Central America
A day in the life of three Central American migrants
Three migrants, three lives, three windows
on the world of Central Americans in the US:
Kelvin Orellana, Gisel Morazán and Lito Melgar.
All three are relatively happy and all are undocumented.
They work hard, learn about and use the world they move in.
They have dreams; they’re bold; and they have a future.
José Luis Rocha
During a visit to Maryland and Virginia, three Central Americans talked to me about the often tightly interwoven areas that burn their souls: work, documents, emotions and God. I savored their words and took careful notes like a solicitous clerk, asking almost nothing, recording almost everything. I accompanied them during their work days and their rest times, learning and, I hope, understanding. I enjoyed it and hope I was accepted. Now I want to share what I saw and heard, what moved me.
A day in the life of Kelvin I met Kelvin in Maryland, three days after landing at the Ronald Reagan airport at the start of my fieldwork this past February. He went to meet me at a central point at the request of his wife, Yadira, whom I’d met over 20 years earlier in the village of Bajo Aguán, Honduras, when she was nine years old. Her father Ceferino was at the time a tireless lay preacher who invited me to share exhausting days with him visiting Flores and Jazmines de Oriente, the most remote villages on the left bank of Río Aguán, which are accessed by walking hours on dirt roads over several hills—dusty in the dry season and muddy in the rainy one—from the point where even four-wheel drive vehicles can’t go any further. Back from our trips I would enjoy succulent Honduran tamales called ticucos, crack up at the funny stories pouring out of Ceferino’s mouth and swap jokes with the marimba of children God had blessed him and his wife Fernanda with, year after year, with unfailing regularity for a dozen years.
Kelvin took me to the apartment he shares with Yadira and their three US-born children in a multifamily building inhabited by undocumented migrants and a few Afro-descendants. Our dinner was pure Honduran-style: cabbage and tomato salad, rice and refried beans, stewed chicken with potatoes, Copan tortillas and a touch of green courtesy of a delightful avocado.
This is how we eat every day. We buy everything at a store less than ten minutes from here where they have all kinds of Honduran goods, even more than in my village. That’s why Mr. Ceferino and Miss Fernanda don’t get homesick when they visit us. We make them baleadas [a thick wheat flour tortilla folded in half and filled with mashed fried beans and a choice of other ingredients], tamales, atol [a sweet cornstarch or masa-based drink served hot], tortillas… Back there we have avocados only a few months a year but here we have them all year round.
They came to stay five months here and, thanks to Ceferino, it was five months of constant joking around. They went to the US Embassy and got a ten-year visa because my brother-in-law, who’s got papers and has been living here for 20 years now, gave them a call. We took them to see a lot of places and sometimes Mr. Ceferino went out by himself, to walk about and visit another daughter, but I told him that it’s not like back home here. You can easily get lost her so we only go out in our vehicles.
We moved into the living room where an enormous Honduran flag covers the wall over the flat-screen TV and a towel with the Sacred Heart of Jesus is hung on the next wall. We settled down on two sofas and drank Corona beer, a taste Central Americans have acquired from the Mexicans. The children chattered among themselves in perfect English but only spoke Spanish to the adults. Seven-year-old Bryan, their youngest son, soon worked up his confidence to come over to ask me to read him some episodes from Diary of a wimpy kid, a children’s bestseller. Melissa played the clarinet in the middle of the room.
Melissa can play clarinet. They teach it at school and she practices in the evenings. It’s a public school but they learn many things and she likes music. Bryan’s fanatical about those books. Whenever he sees another in the series he asks Yadira to buy it for him. See there? Bryan had a heart operation but there was no fuss about paying for the surgery. The hospitals have different rates; we applied for the lowest one and they gave it us. That’s how it is here. There’s something to suit everybody’s pocket.
“There’s no mercy on that train,
you pay up or they take it out of you” The talking didn’t go on much longer. Kelvin had a long working day and the next day, Saturday, he’d be busy with his own contracts, which often pay better. After a half-hour Skype call to Miss Fernanda in Las Mojarras, Honduras, we said goodnight. I shared a room with Chico Guerra, who’s married to Kelvin’s sister and has two children in Honduras. Almost all the families have a recently arrived brother-in-law, cousin or sister. Either to summon or deter sleep, Chico whispered from his bed recalling for me his transit through Mexico.
