Analysis Of Helena Maria Viramontes Cariboo Cafe

In Cariboo Café, Helena Maria Viramontes interpolates issues of government brutality, racial discrimination, and mistreatment of illegal immigrants through intertextuality. As an immigrant herself, she supports multiculturalism in her piece by bringing awareness to the issues associated with immigration, which remain unsolved. Viramontes switches between three different character’s perspectives, in a way that enables her to effectively manipulate the audience into feeling the emotions similar to that of an illegal immigrant who is trying to live their life in America. It is through these switches that we first feel confusion and frustration, as we are given little guidance on where we are in the story, or where the story is going to go, due

In introducing this character and her family, Viramontes says “They arrived in the secrecy of night, as displaced people often do, stopping over for a week, a month, eventually staying a life time.”(168). Upon reading the word “displaced” I immediately thought of IDP’s (internally displaced persons) who are refugees fleeing their homes but not actually leaving their country. This fit really well with the idea that Viramontes is trying to get across to her readers, as she describes two children who are lost and alone in a place where they are meant to feel at home. It also reminded me of all of the horrible IDP camps and their conditions, which didn’t seem that far off from the way that Viramontes was describing Hispanic American’s lives as refugees. “Rule two: the police, or ‘polie’ as Sonya’s popi pronounced the word, was La Migra in disguise and thus should always be avoided.” (168). From here, we learn that Sonya can not ask for help when she is in danger, her only form of protection is found in a small key that can be easily lost. In describing how she lost the key, we learn that Sonya is also being sexually violated while at school, and no one is doing anything to stop it. She is ashamed to admit this to anyone because, as a Hispanic woman, there is a double expectation of being sexy while also being celibate and conservative. It is scary to see such an issue already developing at such a young

It doesn't seem like a coincidence that the only letters lit up look like double zero’s, pointing to the idea that it represented the people with nothing left to lose, or the people that the government had ruled out. The Cafe owner introduces himself by pleading his case, and desperately trying to convince the readers that he his a honest, fare, good man. He tries to tell us that he is good because he lets in the types of people that most business establishments do not. However, at the same time he is saying this, he is also relentlessly bashing and complaining about these very people who give him what seems like his only business. As he is talking about the illegal immigrants who come in, he mentions how they act “queen-like” and sit in his “best booth” and order only Cokes. This is another example of the Coke symbol and the Cafe owner is insinuating that they are impostors for the ways in which they conduct themselves, and for their drink choice. This is also the first time that the Cafe owner begins to lose credibility with the reader. The ways in which he describes their actions doesn’t make them sound like they are acting “queen-like” at all. They sound like normal people who simply want to sit by a window in a clean spot. The cafe owner is