" No Loitering (Prohibido Hanguear) An invitation not to give up what you truly long for."

It is a dark fruit I now invoke,

a small circle rescued from the night.

At its summons, we return from wherever we may be

to the very point from which we once departed,

our eyes forgetting where we left a part of ourselves,

to rediscover that unshaken space that belongs to us.

Rolando Cardenas.El fruto invocado

«I had always hoped that this land might become a 

safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted 

part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong…»

George Washington.

Reading No Loitering (Prohibido Hanguear) means stepping into the shoes of a father fearing to lose his daughter because he is a foreigner; of a real estate agent willing to do whatever it takes to escape the murky circumstances of a large deal in a metropolis she has yet to call her own; of someone who comes to understand that no matter where you are, destiny hinges on an act of faith that brings forth the miracle; of someone who, though unsure of what they're searching for or why, still manages to find love; of someone who, in trying to find their place in the world, ends up losing even their sanity; of someone who resists change in the face of new circumstances and the barrier of language, yet persists in adapting; of someone who experiences the strangeness of a city like New York, with its almost supernatural appetites. In a word, it is about those who confront their immigration reality armed only with the strength of their longings and desires.

No Loitering (Prohibido Hanguear) is not merely an invitation to understand the migrants’ situation through the fictionalization of an experience that blends the familiar with the foreign. It is a complicit exhortation to persist, to persevere, to never give up on what is truly longed for. In each of the six stories that make up the book, and from their epigraphs, Escalona makes us feel the vital force born from the clash between what is lost and what is yearned for, between origin and destiny,  that power we call desire.

“The migration process is like mourning; it resembles the feeling after the death of a loved one,” “sometimes, all it takes is a smile to move forward,” and it always comes down to solving the difficult equation between what is left behind and what is desired. This is the common ground for the protagonists of the stories, for whom reality is shaped by the desire that drives them to go beyond.

At the same time, the heroes of the tales in this book are agents of a unique quest, whose journey — full of contradictions, hesitations, and uncertainties — Escalona masterfully portrays in that liminal space where fantasy — even hallucinated — and reality — even ineffable converge.

Thus, Manhattan and, more broadly, New York are not mere backdrops decorating the protagonists’ adventures, but vital and sometimes deadly spaces defined by the encounter, juxtaposition, and divergence of the characters’ desiring trajectories; a sort of kaleidoscope of images from the present and the past in perpetual motion and reconfiguration, where the fate of the heroes is at stake: “New York is a fantasy, a metropolis of constant fleeting and abandoned loves seeking conversation in any random bar.”

In this, his third book, Escalona gives a refined and original shape to his literary explorations. No Loitering (Prohibido Hanguear) is crafted from various subgenres of fiction and narrative experiments unified by a matured voice. The great metropolis, its margins, and the lives of its inhabitants were the protagonists of Ciudad Capital (2011, 2013, 2023), the author’s first book, awarded by the Chilean Ministry of Education. In 2024, he published the bilingual collection of chronicles Tal vez Manhattan / Maybe Manhattan, where he explores Latin American New York through the lens of subjective lived experience, while never losing sight of the intrusion of the fantastic. With No Loitering (Prohibido Hanguear) we witness a display of his passion “for telling the shadows of great cities and revealing the lives of those who remain invisible in the urban whirlwind.”

This work arrives at a difficult moment for migrant communities in the United States, where intolerance and racism have become government practices aimed at denying the rights, dreams, and aspirations of Hispanic communities, but also of a society shaped by multiple migrations. It arrives precisely now, as if by fate, because it was not written for this unfortunate moment, yet it has much to say about it. The reader will realize that this is not a book seeking controversy, but empathy, communication, and dialogue—even beyond the “language barrier.”

In this sense, it affirms that the migration issue will not be resolved by denying the other, especially the powerful influence of Spanish on American cultural life. Language is the preferred form of expression of the persistent desire in migrant life, which, tirelessly and against all odds, insists on expressing itself and blending in: “—Should I start the engine?/ —Oh, man, speak English. We are in America!/ —Oh, yes, yes, in America. Sorry, señorita.”

Lenin Brea

Editor