I sometimes traveled on the train, but not always, because it’s hard work and very dangerous. You have to keep your wits about you. I once saw them shoot someone in the head because he didn’t have money to pay the toll. It was eight gangsters who boarded the train. Pleading with them made no difference. There’s no mercy. You pay or they take it out of you. Many get thrown off the train. They don’t think twice about it or listen to reason. They get drugged up to be able to do it. In their right mind they wouldn’t dare. When they get on the train, they’re already well loaded. That’s why it’s better to pay.
The coyote [facilitator paid to help people cross borders/countries illegally] had our payment and he just handed over portions of it at the roadblocks to the gangs, the garrotters, the police…
I slept with those images: the train frantically rolling along, gangsters holding the body at their mercy, a youth on the threshold of becoming a statistic of the mutilated, the dead…
The next day, Kelvin surprised me with a kind invitation to join him all day. We were going with his brother-in-law and another colleague in one of the many vans the migrants use for interior remodeling. We went into a 7 Eleven, which some Central Americans call: “Latino restaurant, gringo bar.” The largest glass wall was covered by a poster showing the 7 Eleven logo on a cardboard cup, haloed by signs advertising: $1 medium coffee, Wednesdays, Try our Guatemalan Santa Rosa Blend.
A lot of solid men in heavy jackets were clustered around the coffee machines. The weather forecast was for six inches of snow, but they knew from experience that the forecast could be ignored if there’s an early snowfall. Kelvin paid for the coffees and bread of our choice. Back in the vehicle, he became more talkative with the coffee buzz.
“I came 13 years ago, but I knew
hard work from much younger” I arrived here 13 years ago. Right here, to Maryland. My wife’s brothers paid for my trip. My father-in-law told them ‘Take Kelvin with you,’ so they got together the dough to pay the coyote. That Mr. Ceferino doesn’t mess about. I owe this life to him. After three years I sent for Yadira and now we have three children, three little gringos who don’t look like gringos: Melissa is 10 years old, Bill is 9 and Bryan 7. Now we have my brother-in-law Chico with us in the house. He works laying lawns. He came here four months ago and they’re already paying him over $20 an hour. When he works 12 hours straight, he comes back with $250, almost what he earned in a month back there. But lawn work is bad, it’s seasonal and he’s been laid off for two months now. In winter there’s no movement, except if it snows more than four inches, then they shovel snow; but once spring comes the money’s going to pour in.
This is how it is for people here who put their back into it. At first I was a bit lazy, always asking the boss to explain things to me, until one time he said ‘Just do what you can.’ And I did. ‘You see? You can do it,’ he told me. And when I went to get paid at the end of the day, he gave me $12 an hour instead of the $9 I’d been getting before. He told me that that would be my salary from then on.
I come from a small town in Danlí. How I’m living now is nothing like my life before. I remember in the village, old Eleuterio almost always paid us to go buy his cigarettes. He spat on the ground, burning hot in the sun, and told us: ‘If this saliva dries before you return, you won’t get paid.’ He’s older now and not so feisty.
I knew about hard work from very young. My uncle had a cheese business and kept me busy doing everything: ‘Come load the trucks; Go move that handcart; Collect that invoice’… He later came to the US where he had a daughter living because back there they wanted to kill him over his debts... After three years I got fed up with the low pay and all the work. He came looking for me at my father’s house and tried to convince me, he even offered to turn the business over to me in the future. Pure lies.
As I knew how to make cheese, I went to Las Mojarras to work in a cheese business two houses down from Mr. Ceferino. That’s where I met Yadira; we got married and my life changed. I’d never thought about coming to the US. How could I? How can you make a web if you don’t have a spider? But Mr. Ceferino saw I was a worker and helped me.
