 Hello, my name is Roger Jelenick, I'm your host of Book Worlds, and my guest today is Tyler McMahon, the author of a new book, Dream of Another America. And first we're going to find out who Tyler McMahon is. Tyler, what, who are you? As you said, I'm Tyler McMahon, I'm a professor of English here at HPU, just across the street or in this building, I suppose, in another sense. I'm from Washington DC area, Virginia originally, and I've been here in Honolulu for about ten years. And have you been teaching all that time? I have been. Yeah, I came here sight unseen and started teaching for HPU. The subject of the book is, the book, it's a novel, it's set in El Salvador in part, or mostly, how did it come to be set in El Salvador? What's been your experience in El Salvador? Well, when I graduated from college, very shortly thereafter I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to El Salvador in 1999, I suppose, and I was a water and sanitation volunteer. What does that mean? Well, it was a program that mostly built latrines, but I was fortunate to be matched with a, though I have built a few latrines of my day, I was sort of assigned to a community that was on the verge of installing a big gravity flow aqueduct for about five villages that didn't have any potable water. So I was able to go there and work on that project and live in a small little village for about three years and that was, this was the late 90s when I arrived, I was there in 1999 to 2002 or thereabouts. So it was kind of the height of immigration, you know, economic immigration to the US. Just tell me where is El Salvador? So it's in Central America, it's on the Pacific Coast, it's kind of cut out of Honduras that's the way Portugal's cut out of Spain. It just has a Pacific coastline that actually faces mostly to the south, but just because Central America's sort of oriented that way and it shares a border with Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala and, you know, you have to cross through Guatemala to get to southern Mexico. And did you choose El Salvador or were you sent there? I didn't. I was sent there. I did prefer Latin America at the time, the time I joined the Peace Corps, particularly the English majors were almost all being sent to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states that had just recently become states. And you know, they were having a very particular kind of experience where they were, you know, working in schools or institutions and in many cases living in two bedroom apartments and sort of having a kind of commuter thing and I, for one thing, I wanted, I'd learned a little Spanish by that point and I wanted to keep going with my Spanish and I also, I was interested in the sort of romance of the Peace Corps as I'd heard about it before and I didn't, that involved, you know, more of a, you know. A Peace Corps turned you into a water engineer? Yeah, exactly. From an English, all it took was a plane ticket and I went from being an English major to a, sometimes called an engineer erroneously, but. So what did it actually involve? Well, it was a lot of things at a lot of different times. I guess it was mostly kind of community organization types of work. I mean, I was, in the Peace Corps and other NGOs, they liked to work in partnership so it was sort of a sign to an organization called PCI that I don't believe works in El Salvador anymore. But they had engineers and lawyers and things like that. And most of the funding had already been secured by the time I got there. I sort of, there had been another volunteer who, who lived nearby in a larger town who kind of, most of his service was, was kind of a liaison to smaller villages and he, he laid the groundwork for me to go to Apollo Ground. So your job was more community organizing? Yeah. How big was the village? The village was a couple of hundred people and as I said, I worked with, with about five other villages and one of them was probably about, largest was probably about seven hundred people. I should say the novel is set in the village in El Salvador and about the whole migration to the U.S. and the adventures involved in getting from El Salvador to the U.S. Having said that, the, the family that is central to the, to the story was a family you knew? Was it a composite family? Yeah, it's a composite of, of, it's a strongly based, the, the, the village aspect of things, the sort of home front is definitely based on a family that, that I was very close to and I took all of my meals with. It was always a fun sort of source of irony for us to talk about, you know, me being there and eating at the table that, that was sort of set with, with, with remaces as they call them, the wages that were sent back, back home from, from my, you know, country. And they, they took great care of me. I took, you know, as I said, I ate with them, you know, every day and, and they really showed me the ropes and, and their, their kid, they had several kids and in the book there's only one child, but they had several kids who, you know, really helped me learn Spanish and learn, learn about the culture and, and about the politics of the village and things like that. So, let's describe, describe the book given that setting. So, what's, what's a basic story? Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, the, the heart of the book is, is the, the main character, Jacinto sort of traveling up through, through Mexico. He's, he's sort of double-crossed by a smuggler in the, in the first chapter and, and left for dead in the, in the desert and then, you know, sent back to Central America as, as many, as many Central Americans are in that situation and then he's, he decides to, to sort of self-cater and, and, and find his way to the states without the help of the smuggler after that. And, and his journey is really, is, is a composite of a lot of stories that I, you know, read or, or heard about him or, or, you know, studied and, and that kind of thing. Some of the worst tragedies that folks go through, they're not all that bad, hopefully. But he had a particular kind of guardian angel in, in another major character in the book. Yeah. Was that somebody, was there someone like that you actually knew? Or was that a? The Israel character, not really. I mean, it was, he was based on a lot of, I guess, like superstitions