Only A Shadow: On El Salvador's tragic identity

In the first few pages of Malcolm Lowry's posthumous novel, Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, the book's protagonist, Sigbjørn Wilderness, travels by plane to Mexico. Alcoholism and paranoia keep him in a state of acute nervous excitement and dread at the prospect of being detained by Mexican immigration officers on his arrival at the airport. Sigbjørn, of course, has a British passport and should have nothing to fear, were it not for his state of mind and, perhaps, for some of his previous experiences in that country.

I read Lowry's novel at least 30 years ago, and yet Sigbjørn's fear at the thought of reaching immigration remains etched in my memory—and far more deeply than the rest of the narrative—for one simple reason: Throughout my adult life, I've been victim to a similar fear, the fear of being detained by the immigration authorities of any country I travel to. Unlike Sigbjørn, this fear isn't the result of an alcohol-induced paranoia, but of other factors, among them the Salvadoran passport I carry with me, which has raised suspicion in the eyes of the many immigration officers I've had to pass by.

I'm certainly not the only Salvadoran with countless anecdotes about being treated with suspicion the moment I hand my passport over to the immigration officer, or about being interrogated with distrust, at times asked to leave the line so I can be subjected to a second, more meticulous inquiry. I remember distinctly a Dutch officer at the Schiphol airport who swiftly stamped the documents of the other travelers of other nationalities who stood in line before me but who, when my turn arrived, slowly pored over page after page of my passport, making a point to bend the spine, then taking out a small, charming magnifying glass and fitting it on his eye so he could scrutinize every stamp—as if he were a jeweler bent on discovering the falseness of a particular diamond—then calling a colleague over to discuss the situation and, finally, indicating that I should step aside into a small room where I would await a more in-depth review. All of this despite the fact that I'd showed him my green card and my credentials as a university professor. None of that mattered; the simple fact of holding a Salvadoran passport had made me potentially guilty. But of what?

I understand that it may seem tactless or futile to discuss the fears of one privileged traveler when you're from a country where tens of thousands of people don't have passports and, instead, cross the border illegally, on foot, putting their lives at risk; where a journey might begin as an epic adventure but will oftentimes end in drama or in gross tragedy. I don't know the exact number—if one exists—of the thousands of Salvadorans who in the last two decades have been murdered or have disappeared in Mexico or in the deserts of the United States on their exodus to that northern country, but testimonies on the subject are chilling.

I also understand that there are tens of thousands of Salvadorans whose experiences passing through immigration have been different to mine because they are traveling with a passport from the United States or Canada or Australia, or from another affluent country that elicits respect in the receiving officer. There are tens of thousands of perceptive and intelligent people who, when they had the chance, knew to separate the important from the superfluous and took on the nationality of the country that harbored them, telling themselves that their national identity—that feeling of belonging—was determined not by a simple travel document but by a set of values, attitudes, and ways of seeing the world.

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I've often asked myself what my interlocutors—be they immigration officers or not—think when they hear that I am from El Salvador; what idea or picture comes to...