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Wow.  I loved Libertad by Alma Fullerton.  I knew instantly that I would like it after flipping through the pages and seeing that it was written as a free-verse novel, a style that I have just discovered that I really love.  Although a fictionalized account, Libertad is loosely based upon a real boy’s journey and the thousand of children who experience everyday what Libertad went through.

Libertad lives with his mother and little brother inside the Guatemala city dump scavenging for anything of value that could be sold.  After a freak accident kills their mother, Libertad and his brother struggle to survive.  Their father immigrated to the United States earlier in hopes of providing a better life for their family and had hoped to send for them later.  But know they have lost track of them and only have a address to go on.  Libertand decides that their only hope is to make the dangerous journey from Guatemala City and try to cross the border into the United States unaccompanied by any adults.  The only thing they both have is each other and the promise of a better future.

I thought that this book was simply beautiful.  It was also eye-opening.  I had no idea that people actually lived inside of dumps.  It’s heartbreaking to learn that people really live like that.

On her website, Alma Fullerton states the following:

During my research of the Guatemala City garbage dump, I learned that approximately 10,000 people reside in shacks on the rim of the dump.  These shacks are made with whatever can be salvaged from the garbage-tin, cardboard, and broken furniture. Some of these shacks have power, others don’t. There are about 100 people who live in large cardboard homes inside the boundaries of the dump. All of the  inhabitants make their living recycling garbage, often  specializing in looking for specific items like glass, plastic, cans, or cardboard. Up until 2005 children as well as adults worked inside the dump. After a huge fire that year, city officials no longer allowed children to work inside the dump walls.

Of trying to make it across the border she also says:

Each year, over 80,000 unaccompanied migrant children attempt to enter the United States. The average age of these children is sixteen but there are some as young as six or seven – some younger if sent by coyotes (people who charge a great deal of money to take immigrants over the border). If the children survive the journey, only a few of these children remain in the US. The rest are deported, usually within two days.

I found the following video created from an organization not associated with Safe Passage, the one that Fullerton mentions, but found it to be very similar to what those at the Guatemala City garbage dump must go through.  This video is filmed in Honduras:

I highly recommend reading Libertad which will be released on September 13th.  A portion of the royalties goes to the non-profit organization, Safe Passage which gives Guatemalan children an opportunity to attend school by paying for tuition and school supplies and giving families food in return (because the children are often needed for work to help pay for food, many families won’t send their children to school).

Visit Alma Fullerton’s website.  I for one, am now looking forward to reading her previous novels, which includes Walking on Glass and In the Garage.

Read this book.

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