and things like that that you heard about from almost a pre-Columbian Mayan stories and things or about kind of these helper types and, and sort of witch doctors and things like that who believed in, in these guys. He had a, he had a kind of hidden history, right? He was a, he was a fighter. Right, right. What was he, give some background on the revolution and then the continuing struggle in El Salvador. Right. Well, so as you, as you saw it in that village. Mm-hmm. It is, you know, by that point when I was in El Salvador, you know, the, they call it the conflict, you know, but it was a civil war by any measure. It had been over for, for quite a long time. But it just, it informed everything, you know. It was, for one thing, they, El Salvador got a kind of hasty, you know, quick and dirty land reform after their war. So, you know, you could say that, that it certainly, it changed the country and, and it needed to be changed because there was such a vast monopolization of the, of all the agricultural lands. But it effectively sort of relocated everyone. So, for example, the biggest problems I had with, with the, the water project I worked on is there was one community that was all former guerrillas in the middle of, you know, four others that were all former military. And they didn't get along, you know. And they, they used different structures to organize their communities, they used different terminologies. When the Evangelical Church came around, which was happening in earnest in the late 90s when I was there, you know, previously it was a 100% Catholic country. And then, and then Central America started having these, they called Evangelical Churches their, their, you know, Protestant faiths essentially. And for whatever reason, they caught on more with the former army folks. And, and, and the guerrillas remained Catholic. And, and so it, it, it created a new dimension to this. How did you experience that on day-to-day basis in the village? Well, I spent a lot of time sort of trying to liaise to reach out to that, to that other village, that guerrilla village, but much more directly the family that I, that I described, they had been former guerrillas and, and even more kind of random coincidence. They were, you know, assigned a parcel of land and a home in the midst of, of former army fighters. So they were sort of pariahs in their own village and me getting close to them, you know, influenced my relationships with other, other people in the village. So it was all this, you know, overlapping kind of history that became religion, that became politics. So they all vote a particular way to, you know, obviously the. And was this complexity part of everyday life? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think. Was it a part of an endless conversation? Or a, or a sort of passive regressive sublimated, you know, unspoken conversation in a lot of ways. And, and I just think it, on a personal level, it, you know, there's just a lot of things that you didn't talk about, things that you didn't ask about, a lot of trauma that just went unaddressed, you know. But that was a memory. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Was a memory maintained deliberately or? Yes, but it was. It was from generation to generation. Absolutely, I think so. I mean, in some ways it was, it was something that, that people never spoke about, but it was, you know, it informed all their opinions about their neighbors and things like that, and about each other's children. I remember in the Northern Ireland conflict, the children were kind of brainwashed at taking sides. Was that the same truth? Yeah, I think so. And, and you know, it's, it's just a weird juxtaposition of, of religious faith, political parties, and then these, you know, notions about what, these are the people that were shooting at my, me and my brothers and things like that. So the stories is about this kind of hideous journey from El Salvador to the U.S., undergoing all sorts of horrendous interventions by various self-interested people along the way. What sort of proportion of the village would, would have that kind of experience? Would be somebody in every family or? Certainly in many villages, that would be the case. My village skewed less so. I'm sure it's, it's changed now, but particularly in Northern El Salvador and in a region called Chilatinango, I mean, absolutely one member of almost every household would be there, and it tends to work like that. Like it tended to have a kind of exponential effect. So if one family had, you know, someone to receive them as they would, they would put it, you know, and I spoke to many people in my village who I would say, you know, have you ever considered going? And they said, oh, I would love to, but I don't have anyone to receive me, you know, meaning they didn't have a cousin or a brother or an uncle that would kind of take them in once they got to the States. And in many cases, it's a down payment issue as well. You know, so if one village got a sort of foothold, often, you know, other members of the village would end up there in a, in some place in the same city. A lot of the stories takes part in trains and hitchhiking and so on. Just give us a sense of that, of what that was like. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a big distance for starters. It sure is, yeah, it's a cover on foot, exactly. It's a strange thing. For whatever reason, the, there's a train that's, sometimes the train is called La Bestia, the beast, other times you hear the state of Chiapas, which the train goes through referred to as the beast. I kind of had it both ways in my book, but you'll see it, you'll see it explained in different, different senses. And this is like the, the sort of narrow southern corridor of Mexico, where for whatever reason, it's, you know, it's very difficult terrain for one thing. So the train is one of the only ways to move about. But it's also just a sort of a bottleneck in the geographic sense where everyone needs to kind of move along this one corridor. So all of the immigrants end up sort of squeezed into, onto these trains, you know, holding on from every angle. You can see pictures easily of, you know, just dozens of people on top of a train car and, you know, barely having room for their feet or hands or whatever. It might be a cling to the sides sometimes and that kind of thing. And how long would they be on these trains? If they, depending on how long they go, but days or weeks, I would say, you know, usually it's. Weeks on trains. Yeah, I mean, you could, you could go even further if you were so inclined, but it's sort of, it's really a thing down in Southern Mexico. And it's, it's, it's particularly problematic because it's, it's certainly the police are opportunistic about, about finding folks there, but even more so bandits and robbers and things like that find it a good place. We'll take a break now, but we'll come back to our training. Sounds great. