Foreigners
My first Saturday in León I go out early in search of a guitar, and step into a beauty-salon stall at the central market where the two women inside look bored but friendly. One woman goes off in search of someone who knew where to find one, and the other, Cristina, sits me down and peppers me with questions. She seems exceptionally curious about me, and when I start asking questions back, I find out why: she’s a stranger here, too. She’s from the Dominican Republic, and when she couldn’t get into the US, she came to Nicaragua looking for work. People from Nicaragua go to Costa Rica to find jobs – what a state the DR must be in.
I remember visiting a women’s jail in Guatemala a few years ago and playing basketball with the women inside. The overwhelming majority of them were not Guatemalan; they were from Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. They were trying to go North, and had gotten as far as Guatemala before they ran out of money and found themselves stealing food or selling their bodies to survive in a strange place. I also think of an old friend in the US, from the Andean region of Latin America, who had crossed from Mexico to the US in the trunk of a Geo with three other people. I wonder if Cristina will try to cross all these borders someday, to risk life and limb on Mexican trains. She was talkative, but did not want to answer definitively when I asked where she was living.
The other woman comes back with an address across town where I can find a guitar. Before I go on my way, Cristina tries to convince me to straighten my curly-frizzy hair, like she has done. She is dark skinned, and here women with light skin and straight hair are considered more beautiful – more like the blondes up North.
