Mario Bencastro's Diaspora:

Salvadorans and Transnational Identity

Linda J. Craft
North Park University, Chicago
Mario Bencastro's novel Odyssey to the North (1998) opens with
the body of an unidentified immigrant on the hot cement of a
Washington DC street where he has just fallen to his death while
window washing. No one can or is willing to answer the para-
medic's questions: Who is he? What is his name? A few bystanders
conjecture that, judging by what is left of his facial features, he
looks Hispanic and that he is probably Central American since
many live in that barrio. "Poor devils," replies another paramedic,
"They die far from home, like strangers" (3). Faceless, nameless.
The scene is emblematic of a central thread running through all
of Bencastro's fiction, the question of identity. Who am I? Do I
even have an identity? Am I still Salvadoran? What does it mean
to be a Salvadoran living in the United States? Is it possible to be
both Salvadoran and American, or must one assimilate, as did
many immigrants of the past, to find success? To help answer
these and other questions, it is helpful to understand terms. The
word "identity" derives from the Latin identidem, an adverb
meaning "repeatedly, again and again," which, of course, informs
its meaning in English. Webster's defines "identity" in several
ways, two of which illustrate my argument: 1) "the state or fact of
remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or
conditions"; and 2) "the sense of self, providing sameness and
continuity in personality over time" (950). How then, we might
MELUS, Volume 30. Number 1 (Spring 2005)
150 LINDA J. CRAFT
ask, is a Salvadoran immigrant able to maintain "sameness" in
conditions of diversity and hybridity? In this paper I will examine
Bencastro's synthesis of identities as it unfolds over the course of
the production of his four major texts. He concludes that identity is
never fixed but fluid and that the immigrant does not need to
sacrifice his past to the demands of the present.'
Part of Bencastro's preoccupation with identity is personal, and
so one can consider the autobiographical elements of his writing.
His own transformation in the face of new circumstances mirrors
that of many of the characters he depicts. He changed careers and
domiciles, from an abstract painter in El Salvador to realist story-
teller in Washington, DC, where he has resided for over twenty
years. He confronts the dilemmas and responsibilities of the artist
in a society in crisis, changing his own identity in the process to be
able to document the upheavals and follow his compatriots in their
displacements. In his first two books, a short story collection. The
Tree of Life: Stories of Civil War (1993), and the novel, A Shot in
the Cathedral (1996), Bencastro records Salvadoran myth and
history in order to prevent these stories from slipping into oblivion
(Hood 576). His two most recent novels, Odyssey to the North and
Viaje a la tierra del abuelo {Journey to the Land of My Grandfa-
ther), are epics of migration of a people forging a new identity
from their experience in a new land.^ The young protagonist of
Viaje completes the cycle as he travels back to El Salvador, a
country he scarcely knows, in search of roots. Both these novels
also highlight the continuing exchanges occurring between home-
land and diaspora.
For Bencastro, literature offers salvation. Literature is a reposi-
tory of human values, and he has faith that "en ultima instancia,
sea la literatura la que salve a la especie del caos total" [in the last
instance it will be literature that saves the human species from total
chaos] (translation mine, Hernandez Martin 60). Here we might
translate "especie" not only as human species, but also as a spe-
cific ethnicity. Through literature, Bencastro constructs ethnic
identity by preserving myth and the memory of historical events,
negotiating cultural politics, recording narratives of nostalgia, and
deconstructing old assimilationist myths, following all the while
processes of globalization and transnationalism. Salvadoran-ness
transcends the national space, and we can state, a la Foucault, that
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 151
both the nation and its diaspora constitute a "discursive forma-
tion," but one that is in constant flux. Bencastro's work undertakes
what William Boelhower calls an "interpretive practice" that is
"essential to ethnic narration: namely, the activity of the self in
search of its lost intimacy, the very intimacy that the modem
selfas citizen of the synchronic space of representative democ-
racyhas desemioticized" (26).
Narratives of memory are important to developing a sense of
personal and communal identity and to establishing a sense of
intimacy and belonging. Texts such as those by Bencastro tum to
memory for several reasons. They "substantiate ethnic assertion
and invoke nostalgia," according to Lisa Suhair Mujaj, but they
also "facilitate assimilation, ground [various] critique [s], and make
possible transformative relationships to ethnicity" (266). Beyond
national borders, what is the tie that binds? Shared memories and
stories and a shared home-base, if no longer a shared space. It is an
identity that, of necessity, must travel. Literature helps to conserve
memory and create identity, and it is portable.