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest, you can be the best, you can be the king, come playin' on your chest. You can be the weaker, talk to God, go bangin' on his door. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech. And here we are back. We were just talking about these trains of the immigrants clung to for literally weeks at a time. And they had some pretty rough adventures along the way. Can you describe some? Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not uncommon for gangsters to sort of assault immigrants. A lot of times people are traveling with their savings, such as they are, and that sort of thing. And it's very common for bandits to sort of stick them up. It's also common for law enforcement to sort of abuse people. For whatever reason, and I know this just from research, not from firsthand experience, but that Chiapa state is somewhat hostile to the immigrants coming up from Central America, whereas other states are quite welcoming, like Oaxaca has a reputation as being extremely kind to the people who pass through. So there's a lot of internal tensions between Mexicans and Central Americans that sometimes lead to violence. And is the endemic violence of the whole setup, the result of the Civil War, or is it a cultural tradition? Yeah, I mean, I think it's based on a lot of factors. Mexico, unfortunately, has had a sort of rough time of it the last few years, and there's a lot of bad actors there that can be very opportunistic. And certainly folks from the Northern Triangle of Central America, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans are subject to abuse at many hands. It's certainly getting the impression from the story of predators and prey all along. I mean, everyone was faggained by everybody they encountered, it seems, you know. There's one particular predator that's mentioned as much in the news thanks to the president, which is the M13 gangs. The impression that Mr. Trump gives is that they come from Latin America and come to the US to terrorize everyone. What's the actual story? Well, first of all, I think there's a lot of misinformation about MS-13. I really think a lot of our official accounts are not quite accurate, but the people that researched this in depth would all agree that that gang really started in Los Angeles and most of their signs and lingo and things refer to streets and whatnot in LA. Sometime in the 90s, during the Clinton administration, there was an effort to deport felons to felons. The bad guys. Right, right, that were foreign nationals. And this was something you would see at the airport when I was in El Salvador. I mean, you'd often kind of hear those stories and see people getting off planes, talking about just having come from the penitentiary and that sort of thing. So there was sort of exporting of that gang culture that happened in many ways and it sort of took root in El Salvador. It certainly was something that all our safety briefings covered and whatnot. There's a lot of rumors that they're somehow related to factions of the Civil War paramilitary groups and I don't find that to be accurate. I mean, I think it's a different generation. It really is a different kind of culture, but they're a big part of our lives as volunteers in El Salvador. Not a, there was something you'd see on a weekly basis, certainly if you were in any kind of urban area. In a village that you were in, were there M14 people living there? Yeah, there were. There was one guy who was kind of a notorious, they called him Chepe Mara because he had the gang tattoos and everything and he sort of was a drifter who had come in and out. His family was there. There were other people that, there's certainly a lot of graffiti and there was a lot of kids who emulated the signs and things like that. Now, apparently it's grown in a big way and from what I'm told about my village, it's sort of you can't travel through there without having your vehicle stopped, whether it's a public bus or a private car and sort of have to pay off a toll essentially to use the road and that sort of thing. But when I was in El Salvador, much of the visible aspect of MS-13 was homeless folks, people with substance abuse problems that were living on the street, that kind of thing. So it wasn't always, it was a widespread kind of social phenomenon. It wasn't just a extortion antagonism thing. It sounds like it's become more. Were you yourself ever confronted by them? Sure, yeah. I mean, on buses I was often kind of threatened or asked for money. Did you pay the toll? Yeah, I usually just pay the toll. I figured it was worth it in the long run. Actually, I remember one of my first times on a bus in El Salvador, I was with two other gringos and my Spanish was a little bit better than those two guys and a guy with tattoos and stuff got up on the bus and kind of went through a speech and said that he was gonna come around and collect cash and if we didn't pay him, he was gonna hurt us. And so he gave him a little bit of money and all the other passengers on the bus were like, just ignore him. You know, that sort of thing. It was always a hard thing to read, as I said. I mean, it was a very strange phenomenon. I think that trying to equate it with other kind of gangs or kind of criminal movements is difficult to do because it is a very unique thing and it's taken hold with the generation in El Salvador that's had a hard time. And you know, in many ways it was the kind of generation after the Civil War generation and their issues and their problems were not well understood by their elders in some cases, I think. The stories that I hear now, I will say one thing I really didn't witness there is this kind of