“I had a hard time shaking
off my lack of initiative” We drove to a neighborhood where only African Americans live, judging from the people we saw on the street. We went into a four-unit apartment building, one of which was in primeval chaos, and began to remove the dust and debris: stained carpets, chipped washbasins, rotting cupboards, rusty heaters… Later Kevlin showed me the neighboring apartment, which was already almost finished. Everything was sparkling: perfect finishes, heating ventilators set into the ceiling, gleaming showers, polished washbasins, beautifully plumbed trim, immaculate well-laid carpets…
This is our work, it’s what we do; I learned it here. I finally shook off my sloppiness, my lack of initiative. But it cost me. First I worked for six years in a Korean supermarket. I didn’t have even a day off. They paid me just enough to keep going. Then I went into gardening, which I learned here too, but by abuse. There was this Mexican who kept yelling at me: ‘Get on with it, asshole!’ And me, perched up at the top of a tree, struggling not to fall. I had been afraid of my uncle and now he says it’s thanks to him that I’m here. Yeah, thanks to me running away.
Now my bosses here respect me. They listen to what I say and like my ideas. The black guy who owns the apartment building was upset because he didn’t know where to put the heater and air conditioning. ‘There’s no place for it now,’ he told me. And I told him: ‘We can put one of them in the ceiling.’ But he was still uneasy: ‘We can’t put the AC motor there because it gets too hot.’ ‘We’ll put it on the roof then,’ I said. You should have seen how happy he was.
We just came today to do some small jobs. We still need to connect up the heating and install a lock. The other small jobs are plastering and fixing the damage left by those who put in the heating ventilators. We’d already left everything just about ready, but they came with some slabs and broke the edges. They ought to fix it but they’d rather pay us to do it. So we get another little contract.
“It’s all about figuring out the game” In the course of the morning we made two trips to the Giant Hardware Store, which lived up to its name. I went as porter, but didn’t know what I was carrying or its purpose. At the cash register some employees wore badges that said “I speak Spanish.” The parking lot was filled with Latino men of over 40, anxiously hoping for a last-minute job.
They don’t feel any pride in their work. They drink booze all weekend and get in late on Mondays, or don’t go in at all, and do it repeatedly until they get fired. Or they steal and get thrown out. Or they can’t learn and never grasp what steady work is and stay just doing casual jobs. If you aren’t lazy or sloppy you can always get work and get ahead. It’s all about figuring out the game.
Once you get a van like this you’re on your way: contracts pour in. I realized that and got one that can hold all my tools, ladders and even a work crew. Then the company that hired me helped me get my license. Now I’m registered with my own company here in Maryland.
He showed me a certificate headed “State of Maryland License, 90 County.” The next line says “Orellana Construction Inc.,” followed by an address, a number and some columns itemizing costs: $3.75 for registering the construction firm and $2 for issuing a certificate valid for three months. In bold letters at the bottom it warns: “This license must be publicly displayed and expires on April 30, 2014.”
Now I have to take out two kinds of insurance. I already have one for the van but I need one for property damage and another for workers’ comp. Contracts are better paid when you have these three but some people want us to have insurance then try to pay us the same as if we didn’t. The owner of these apartments is a good boss and pays well. For the work we’re doing here he’s paying $7,000 per apartment just for labor, plus another $11,000 in materials.
He gave me a credit card and I buy what I need with it but the invoices go to him so he can keep a check. One time he paid me $3,500 to fix a roof, which I did in one day with an assistant. He’s a senior official for the Washington DC subway. He inherited several apartments from his father and it looks like he’s been buying more. He has apartments all over the city and we do the maintenance.
“Having papers doesn’t
help if you’re apathetic” At midday we left for DC. We got a sandwich and coke at a Crown Fried Chicken, located on a busy corner between H Street and Northeast 8th. Once again Kelvin paid for everything. Afterward we waited at the door for his employer, who pulled up 40 minutes late in a Ford pickup with the Washington Metro emblem. He handed over the key for the next job and asked for a brief progress report on the last one. A few blocks from the fast food place we went into an apartment that was inhabited but in total disarray, with dirty clothing hanging from the table, chairs and doorknobs.
American women live in these apartments and look at that! She’s left her panties scattered about everywhere and she knew we’re coming today to fix her washing machine. Look what they wear. That’s how gringo women go out, almost naked. They put on panties with very thin straps, so you can see what they’ve got and what they don’t. But here you can’t make jokes about such things. When I’d just arrived, my cousin told me: ‘Brother-in-law, don’t stare at that girl if you don’t want the police picking you up. Here you can’t go about ogling the girls.’
The tenant entered in gym clothes. She gave a friendly greeting and went out again, confident that her belongings were safe. After confirming that the problem with the washing machine required specialized attention, we returned the key and the respective report to the owner, who appeared at the workplace; our day’s work was over.
