makes $125 a week and is able to send money back to Honduras. But after seven months, she decides to quit. She cannot bear to care for another child when she has left her own so far away.

When Lourdes leaves Honduras on that fateful day, Enrique is left confused and abandoned. His father, Luis, who had been separated from Lourdes for three years, takes Enrique in. Enrique quickly becomes attached to his father, but within two years, his father starts a new life with another woman. Abandoned again, Enrique lives with his paternal grandmother, Maria Marcos, in a small shack, while his sister, Belky lives with her aunt Rosa Amalia in a better part of town, six miles away. Lourdes sends home money for her children, but not enough for Enrique to go to school.

Lourdes life in the U.S. is not what she imagined. She rekindles a relationship with a former boyfriend from Honduras, Santos, who moves to Long Beach to live with her. She unintentionally gets pregnant. When her daughter Diana is born, Santos is not there, but at a bar. When Diana is an infant, both Santos and Lourdes lose their jobs. One night, Santos, an alcoholic, hits her. Later, he decides to take a trip to Honduras under the pretense that he will make investments with their savings. However, he spends the money on alcohol and never calls Lourdes and never returns. She is left alone with Diana, living in a dilapidated garage. With no other options, she takes a job as a fichera, where she must chat with lonely men at a bar. In nine months, she finds work as a cleaner during the day, and at a gas station at night. Her jobs allow her to wire money to Honduras.

Despite Lourdes' attempts to care for her children from afar, the money cannot make up for their emotional loss. Her relationships to Belky and Enrique become more strained. In response, Lourdes plans to become a resident of the United States and bring her children as legal immigrants. But after multiple attempts to get her papers to no avail, she realizes that her plan may not work. Instead, she promises to return home for Christmas, a promise that she then has to break every year. When Enrique is twelve, he begins to realize that his mother may never return. Lourdes considers hiring a smuggler to bring her children to the United States, but the risks—abandonment or even death—and the price ($3,000 to $6,000 per child, $10,000 by air) are more than she can possibly pay.

In Honduras, the anger Enrique feels at the separation from his mother causes him to rebel. He is suspended three times and becomes a problem at school. When he is fourteen, he hangs around in a bad neighborhood, Carrizal, and defies his grandmother's orders. He becomes too much for Maria Marcos to handle, and she asks Lourdes to find him another place to live, causing Enrique to believe that no one loves him. Enrique moves in with Marco, Lourdes' eldest brother.

A year later, Lourdes moves to North Carolina, where there are fewer immigrants and she finds the people more friendly. She works as a waitress, rents a room in a trailer, and begins to save her money. She also falls in love with a house painter from Honduras, who also has two children back home. Enrique is doing well living with Marco, who works as a money changer at the border, and they have built a relationship of trust. However, at one exchange, Marco and his brother Victor are killed by thieves. Lourdes sends her savings to help pay for the funerals. With Marco gone, Enrique once again finds himself without a home.

Enrique next moves to his maternal grandmother's, where he grew up with Lourdes. At fifteen, Enrique becomes quiet and sad. His grandmother Agueda begins to scold him when he misbehaves. He also develops an addiction to sniffing glue. His grandmother won't allow him to live in the house and has him stay in the stone hut located behind it.

Meanwhile, Enrique meets and falls in love with Maria Isabel, who has also endured a difficult childhood separated from her parents. Enrique wants to have a child with Maria Isabel so that he can start a family and ensure that he won’t be abandoned by another person he loves. Unfortunately, his drug addiction becomes more severe and he grows increasingly out of control. He hallucinates at times, sometimes fails to recognize his family, and once tries to hurt himself by throwing himself off a hill. His family’s attempts at intervention are unsuccessful, but they decide not to tell Lourdes about Enrique’s situation.

When Enrique turns sixteen, he and his friend Jose decide to try to get to the United States. They take buses across Guatemala towards Mexico, and successfully get past the border and make it onto a freight train. On the train they are arrested and robbed by corrupt police, but then released. They eventually make it to the city of Veracruz—though Enrique only barely and luckily avoids injury or death when he fails to make a jump from one moving train car to another. In Veracruz, though, they are caught and deported back to Honduras.

The failed attempt pushes Enrique deeper into his drug addiction. He ends up 6,000 lempiras ($400) in debt to his dealer. To pay the debt, he steals jewelry from his aunt Rosa Amalia, who tells the police. As a result, Enrique's uncle resolves to take better care of Enrique and show him more love. He also gets Enrique a job at a tire store. However, despite attempts to quit drugs and the pleas from Maria Isabel and his family, Enrique continues to use. The conflict comes to a head when he kicks his aunt Ana Lucia, and is thrown off the property.

Although she is advised to leave Enrique, Maria Isabel persists in their relationship. She also thinks that she may be pregnant with his child. Enrique feels guilty for the way he has treated her and his other family members, and believes that only his mother can help. Though he despairs at leaving Maria Isabel, he decides that he must go to the United States. On March 2, 2000, He says goodbye to his loved ones and leaves with only $57 and his mother's telephone number written on a bit of paper attached to the inner waistband of his jeans.