Weasel’s Diary, Revisited
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2014
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jose William Huezo Soriano – aka Weasel – is a 26-year-old Los Angeles resident who gets deported to his parents’ home country of El Salvador, which he has not seen since the age of five. In this episode, you’ll hear Weasel’s original audio diary, as well as an update from Weasel in which he talks about his life over the past 15 years.
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| 0:00.0 | Radiotopia from PRX. |
| 0:05.6 | I'm Joe Richmond, and this is Radio Diaries from PRX's Radiotopia. |
| 0:11.2 | On today's show, there is no place like home. |
| 0:14.7 | Over the past year, almost 70,000 unaccompanied children have been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. |
| 0:21.0 | Most of them are fleeing gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, |
| 0:25.6 | places that share the honor of being ranked in the top five on the list of countries |
| 0:29.4 | with the highest murder rates in the world. |
| 0:32.2 | Some of those kids have been allowed to stay in the U.S., others have been sent back home. |
| 0:36.8 | Fifteen years ago, we produced a story for this American life about a young man named |
| 0:41.4 | Jose William Wazzo Soriano, also known as Weasel. |
| 0:45.9 | We're going to catch up with Weasel and find out what's happened to him over the last 15 years. |
| 0:50.4 | That's at the end of the show. |
| 0:51.9 | But first, let me tell you Weasel's story. |
| 0:56.0 | Weasel came to the U.S. from El Salvador at the age of five and was a legal permanent resident. He had a pretty typical |
| 1:01.5 | American childhood in Los Angeles, but then he got in trouble with gangs and then with the police. |
| 1:07.1 | At the same time, Congress had passed tough new immigration laws, making it easier to deport |
| 1:12.3 | residents with criminal records, and Weasel got deported back to El Salvador. |
| 1:17.3 | He was 26 years old. |
| 1:19.5 | He hadn't been back to El Salvador since he was five. |
| 1:22.6 | He had no memories of the country, no close family there, and he'd forgotten most of his |
| 1:27.0 | Spanish. Soon after he was deported, and he'd forgotten most of his Spanish. |
| 1:34.2 | Soon after he was deported, I gave Weasel a tape recorder to document his first year back in El Salvador. |
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