Signs Preceding the End of the World. Yuri Herrera, 2009 

Note: This is a personal note on reading the novel, it has major spoilers for the story.  

Collection: getting to know contemporary Mexican literature to complete a personal research project. Book recommended by Canek Sandoval.  

This is a novel about migration from Mexico to the United States and the search of a sister for her lost brother.  The story revolves around the migration from Mexico to the USA and the kinds of difficulties that people encounter in their travels, surrounded by crime and individuals with bad intentions who seek to abuse them or profit from them.  

This book offers a detailed description of each character, as well as the intriguing portrayal of every thought and action surrounding the main character, Makina. 

In general, I enjoyed the narration which consistently propels you forward. I wanted to keep reading about the adventures of this strong woman as she navigates a world of hostility to fulfill her mother Cora’s mission to find her brother. Makina is the communication link of all the migrants with the people that waits for them in Mexico. She is something of an anachronism, acting as a “board girl” that attends every call in a remote, undisclosed population in rural Mexico. By doing this, she learns English and the language combinations in emerging from Spanish and English. She also knows innumerable stories of migration happening in her town and is well informed about the multiple issues that people endure during the migratory process. Furthermore, she has a strong understanding of the process that separated families go through during the migration of one of its members and empathizes with this issue since her brother also abandoned them.  

“Makina’s brother”, as he is referred to in the book went to the US in search of a promised land. This search for a literal promised land evolves as he becomes the victim of some kind of scam in which he was made believe that his disappeared father let a plot of land to them and that a member of the family needs to travel to the other side of the border to recover it. This promise makes them eager to travel, which a local group of criminals dedicated to the traffic of people and drugs uses to profit from his journey as a mule.  

The brother then arrives to the USA only to discover that the land was a scam designed to lure him into transporting something for the criminals in town, leaving him alone to wander in a new land without any family or options to work and survive. In his despair, after finding nothing and abandoning his family, he seeks alternatives to make a living in the US without a clear direction. In his struggle, he is no longer able to make sense of his travel and feels ashamed to return empty-handed. With time, he starts to create his own story and find himself, even if it means being far from home. However, this ambition is oposite to his Mother’s will, Cora, who misses him and wants him to return. Because of this, Cora gives Makina the mission to find a way to the north to find her small brother and to tell him that he doesn’t need to prove anything and should come back.  

Makina, the strong woman that stays to support her family and community.  

I found a certain symbolism in the way that Makina, the main female character, is depicted. Mainly, young males go to the US from Mexico, traveling to the southern states of the US, seeking to make a living and bring money home. Many times, they do so without a clear plan or understanding of the impact their absence will have on their families. They are, to a certain degree, also children, with immature ambitions that they are unsure they can accomplish. They compromise everything around them just to take the journey.  

On the other hand, Makina, contrasts with this by being completely self-determined, confident in her abilities, and satisfied with her role in her community as a communication link between the northern families and those who stayed at home. Being able to speak Spanish, English, and the many mixtures of both, she provides the neighbors in her town a way to communicate with their families. She is well aware of  the caveats of migration affecting her town, the challenges of migrating to a country that constantly rejects immigrants, and the stereotypical adventures or misfortunes that males encounter on their way to the north.  

She is then a representation of the female figures in the mexican communities. She is the one doing everything that is needed to provide to their families while the man leaves without a clear path, and she is the one who is sent to find them when they are lost.  

In this way, she sets out to find her brother with the determination to accomplish her quest and return to care for her mother, her little sister, and the others in her town. However, on her journey north, she also becomes lost after finding difficulties in every step of the road, after being wounded and finding no evidence that could lead her to where her brother lives.  She becomes homeless and desperate, taking a huge toll on her body and mind. Always a beautiful woman who “looks like intelligence herself” according to the brother, she finds herself alone in a hostile environment without a clear path to go forward or to return. 

A journey to make everyone lost.  

