Cristina Colombo

The Architecture of Migration

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF MIGRATION

A 57 storey skyscraper stands out in the urban landscape of Manhattan. It has a mixed
composition; a solid, geometric base and a nearly dematerialized upper tower. The
world is being filled with buildings of these characteristics: a manipulation of abstract
dualities: presence and absence, solidness and intangibility, strength and frailty; an
engraved extrapolation of the iconic reflection of a disquieting society in which man
struggles to preserve his own identity.

The underlying semiotics unravels the expectancy of bodies projecting into a space in
which they seem to run the risk of dissolution; migration of the form, of the whole
picture in an structural occurrence, we might infer, in parallel with the human condition
of which migration has been and still is an essential incident bearing its own intrinsic
architecture.

Similarly to the skyscraper in Manhattan, children’s literature shows how this

ideologically coded architecture of migration reveals its own dual nature; a deeply
rooted foundation and a deconstructing profile that finally shapes its own strength along
a deranged and disjointed trajectory.

The new millennium witnesses an increasing migratory movement due to an outrageous

imbalance in richness distribution, and an indiscriminate and thoughtless intolerance,
unthinkable in a world of breathtaking scientific and technological material progress
and massive communications. These facts clearly show that spiritual and material
progress does not usually coincide in history. Thus it is in the realm of human behavior
where we have to look for the cause of the painful circumstances of exile and migration
and of its traumatic consequences.

Along the centuries, Argentina has played a double role as regards the subject of this
phenomenon. It has received enormous flows of immigrants and in the course of time
obliged hundreds of its own citizens to leave the country in search of refuge under
dictatorial governments.

Many books have reflected these hard and demanding periods when some succumbed to
despondency, others managed to find their own road to salvation and many discovered
the meaning of the word hope even at a time of extreme necessity and deprivation.
Thus, what I intend now, is to offer a panoptic view, through two specific examples, of
the way in which children’s literature explores the actual and symbolic architecture
involved in the experience of migration; its own secret intimacy, the push and pull
factor and the particular survival strategies chosen when all other possibilities are no
longer available.

Between the unification of Italy in 1861 and the 1960’s, nearly 25 million Italians left
their native country, mostly to America, due to a situation of extreme poverty.
Argentina received an enormous part of this diaspora, the biggest migration of
contemporary times, in search for peace and better material conditions.

This period of renewed hope and enthusiasm as well as misery and homesickness is
outstandingly reflected in “Stefano”, a novel, about a 14 year old boy who leaves his

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fatherland in pursuit of a new life in Argentina, by María Teresa Andruetto, winner of
the Andersen Award, herself an immigrant’s daughter.

Stefano’s pilgrimage is superbly told through a counterpoint of two voices, a harmonic

duet through which the reader can watch the intricate meanders of Stefano’s not only
self imposed but also inevitable migration.

First, an omniscient narrator that offers a chronological vivid background where we can
watch Stefano suffer, enjoy, love, fear; in short grow up and become mature. And then,
the protagonist’s own voice which will constantly refer the reader back to a closed
world, in which his mother, left behind by her own will, and the forsaken land of his
childhood repeatedly appear in a time of sorrow and hardship.

These alternate points of view show Stefano torn between the facts of life he has to face
in the new land, the extension and wealth of which overwhelms him and his own
destiny of loneliness and poverty. All this, epitomized in the maternal image, a sad,
grieving woman, Agnese, who carries the picture of a husband, killed in battle during
the First World War but at the same time still alive in spirit, in a photograph hidden
among the abyssal plaits of her black dress and her petticoat.

In a long roaming of soul and body, Stefano will eventually have to endure a series of
significant and even devastating circumstances: the wreck of El Syrio, the ship that was
supposed to safely bring him to the New World; the early death of some of his friends in
the tragedy; his days as a rural worker and later on as a saxophone player in an itinerant
circus, his sexual awakening and finally the discovery of love and the acceptance of his
own identity.

Stefano cannot escape his fate as a displaced person. Among his belongings he has
brought his own past with him. A past that has made him the man he is but that at the
same time bears the seal of a sentence.

The tribulations underlying the text are those, inherent to an immigrant’s condition;
among others: fear, fatalism, submission and rebelliousness, and in Stefano’s case a
religiosity with it mournful tone and its proclivity to an ever-lasting guilt and
atonement.

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Even at a distance, Stefano interacts with Agnese through the images of family scenes
present in his constantly recaptured memories; a whole gallery of desolate pictures,
through which the reader can grasp the intimate nature of the mother-son relationship.

Stefano embodies his homesickness in his dear Agnese, who saddens him during
daytime and haunts him in the long nights of his solitude with a ghostly series of
repeated questions (Why did you go? Are you happy?), an endless litany for which
Stefano cannot find an answer.

