Ramon Perez

Diario De Un Mojado Ramon Perez Spanish, First edition

An unflinching memoir that exposes the illegal immigrant?s travails in the U. S.

Ramón "Tianguis" Pérez walks eight kilometers from his village carrying "a small, vinyl suitcase that holds one change of clothes" and "a mountain of goodbyes." He is seeking out the highway on a voyage that will curl through Mexico and across the Rio Grande. After three bus rides and a swim across the Rio Grande, Tianguis finds himself jammed in the trunk of the car next to two other men travelling the dusty roads of South Texas. The trunk has no ventilation, save a hole where the stereo speaker once hung, a hole through which Tianguis can see the blue sky and the refracted, light green light of the Migra patrol car.

Diario de un mojado is the very personal account of an illegal worker and the people he meets, all struggling to carve a life out of the unwelcoming land of the free. Tianguis writes, immigrating "was a matter of following the tradition of the village. One could even say that we?re a village of wetbacks." Here, that "village of wetbacks" is given a voice.