The Wind Knows My Name

This section introduces a few new characters, bringing the story into the present time, 2019. The text gradually forms links between Samuel’s experiences in Vienna and England, and Leticia and Anita’s experiences in El Salvador and the US. Selena and Frank are the allies of those immigrating to the US, much as Peter and Volker were allies of the Adlers in Vienna. In forming such links, the text emphasizes key elements, such as the indifference of US officials, the political motivations behind violence, and the tactics used to dehumanize and control sections of the population. One of these key similarities involves the theme of The Gendered Differences in Violent Oppression, as the text notes how soldiers at the El Mozote massacre separated the men, women, and children, much as the Nazi party did in Vienna. Specifically, soldiers sexually assaulted the women before killing them, often in gruesome ways, while outright killing the men. This reflects the similar experiences that Rachel Adler had in Vienna when she was exploited for sexual favors by a Chilean official. Likewise, when Anita recalls being kept in the hielera, or “ice box” prison, she notes that she was with other children and their mothers, again implying that men and women are separated at the border during detention. Selena’s family’s response to the targeting of women and men separately is to increase the strength of the bonds between female family members, and she emphasizes the theme of Family as the Greatest Strength through the common use of the last name Durán among the women in her family since, as Selena notes: “Men come and go, or they die on us” (77). How and why the men “come and go,” or die, is secondary to the importance of maintaining familial strength in the face of adversity.

In the present, Selena’s work with the Magnolia Project, though serving as a relevant element of the plot in that it gives the characters access to the crisis at the border, also serves as a means through which the novel can present the nature of the immigration crisis from the perspective of both those living under oppressive policies and those trying to alleviate the deplorable conditions that such policies create. However, much like the Nazi party’s Kristallnacht in Vienna, the situation at the Southern US border exemplifies the use of oppression as an all-encompassing force. Families are separated, children are kept at ice-cold temperatures, and neglect and abuse abound in detention centers and at the border itself. Although these are obviously immoral actions on the part of the US government, Selena notes how little is done to stand in the way of such atrocities. To demonstrate the futility of Selena’s task, she tells Frank how the common procedure is to ask the defendant whether they’d like to be deported, noting that a judge “looked straight at my client,” asking if he wanted to be deported, but that “[t]he client was one year old!” (85). Such mishandling of the situation at a legal level reflects the absurdity of the state of border enforcement in general, in which refugees are treated as less than human and the officials in charge of the operations are willfully ignorant to the injustice they’re perpetuating. This absurdity also links to the massacre at El Mozote, after which Leticia’s guide during her journey north told her that the battalion attacked El Mozote to prevent the spread of leftist ideologies. However, “[t]here were no guerillas in El Mozote, only farmworkers from the village and surrounding areas” (56), indicating the foolishness of the battalion’s operation, in which they were trying to eliminate nonexistent insurgents. They killed children, writing in blood on a wall the operation’s central sentiment, reflecting its lack of consideration: “One dead child, one less guerilla” (56). This sentiment mirrors those of judges in the present who view each child seeking asylum as another burden on the state.