Both The Tree of Life and A Shot in the Cathedral invoke
"home," El Salvador, the place of origin, its history, heroes,
martyrs, and myths in order to ground the identity of what Bene-
dict Anderson calls the "imagined community." The concept of
home is especially important to a displaced people who truly must
"imagine" their commonality when a geographic space no longer
circumscribes them. Sura P. Rath defines home as place, as time,
and as a third space ("virtual home"). Citing Dorinne Kondo and
Gayatri Spivak, Rath observes that home is a "safe place, where
there is no need to explain oneself to outsiders; it stands for
community" (par. 20). While we could debate that El Salvador in
this past century is a "safe place," we can accept the idea of
"home" in the sense of what is known: it is a place of familiarity
and intimacy, a certain comfort zone. Rath goes on to explain that
home is time: "as a function of history, home is the reservoir of
public myths and private memories. . . the past. . . a crossroads of
history" (par. 20). The third space is the constmcted home away
from home, which will be addressed in terms of Bencastro's later
novels.
His first book. The Tree of Life: Stories of Civil War, has as its
point of departure the civil, political, military, and religious
152 LINDA J. CRAFT
turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s through an intriguing assortment of
myths, magical realist tales, testimonies, historical vignettes,
surrealist and lyrical fiction, and soap opera. While the various
stories paint a culture of death, the title story points to an underly-
ing theme of metamorphosis and transformation which is found
throughout the collection. Like Ovid's Baucis and Philemon or
Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses), from whose graves sprout
strong and healthy trees, Matilde and her fiance, Casiano, whom
she betrayed by sleeping with his twin brother, Hermogenes, who
then slays him, now lie entangled in a fertile embrace, "swallowed
up" in the roots of a tree that "erased all traces of hatred from
Casiano" ("The Tree of Life" 38). At the end of the same story, the
narrator reports that all the townspeople killed in the civil war are
buried near the same tree: "At nightfall the enormous roots swal-
lowed them up and they came back to life inside the tree" (40).
They are rebom to happiness. Rafael Lara-Martinez suggests that
we read the story allegorically: the two rival brothers as the army
and the guerrilla, woman as country, and the thunderbolt that kills
Matilde as the rain god Tlaloc (19). In death they are transformed,
and new life springs from hatred and destruction.^ We will later
extend the possibility of transformation to people of the diaspora
as well.
Other transformations are also at work. In "The River God-
dess," human beings who dare possess the statue of the Mayan
goddess Lempa become alligators; the feathered-serpent god
Kukulcan ("The Insatiable Ones") and the creator Gucumatz ("The
Garden of Gucumatz") purify the earth, bringing forth good from
evil; art transforms pain ("The Faces of Xipotec"); a disappeared
photographer is replaced by another who is equally dedicated to
the cause of human rights ("The Photographer of Death"); an
assassinated archbishop is resurrected in the spirit of the people
("The Spirit of Things"); and the Sumpul River, site of a horrific
massacre of hundreds of men, women, and children, once again
flows in peace: "The same waters that once were filled with blood
and death became messengers of life and continued nourishing the
valley with love and fantasy" ("Once Upon a River" 105).
Bencastro draws on the Mayan concept of creative tensions and
the play of opposites as he constructs his narrative transformations:
"Es por medio de este componente mitico que Bencastro logra
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 153
afirmar un esperanzado futuro para una historia nacional devasta-
dora, y envisionar la transformacion de un pueblo hacia una nacion
fuerte y respetada. . ." [It is by means of this mythic component
that Bencastro is able to affirm a hopeful future for a country with
a devastating history and to envision the transformation of a people
into a strong and respected nation.] (translation mine, Hernandez
Martin 60). This concept, not unique to Mayan mythology but
characteristic of a Utopian vision in much of Westem narrative
tradition as well, travels well when Salvadorans find themselves
having to adapt to a new culture, also founded upon Utopian
dreams, in the United States.
Furthermore, Bencastro situates his characters in reality, how-
ever treacherous. They are on very real ground; home is a concrete
place: the volcanoes, the quaking earth, the cemeteries, the Devil's
Door, the Planes de Rendero, Panchimalco, the Barrio San Jacinto,
and the forests and rivers with their rich abundance of flora and
fauna that house the spirits of the ancestral gods. Home is also time
depicted at the intersection of particular people and historic events.
Bencastro pays homage to Salvadorans, ordinary and famous, who
have been martyred for their country during the civil war, includ- .
ing peasants, teachers, joumalists, and Monsenor Oscar Amulfo
Romero. These are the heroes of a new Salvadoran consciousness,
a new identity of life which arises after decades of violence and
death. As Bencastro acknowledges, "El espiritu de sobrevivencia
es parte esencial de la salvadoreiiidad" [The spirit of survival is an
essential part of Salvadoran-ness.] (translation mine. Hood 574).