The gringo girl asked me if that streak on the roof is dangerous and I told her it’s just tape. But the truth is that if we don’t do something soon, the ceiling’s going to come down. That’s how our day is. Today we had it easy. Sometimes, when we have to hand over an apartment, Yadira helps me with the final clean-up. And so we go, with one contract after another.
The important thing is to have the van and papers. I bought this one second-hand, with 6,800 miles on it. A van like that could cost $4,000. The windshield was broken and it had other damage. For another $2,000 I had it like new. Anyone who buys one of these is on his way. You put the ladder on top and fill the inside full of materials. That’s why there are so many in and around DC. When you see one, look close and you’ll see it’s being driven by a Central American.
The papers are necessary. I drove without a driver’s license for five years. It’s no big deal until a cop stops you for some infraction; you can lose your vehicle, the police keep it as a perk. Now I have a license, a credit card and even a license for my construction company. Undocumented migrants here in Maryland can take out a driver’s license as long as they can show they live in Maryland and pay taxes. While papers are important, it’s more important to eat. And having papers doesn’t help you if you don’t have get up and go. Lots of people have papers but don’t have a job. Sheer laziness.
A day in the life of Gisel
Gisel is Yadira’s older sister by one year. She was 10 when I knew her in Las Mojarras. Her life is split between two countries. She turned 31 this year: 19 of those years in Honduras and 12 in the US. She’s had two children. One lives in Honduras and the other in the US because she’s been married twice, once in each country. I often used to help her grind corn to make tortilla dough. Now she helps me figure out where I am in the city using the GPS on her smartphone.
She lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, an hour by subway from her sisters Yadira and Celia and her brothers Wilson and Chico. She can get to the Pentagon or the White House in less time than it takes to go from Las Mojarras to Tocoa or Trujillo, the cities closest to the village where she was born and the first access points to a paved road. She does child care in her own apartment. We met up at the entrance to the East Falls Church subway station with plans to go to the last station in Maryland. She came with her smiling, talkative son Carlos, and began talking in the subway car.
I told them I’m taking the day off today. No problem with that. Occasionally my brothers and sisters and I meet up and I use the days I’m entitled to. I used to have up to two weeks paid vacation but now they don’t give vacations; instead they pay me for all the holidays and other days I don’t work.
I took today off in lieu of a holiday. I just told the parents ‘I’ll be closed tomorrow’ and they look for someone else to mind their child for them. I give them two days’ notice, which is enough time for them to find someone. I even helped them get another babysitter for today, plus which I often help when they have an emergency and have to go out, like when there’s snow and they have to go out shopping… I often do them favors like that. After all, they’re like my children and I take care of them. That’s why I don’t think twice about doing them a favor. And they give me whatever they can for it. Here’s our stop...
Yadira picks us up at Shady Grove station, at one end of the red line. In 15 minutes we’re at a supermarket full of Central American products: Honduran red beans (“Really soft beans”) at $3.25 for a pound and a quarter, rice imported from Thailand and distributed by Distribuidora Cuscatlán at $2.59 a pound, pineapple pastries and rice flour quesadillas at $1.25 each, Salvadoran rice cakes and shells at $0.79, Honduran hard cheese at $5, coconuts at $3, La Perfecta sour cream at $3.29 a pound, pupusas at $2.89 a packet of four, tortillas, corn on the cob, tamales, ground corn turnovers called riguas, baked ripe plantains, Central American squashes and vegetables, iguana stew, pineapples, mangos and other tropical fruit… even Honduran beers: Salva Vida and Port Royal. Shopping didn’t interrupt the conversation.
“I’m mother to a handful of children” I got married back in Las Mojarras and I left my first son there. He’s a big boy already. My first husband is here; he came too. I’m now with a man who loves and respects me and I became a Jehovah’s Witness for him. He gets off work at 3 pm and sometimes helps me with the afternoon ones or takes a nap until the children leave. Together we take the children to the mall so they can play, to the park in the summer, or to Chuck E Cheese, a really fun place where they give the children pizza. I earn more than my husband, which is why he sometimes says he’s going to stop working. But he’s just kidding. We can’t. It takes almost one complete wage just to pay for the apartment.
