Enrique’s Journey | A six-part Times series
This six-part series from 2002 chronicles the journey of Enrique, who traveled alone from Honduras as a teenager in search of his mother in the United States.
Sonia Nazario, a former Times staff writer who reported and wrote the series, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Times photographer Don Bartletti was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.
- 1
In the vast migration that is changing the U.S., thousands of children travel alone, seeking the mothers who went before them. Most are visited by cruelty. Some are touched by kindness. Success comes only to the brave and the lucky.
- 2
The day’s work is done at Las Anonas, a rail-side hamlet of 36 families in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a field hand, Sirenio Gomez Fuentes, sees a startling sight: a battered and bleeding boy, naked except for his undershorts.
- 3
Enrique wades chest-deep across a river. He is 5 feet tall, stoop-shouldered and cannot swim.
- 4
Their generosity, they say, is “what God teaches”
- 5
“You are in American territory,” a Border Patrol agent shouts into a bullhorn. “Turn back.”
- 6
At 1 a.m., Enrique waits on the edge of the water.
- 7
El niño no entiende. Su mamá no le habla. Ni siquiera lo mira.
- 8
En Las Anonas, Oaxaca, una ranchería aledaña al ferrocarril donde viven 36 familias, la labor del día ha concluido cuando un jornalero, Sirenio Gómez Fuentes, ve algo desconcertante: un muchacho maltrecho y bañado en sangre, casi desnudo a no ser por un par de calzoncillos.
- 9
Enrique vadea un río. El agua le llega hasta el pecho.
- 10
Desde lo alto del vagón de carga en marcha, Enrique ve la figura de Cristo.
- 11
“Estás en territorio de Estados Unidos”, grita un agente de la patrulla fronteriza a través de su megáfono.
- 12
La madre de Enrique paga a los coyotes para que lo ayuden a cruzar el Río Grande y llegar hasta ella en Carolina del Norte. Pero lo logrará? Ella no puede dormir. Se lo imagina muerto.
