“Solito”: Salvadoran Writer Javier Zamora Details His Solo 4,000 Mile Journey to U.S. at Age 9



As Biden ends Title 42, the Trump-era policy blocking asylum seekers, and plans stronger enforcement measures on the border, we speak with Salvadoran poet and writer Javier Zamora, whose best-selling memoir, _Solito_, details his odyssey as a 9-year-old child traveling unaccompanied through Guatemala, Mexico and eventually through the Sonoran Desert, before he makes it to Arizona and reunites with his parents with the aid of other migrants. “We’re all just human beings trying to have a chance at a better life,” says Zamora about his work humanizing the people caught in the migrant crisis.

Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/5/10/end_of_title_42_immigration

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25 thoughts on ““Solito”: Salvadoran Writer Javier Zamora Details His Solo 4,000 Mile Journey to U.S. at Age 9”

  1. I've known so many people that leaves their children behind with grandparents or other family members, uncle's, antiea, etc.. to come and study and or work to this so called "first world" countries. They leave children behind not because they don't love them but because there is no other way to progress and to support them. As a parent all you want is to provide your children with better opportunities for them to have a more dignified future. It is sad and difficult to leave your home to go and live in a completely different culture and environment, even sadder when received with anger and violence. Desperation when there's no food on the table can make you do all sorts of things.

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  2. This is very interesting, This is almost exactly what happend to me in 2006, things are getting worst by the years, we still humans, thank you Javier Zamora to share your story, to me it has been very difficult to speak out what happened to me, I know is extremely hard. 🙏

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  3. I have been a listener since 1976 and, I am wondering why haven't the station said anything about the congress Intel committee investigating joe Biden and hunter Biden influence trading. I see there are reports about any information against Donald Trump. This is very unfair

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  4. At what point do the people already here have a say? If I wanted to live in a country where it’s always been chaos why would I go there? Ur guest is a writer spinning a yarn.

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  5. La palabra "Solito":

    Toda lengua tiene una posesión secreta. En español, «estaba solito»; se podría

    traducir al inglés por: «he was all alone» [en francés: «il était toute seule»]. Pero ¿cómo

    decir «estaba sentadito»? [«il était là, assise, toute sage»]. Creo que no se puede decir en

    otras lenguas porque «sentadito» significa que una persona está sentada y al mismo tiempo

    se expresa la ternura y el afecto que se siente por ella, esto es una posibilidad de la lengua

    española. (Lo dijo Borges y lo encontré citado en un libro de la lingüista Ivonne Bordelois "La palabra amenazada")

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  6. Watch Amy's "sensitivity" during Katrina. Bodies floating by her and her spirits were peculiarly buoyant. A trait similar to her sensitivity towards the growing homeless population in the US.

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  7. Thank you very much Javier for sharing your story, and Democracy Now/Amy for giving him the space to do it. As other commented, it's hard to find news media accounts of migration that are dignifying for migrants or that show their resilience. I'm looking forward to reading Solito!

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  8. This is ridiculous. Apply for citizenship!!! U just can’t bum rush the border then req. free sheooot of the tax payers dollars. Stop giving benefits and they will stop coming! This is not a Humanitarian issue! Every last person not seeking Asylum. Stop!!!

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  9. So we are supposed to pay free rent, college, sect. 8, ebt cards, free school, free DL, CDL license, free Id, low interests business loans? free school breakfast and lunch, free health care? Yet Americans are being evicted, pay full price for college via student loans, pay high Medical coverage, and medications? Gtfoooootahhhhere!!!!) forget about your teen getting a summer job, or even an Adult trying to get a decent job, cause they hire these folks 1st.

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