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Danielle Gonzalez

Mr. Sira

CP 1 English

31 January 2020

It Was Right to Leave

Imagine being able to prove how love works in a science lab. Well, Harry Harlow’s

Experiment, was able to prove the difference between comfort/love to necessities of living a

simple good life. During the experiment a baby monkey was given an option to choose a robot

mother that can only feed him or a mother made of cloth that could comfort him. The baby

monkey ended up deciding the mother made of cloth that could only comfort him. But in life

comfort won’t help you survive all the time. That's why, in life you are overcomed by life

changing decisions and sometimes you won’t even be able to predict the outcome of. In the story

Enrique’s Journey: non-fiction, award winning novel by Sonia Nazario; Enrique was about 5

years old when his mother, Lourdes, decided to leave him and his sister to journey to the United

States. By leaving she gave her family in Honduras little help as she struggled to maintain

Dianna and herself in the United states but it still made a difference in her children's life back in

Honduras .

While living in the United States Lourdes was able to financially help her children that

lived in Honduras at the time, in a lot of ways. Lourdes who was working plenty of different jobs

but was, “proud that her money pays Belky’s tuition at a private high school and eventually a

college” (Nazario 35).

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Without Lourdes decision to leave Honduras and to travel up north to the United States

her family could have been in worse condition and maybe in risk of death. As the years passed

and Enrique grew up and he, “started hanging out in a neighborhood known as El Infiernito,

Little hell, It is controlled by the street gang MS” (Nazario 43). Because of his decision to hang

with them, he was at risk of death and more. Besides being in life or death situations with gangs,

Lourdes and her kids would have been living in complete poverty, “in honduras having to dig

through trash to find things” (Nazario 35)

With Lourdes' decision to leave, it not only affected the present but also the future in

positive ways. Because Lourdes had made the journey to travel north, in some way it encouraged

Enrique to follow her steps. It was also a lot easier on his part to travel up north because he had

his mother in the United States already. Lourdes was able to have her daughter Diana in the

United states as well as Enrique and Maria Isabell were able to have their son Daniel in the U.S.

who was born on July 3, 2012, “at 5:38” (Nazario 215) which was an advantage to their future.

Due to the fact Lourdes and Enrique both were open to share their experiences that they went

through to get where they were then with Sonia Nazario, their story was heard by many and were

able to reunite with Belky, “

To conclude, Lourdes decision wasn’t a bad decision at all. She knew that her decision

would have a good outcome in the future which it did; she was able to help in so many ways and

change the future of her kids and her own by one life changing decision. She helped: financially,

she helped keep Enrique out of trouble by making him want to the U.S. and created

opportunities.
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Works Cited

Nazario, Sonia. Enrique's Journey. Penguin Random House LLC, 2006

Nazario, Sonia. “Update on the Family.” Enriquesjourney.com, 10 May 2019,

enriquesjourney.com/about-the-family/update-2/.