pressure on young people to become a member or else. That was not in my experience a phenomenon in El Salvador and it just is heartbreaking to read about because the Salvadorans that I was around, they just tested those gang members. They just thought it was just the worst thing ever. They hated them more than Donald Trump does, I can promise you that. But in the reports that you now get in our media is that people are leaving more out of terror than out of economic motivation. Absolutely. Is that metaphor, is that? No, I think it's reality. I mean, I haven't checked this stat recently but the truth is that immigration from Central America has been going down really since the late 90s. Yeah, it has been. It's a little bit of a difficult thing to track because in some ways they use statistics of how many people are encountered and whatnot but the real data nerds would tell you that. The character of it, in my opinion, has changed pretty tremendously. I mean, in the era that I was in El Salvador, it was like the character in my book. It was a sort of economic calculus of my family's survival. They're not being work in this country and we can go for a little. It was always an extremely reluctant decision. I think that's the great misunderstanding is that somehow this act of opportunism, like, oh, I can make a little bit more money if I break this rule or cross this line. Really, it was a desperate situation and nobody wanted to go. People just don't want to leave their homes generally. It's a tough thing for anyone and those fathers and husbands and brothers and mothers and sisters and wives that would go. We're always sort of looked at it as biding their time and being able to get their family out of debt, get their education for the kids paid off. And now I think it's becoming more of a refugee situation. People fleeing violence at the hands of these gangs and that's a real problem right now. The last part of the book is it takes place actually in the U.S. that your center, your main character actually makes it. It gets into the U.S. through a pretty amazing tunnel. Right. Have you ever seen that tunnel? I have not seen that, but it exists. It does, yeah, and much of that chapter is... It comes out of Dante, you know. Yeah, it does, it feels that way. And those sort of gangs of children that live there is a real phenomenon. And there's a great book called Lives on the Line by I believe the author's name is Miriam Davidson that chronicles that sort of tunnel thing. It's not a really common route that folks use but it is sometimes used and it sounds terrifying to me. And at the time you were there was the border crossing as punishing as it is today? It didn't look that sound like it in the book. It sounded as though it was fairly routine. Yeah. But it wasn't cruel. Right, it's only gotten worse. It certainly, I think it was starting to turn while I was there. I was in El Salvador for September 11th, 2001. And in the aftermath of that, I think border security tightened up quite a bit. Certainly in the mid-90s, you can remember some of that footage of folks kind of bum rushing the crossing in Tijuana and just kind of running across and everybody was like, oh, they're like, oh, we're not. It's not worth chasing them kind of thing, you know. It's unthinkable today. Right, right. And it's been, you know, it's such a funny, the conversation about building walls and things like that. I mean, there's no wall that's high enough to that's any match for the kind of desert conditions that people walk through nowadays. Certainly most of the Salvadorans that I met, their stories were of walking through the desert in Arizona for, you know, two or three days. Did a lot of them die? That you were aware of them? I cannot recall anybody from the village dying. I do remember a lot of incapacity or incarceration, you know, and those conversations about, well, we hope that the Americans get them and not the Mexicans and that sort of thing was often a topic. The worst parts were often these dead silences where you'd be receiving communications, telegrams or whatever from your loved ones and then all of a sudden it would be sort of radio silence and that was, you know, the coconut wireless in the village would always be, did so-and-so hear anything about so-and-so? No, not yet. Oh, well, I bet this is what happened to them or I bet that's- So it was a major topic of conversation. Oh yeah, very much so, very much so. A lot of people that did have families there, a lot of speculation about, you know, they were the targets of thieves and things like that, a lot of speculation about how much money they had and could they help us out if we, you know, have a sick child or that kind of thing. So this is your second book? My third. Your third book, okay. And what were the other two? The first one was called How the Mistakes Were Made. It's a sort of rock and roll novel that takes place in Seattle in the early 90s and kind of the crazy things that happened to folks there and the second one actually also takes place mostly in El Salvador. It's called Kilometer 99 and it's kind of an expat novel about some surfers that are in El Salvador and the big earthquake that happened. So you're a musician, a surfer and a writer? Well, mostly just a writer. Yeah. Dream of another America means exactly what? Well, I kind of like to think of it as a double entendre. Certainly it's, on the one hand it's sort of an order, you know, to try and dream of a place where we could accommodate a lot of different ideas about, you know, who our citizens are and how we treat each other. But it's also, I mean, I think when you're as a person from this country in Central America, the language kind of fails. You know, you're still in America. You only know how to describe yourself as an American. You usually refer to your country of origin as America and I guess- And they're all Americans too. That's right. So I sort of, it's also the idea to be mindful of this other America that we often ignore and the dreams that they have and, you know, how those might overlap. Well, the book has just been published. Yes. And your publisher is in Virginia, where you graduated. Correct. Yeah, it's a wall press. I wish you great luck with it and I look forward to seeing you at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Roger. Aloha. Aloha.