My Mother's Migrant Narrative
Graciela's Story
It was a very sad day and everyone was crying. I was trying to be strong but everywhere I turned people were crying. My mother and sisters were crying. It was a sad and terrible time, everyone was being killed, innocent people were being killed. A lot of young people were being killed. To make things worse the bus driver was a masochist and he was playing the song: La Golondrina Negra.
Everyone was crammed into this bus. We would get off and do our business in the shrubbery when we stopped. I remember one stop; we had stopped to eat this time. My mother had hard bread and boiled potatoes. Everyone else was also taking out their little bundles where they carried their food. There was a woman that took out cow poop. For a moment I thought she was going to eat it! But, she put it on the ground added some twigs and lit it on fire. That is how she boiled herself some coffee. This is what people from ranchos learn to do. Ingenious.
We left El Salvador from a city called Apopa and from there we crossed into Guatemala to reach our destination which was Mexico City. You have to understand there was no bus station; this was a time of war. A buses’ location got around by word of mouth.
We got to Mexico City and we were informed of a hotel where we could stay but we were also warned to be wary of La Migra that was known to drop in unexpectedly. We got to the hotel and we had not been there three hours when there was a knock at the door. I recognized the girl; she had been on the bus with us. She warned us that La Migra was here. We gathered our things quickly and we left. We went to the bus station and were on another bus en route for Guadalajara. We arrived in Guadalajara at around six in the morning. We took a taxi to the neighborhood in the address. We walked back and forth and could not find the number. Kids were heading to school. All we had was our relative’s address but we had not communicated with them or anything. We did not know this place, everything was strange and it was difficult to communicate with people. People have different words for things and talked differently from us. I remember us trying to talk like a Mexican. They would laugh; they could not understand our words. We looked like La India Maria, we had bundles and bags.
Well, there we were. It was the afternoon and we were hoping for a miracle. We did not want to say we were looking for a Salvadoran man; there was a stigma against foreigners in Mexico. Still, in the end we did. The man we asked told us he did not recognize the name but that he recalled a house where there were foreigners and pointed us in that direction. We made our way in that direction. At this time, kids were heading back from school and we saw a somewhat familiar face. It was the son of our relative.
In this two-room house there were nine young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, three couples, and now us. Most of us slept on the floor. My mother was very territorial , my sisters and I slept behind her, and she wanted to make sure no one touched us. They were all relatives mostly. I was seventeen years old and my sisters were fifteen and thirteen. It was so cramped. We were there a month and then we made an agreement with one of the couples to pay half of the rent at another location. I had many jobs: restaurant work, cleaning work, worked for a rich family, all kinds of little jobs. We were in Guadalajara for a year. It was a difficult time, sometimes we ate and sometimes we did not.
I had a sister and brother in the United States already. They bought me a plane ticket from Guadalajara to Tijuana. They were checking documentation in the Tijuana airport and I had none. So, I noticed two Americans and I acted as if I was with them when they got their papers checked. I knew Americans would have help and sometimes brought people over. I just kept my head down and kept close to them. Thankfully, it worked.
I reached the street and I had received instructions to take a taxi to an address. I was told prior to my trip that the address would be approximately 15 minutes from the airport. Yet, I was in that taxi for an hour. The driver kept driving in circles and asking me questions about my nationality. I got mad after a while of this and said to him he can take me to the address I gave him or I could get off and find a taxi driver who would. I remember him telling me that I looked pretty when I was mad. He was very suspicious of me but took me to the address. The place was a store/house. He charged me twenty dollars and I only had two dollars in my pocket. I entered the store; there was a man, maybe seventy-five years old. I told the man who I was sent by and who I was looking for, and that the driver was waiting to be paid, and that I had no money. The man looked toward the driver and mumbled something about a rat. He gave me money to pay him and told me to come back in and stay for a while but that as soon as the driver left to leave to another house a little ways away because this driver was sure to report me to the authorities. I did as he said. I paid the driver and gave the little old man a big hug. I called him grandfather and he played along.
My coyote was a nice man. My sister that was already in the United States is the one that found him. He came to the house the viejito had told me to go to with a picture of me as proof that he was who he said he was. Initially, he took me to Ensenada and left me with a family for three days. He returned and said the crossing would be too risky here. So, he took me to Rosarito to stay with another family for one night. Originally, he was going to pass me with his daughter’s documents but he decided we did not look enough alike. So, he arrived with his family and a big car and hid me underneath the driver’s seat. I was a skinny thing. They had a lot of goods in the vehicle and said they had been shopping when they were stopped at the border in Tijuana. We crossed without incident. However, there was another checkpoint. I think it was in San Clemente. Here, they opened all doors and had everyone get out. My coyote instructed me to be very quiet. He got off but stood near to the driver’s seat. All that prevented my detection was a towel that was laid over the driver’s seat. Fortunately, we were on our way again quite soon and I was not detected.
I arrived in Huntington Park, California to my sister. She put me into sewing classes and I got a job at a factory shortly after making $70/month. The goal was to bring over my sister and mother that were still in Mexico. In El Salvador my family cultivated the land. I have been working since I was seven years old. We worked in grain, chile, bean, coffee, and tomato fields. The cafetales, coffee fields, were worked by 90 plus people at a time for maybe a month. These fields were enormous and owned by groups of rich people.
No, I never wanted to come to the US. It just happened that way. The important thing was to get out of El Salvador, to live. People were being killed. I just wanted to live in peace. I was very saddened that my family was scattered.
No, I never wanted to become a US citizen. One does not feel at liberty in a country that is not their own. But, it was very difficult to maintain jobs if you had no papers. I had arrived in the United States before 1983 but I could not prove it. I do not recall what president passed the law, maybe Clinton. My older sister was trying to figure out how to prove that we had arrived before then, though not all of my siblings had. She found a receipt dated December 1983 and put my name on it. It validated that I sent a card to El Salvador. Due to this receipt, all of us were able to attain citizenship.
Something that I am very proud about is that in my country there are no nursing homes. One does not see them. Old people are with their families; they are taken by the arm and remain with the family. I work in a nursing home and here the old are dispensable. I have worked at this nursing home for five years and in these five years there are viejitos that have not been visited the entire time.
I would like to go back to El Salvador if I had money. But at this point and at my age I do not see what I would live off of. Besides, my family is here now.
