The Other Side

Juan Pablo Villalobos’s non-fiction The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border (2019) comprises vignettes told to Villalobos by real pre-teens and teenagers who were detained or otherwise struggled to cross the Mexican border into the US after fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Though minor changes have been made to protect the privacy of the children, all the stories are based on real accounts from children Villalobos interviewed as part of a project to explain the situation at the southern border to American adolescents. Geared toward ages 12-16, the book depicts the stories of Central American children from the same age group.

Villalobos focuses on unaccompanied minors who risked their lives to cross the Mexican border. He tells the story of these children using techniques that mirror his fiction, leaving out details about the lasting consequences of these children’s actions and their fates in order to highlight the harrowing immigration process, and the journey they undertook alone.

In the first vignette, “Where Are Your Kids?” the focus is on two children, Kevin and Nicole, who are trying to cross the border alone. Kevin, who is 16, and Nicole, who is only ten, are detained at the border town of San Ysidro. Their mother, who lives in the United  States, is shocked to discover that her children are in a detention center—she believed they were on a class field trip in Guatemala. The disjunction and lack of information between mother and child, and the lack of control a mother has over the safety of her children, is clear in this first chapter.



Other stories follow teenagers in similarly precarious situations. Sixteen-year-old Miguel Angel struggles to make a choice between staying in his native country or searching for his father, who immigrated to New York. Miguel is gay, and in El Salvador, gangs often target and murder gay men for their sexual preferences. However, Miguel isn't sure that life in the US would be much safer. He knows that his father carries that same bias with him, and though he would not be at risk of death by gangs, his own father might throw him out on the street.

Many stories depict detention centers, where children and adults alike are held until they can be released, either into the US or back across the border to Mexico. In one story, Kimberly has been crying since she crossed the river that marks the Mexican border and was detained. The detention center is called “the freezer” because of its frigid, inhospitable temperatures, and Kimberly recounts having to take turns sleeping on the floor of her cell because there isn't enough room for everyone in the cell to lay down at once.

Other accounts in the book include depictions of sexual and physical violence, a common experience, in particular, for young women crossing the border. In one vignette, two lost siblings are forced to hitchhike with a strange truck driver to get across the border. Like so many of these children, they risk their own physical safety and wellbeing to find a new life in America.



Villalobos is a Mexican author who has also spent many years living in Barcelona and Brazil. His debut novel was Down the Rabbit Hole (2011). He has also written Quesadillas and I'll Sell You A Dog. The Other Side, his first book of non-fiction, won a Kirkus Prize, among other honors. He has also received a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award, and a Herralde Prize for his fourth novel, I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me. He is known for writing in the genre of narco-literature, or books that explore drugs and drug trafficking, particularly in South and Central America.