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By Éric Lach
As he strolled along the Upper East Side, Marco Trigoso recalled his arrival in New York this spring. “I came here like I fell from the sky,” he said. The first few days were very exhausting. “He was wearing a beige jacket and beige sneakers. ” I hadn’t even looked on Google Maps to see what New York City was like,” he says softly.
Trigoso is a twenty-seven-year-old Peruvian asylum seeker, one of 130,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the city in the past year and a half. More than 60,000 more people are living in city-run emergency shelters. however, Trigoso can simply rent a room for $400 a month in a Bronx home. “We have a percentage of a bathroom,” he says, “but I don’t know my neighbors. “
He is an aspiring singer-songwriter and, before leaving Lima, he recorded a song called “Solo Solito,” about the bittersweet joy of lighting up alone. “I wrote it when I felt estranged from my family,” he said. The song is about enjoying your own path. ” After arriving in New York, the lyrics took on a new meaning and he decided to make a music video.
He set off before dawn, armed with a tripod and a smartphone, and began exploring the city in search of attractive settings. He committed suicide by writing a song and dancing near Radio City Music Hall, near the Battery Park City Marina and across from the Coney Island Wonder Wheel. He filmed early, he says, “so other people wouldn’t be in the shots. And because I’m shy. A friend in Peru edited the footage together: Trigoso is in the dark at the beginning of the video and at the end, he’s under the sun.
He stopped walking when he reached Roosevelt Island Automobile Street at the corner of East Fifty-ninth Street. The street-car connects Manhattan to its smaller neighbor on the East River. “I’m afraid of heights, but I like it,” he said as he climbed into one of the swaying cars. “If it happens, I’ll die happy. ” As the car flew over the city, he looked south. I had taken the tram several times. ” You see the Williamsburg Bridge,” he said.
Trigoso, the son of farm workers, was born in a small rural town. Ten years ago he moved to Lima, where he worked in restaurants and then as a podiatrist, treating foot diseases. He wanted to come to the U. S. , but couldn’t until March, when a friend lent him money in exchange for accompanying his brother.
From Lima, he and his partner flew to Mexicali, Mexico. They entered California, were processed by immigration authorities, passed COVID tests, and then flew to LaGuardia, Chicago. “I’ve heard of other people who walked for days, crossing part of a dozen countries,” he said. “I walked about two hundred meters. ” He had planned to stay with a friend in New Jersey, but his friend pulled out at the last minute.
The cable car doors opened and Trigoso arrived at Roosevelt Island. He had in mind a position at the southern tip of the island, near the ruins of the smallpox hospital. In his early days here, he traversed the subway era. the iron gates, the worn-out cars, and the chaos of the city. ” I didn’t expect this,” he said. The trash cans, the homeless. Trigoso referred to a Brooklyn organization called Mixteca, which helped him access legal services. She spent several emotional hours with a social worker explaining why she is seeking asylum. Peru is a predominantly Catholic country with a conservative culture, and Trigoso never felt free to live the way he wanted. “I’m coming to terms with myself,” he said.
Trigoso devised a bench with a view of the water. He pulled out his tripod and narrowed his dark eyes as he tried to frame a photo. “I love this little tree and the people behind it,” he said. I was looking for the location of a video of a moment, of a song called “Tonight,” about a complicated verbal exchange between a mother and her son. “Some of my music is about exploring my own story, my own pain and turning it into something that gives me hope,” she said. Have a permit to work during the summer. For now, she’s studying with a seamstress and waiting for her papers. “I discovered the pants,” he said. He occasionally takes the subway from the Bronx to the Mixteca workplace in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “I love sleeping on the subway,” she says. People tell me not to do that, that there are a lot of crazy people here, but I don’t care. I wake up before the right stop. ♦
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