Migration Begins

There are a few things that I remember from the early 80's when I was six years old. Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is one, Los Gatos Bravos is another and Ronald Reagan. Cindy Lauper is just another liking of Hondurans for 80's music that is still prevalent even today. The Honduran northern coast is known for Punta music where Los Gatos Bravos were causing a musical upheaval, it was a period of partying for many folks in the coast of Puerto Cortez back then, but I did not really understood why. Honduras was stuck between other revolutions. One had occured in Nicaragua and another was in progress in El Salvador. The country was a launching point for trained Contras (Nicaraguans trained by Americans in Honduras to fight the rebel army in that country), and for counterinsurgency measures against El Salvador's Farabundo Marti army(FMLN). It was Ronald Reagan this and Ronald Reagan that everyday on radio and tv and so there was no way of getting away from it.
Honduras began requiring that every male of age serve its army. Conscription was everywhere and my maternal grandparents did not like the idea because out of their 12 children three were girls and the rest were destined to serve the military. My grandfather Hector did not like where the country was going. I can only guess where he stood politically back then by the nickname he gave me - Sandino (Nicaraguan Rebel). Later in life I asked him why the nickname and he said "Its because the way you stuck to your mom, like the Sandinos loved their country. Nobody could rip you away from your mom." And it was true.
I went everywhere with my mom back then. Along with my dad she was involved with her church and so we went everywhere in Honduras setting up churches or just sizing up locales. My sisters were jealous of me because of this. One time, my little sister and I found ourselves running through streets with my mom in the lead. We were running away from the military which was arresting people that had participated in a riot. My mom's memory is fuzzy of the events back then, and I don't recall if we were part of the ruckus. We were running anyway, and I remember spending a long time hidding under a bed with my little sister listening to the running and shooting outside. Going places with my mom was not easy and this proved to be true later in life.
What did it for my grandparents was the lost of one my uncles who had joined the army. His death took them over to a launching point where it was decided that all the Aguilares were leaving and coming back was not going to be an option. My grandfather personified the love/hate relationship that many Hondurans have with the United States, blamed for all societal ills but its the first place that everyone is headed. My grandparents were herding their family to the US and there was no stopping them. Except that not everyone in their family completely agreed with their decision. For instance, Tia Marin and uncle Rene decided to stay in San Pedro. Both in the older kids section of the family and so with more connections and excuses to stay behind.
Like Moses in the desert, my grandparents lost a few along the way. My uncle Juan Carlos died in Southern Mexico in a boating accident. While swimming in a river, a boat rode over him an split his head. My aunt Olga decided to stay in Mexico City. I guess she liked the city and decided it was good enough to live in. Uncle Gonzalo is in Tecate which is on the border with Mexico and the US. My mom said that it took her family about three years to make it out of Mexico and that after many tries crossing the border illegally, Uncle Gonzalo just gave up and stayed at the Mexican border where he works as an electrician. I don't think he tried hard enough, it must have been easier to cross the border illegaly back then. Everybody else landed in Baltimore, Maryland. Someone had mentioned to them that there was a fishing industry there that offered good money.
This was the early 80's. When Cindy Lauper was singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Hondura's economy and politics were tanking. My mom and dad had been spotted by their church as good church-planting material, and so it was decided that they should head out of the country. The decision was easy for Mom. She, being the oldest, had lost her family to migration and there was no reason to stay in Honduras. Fifteen years will pass before we heard anything from them. So while her family toiled through Mexico, my family headed on a different path.

San Pedro Sula Living

I immediately recognized her. She had aged a lot but had not lost the Aguilar look. So there was no way to miss her and her husband as they waited for me at the bus depot in San Pedro Sula. The last that I remember of her was she being very strict, but quickly found that absurd as she hugged me and carried my luggage to the taxi. None of her or what I was to encounter next indicated any rigidity but I instantly felt flushed with pity for her and the situation she currently lives in.

I arrived in San Pedro in August, and it was very hot. San Pedro did not seem any different from Tegus and was only better traffic wise, otherwise it was the same - dirty streets, trash everywhere, over congested, car fumes and an overall feel of a city in a hurry to somewhere except where we now drove along. Tia Mari had spent the past 25 years exactly in the same part of the city and was not going anywhere. That was why it was easy for anyone visiting to get back to her. She said that it helped to be where they were because of her husband's taxi job. It provided him with clients and was close to central park where he paid for a spot to pick up people. Tia is now sixty and showed more than that in age. She walks with a shuffle as if tired of walking even though she goes around only in car for fear of being robbed. Constantly watches channel six which continuously shows dead people or other victims of San Pedro's crime. In fact whenever I visit them, she immediately catches me up on the latest kidnappings, murders, killings, feminicidios (women killings), shootings, stabbings and so on. Things I try to avoid seeing or reading about,which I do not need to worry about in Sigua. She is traumatized! I plainly see in her how people in fear live here and understand why everyone has cable but low quality water supply. It's better to be entertained indoors than demand something essential like water to be in constant supply (and not every other day as is the case in most places including Sigua) and of good quality (not the murky brown). She sits all day reviewing the carnage that she already saw in the evening news yesterday, but this time with more detail in the morning newspapers. She gets up only to prepare food for uncle who because of his job comes in irregularly. Its easy to feel sorry for her, and I have not started on her environment or where she lives.

She is not listed in the phone book for fear of scam artists. I don't blame her. Once, when I was visiting, the phone rang but I was not going to pick up. It was not my business and the call was not mine since I did not lived there, and there was no one at home anyway. But the phone rang and rang. So I picked up and a heavy male voice immediately told me that my family that was crossing through Mexico was being held for ransom somewhere near the United States border and that if I did not wire some money immediately...well lets say that it will not be good. I immediately hung up. I don't blame Tia for not being listed, she probably gets a lot of these calls.

Everything is dying around Tia, and if not she tell tales of the dead as she did tell once about my uncle Rene. Whenever I visit, I'm given a back room with a large bed to sleep in. Once, when I was going to sleep, she began telling me about the last person that slept there, it was my Uncle Rene. She said that Uncle Rene's chronic drinking problem led him to a slow death on that bed. She described in detail for about about an hour or so of how their care had no effect on his passing away. On top of the gun shots, suffocating heat and mosquitoes, I don't remember sleeping that night. I thought to myself during that night, that we were sort of doing the same to her. It was like coming to pay our respect at someone's grave whenever we visited her (I'm not the only one from her family here now after being gone for decades). No matter what we do we cannot stop her slow descent, its like we left her here to die and what we see now is just a specter stripped away from any real spirit she was before.

I have a lot of respect for my Aunt because she was the only one that stayed behind in Honduras when all her 11 siblings and family decided to immigrate to the United States in the early 80's. She made the decision to stay behind in the crumbling society that Honduras was then. She does not regret her decision but desires to see this land where everyone moved to. Only to visit and then come back, she wants to know what's the great to do about the US. Part of the reason I'm now in Sigua is San Pedro. If Tia wanted to scare me, she was successful at first and no pleading of hers would make me stay in San Pedro. I ran out of that city in a hurry, back to that little town I had seen and my way back and from Tegus - Siguatepeque. It reminded me of Big Bear and Big Bear City in California without the lake.