Being Salvadoran means one has survived countless natural and
man-made disasters.
Bencastro's first novel, A Shot in the Cathedral, continues to
record the courageous and selfless deeds of Salvadoran civil war
heroes, this time focusing on the contribution of Archbishop Oscar
Romero and the significance of his death. The novel pays homage
to Romero, whose homilies, radio addresses, and letter to President
Carter are interwoven throughout the text with a fictional story
about a besieged newspaper and its staff who are attempting to tell
the truth against mounting repression. Composed of a collage of
speeches, sermons, news clippings, headlines, well known folk
tales from oral tradition, and fictional narrative, the novel advances
simultaneously on several fronts: the raid on the newspaper office
154 LINDA J. CRAFT
and detention of its editor Dominguez; the love story between
artist-tumed-reporter Rogelio and Lourdes, a schoolteacher and
political activist; their visit to her parents' home in llobasco;
scenes from a San Salvador brothel with Soledad, a young woman
kidnapped from the provinces and forced into prostitution; and of
course, political events surrounding Romero's assassination and
then funeral on Palm Sunday, 1980, which itself exploded in
violence as government-sponsored snipers fired on the moumers.
Bencastro addresses the question of Salvadoran identity both
individually and collectively in A Shot in the Cathedral. Lourdes
recites her family's history back to precolumbian indigenous
groups, such as the Pipiles, who populated the isthmus, and her
story becomes by extension a history lesson of the origins of the
Salvadoran people: "My parents carry traces of the ancient and
grandiose blood of people who were hard workers, artists, stone
and clay artisans, builders of temples and pyramids, poets and
warriors, who belonged to the Mayan civilization which extended
from Uxmal and Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico to Tikal, Copan,
and Tazumal in Central America" (39). Rogelio's personal story
mirrors the coming-to-consciousness of many Salvadorans during
the escalating conflict, especially that of the artist who confronts
his responsibilities to the revolution. Art for him is therapy and
escape, until his conscience can no longer justify the ivory tower
retreat: "The celestial metaphor cannot put on airs and tum its
beautiful back on the woman and children crying next to the
cadaver of their loved one. Impossible. Art for its own sake has no
reason to exist" (140). Like Bencastro himself, Rogelio puts down
his paintbrush to pick up a pen and write, albeit as a reporter and
not as a writer of fiction. As Bencastro comments on his change of
heart: "Soy escritor producto de una guerra civil, por lo que
siempre me preocupa ese balance entre arte y realidad" [As a
writer, I am a product of a civil war; therefore, I have always been
preoccupied by the balance between art and reality.] (translation
mine. Hood 572).
A discourse of liberation theology with its own set of tropes is
another strategy of the novel to constitute identity for the people of
El Salvador, which translated means "The Savior," and to sanctify
the memory of Archbishop Romero. Romero, who calls for obser-
vance of human rights and dignity, declares an option for the
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 155
poor,'* whom Rogelio calls "the heroes of existence" (212). He
demands an end to the repression and congratulates his listeners
who "give to this moment the true identity of God's people"
because they stand in solidarity with the poor (111). The people
are the Church, which is metaphorically "the light of the world"
(112). In an editorial commemorating the life and death of the
prelate, Dominguez writes that, although Monsenor Romero has
died, "his voice remains forever etched- on the hearts of Salva-
dorans. . . . They have killed the man but not his spirit, because the
light of his ideals is infinite. Because even from the tomb he will
speak to us untiringly of God, of struggle, of hope, of love" (184).
In Romero, Bencastro marks another transformation that defines
Salvadorans as people of hope who emerge from darkness.
If one settles for the pre-transformation descriptions of the
"tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny country," as El Salvador is known in a
popular song (23), one is left with an image of despair. For exam-
ple, observes Dominguez, "Chaos, violence and death" (56)
dominate this place that drains enthusiasm and destroys ideals,
making it a living hell. Rogelio agrees, stating: "It's been proven a
thousand times that here no one can aspire to excel in anything,
especially if you're poor" (55). In this place the poor who protest
their lot suffer doubly since they are often targets of death squads.
Daily torture victims left for dead on sidewalks have become a
way of life in El Salvador: "[A]n essential part of our reality. Part
of our folklore. So natural" (189). The people are numb, insensi-
tive to suffering. They have been denied their sovereignty, their
right to dream, to work, to createas Rogelio states"the right to
be someone, to be a productive citizen" (29), in short, the right to
determine their own identity.
The homeland is indeed a bleak place, despite Bencastro's at-
tempt in his early work to memorialize its heroes and saints. He
describes an identity based on a violent reality that may not be
beyond redemption, but, at this point of his literary production, it is
a redemption found only at the level of the text and only in the
substance of dreams.
