Infinite Country

Elena, Talia’s mother, demonstrates great growth and change throughout the book. She is a bright, pretty young Colombian girl at the outset who lives with her mother, Perla, above the small laundry they own. She was a good enough student to have gone to the university. She falls in love with Mauro even though he is of more common descent. Mauro convinces her that a much grander life awaits in the United States, where they end up living as illegal aliens.

Elena suffers many indignities in the story, including rape and repeated humiliation. When she reaches out to native North Americans for compassion and understanding, she receives lectures and moralism in return, as when Texas healthcare workers try to convince her to have her tubes tied and a white woman employer lectures her about being responsible for how many children she brings into the world.

She remains in the United States after Mauro is deported and continues to support their family. She later ends up working for an upper-middle-class New Jersey family as a nanny for Lance, their autistic son. Elena is a practical, closed-mouth woman who is extremely protective. She teaches her children to avoid authority, though she does suggest any grand opportunity to which they should aspire. For Elena, getting through the present day without being separated from additional family members is life’s goal.

Mauro, Talia’s father, grows up as a street urchin. His mother, Karina, ejects him from her home when he is 10, sending him to dig graves with her sister’s boyfriend. Ambitious and dissatisfied with his lot in life, he woos and marries Elena and convinces her that easy money and opportunity can be found in the United States, commencing the adventure of their displacement.

Mauro wrestles with alcoholism at various turns throughout the book. He has periods of sobriety, usually coinciding with the birth of a child or another milestone. Once Talia returns to Colombia, Mauro is distraught and enters a lengthy drunken period in which he lives on the street. He often hides outside Perla’s laundry to catch glimpses of his daughter. A social worker named Ximena brings Mauro into the 12-step program of recovery from alcoholism not long before she dies, ironically killed by a drunken driver. In counseling, Mauro becomes aware that he never got over his mother forcing him out of their home.

Mauro is a living catalog of ancient Andean creation tales and shares them with Talia after he sobers up and comes back into her life. The story is replete with myths and references to these pre-colonial beliefs.

Perla is Elena’s mother. She receives Talia from Elena when the girl is little more than an infant and raises her through her early teen years. Perla’s husband disappeared when Elena was a child, just as Mauro’s father disappeared. It comes to light midway through the story that Perla’s husband ended up with another woman, though Perla never mentioned this to Elena.

Perla is steeped in Catholic practices and subjects Talia to the prescribed catechisms and rituals. She also relies on a lay sorceress to perform an exorcism when she decides an evil spirit has infected her home. To control Elena and Talia, she relies on harsh old wives’ tales. In essence, she follows three distinct religions as she makes her way alone, caring for her granddaughter and running her laundry.

Toward the end of her life, Perla inspires tender affection from both Talia and Mauro, who care for her respectfully as her infirmity deepens. The death of Perla, like many events in the novel, is both a sad occasion and an opportunity for new direction and progress.

Secretly named for Mauro’s mother, Karina is the oldest child of Elena and Mauro and the only one born in Colombia. She is a beautiful, dutiful child who plays with her younger brother, Nando, to keep him occupied so her parents can work.

A fuller picture of her emerges later in the book when it is revealed that she is the author. Karina is bright, cynical, and deeply wounded. She is confounded by the untenable position her parents have placed her in by coming to the United States, a place of great opportunity where Karina has virtually no real opportunity. The severity of this predicament is revealed when Nando discovers that Karina has been considering becoming a nude internet model. Highly articulate, Karina is deeply philosophical and possesses the ability to express her thoughts profoundly. She seems obsessed with death, returning to the topic of suicide several times. While Karina’s anger about her non-citizen status is specific to the experience of undocumented immigrants, her feeling of depression and thoughts about suicide align her more closely with her American peers, highlighting her dual identity and her position between two worlds.