From the supermarket we went to Yadira’s apartment where she began making a huge pot of soup with the vegetables and beef she bought. Gisel continued describing her work.
My job is to mother a handful of children. I take care of five, sometimes seven kids. My apartment’s small but it’s not a problem because I don’t have all the children at the same time. I get two boys at 6:45 am. One of them goes to school so I get breakfast for him and have to get him to the bus stop by 7:30. After he’s on the bus I stay with the other, who leaves before 12. A girl comes at 10 and stays until 3:30 in the afternoon. Then the other two children arrive after school and I stay with them until 10:30 or 11 at night. One boy is only two years old and he just sleeps when his mother leaves him. He drinks his milk then sleeps. He doesn’t wake up until 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon, which is why he isn’t sleepy at night.
I only have two at the weekend; the ones who come at 3:30 pm. So on Saturdays and Sundays I’m free until 3 pm. Their mothers work weekends so I take care of them on Saturdays and Sundays, but they don’t come on Mondays and Tuesdays. These are mothers who have two, three children and aren’t with their husband. Or they are but say they’re single to get aid. A woman here has to say ‘He doesn’t help me,’ or ‘I don’t have a husband’ to get support. That’s why they apply for it.
“Aid here is based on
how little you have” I take care of one girl where it’s the father that has her; she’s only seven months old. They brought her to me two weeks ago so I’m getting to know her. She’s sickly but doesn’t want to eat; it makes her stomach hurt. Once I get to grips with her and she gets used to me, she won’t be any trouble. I have to see if this is one of her little ways or if she’s crying because she wants to cry or wants to be held. I’ll get her to change her ways. Her mother left her and the government gave him support because he’s the father… But they’d rather the baby be with a sitter than with the father, plus he has to work.
They take all that into account here. As he earns very little they gave him aid very quickly. They base it on how little you earn.
I try to send this little girl back very clean because I know she only has a father and when she gets back with him it won’t be the same. I always bathe her, put on her cream and leave her very clean. I give her soup with vegetables. I put it in a little machine and half-blend it. She loves the little soups I make. I feel sorry for her because she doesn’t have a mother. She looks at me with those little eyes… And I hug her and squeeze her, and pet her and kiss her and you should see how I rub her so she can feel the love she doesn’t have; well, I have it for her. But she feels her mother’s absence.
Yadira intervenes: It makes my hair stand on end. You leave a man but take the children. I wouldn’t leave any children with the man. It’s better for him to stay alone and you take the children along with you. But it could be something else: it could be that the government took the girl from the mother. If a woman mistreats her children, they take them away from her. That’s how it is here in the US.
While Yadira prepares some baleadas to tide us over until the soup is ready, Gisel tells the story.
I’ll tell you what happened with this little girl. They lived in Boston and came here but after being here for two months she wanted to leave. She liked partying and going out a lot and wanted to go back because all her drinking buddies were there. He didn’t want to go and even less did he want to go back to that lifestyle. So she took off and left the baby with him.
He seems like a fool but he’s not: he quickly went to the welfare office and they gave him aid. They asked him for proof that the mother drank and had abandoned the child, as he claimed. So you know what he did? He went on Facebook and there on her page was all the information he needed: this Sunday we’re going to such a place to drink, everything she was doing … ‘Here’s the proof,’ he told them. That’s all the evidence they needed.
“I only have some free time, but no day off” That’s one of the fathers. I have two others. I only have three fathers and they’re all very easygoing. It’s nicer with Latinos because you understand them. Gringo men are more problematic, and the blacks, they’re really something; they even want you to supply the food for free.
Yadira endorsed this view: There’s a black woman living below, on the first floor. When we came here, we saw the mess but didn’t know what was up. Who knows what problem she had with her husband for him to call the police. He threw all her stuff out, all her clothes and shoes in black bags. When the police came they found her out there in the street with the bags. Now the police come round all the time because the school bus leaves her kids and they have to go on foot. She just wants to stay in the house and doesn’t take them to the bus stop. Every day I put the boy on the bus.
Gisel continued: That’s why we need babysitters so much. You should see how these children are so well-behaved and well-cared for with me. You’ll see no crying here. Sometimes the mothers bring them to me early because they say they can’t put up with them; the kids are desperate to come be here with me. And why wouldn’t they when they eat better in my house than in their own and are better treated?