With the novel Odyssey to the North, he begins a new stage in
his narrative development, this one concerned with writing the
story of the migration, adaptation, and changing identity of a
people. He also gives testimony to transformations in the receiving
156 LINDA J. CRAFT
culture. As one of the local paramedics who is on the scene after
the Salvadoran window washer falls to his death observes: "We
used to be the ones who invaded their countries; now they invade
ours. Soon Washington will look like Latin America" (3). The
irony is not lost. Salvadorans are on the move, active agents in
rewriting history both north and south of the border. Bencastro is
one of their scribes.
Bencastro has called Odyssey "una guia de como emigrar a los
Estados Unidos" [a guide for how to emigrate to the United States]
(translation mine. Hood 575).^ Lara-Martinez comments on
authorial intent, writing that Bencastro obviously has directed this
novel to the Salvadoran people of the exodus, "una poblacion que,
debido a su precaria vida legal y economica, no tiene acceso a la
literatura" [a group of people who, because of their precarious
legal and economic existence, does not have access to literature]
(translation mine, 20). Critic Barbara Mujica has also noted the
paucity of fiction on the subject and, thus, the significance of this
novel (62). It is especially important, continues Lara-Martinez, that
the second generation, "que no ha sufi-ido en came propia la
vivencia migratoria" [which itself has not suffered through the
migration experience] (translation mine, 20), have access to this
foundational epic of Salvadoran migration and settlement in the
North. Bencastro's work attempts to bring them that access.
The story of Odyssey, like that of A Shot in the Cathedral, is
developed through a collage of discourses and narrative forms,
from theater-like conversations in a hotel kitchen, reports of riots
in Washington, and courtroom deportation hearings, to action
scenes narrated in El Salvador, news clippings, letters from com-
paneros during the civil war, and the narration of the journey
itself At the center of the story is Calixto, who, falsely suspected
of subversion by the authorities, flees from El Salvador for his life,
leaving his wife and children behind. The cast of characters
includes a host of Salvadorans whom Bencastro has stated are
symbolic in a novel that is a mural (Hood 567). Of special interest
is Teresa, a refugee whose tedious and intimidating immigration
hearing we witness only to leam that she is finally deported and
then killed once she arrives back in El Salvador.
Bencastro pursues several strategies to construct a Salvadoran
identity "away from home," beginning with a discourse of origins
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 157
and nostalgia, moving through a deconstmction of myths and
official histories, remembering suffering and other shared experi-
ence, and narrating transformations. When asked why he misses a
place that is so "far from civilization," Calixto has no trouble
replying: he remembers he leamed how to "use a machete. And
herd oxen and cows. To ride a horse. And plant crops. Harvest
cotton. And hunt iguanas. Drink moonshine. And chew tobacco.
All the things a man has to leam in order to survive in the country"
(63). He and his fellow countrymen have a tendency to romanticize
the absent country. Salvadorans in the Adams-Morgan district of
Washington, DC, get together regularly to swap stories, eat pu-
pusas, drink Pilsener, celebrate Independence Day and Day of the
Dead, and proudly sing the national anthem (at least the "few
words they remember" [106]).
Somewhat dismissive of these activities, critic Aquiles Magafia
insists that being Salvadoran is more than eating pupusas and
drinking Pilsener: "En los salvadorenos residiendo en los Estados
Unidos se genera una especie de anoranza e idolatrizacion de un El
Salvador que realmente no existe" [Among Salvadorans residing in
the United States, there has appeared a type of longing and idoliza-
tion of an El Salvador that really does not exist.] (translation mine,
16). His critique of these Salvadoran caricatures could be extended
to some of the characters in Odyssey. Nevertheless, such feelings
are real. Many of Bencastro's homesick characters insist on
seeking the healing treatments of a curandero, who has "a gift
from God who has put him here to help poor people who, far from
their homes and their customs, are suffering and don't have the
time or money to go to doctors who don't understand their lan-
guage or their illnesses" (164). They look longingly at these
reminders of home. Suhair Mujaj writes, "One of the staples of
nostalgia is the desire for a stable referent" (274). When all else is
gone, even cliched re-enactments of memories suffice to evoke a
measure of security.
Not all aspects of Salvadoran life, however, are recalled in Od-
yssey with the golden glow of nostalgia. Calixto describes the
conflict: "My country is a difficult memory, because on the one
hand it's a memory of hunger and misery, but on the other it's the
beautiful memory of my people and my customs" (65). When
pressed to explain what Independence Day or the motto of the
158 LINDA J. CRAFT
country, "God, Union and Liberty," really means to him, Calixto
confesses he does not really understand either. His most vivid
memory of Independence Day is standing in the hot sun in parade
formation when he was a student, in over-sized shoes (the only
ones his father could afford to buy) that blistered his feet and
caused him to faint along with a number of other students, and then
being told by the principal they were "lazy and didn't deserve to
march" (105). That was the last parade he remembers.
