Little San Nicolas

We're told that there is a neighborhood in Miami where you can buy Nicaraguan enchiladas, speak campo Spanish, and live side by side with Rayos and Ruizes and Orozcos; here, they call that neighborhood “Little San Nicolas.”

For the approximately 1,000 people who live in San Nicolas, there are an additional 170 or so San Nicolaseños who live in the US. If you ask pretty much any person you meet in San Nicolas, they will tell you that they have at least one family member living in the US. The majority of these people live together in that neighborhood of Miami, but there are also San Nicolaseños scattered around New York City and Southern California. Most of these immigrants don't have their papers – long-term legal status in the US is almost impossible to achieve for most Nicaraguans – but some San Nicolaseños are able to obtain a visa to visit the US temporarily.

I've heard a lot about Latin American immigration issues in the context of immigrants who are already in the US, but until coming to Nicaragua I had hardly even thought about immigration from the perspective of the people who remain here. These are the families who watch as their sons and daughters risk their lives to travel hundreds of miles, to a place where they might never see them again. These are the mothers who receive money wired from their children in the US so that they can afford an elaborate quinceañera for their youngest daughter. These are the young people who apply for visas to the US to visit the older siblings who they haven't seen in years – and these are the young people whose applications are rejected over and over again.

Here in San Nicolas, when you get word that your son or daughter has defeated the harsh desert trek to arrive “mojado” (wet, or illegally) safely in the USA, you throw a party. All of that person's friends and family come together to celebrate their arrival in their new home and the fact that they didn't die getting there. Sometimes, churches hold multiple-day vigils, praying that the immigrant will adjust easily and quickly to their new life.

One of our students, Alba, has two older brothers who made the grueling trek to the United States and now both live in New York. Alba says she never wants to move to the US because of what happened to her second brother. Her first brother, she says, paid the $7,000 fee to the coyotes who transport immigrants across the US border and made it to New York fine. But her second brother somehow got separated from the rest of the group of immigrants and was stranded in the Texan desert alone. He walked and walked, rationing off his only bottle of water, and was eventually picked up by the police. After sending for money from his older brother and paying the $1,500 bail (this part I don't really understand), he was released and had to pay an additional $1,500 to the coyotes to get all the way to New York.

Like many split families here, Alba talks on the phone to her brothers occasionally. One of our primary school students, Alison, doesn't even know her mom because she has lived in the US as long as Alison can remember. There is no way her mom could come back for a quick visit, of course, without having to make that dangerous, expensive illegal journey back to the US all over again. Alba says she would love to visit her brothers, just to be able to see them again, but it's a long, expensive process to apply legally for a visa to visit the US, and more often than not applicants are rejected.

Our neighbor across the street, Edith, is one of the few people we know who has been able to legally enter the US with a temporary visa. Her family is relatively well off and she is studying medicine at a high-profile school in Managua. Because she is on a good career track and has a lot going for her here in Nicaragua, US immigration deemed her unlikely to try and stay in the US, so she was able to visit for a few months. But it is only people like Edith who have a bit of money and a more promising future who are given this chance.

Here in San Nicolas, it's usually easy to tell who has family members in the US. Grandiose houses have begun popping up all over town in recent years, built with funds from San Nicolaseños working in the states. A few months ago, Davie confiscated an iPhone at school from a student whose mom had sent it to him from the US. (He gave it back after the kid's grandma came stomping down to the school later that day). In April our student Etni's parents threw her an extravagant quinceañera for her 15^th birthday with funds from her older siblings who live in the US.

I'm not sure what effect this has on socioeconomic dynamics here in San Nicolas, but I know how I would feel if my mom didn't send me American dollars on a monthly basis and my best friend's mom did. But then again, I also would have a mom in my life.

I have also wondered, if I grew up in San Nicolas, would I be the kind of person who goes to the US to make more money and have an adventure? I think I might be. But what effect does this have on this tiny, agriculture-based town in the mountains of Nicaragua, for all of its boldest, most entrepreneurial citizens to vacate it? And what happens to those who are left behind?

Those are the questions still rolling around in my head. Like so many San Nicolaseños, I would love to see that magical land of “Little San Nicolas” someday – a pocket of Nicaraguan campo tucked away in the urban sprawl of Miami. But unlike so many San Nicolaseños, for me achieving this dream would only cost me a plane ticket to Miami, not a dangerous desert trek, and definitely not my life.