“I’ve always been determined,” Sonia Nazario said during her speech at Old Westbury. “It’s my determination that drives me.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist visited the college at the sixth annual Common Greeting Program in the multi-purpose rooms of the Student Union on September 27; to give a speech about her journey as a journalist and about her life.
Nazario has dozens of awards, but is most famous for her series of investigative reports, which she turned into a book called Enrique’s Journey. The reports in the Los Angeles Times and the non-fiction book are about a seventeen year-old boy who left his hometown of Tegucigalpa to take a treacherous ride through Mexico on the tops of trains, to search for his mother in the United States. His mother left him when he was 5, so that she could come to the United States and send back money to provide for him.
Nazario is an immigrant who was born in Argentina, but grew up in Kansas. Her parents were also immigrants. Her mother had to flee Poland; because she was Jewish. On two occasions, Nazario took the same journey as Enrique did to grasp the type of experiences Enrique had. It’s not just something anyone can do, and she said her determination is what got her through.
Nazario was just 13-years-old when her father died of a heart attack. She was living in Kansas at the time and her mother moved her family back to Argentina following his death. At the time, the Dirty War was going on and the military killed nearly 30,000 people including journalists. “I remember being 15-years-old and living in fear,” she said. “When they killed the two journalists; that’s really the first time I understood the power of words and the power of storytelling. That’s when I knew I wanted to tell stories. We returned to Kansas shortly after that, and I never forgot that lesson.” Nazario first got the idea for Enrique’s Journey when she was having a conversation with her housekeeper Carmen. She asked her if she ever planned on having kids and Carmen started crying. She told Nazario that she had four kids back in Guatemala and she left them there with her mother so she could go to the United States to support them.
Nazario took a journey through Honduras and found hundreds of women just like Carmen. She met Enrique in Northern Mexico.
Enrique left home with nothing but his mother’s phone number written on a piece of paper wrapped in plastic in his pocket. He was poor. He would grip to the top of trains up the length of Mexico and would have to avoid immigration agents, crooked cops, and other dangers.
Some of the other dangers include robbers and muggers, who one night hit him in the face multiple times with a wooden club. He narrowly escaped and was found by women who gave him coins and told him to go home. Inspired by his story, Nazario set out to take the journey to see what Enrique and thousands of others go through.
“I did Enrique’s journey twice step by step on top of seven different freight trains,” Nazario said. “On the first night, I was hit in the face with a branch and almost fell off the train. After I came back, I had recurring nightmares of the trip and needed therapy,” she said.
After traveling 1600 miles from his house on his eighth attempt, Enrique completed his journey in 122 days. Nazario remains in contact with him and thinks this country should help improve the economic conditions of Latin America so that immigration can be reduced.
“We need a foreign policy centered on creating jobs in other countries,” she said, “You have no idea what these people go through until you walk a day in their shoes.”