And as much as diasporan Salvadorans miss their native land, it
is often the case that no one back in El Salvador misses them.
Many are made to feel like orphans from their own motherland.
Word has it among Calixto and his friends that the country cares
little about its refugees streaming north: "One less Indian, one
more tortilla" (53), as they say "back home." In the new transna-
tional paradigm. Marc Zimmerman's "new world (dis)order," it seems
that a Salvadoran expatriate is more valuable to his country away
than at home, especially as s/he continues to send back remesas
(remittances). El Salvador's own meta-narrative has been uncon-
vincing or incomplete to many citizens; in tum, the identity
derived from a tmncated and selectively-applied national story
breeds a collective inferiority complex.
Of course, life in the North only further confuses the identity
question. Calixto finds that this "paradise," this "promised land,"
falls short of delivering the promises of "liberty and justice for all"
that its own mythology has perpetuated. His disillusionment
reveals his understanding that the American ideal has not yet been
realized, especially for people like him. Singh et al. call these
marginal peoples, including Latinos as well as African Americans
and Native Americans, "intemal colonial subjects" (11) since they
have never been fully assimilated, even when assimilation was the
norm. They realize that there is a limit to their freedom.^
Nevertheless, since the 1960s and the movement for civil rights,
an increased openness toward espousal and expression of ethnic,
racial, and gender differences has validated a more activist identity
politics. Now "[i]mmigrants no longer have the compelling need to
disown the language and speech they bring with them. It is more
possible now to straddle two national identities without being tom
asunder. . . . Recent immigrants can assume double nationalities,
even double identities, more easily than could their earlier coun-
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 159
terparts" (Singh et al. 6). Many memories and many stories now
compete in what some have called "culture wars." The very idea of
the nation-state is being questioned as multiple narratives, or "key
micro-narratives" (Marc Zimmerman's term for narratives which
maintain relations and coherences across borders and spaces, 9)
come into play, replacing the grand meta-narrative of modemity.
Calixto's story is one of the many micro-narratives that must be
told if the national space is to become more inclusive.
Not only is Calixto disillusioned in the face of injustice, but he
is also dismayed by the values of the North. He expresses culture
shock in an "advanced" country (15), a place where money talks so
much (43), television hypnotizes (140), and the military trains
soldiers from his country to kill their own (100). But some immi-
grants are seduced by the culture of materialism that is part of the
American dream. As one friend asks Calixto, "Isn't that what
we're here for? To work hard and buy all we want, and be happy?"
(138). It appears many Salvadorans, who enjoy a reputation as
"hard workers" (184), are turning into super-consumers the longer
they spend time in the North, a theme Bencastro will develop in El
viaje.
The issue of identity is further illustrated in the importance of
language and names throughout Odyssey. Preparing for the joumey
north, the coyote instmcts each member of his group to "talk like a
Mexican," to which one woman replies, "It's impossible to change
your identity ovemight" (67). At the detention center near the US-
Mexican border, prisoners sport govemment-issued army fatigues
that still bear the name of the original owners. The Salvadorans
amuse themselves by calling each other by Irish, Scandinavian, or
Polish names that they can barely pronounce (153). When fellow
dishwasher Juancho Molinos tells everyone to call him "Johnnie
Mills" from now on since he is no longer from "there" (El Salva-
dor), his coworkers react in shock: "You can change your name
but not your peasant face" (137). They think he is a sell-out,
ashamed of his origins. Calixto, unlike Johnnie, refuses to answer
when North Americans call him "Cal," explaining that he does not
want to forget his past. Just because he may be different now that
he is in the North, he feels more and more Salvadoran every day:
"Because it's one thing to make progress, have a job, live better,
but your home is always in your; heart. I could live away from my
160 LINDA J. CRAFT
country for a hundred years but I'll never renounce it" (138). This
seems to be Bencastro's affirmation of ethnicity and identity amid
the pressures and empty promises of assimilation.
