Undocumented Dominican Migration

Saúl

Saúl The paved roads turn to dirt and then to improvised trails that get smaller and smaller until the last wet stretch—you do that on foot—descends steeply to the house. I had seen Saúl a few times during previous trips but the mood now seemed different. The shacks inhabited by his extended family were vacant, and even his wife and two kids were gone because the wife—suffering through a difficult pregnancy—returned to her family in La Vega to give birth.The day before, when I set up the meeting with Saúl, we found him on a day-labor job at an apartment complex, digging a well that would be lined with rocks. His clothes were covered with mud but his face was clean. The pants were torn at the knees. Saúl walks funny, kind of lumbering as though he were heavy, maybe a little hunched, with his brooding head downward. He tried to seem happy to see me. Saúl’s house is a depressing shack cheered up with blue paint, and on the inside the only signs of life are a school plaque and snapshots from a two-year residence in San Juan. The photos hang on nails banged through from outside. Saúl poses in the image of the man he hoped to be, the man he was becoming, with an ideal of attitude conveyed through style. “Look at that chain,” he says, pointing. All of his pride is invested in these glimpes, in this testimony, of a lost life that he longs to recover. Saúl’s beleaguered self-identity—who I am, who I was, who I could be—is painfully registered in the juxtaposition of these photos and the context that gives them such importance. Saúl came out brushing his teeth—we had woken him—then left to Photographs on the wall of Saúl’s house “Look at that chain.” Saúl 219 look for a migrant who was supposed to meet me for an interview. A couple of menacing guys approached a few minutes later, and the timing was such that the departure and the arrival seemed related. Chencho, my assistant, sat on my camera. The two guys hovered without clear purpose, Chencho gave a mild display of machismo, and I hid my anxiety beneath a façade, neither assertive nor deferent, right in their faces, because fear is their best entry. When the two guys finally left without incident, Chencho produced a knife that opened to a five-inch blade: “I carry it just in case.” It didn’t seem like something that big could fit in his pocket. Saúl eventually returned with his friend—the migrant for the interview—and we continued with business as usual. Saúl, now twenty-seven, has been involved with yola trips since he was fifteen. In 2003 he worked as crew (for a captain who is now incarcerated in the United States) on a voyage with 135 people. He made it safely to Puerto Rico, settled in San Juan, found work, and thrived in his new life abroad. But the thought of his wife alone in the Dominican Republic eventually began to haunt and overwhelm him—Where was she, what was she doing, who was she with? His frequent calls could no longer alleviate the tension, “until I made the decision between money and her. And instead of money I chose her.” He was relieved upon his return: “I found my wife normal, without any story,” meaning that she hadn’t had an affair . Many people aren’t that lucky, Saúl explained: they forfeit everything in Puerto Rico for love and then discover that their spouses love someone else. However difficult the situation in the Dominican Republic, Saúl said, he would rather be at home with his family. At least in theory. He made a good-faith effort to earn a living—underpaid odd jobs, construction—but eventually despaired and resolved to return to Puerto Rico. This voyage, in September 2008, nearly cost him his life. Saúl was one of three crew members who departed with a captain en route to a beach in Cabrera, where about thirty migrants were awaiting departure. The captain and crew were apparently unaware of Tropical Storm Hanna (August 28–September 8, 2008) and their yola—caught in it—capsized before picking up the passengers...