Frightened and at a loss in his present condition, Stefano feels reluctant to let go his
memories even though they act as obstinate hosts that constantly trouble his heart
preventing him from receiving the healing action of a deeply desired consolation.
Poverty has been at the root of his decision to leave his native country and it is poverty
that now emerges unstoppable in the endearing flashbacks that time and time again
clearly show how mother and son used to connive through small petty fictitious
attitudes to make their world less hard to bear.

They pretended they had sufficient food while they separated the white from the yolk,
so that the only egg in their dinner would last longer. They pretended that Stefano’s
outworn clothes suited him well when they were too small for his rapidly changing
body. In this make believe world the only real thing they did not have to pretend was
the strong affection they felt for each other.

The sense of destitution is also reflected in the austerity of their language. The dialogues
between mother and son, when they exist, are deprived of any joy, being their meager
and restrained expressions shaped by the indigence in their existence. It is a language of
dispossession, precise and unadorned, loaded with regret, uttered in closed scenes,
hermetic as cameos.

Their conversations, including the mother’s pieces of advice, usually have survival
connotations. Poverty is so powerful a presence that distorts the whole picture and
reduces life to the satisfaction of the most elemental needs. At this point, food becomes
a vital issue reaching the category of an almost sacred item; nearly an object of
veneration, even endowed with a punishing capacity. In Agnese’s words, letting meat
burn is a sin and throwing bread away leads a person to damnation.

And there is the painful sight of her self-victimization. Stefano’s mother, in the act of
refusing to eat so that her son will get a better portion, with a look in her eyes, the
memory of which cannot be easily forgotten, obsesses Stefano. Another powerful cause
of regret also derives from her denial to accompany her son and leave his father’s land
thus creating a painful link between fatherhood, land and abandonment in the child’s
mind, encircled by a distressing chain of feelings and emotions.

Thus, the strong tie between Stefano and his mother is nevertheless marked by an
irreducible contrast. Agnese’s identity is forged in an unbending attachment to the soil,
in her mind and spirit an archetypal, original and at the same time ultimate place of
unrelenting affection. To Stefano, his homeland is also his father’s land, though
irrigated with his blood, torn apart under distressful conditions and consequently source
of his bereavement, hopelessness and destitution.

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Meanwhile, far away, amidst the mourning that confines his soul to the landscape of his
own country where his mother survives in her unredeemed loneliness, Stefano
undertakes a pilgrimage in search of his own individuality. Different places, different
occupations, different friends, different women follow uninterruptedly molding his
character and strengthening his spirit. It is this search of an open, hopeful future that
guides Stefano’s steps and impels him to relentlessly march in the pursuit of the
Promised Land that he feels as a never ending, intimate impulse towards action.

Time passes and Stefano’s mother dies of consumption. Immersed in his deep anguish
he becomes aware that ahead lies the only road to salvation and that he must go on to
fulfill his destiny.

Eventually he will find true love and form a family. And what is most consoling he will
also discover the answer to his mother’s questions: Why did you go? Are you happy?
He now knows these have always been his own questions, those harassing him through
the course of time in the solitude of his conscience. Then, it is at this very moment, his
doubts cleared, his search ended, that in an ultimate revealing dream, his mother comes
and silently clasps her arms around Stefano, in a loving and touching embrace of
understanding and reconciliation.

DE EXILIOS, MAREMOTOS Y LECHUZAS

Of a different nature are the problems that Laura, our next protagonist faces, derived
from her condition of political exile, a situation that involves more sensitive aspects as
regards the coexistence with other exiles and the natives of the host country, amidst
elements at play which go from frustration, a false sense of patriotism, denunciation of
supposed acts of treason to even xenophobia.

During the 70’s, many Latin American countries, Argentina and her neighbor Uruguay
among them, fell under the rule of dictatorships that made thousands flee for their lives
in search of refuge.

These simultaneous dreadful conditions loom at the ominous beginning of a moving

novel, “De exilios, maremotos y lechuzas” (On exiles, owls and seaquakes), by Carolina

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Trujillo Piriz, a Uruguayan author who fictionalizes her own physical, psychological
and emotional experience as a refugee.

The novel starts with the father’s imprisonment for political reasons and the subsequent
exile of the endangered family, first in Argentina and then, in Holland.

The story is told by Laura, the elder daughter, in a double fashion, as a girl who refers to
the past through a child’s innocent vision and as an adolescent, a fact that adds a deeper
perception to events and feelings. The contrast is rich and fruitful. Eventually other
characters (the mother and the father) will become the leading voices adding a dramatic
tone to the narration.

Little Laura tells us how the act of moving to another geographical space brought
nightmarish ideas to a mind that on account of its short age could not intellectually
grasp the concept of country. Images follow in the book of big holes and sharp rocks
piercing people who hang from the edge of abysses, of buses falling and bursting, and
beasts attacking a mass of exiles.

All the same, by the time Laura becomes aware of the territorial continuity implied in
the compulsory displacement of the family, they have to leave Argentina, now under a
military regime and move to Holland.

