The book is aimed at a 12+ audience. It contains
significant allusions to violence, including murder and sexual assault. Which
unfortunately adds to the compelling nature of the stories. The book is
presented in such a way that it works on many levels.
Most of the children are from Honduras, Guatemala and
El Salvador. Such is the massive scale of the problem that in 2016 the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees published a major report called Children
on the Run: In one interview with 15-year-old Maritza, from El Salvador, she explained
to researchers that “I'm here because I was threatened by the gang. One of them
"liked" me. Another gang member told my uncle that he should get me
out of there because the guy who liked me was going to do me harm. In El
Salvador, they take young girls, rape them and throw them in plastic bags. My
uncle told me it wasn't safe for me to stay there, and that I should go to the
U.S.”[1]
Juan Pablo Villalobos called this collection
nonfiction because the stories were collected via first-person interviews. The
book is based on a series of interviews Villalobos held did in 2016; The Other
Side examines Central American migration through the stories of 10 children who
made the murderous trip to the U.S. on their own.
Villalobos adds , my literary ambition, if I can
admit to that, was to write a book that is about Central American immigration
and the migration of unaccompanied minors, but these stories are happening all
over the world — in Syria, in the north of Africa, in Europe — and it was my
hope that the book should resonate beyond the specific moment and the American
and Central American contexts.”
With the Fascist Trump in the White House, the situation
will only get worse. Figures released recently by the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) revealed that the United States has detained record numbers of
unaccompanied minors attempting to cross its southwestern border. In the last
few days, various US media have reported, that the Trump White House is
imminently planning to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as part of his
administration’s ongoing criminal deportation operations.
