The Cariboo Café by Helena María Viramontes
"The Cariboo Café" by Helena María Viramontes is a poignant narrative that explores themes of loss, identity, and the intersections of personal and societal trauma. The story unfolds in three interconnected parts, beginning with Sonya, a young girl navigating the challenges of her urban environment as she searches for her missing apartment key while caring for her younger brother, Macky. Their journey exposes them to the harsh realities of homelessness and police brutality, instilling in Sonya a deep-seated fear of authority figures.
The narrative then shifts to the perspective of the café owner, who grapples with guilt and memories of his son, JoJo, while trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy in his establishment, which has become a refuge for marginalized individuals. The café serves as a backdrop for the story's exploration of kindness and complicity, especially during a tense encounter with immigration agents.
The final section introduces an El Salvadoran mother, whose heart-wrenching search for her lost son, Geraldo, reflects the horrors of political violence and the desperate measures taken to seek safety in the United States. As her story converges with that of the café owner, the narrative culminates in a dramatic confrontation that highlights the struggles of individuals caught in a web of systemic injustice. Overall, "The Cariboo Café" is a powerful commentary on the complexities of immigrant experiences, family bonds, and the pervasive impact of societal neglect.
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The Cariboo Café by Helena María Viramontes
First published: 1985
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: The 1980's
Locale: An American city and El Salvador
Principal Characters:
Sonya , the young daughter of a Latino immigrant to the United StatesMacky , her brotherThe cook , the owner of the Cariboo CaféJoJo , the cook's sonNell , the cook's former wifePaulie , a café patronA washerwoman , from El SalvadorGeraldo , the washerwoman's young son
The Story
In the first of the story's three parts, a young girl named Sonya has lost the key to her father's apartment that she usually keeps on a string around her neck. Her father works by day while she goes to school, and her brother Macky is tended by Mrs. Avila. Today Sonya has brought Macky home from Mrs. Avila's house; she arrives at the apartment before she realizes that her key is missing. Street smart but young, she tries to guide her brother back through the ghetto area where they live to Mrs. Avila's house but quickly becomes disoriented.
As they walk, Sonya observes various human examples of homelessness, poverty, and vice. She sees a man and innocently thinks he might be the father of a classmate at her school (because both schoolmate and man are African American). She considers approaching the man for help, when he is suddenly stopped, searched, and taken away by the police. Her father has taught her to fear the police—who work in league with immigration officials—so witnessing this incident confirms to Sonya that what he says about the authorities is accurate. She seizes her brother by the hand and they run into the unfamiliar warehouse district of the city. Tired and frightened as darkness falls, they head toward the lights of a café that Sonya spots in the distance.
The second part of the story is narrated by the owner of the Cariboo Café, who is in the process of rationalizing some of his recent actions and ruminating about his life. Something has recently happened in his café that makes patrons avoid it and that makes the man scrub stains off its floor. He tries to be fair to the odd assortment of people who enter his place, including the disabled and those down on their luck. He is especially kind to a man named Paulie, who has a drug or mental problem (which may stem from his experience in the Vietnam War), because something about him reminds the man of his own son, JoJo, who was killed in Vietnam. The café owner's level-headed wife, Nell, has left him, and he misses her. One day, he recalls, a disheveled Latina woman ordered food for two children sitting with her in a booth. The younger child (whom he thinks of as Short Order) reminded him of JoJo as a little boy. The boy's sister appeared distrustful. After they left, the owner saw a television news bulletin about two missing children and recognized the boy as the one in his café.
The next day immigration agents raid a nearby factory and some workers run into the café to hide. Although the owner recognizes them as regular customers, he gestures toward their hiding place when the agents enter, and they are taken away in handcuffs. Shaken by this incident, he is further distressed to see the woman from the day before return with the two children.
The final section of the story is the first-person narrative of an unnamed El Salvadoran woman whose five-and-a-half-year-old son, Geraldo, was taken off the streets by army officials and never seen again. Along with other women whose children disappeared, she went to the authorities at the "detainers" (where bodies of people accused of helping the Contras were collected) trying to find her son. Crippled by her grief and the sadism that she encountered while seeking information about her son, she finally gave up hope of regaining her life in El Salvador. With the help of her nephew Tavo, she crossed the border into the United States from Juarez, Mexico.
While working as a housecleaner, the woman one day sees a boy in the street whom she believes to be Geraldo; he is with a girl. The woman takes both children to eat at a café, where the cook is kind to the boy, and then takes them home, where she bathes the boy lovingly and sings to him, tucking him into the bed. She dreams of taking him home and having their old lives of harmony restored. The next day she returns to the café with the children.
At this point the stories of the bereft mother and café owner converge. When the owner sees the children, he calls the police. After they arrive, the point of view shifts from the owner to the woman, who desperately tries to stop the police from taking the boy—whom she believes to be her own Geraldo—away from her. As the owner cowers behind the counter, the woman clings to the boy and fights a police officer holding a gun with all her might; in him she sees personified the officials with whom she dealt at home, and she vows to herself not to allow these uniformed men to take her beloved son from her again.
Bibliography
Carbonell, Ana Maria. "From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros." MELUS 24, no. 2 (Summer, 1999): 53-74.
Lawless, Cecilia. "Helena María Viramontes' Homing Devices in Under the Feet of Jesus." In Homemaking: Women Writers and the Politics and Poetics of Home, edited by Catherine Wiley and Fiona R. Barnes. New York: Garland, 1996.
Rodriguez, Ana Patricia. "Refugees of the South: Central Americans in the U.S. Latino Imaginary." American Literature 73, no. 2 (June, 2001): 387-412.
Saldivar-Hull, Sonia. Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Saldivar-Hull, Sonia. "Helena María Viramontes." In Chicano Writers, Second Series. Vol. 122 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1992.
Viramontes, Helena Maria, and Maria Herrera-Sobek, eds. Chicana Creativity and Criticism: New Frontiers in American Literature. Rev. ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Viramontes, Helena Maria, and Maria Herrera-Sobek, eds. Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film. Berkeley, Calif.: Third Woman Press, 1996.