T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Saul Flores, who walked 5,328 miles across Latin America from Ecuador to Charlotte, N.C., spoke on the MCC campus in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month on Tuesday night.

Saul Flores had a lot of time to think about his relationship with his hometown, New York City, through the isolation and quarantine of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it got him itching to hit the road and share his story with anyone who might need to hear it.

Flores, who spoke at Dejardin Hall on the MCC campus in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month Tuesday night, made a name for himself back in 2010 when, as a 20-year-old college student at North Carolina State University, he undertook the daunting “Walk of the Immigrants” all the way from Ecuador to the U.S.-Mexico border and then back to North Carolina, traveling well over 5,300 miles on foot in the process. As the son of undocumented parents — his mother from a small town in Mexico and his father from El Salvador — he knew about the struggles migrants faced when they sought a better life in the States, but he wanted to experience it for himself.

In addition to sharing his own memories of childhood and his mother house cleaning for a wealthier French immigrant who let them take whatever they wanted to eat, Flores asked those in the audience to talk about a time someone had made a sacrifice that benefited them.

From there, Flores segued into his decision to undertake the walk, which caused plenty of consternation in his family, and some of the most harrowing moments along the way — including being mistaken for a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) while attempting to pass through the jungleland of the Darien Pass on the border between Colombia and Panama and taking a giant bite out of a raw fish in Panama because he was so hungry. Throughout the journey, he snapped over 20,000 photos.

As Flores explained, one news broadcast in particular stuck with him and encouraged him to take action: an anchor commented that it “would’ve made our lives a lot easier” if the Rio Grande had swallowed a woman attempting to cross it whole.

“Nobody stopped eating their food because they know how people speak about us,” Flores said. “I was so mad. I was like ‘Mom, how can they say this?’ Do they not know how hard it is for us to leave behind (our lives)?”

One stop along the way still holds a special place in Flores’s heart: Atencingo, Mexico, his mother’s hometown in the southern state of Puebla. Before he set off on the walk, he and 15 college friends visited, and he recounted the humorous conundrum his grandmother faced when his friends from the American South ate all of the food on their plates as a sign of respect. In Mexico, an empty plate means the eater is still hungry, so she continued to prepare more until she ran out of ingredients.

It was also an emotional experience for Flores as he had never met any of his aunts and uncles before then, and he ended up using the publicity he garnered through his walk to help fund an elementary school in Atencingo.

In Flores’s view, the journey was an opportunity for Latinos to tell their own stories, and while he was in Colombia, he even heard from locals who implored him to ‘tell your friends there are good people’ in Latin America. Despite ongoing issues like political turmoil and drug trafficking, many of the citizens are just trying to make do with little to nothing and feed their families.

“No matter what you see or what you read or what you hear, we, in Latin America, are good people,” Flores said a man told him. “It’s stories like Raimundo’s that are the backbone of Latin America.”

After he finished speaking, Flores opened the floor up to questions from the audience of at least 50 MCC students and members of the general public. It may have helped that MCC Dean of Academic Affairs Vincent Boyd offered extra credit to students in his class who asked a question, but it was a good way to keep them engaged.

“For me, the story of Saul Flores and his walk from Ecuador to Charlotte, North Carolina is important to all of the students at MCC and the Marshalltown community in general. His story is an American story. His story is a story of hope and determination,” Boyd said. “His story reminds us that America is still the land of opportunity. I hope that everyone in attendance walked away with a better understanding of the plight of immigrants who seek to enter the U.S. and why.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.