The Jaguar’s Children

A young man from Oaxaca travels all the way to the United States border, where he pays a coyote to seal him, along with other migrants from various parts of Central and South America, into the tank of an old water truck. Sealed as in, the metal is welded so there’s no exit. Eludes detection, but when the truck breaks down just after crossing the border, and the coyotes take off -saying they’re going to find a mechanic but who knows- all the migrants are left inside in the dark, just waiting. It’s stifling in the day, cold at night, and soon the situation becomes unbearable- water runs out, tempers are frayed to say the least. Will someone come back? will they ever get out? In desperation, our narrator starts sending messages on his cell phone, hoping to reach the only contact he has in the States. And then he starts telling his backstory. It becomes a story of his country and his people as well, melding family history with political turmoil, cultural disintegration, agricultural reform that threatens everything, and mythology like a shadow in the background. Very strange, to encounter stories of the Aztec sacrifices and the Oaxacan beliefs in Grandfather Jaguar, near the very end of this book. Such a very different context from the last. This one really has you on the edge of your seat, wondering if the people in the truck will survive, reading with consternation (and some humor) the historical retellings, the stories within stories. Some of it is very hard to read. And I liked the appearance of an actual jaguar in the end, but dismay is what I felt most. Especially at what happened to the corn.