Bencastro has written his most recent novel, Viaje a la tierra
del abuelo (Journey to the Land of My Grandfather), expressly for
young Latino adults caught in a transcultural no man's land in the
United States. Having worked with adolescents who have experi-
enced racism and the culture of gangs, drugs, and alcohol,^ he
states: "Conozco sus problemas, sus ambiciones, sus fracasos; en
una palabra su circunstancia" (I know their problems, their ambi-
tions, their failures; in a word, their circumstances) (translation
mine. Hood 570).^ The novel narrates the story of their conftisions
and frustrations and addresses questions that are fundamentally
identity related. Bencastro's protagonist, Sergio, a seventeen-year-
old Salvadoran who has lived in the United States for over ten
years, frames the central concems of the novel: "^Quien soy? ^De
aqui o de alia?" (21). "Me siento marginado" (Who am I? Am I
from here or from there? I feel marginalized) (translations of Viaje
are mine, 33). Sergio is a poor high school student who maintains a
close relationship with his grandfather, a veritable fount of Salva-
doran popular sayings and folk wisdom. His abuelo has traveled
back and forth between El Salvador and the United States several
times and has saved enough money to be able to send periodic
remittances. Compounding Sergio's problems of identity, his
grandfather tells him his Spanish is "mal, malisimo" (bad, really
bad, 3), even though he speaks it at home with his parents. But, in
addition to being direct, abuelo is sensitive, saying he understands
Sergio's confiict of being unable to embrace fully either the
country of his parents or his adopted land. Indeed, he has a prob-
lem. The secret, the old man explains, is to be fiexible and to
adapt, not assimilate, to the situation: "Algo asi como el camaleon,
que cambia de color segiin la ocasion" (Something like the chame-
leon who changes its color according to the occasion, 33). Furt-
hermore, he notes, "No hay nada malo en querer ser lo que uno
quiere, en querer saber de donde uno viene, conocer sus raices y
quienes son sus antepasados. Si sabemos de donde venimos,
tendremos una idea mas clara de lo que somos y hacia donde
queremos ir" (There's nothing wrong in wanting to be what you
wish, in wanting to know where you come from, what your roots
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 161
are and who your ancestors are. If we know where we come from,
we'll have a clearer idea of who we are and where we want to go,
34). The text is an exploration of what constitutes that new per-
sonal and collective identity, a project that began with Bencastro's
first book and now follows the transformations of Salvadorans in
the diaspora.
For Sergio, life in the United States is difficult: "simple," "fast,"
and "cold." There is no time to make friends, no respect for
teachers; the priest at his local parish is unresponsive to his needs;
and his parents have been bitten by the bug of consumerism. The
novel critiques the stereotype of the hardworking, family-oriented
Latino. It is tme Sergio's parents work several jobs, not merely to
feed their family but also to be able to accumulate luxury goods.
Bencastro seems to be questioning the reputation Salvadorans and
other Latinos enjoy among North Americans for an unselfish work
ethic and dedication to family because they are actually mutually
exclusive. The truth, reveals Bencastro, is that Salvadorans work
hard like anybody else who wants to acquire things, often sacrific-
ing previously valued time with their families. The problem may
lie with the materialist values of the dominant culture, which end
up destroying the immigrant (as well as perhaps the native) family
fabric. As Sergio's grandfather says, "el que no tiene y llega a
tener, loco de gozo se puede volver" (He who has nothing and
acquires something can go crazy with pleasure, 11). Sergio's
parents are always working and have no time to help him study, let
alone meet with his teachers to discuss his progress, a part of a
larger social problem noted by the younger generation. A conver-
sation among Sergio's classmates catalogues a long list of the
dysfunctions of Salvadoran families, from alcoholism and dmg
addiction to domestic violence and sexual abuse (24). The young
immigrants are becoming aware of what has been lost.
In an inversion of fantasies, since it is usually the North that
stokes immigrant dreams. El Salvador for Sergio seems like
Wonderland, "un lugar de maravillas" (50). When he finally
arrives, accompanying the body of his grandfather for burial in his
birth country, he feels a mystical, almost organic connection to the
land. He recalls his grandfather's nostalgia: "la tierra es mi
ombligo" (the land is my umbilical cord, 32). Sergio describes his
own delight as he rediscovers the place of his origins: "La primera
162 LINDA J. CRAFT
impresion que tuve fue la de entrar en un mundo diferente, de color
y fantasia. . . . Una brisa suave acariciaba mi piel y sentia que a mi
corazon lo envolvia una sensacion de alegria hasta entonces para
mi desconocida, como si la misma naturaleza me diera la bien-
venida despues de diez anos de ausencia" (The first impression I
had was that of entering a different world, one of color and fan-
tasy. . . . A soft breeze caressed my skin and I felt a sensation of
happiness, up to that moment unknown to me, wrap around my
heart, as if nature itself was welcoming me after a ten-year ab-
sence, 60).
