Children of the Land Quotes

“I ventured to believe that the function of the border wasn’t only to keep people out, at least that was not its long-term function. Its other purpose was to be visible, to be seen, to be carried in the imaginations of migrants deep into the interior of the country, in the interior of their minds. It was a spectacle meant to be witnessed by the world, and all of its death and violence was and continues to be a form of social control, the way that kings of the past needed to behead only one petty thief in the public square to quell thousands more.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“When I came undocumented to the U.S., I crossed into a threshold of invisibility. Every act of living became an act of trying to remain visible. I was negotiating a simultaneous absence and presence that was begun by the act of my displacement: I am trying to dissect the moment of my erasure. I tried to remain seen for those whom I desired to be seen by, and I wanted to be invisible to everyone else. Or maybe I was trying to control who remembered me and who forgot me. But I couldn’t control what someone else saw in me, only persuade them that it was an illusion. There were things that I could not hide, things that would come out of me and expose me in my most vulnerable moments. It was my skin, my dark hair, my cheekbones, that I swore would give me away. I was afraid of the way I walked. It was easy to imagine being hit by a car, because even if they didn’t see me, I would for once be able to feel my body as more than smoke.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“On the plane, I wondered if there was an exact point when we were no longer in one country and inside another, or if there was ever a moment when I occupied no country. If ever that was possible, it was possible up in the air. There was no clear correlation between what was happening down below and up above. I had heard that at the official port of entry there were turnstiles, just like the subway, ushering the travelers forward. If such turnstiles existed, you could map the precise moment when half of your body was here and the other half was there. I could measure; all I wanted was that little gold stamp that said I clicked past onto the other side, I entered, I returned, I was measured, counted for, recorded.

Would a sudden coldness come over us when our bodies moved over the actual line of the border? Wasn’t that how loneliness began, with the coldness of our bodies?”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“There were things about me that became automatic, that over the years I came to do without thinking. I would have to pull myself back and adjust. I had to recalibrate—to enter the world as someone who was there, someone who was present. I finally had the liberty to do things as minor as saying my name out loud, and still at times I kept silent.”
― Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Children of the Land

“It was useless to blend in, to not bring attention to myself—speak neither too loud nor too soft. It didn’t matter if I perfected my English—speak like a person who is wandering but not lost. It was useless to try to negotiate two worlds at once when only one of them was visible while the other one threatened to collapse. And yet I tried, but it came at a price. So much of my energy was spent trying to avoid getting caught. I wonder how much more I could have done with my life if I’d been spared the energy it took to survive.”
― Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Children of the Land

“It was strange to see that the U.S. still feared the spread of communism. The legacy of that law is what persisted. It assumed that the U.S. was clean, not to be soiled by the ilk of the world.”
― Marcelo Hernández Castillo, Children of the Land

“And in return, for the duration of the interview at least, I was supposed to speak and look patriotic. I was supposed to show or prove an attempt at assimilation; that I aligned myself with undeniable American values--"values" that ensured the continuation of a system historically aligned against me. I had to align myself with a history of denial toward the violence committed on entire generations of people.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“Perhaps, in an ironic turn, he saw blackness as quintessentially American at the same time that America distanced itself from black life and people while co-opting their culture.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“Our life was dedicated to the unbreaking of things, and things kept wanting to stay broken.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land

“Amá’s earliest memory of her mother, whom we called Amá Julia, is of them sitting beneath the same tree outside the courtyard walls of that same ranch, La Loma. Her mother wrapped her in a shawl and they sat huddled together on a rock, listening to the birds roosting for the evening in the trees. It was the evening chorus that makes birds feel as if they are as large as their songs carried over the valley, announcing themselves, saying “I’m still here,” as if there were any doubt about it. The stars were innumerable and soon the night would fall with its absolute darkness, because no one had electricity up on the mountain. It was so dark that everything seemed to be on fire when even the slightest light from the sun emerged in the morning, as if by noon it would all be burned to the ground. Amá said that never again were there as many stars in her life.”
― Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Children of the Land