At the end of her journey, she finally finds her brother or what is left of him. She finds a lost man, moving aimlessly, one step in front of the other, without a clear understanding of his actions. He stumbles with an impossibility to find a proper way to sustain himself in this new country and gets trapped in a sketchy bussiness to replace the identity of a young American man to avoid him from joining the army and going to war. He then loses his identity and changes names. Hence explaining the dead ends that Makina has in her search for him.  

Their relationship is never fully described, we don’t get a feeling of the ties that join them. The stubborn brother, provoked by one of the local criminals, embarks on a journey without direction or promise, leaving his family behind in search of a promised land. Symbolically, many people I have known embark on similar journeys, following promises that they often never find. Also, I have found certain similarities with my own migration story, leaving everything behind with a fragile promise that didn’t crystallize but that was way gentler to me.  

The relationship between the two is then described by mutual idealization, by the remembrance of the person missing and accentuated by their lack of communication during their separation.  This aspect mirrors many migration stories I have encountered in my home state, where men abandon everything with the promise of returning with riches. On their journey north, they often cannot return, either because they become lost, fin themselves undocumented, and cannot obtained the promised citizenship that would allow them to transit freely between the two countries. Then, the memories of these people are the stories that the ones who got left behind decide to tell the others. Many of my aunts, uncles and cousins share this and I constructed an image of them by the careful and loving remembrance that their mothers or children procured for each of them.  

Finding a stranger.  

Once Makina finds him, they can no longer recognize each other. She encounters a man who is not only no longer her brother but also does not even carry his name anymore. His identity has changed; he is literally a different person. He cannot feel empathy upon seeing her and does not feel responsible of communicating with her during their brief encounter. On the other hand, Makina becomes abandoned, wounded in her journey, and physically affected due to their prolonged search. She bears the weight of a search that seemingly takes months, making her grow old, dirty, and despaired.  

I can empathize with this story as a migrant myself. Sometimes, I need to accept that life can lose its direction, becoming something completely different and unexpected. However, the engaging aspects of life, no matter where you are, attract you to stay and create a new mission or goal that was never in your mind when you moved. It becomes very difficult to maintain focus on the original goals. I have often felt lost, struggling to distinguish which place is my home now—my original homeland, my state of origin, or Germany, which currently hosts me.  

Now that I have accomplished my PhD, the degree for which I came here, I find myself facing these questions again. Should I go back to reunite with my family, or should I continue down the seemingly clear path that lies ahead of me? These two roads push me in literally opposite directions across the globe, and I feel a connection to the role of the lost brother seeking the promised land. However, I must acknowledge that my experience is very different because I have the support of my wife, who also embarked on this journey from the same place as I did. In her, I find a companion who drives my heart to a better place. With her, my plans are filled with meaning. Honestly, this companionship has made me feel like I am no longer lost as I felt during my first 18 months when I was alone in Berlin.  

A representative story.  

This book resonates with me because I am used to these stories. My home state, Nayarit, and the state where I completed my social service during medical school, Zacatecas, share the characteristic that a large proportion of their  youngmale population migrates to the north in search of better opportunities.  

I remember joining my sister in a small community filled with women left alone, while the men were only present in letters or sporadic calls home. Their presence becomes relatable only through the stories of the women who remain. These women bring them to life through their narratives. Their stories construct the image of someone who is never present, and that often, never returns.  

The price to pay to embark on this journey is immense, burdening not only the person who leaves but also those who remain. It was difficult for me to understand the emptiness of those towns until I witnessed the lack of opportunities for the males in these areas.  

These towns are situated in the middle of the desert, where hardly any crops can grow. They are dangerous, filled with snakes, scorpions, and criminals. Sometimes, the only options available to young people are joining criminal groups to grow drugs or transport them to the north. Even more, this situation has become something forced into adolescents by cartels that push them or lure them to become criminals by force. Once in this situation, they rarely get out of this life.  

Links:

Link to Yuri’s academic website:

https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/spanish-portuguese/people/faculty/yuri-herrera-gutierrez