Sergio feels an immense peace as opposed to the frantic
rhythms of life in the North (76). His aunt in El Salvador explains
that she does not understand how people can leave this land and
never look or come back: "Claro, aqui no tenemos las comodi-
dades de los paises ricos, pero vivimos la vida con intensas ganas
de vivir porque la vida es lo unico que tenemos" (Of course, here
we don't have the comforts of the wealthy countries, but we live
life with an intense desire, to live because life is the only thing we
do have, 78). She speaks as someone who has considered her
country from afar, who has weighed its shortcomings in search of
some virtue. Perhaps she is here the alter ego of Bencastro himself
It does not take Sergio long to awaken to the reality of limited
opportunities in El Salvador, the land that "God has forgotten"
(98). He leaves, but not without first discovering the love of his
life, "Flor de Angel," whom he accompanies on a perilous joumey
north, by choicehe has an airline ticket and a green card, repeat-
ing the odyssey of Calixto and his companions from the earlier
novel. Sergio's voyage to his birth country has answered many of
his questions regarding personal and communal history, fulfilling
what Edna Costa Belen sees as a necessary process for many US
Latinos in "reconstmcting a tradition within U.S. society [to]
provide a sense of origin and continuity with the past and a vital
source of collective identity and empowerment that counteract
some of the negative effects of their current marginal status" (91).
It is part of a strategy for survival and, hopefully, friture success.
Perhaps a "certain nomadism," as Stuart Hall suggests, charac-
terizes the contemporary immigrant subject such as Sergio, who
must always be negotiating both center and periphery (119). Hall
continues, "The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined.
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 163
not by essence or purity, but by recognition of a necessary hetero-
geneity and diversity, by a conception of 'identity' which lives
with and through, not despite, difference by hybridity. Diaspora
identities are those which are constantly producing and reproduc-
ing themselves anew, through transformation and difference" (119-
20). Sergio's experience is and will be defined by movement, and
his identity will be formed on the move. Therefore, it will always
be contingent.
There is no such thing as a fixed or essential identity, as Iain
Chambers has argued (23-24).^ The idea of identity is complicated
by the very spaces of fiuidity and creativity that are the diasporas
in which Sergio, Calixto, and their fellow Salvadorans live and
work. The sameness or repetitiveness at the root of the word
"identity," which was highlighted in the introduction of this study,
are the values and memories of home that travel and necessarily
bump up against foreign, even colonizing, cultural forces. At work,
writes Doris Sommer, is Femando Ortiz's concept of transcultura-
tion or "creativity derived from antagonism" (305). She finds the
resulting "double consciousness" healthy and desirable because it
indicates a pride in difference, "a pride that keeps cultural particu-
larity in productive tension with others" (305)."^ Bencastro,
ASOSAL, and others who are concemed with maintaining ethnic
heritage also recognize these contradictory impulses in diasporan
identity formation. Thus, ~ they think it imperative to promote
cultural production and seek certain cultural markers"anchors,"
if you willnecessary for immigrant sanity and survival in the
diaspora.
Toward the end of Viaje, Sergio's observation that Salvadorans
are accustomed to disasters and that "no permitian que ningun
terremoto dermmbara su amor a la vida" (they wouldn't allow any
earthquake to destroy their love of life, 100) affirms Bencastro's
vision of hope translated into words of encouragement for his
compatriots, both at home and abroad, who face a difficult future.
His somewhat oxymoronic metaphor of "shipwrecked survivors"
(Odyssey 155) for those who do reach the North aptly describes
their condition and new identity. Armed with spirit and a love of
lifeperhaps Bencastro's common denominator for a basic
Salvadoran identitythey bring with them memories of a shared
homeland and point of origin, folk wisdom and testimonies of war.
164 LINDA J. CRAFT
as well as stories of heroes, martyrs, saints, and assassins. Their
environment and circumstances have changed in the diaspora,
Bencastro acknowledges in his fiction, but they need not "lose
their hearts," to paraphrase Calixto (138). Bencastro, under similar
circumstances, changed part of his identity, and, continuing the
maritime imagery, credits literature as the life raft that saved "mi
conciencia social y a mi salvadorenidad de hundirse en el mar del
olvido" (my social conscience and my Salvadoran-ness from
sinking into the sea of oblivion, translation mine. Hood 576).
