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Grant Durbahn's Reviews > Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
by
by
Good book overall. Longish review ahead because it is a work worthy of discussion.
We'll start with the good. I, like most Americans, am not really aware of the origin of the immigration crisis that has been a mainstay in American politics since ~2014. This book does a good job of explaining the origins of the evil governments of Central America in the 70s and 80s (major surprise to no one: American support holding up fascist dictators with death squads) causing the destabilization of the region. Once America started deporting people who fled from these evil governments to America back to their origin en masse, the systems in these countries collapse and we essentially have situation we have today. The sections of the book where the author is quoting government sources in both the United States and Central America while summarizing events is the strongest part of this book.
Now for the bad. This is written by a journalist and you can tell. The number of names and different people introduced in this book is astounding, and Blitzer expects you to remember and recall them all. The point of this is ostensibly to show the impact of the policies of the American government on individuals and to force you to empathize. The downside is that I was getting people confused as the deluge of names made different people indistinguishable from each other. Additionally, empathy is a finite resource. I simply didn't have it in me to care about very single one of the 150+ people that are in this book. The book really didn't need long sections about the activities of the activists working in the United States; I understand the Blitzer wants to recognize the people who helped him write this book but this book really could have been much much shorter. Finally, the characterization of several of the people in the book, both smaller and larger characters, made me say "stop the glazing" at times and was downright cringe in several spots.
Overall, don't want to take away from this achievement as I learned a lot and I truly think this is an essential book if you want to understand immigration at the Southern border today. You could probably put the book down after the Trump section though.
We'll start with the good. I, like most Americans, am not really aware of the origin of the immigration crisis that has been a mainstay in American politics since ~2014. This book does a good job of explaining the origins of the evil governments of Central America in the 70s and 80s (major surprise to no one: American support holding up fascist dictators with death squads) causing the destabilization of the region. Once America started deporting people who fled from these evil governments to America back to their origin en masse, the systems in these countries collapse and we essentially have situation we have today. The sections of the book where the author is quoting government sources in both the United States and Central America while summarizing events is the strongest part of this book.
Now for the bad. This is written by a journalist and you can tell. The number of names and different people introduced in this book is astounding, and Blitzer expects you to remember and recall them all. The point of this is ostensibly to show the impact of the policies of the American government on individuals and to force you to empathize. The downside is that I was getting people confused as the deluge of names made different people indistinguishable from each other. Additionally, empathy is a finite resource. I simply didn't have it in me to care about very single one of the 150+ people that are in this book. The book really didn't need long sections about the activities of the activists working in the United States; I understand the Blitzer wants to recognize the people who helped him write this book but this book really could have been much much shorter. Finally, the characterization of several of the people in the book, both smaller and larger characters, made me say "stop the glazing" at times and was downright cringe in several spots.
Overall, don't want to take away from this achievement as I learned a lot and I truly think this is an essential book if you want to understand immigration at the Southern border today. You could probably put the book down after the Trump section though.
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