Odyssey to the North.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Odyssey to the North, by Mario Bencastro. Translated by Susan Giersbach Rascon. Houston: Arte Publico, 1998.

Although a million Salvadorans--one-fifth of El Salvador's population--live in the United States, the exodus has produced practically no fiction. This is not surprising, of course. Most of the Salvadoran immigrant population has been more concerned with surviving in a new country than with literary expression. Odyssey to the North, a new novel by Salvadoran writer Mario Bencastro, is among the first to tell the Central American immigrant's story.

The story is set in the turbulent eighties and early nineties, when refugees of Salvador's right-wing death squads and left-wing guerillas flooded American cities. Calixto, the book's protagonist, was not involved in politics in his native El Salvador, yet inexplicably finds himself on the government's hit list. He pays off a coyote and flees to Washington, D. C., where he takes a succession of low-paying jobs. Sharing one room with nineteen other people, Calixto dreams of returning to his wife, Lina, and their children, but back home, his village has been demolished. There is nothing left to go back to. Besides, the situation is too dangerous.

In Washington Calixto's cousin Juancho finds him a job washing dishes in a hotel kitchen. There, he hooks up with Latin immigrants from all parts of the Americas. Some are fleeing persecution; others are fleeing hunger. None has the coveted green card, and all live in fear of a raid by the migra. Some are so desperate they marry just to legalize their situation. Through flashbacks and the dishwashers' conversations, Bencastro recreates Calixto's and Juancho's life in El Salvador during the months preceding their escape and the arduous, risky trip through Mexico and northward. What emerges is the portrait of a country in chaos, where terror and poverty reign and people are so eager to leave that they risk everything to get to the "Uniteds."

Once in the hands of the people smugglers, immigrants are subjected to the brutality of Mexican officials who harass immigrants, demand bribes, and violate Salvadoran women. Newspaper clippings add authenticity and immediacy to the narrative. One, from the...