A constmctive survival necessitates a flexibility and adaptation
to reality without losing one's moorings, perhaps even actively
working against distance's tendency toward erasure. The transna-
tional forces migrant Salvadorans find themselves currently
navigating may actually facilitate memory: centrifugal pulls are
countered by centripetal ones, renewing contact with home fre-
quently. El Salvador and, we could argue, Latin America live and
work in Bencastro's United States; El Salvador is in the United
States. Diasporan identities no longer have to be diluted by assimi-
lation, but rather can be strengthened and, at the same time,
nuanced through an ongoing process of negotiation, adaptation,
and remembering. In short, one need not lose oneself to find
oneself
Notes
1. Current theoretical studies of diasporan identity formation suggest that the
experience of Bencastro's hybrid immigrants does indeed follow that of the
almost one million Salvadorans living and working in the United States. One
million represents about a fifth of the tiny nation's population. Because of this
high percentage, interested scholars, journalists, writers, and other professionals
in both the United States and El Salvador have organized a series of conferences
sponsored by ASOSAL (Asociacion de Salvadorefios en Los Angeles) to study
the dynamics of Salvadoran identity in the diaspora. Their work highlights the
growing complexities of Salvadoran life at home and abroad that result from
increasing cross-border flows.
They note that most Salvadorans who emigrate have plans to return, so they
insist on maintaining close contact through telephone, internet, and, if they can
afford it, frequent trips. For example, on-line versions of newspapers such as La
Prensa Grdfica, one of two major dailies in San Salvador, publish up-to-date
coverage of what is happening "back home" and offer internet connections for
readers abroad to send letters to the editor and to make connections with loved
ones left behind. Commenting on the relationship. Urban Studies professor
MARIO BENCASTRO'S DIASPORA 165
Aquiles Magana (California State University at Northridge) expresses his
dismay at a new welcome sign on the outskirts of San Salvador for "los
hermanos lejanos" [distant brothers]: "Los salvadorenos que estamos en el
exterior de lejanos no tenemos nada, ya que estamos igual o mas informados del
acontecer politico, economico, social y cultural del pais que muchos de los
salvadorenos atrapados en las fronteras nacionales" [We Salvadorans of the
exterior are not at all distant since we're equally or better informed about what's
happening politically, economically, socially and culturally than many of the
Salvadorans who are trapped within the nation's borders.] (16).
Most Salvadorans in the United States are concentrated in Los Angeles and
the nation's capital. Collectively, US Salvadorans are often referred to as "the
fifteenth department," a sobriquet that ties the two groups together and reflects
the importance of the emigrants to the economic, political, cultural, and social
well-being of the fourteen departments back in Central America.
2. Bencastro wrote all four texts in Spanish. The first three have been translated
into English by Susan G. Rascon. I refer to them by their English titles. The
translation of Viaje a la tierra del abuelo is forthcoming.
3. This story recalls similar texts of animism, purification, and rebirth through
nature from other Central American writers: Claribel Alegria's Flores del
volcdn and Gioconda Belli's La mujer habitada come to mind. Like Bencastro,
they present a hopeful vision for a transformed identity of El Salvador and
Nicaragua respectively.
4. A term used by liberation theologians in Latin America to describe what
should be the appropriate stance of the Church vis-a-vis the poor and oppressed.
5. In fact, Bencastro has generalized his audience to any immigrant group from
a third world country. It is significant, he feels, that the book has also been
published in India, where readers have found it addresses their own odysseys to
the United States (Hood 576).
6. Singh et al. explain that while democracies create an illusion of sameness and
equality by erasing ethnography (history) and looking to the ftiture, the culture
of the dominant group still prevails by resorting to nostalgia and "mental or
cultural ellipses" (5). But, they continue, marginal groups will fill in the blanks:
"[M]arginal groups often seek to maintain at the center of national memory what
the dominant group would often like to forget" (6). Their narratives are inserted
into the grand one or even exist along side it. Such multiplication is seen as
threatening to the degree it undermines a single allegiance. Singh et al. have
characterized the postmodern space that is the United States as "a federation of
diasporas" (12). Those (i.e. the cultural studies folks) who would like to see
marginalized groups further empowered encourage projects to preserve distinct
cultural memories. Bencastro's voice is among them.
7. A culture of stress hits the immigrant communities especially hard; Zimmer-
man calls it "PMS," "post-migrational stress syndrome" (3).
8. Bencastro explains that because the novel is directed to younger readers he
has kept it short and direct in order to compete with television, movies, the
internet, and video games.
166 LINDA J. CRAFT
9. Chambers explains that migrancy's dispersal disrupts the overarching themes
of modemity: "the nation and its literature; language and a sense of identity; the
metropolis; the sense of centre; the sense of psychic and cultural homogeneity"
(23-24). There is no longer a singular meta-narrative nor uniform culture.
10. Sommer reports that most "hyphenated Americans" prefer to remain living
on the hyphen, even though "so much of our civic and cultural training in the
United States demonizes doubleness. . . . Perhaps we sense, sometimes without
saying it, that the cure is far worse than the complaint" (305). She states that the
fiourishing of double cultural consciousnesses is essential to a well-functioning
democracy.
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