Once there, a hotel by the sea, their new Dutch home, becomes the first setting of their
newly born nostalgia. There, Laura, her sister Christine and her mother live with other
Uruguayan refugees and it is this cohabitation which fosters and increases a sense of
loss and solitude.

The world of exile is shown as a split world where personal identity loses its immanent
quality. Hate and love burst among the fellow countrymen as if they were members of a
dysfunctional family, abusing each other, in many cases fighting out of their own hybrid
state as exiles.

Laura depicts the group of refugees ironically as running a race, at a lightning speed
towards what could be defined as a perfect exile: hating the Dutch who in their turn fear
and despise them; hating the other exiles for sharing their destiny and hating those who
have remained in Uruguay for not having rebelled against the injustice of political
circumstances.

Only memories and a portable homeland of objects cherished as symbolic icons can
help to mitigate the unstoppable flow of feelings. Turned into passion, homesickness,
paralyzes, mutilates and stratifies pain in the mortified and enervated soul of the
refugees.

Besieged by the fear of ungratefulness towards their own motherland and a forced
sympathy towards the society that has offered them asylum, the exiles take refuge in an
attitude of denial, refusing to accept any kind of integration and imposing among
themselves a set of unsaid, unwritten rules, as an undisputed dogma.

Thus, learning Dutch, moving on, trying to mend one’s broken life by interacting with
the host country is considered an act of treason. And still more, irretrievably sunk in

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delusion and acting as stalwart revolutionaries, the exiles assemble to plan subversive
actions in detail, disregarding the evidence of geographical coordinates.

Let us hear Laura’s painfully mordant voice depicting this situation: “Little by little, the
traitors began to better understand the Dutch language and little by little though also
very quickly they abandoned their trunks and left. Only some remained there, with their
suitcases almost ready; the others, those who never learned Dutch stayed paralyzed,
hidden between the white walls and the small paths, turned into busts and
monuments”…
“The house was full of busts and dust and fabulous cobwebs with a wall covered by a
yellowish poster of the Che, a flag, a photo. Full of busts and cobwebs and books by
Marx, poems by Benedetti, a phrase once uttered by Artigas, and busts, nothing but
busts of heroic revolutionaries”

In this metaphoric description of desolation and unredeemed nostalgia children also

help to keep the past alive by reenacting previous symbolic moments. Laura and her
sister talked to each other through the glass of an open window as they have seen their
parents do in their visits to the prison. Or figure they are tupamaros (Uruguayan
revolutionaries) staging scenes in which the security forces made people, even babies
disappear.

The host land natives also added to the sense of estrangement and despondency through
the attitudes displayed by many Dutch who saw the refugees as terrorists and
communists robbing them of their jobs and thus introducing into their society an
element of disruption and imbalance.

Time passes and Laura, Christine and their mother move into a new house; the mother
finds a job and her Dutch boyfriend is accepted in the family circle. It is at this point
that the girls realize their mother tongue is beginning to fail them in the act of writing
their letters to the absent father now that once outside the refuge, Dutch has become
their everyday language.

In the long run, this last fact introduces a radical change in the idiosyncrasy of the
family including a new pattern of thought and expression; a new set of assumptions,
concepts, values and practices; in short, a different way of viewing reality together with
an empowerment and an increasing feeling of acceptance of and by the adopted country.

Finally, after 12 years the father is set free and decides to join his family still in
Holland.

A period of adjustment takes place. Opposite feelings erupt with the force of a tempest.
The experience of exile, forced separation, of solitude and uprooting has changed each
and every one of the members.

The father, deeply immersed in recollections, pours his exacerbated melancholy into the
surrounding scenery, day after day, his mind and eyes fixed on an imprecise object at an
imprecise distance. He becomes dependent and sensitive to the point of helplessness.

The girls cannot recognize in their defeated father the inveterate revolutionary who
waged a fierce fight against oppression and injustice. On the other hand, the mother,

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overwhelmed by the state of affairs, becomes haunted by the ghost of a nascent
depression.

A decision follows to return to Uruguay as a possible solution to the distressing

situation. Once in the country, in the middle of their parents’ unavoidable separation,
Laura and her sister make a spirited effort to learn everything about their motherland;
the language and its idioms, the places and their secrets, the people and their common
habits; in one word the essence of their own Uruguayan identity.

Nevertheless, the years of exile will always remain like a paradoxically enriching but
painful experience. Laura and Christine will always feel themselves pulled in opposite
directions, half Uruguayan, half Dutch, especially on rainy days when the whole
landscape silently turns into an emotional state of mind, an endearing reflection of an
everlasting longing.

Thus, I have tried to depict different circumstances resulting from different migration
status: one due to economic reasons, the other to political ones; both equally tearing
though revitalizing. Then, it is my wish and hope this paper will help to throw some
light into the entangled, reticent architectural framework of the painful condition of all
those who have been and still are obliged to abandon their own land following an
overwhelming impulse towards hope and happiness.
Thank you

Cristina Colombo