But that’s also why this work is so exhausting. You see the bags under my eyes? I only have some free time but never a whole day off. That’s why I don’t think I’ll keep going for much longer in this work. I dream of only working during the day, not at night. The problem is that I can’t increase the number of children because the space is limited, so I have to do several shifts.
The advantage I have is that I only have one child of my own. Social workers count all the children who’re going to be in the house. If you have three children, and your space can take eight, you can only mind five more. It’s also not advisable because one person can’t really mind lots of children. You can control five but more… one person can’t do it alone.
That’s why there’s both a child limit and a time limit. A child can’t be more than 12 hours in your home. Those I have are never here longer than seven hours. The county pays me $37 per day for a baby and $35 for a 2-year-old. They pay me $20 just for putting that five-year-old boy who goes to school on the bus. I have him for one hour, give him breakfast and put him on the bus, and my job with him is done. And the pay doesn’t go under $30 for the other children. I get paid from Fairfax County and the State of Virginia.
“The social worker makes a
surprise visit and checks everything” There are other jobs caring for children with Down’s syndrome but I don’t dare do it. You have to hand feed them and take them to the bathroom and everything. And some of them come out dreadful. They may already be old and they’re always shouting. And it would mean further training.
You have to train to get a permit for this work. Before getting one I had to go on a training course where they taught me how to care for children, how to deal with them, how to play with them... For example, the food: if they don’t want to eat, you can play games with the food, make little drawings with it so they eat it. They also teach you how to prepare healthy foods: protein, carbohydrates. Everything, absolutely everything must be right.
The social worker visits me every four months about the food: to see if I’m giving them food, to see if they
want it...
I buy the food with my own money then they reimburse me at the end of the month. They give me a fixed amount depending on the children I have. They don’t like me buying the cheapest food and the social worker checks on this. She makes surprise visits. She just says ‘I’m going to come in February’ but not which day. There you are waiting, expecting the visit, poking about cleaning up every corner because she notices cleanliness a lot.
Don’t think I only have to give them food. I have to keep an account of everything. For example, each child has a number and alongside that number I have to note down if they came or not, if I gave them the morning or afternoon snack... I have to write down every little thing. At the end of the month I sign the paper and it’s sent to the county so they can pay me.
Each child has a folder and that’s where the vaccination record is kept and there’s a page for emergencies, which I have to fill out if the child gets sick, so I can take him to the doctor and show the child’s social security number, the parents’ authorization, etc. … I have to have one for each child. The social worker told me it’s very important to have them because if a child gets sick, I can go to the hospital or clinic with all the information about the child. With that they’ll attend to you. Next week, she warned me, I’m going to call and ask you if you’ve done it yet.
And I don’t only have to prepare myself; I also have to have the house ready. Firefighters came to check out if I have fire safety measures and emergency exits. The social worker comes to see how the children will be here: what I’m like, where they might get hurt, if there are dangerous things lying about, if the electrical outlets are covered… The social worker helps me go over how to work with children before renewing the annual contract or when children move out of the county. Then she works out the contract with me. She calls and tells me: You’re so-and-so and this guy tells me he wants you to take care of his child. Once she’s spoken to the child’s parent she calls me, as she has my number.
My name’s on a webpage. People are always looking for the closest sitters. If they drive they can come from a little further away, but those who don’t drive prefer someone nearby. If I have space, the parent comes and calls the social worker. You may get Americans or Latinos or whoever calls. I’ve only gotten Latinos so far.
“They give you this work
without migration papers”
With bachata music playing in the background, we sat down to eat the soup made using Miss Fernanda’s recipe. More food followed. “Don’t be ashamed to eat,” they urged me.
‘Remember back there when you rode horses up into the mountain?’ We also recalled when Mr. Ceferino made both sisters lick his back, smeared with salt, as punishment for fighting. Afterwards they had to swallow a ball of corn dough to ease the penetrating salt residue.
Migration documents aren’t needed for this work. All I
had to show was my passport and tax ID to start the process and get my permit. Once I passed everything, the courses, the apartment inspection and the checkup by the firefighters and social workers, they said ‘Yes, she can mind children,’ then gave me the permit. They didn’t ask for any papers from Migration. They weren’t interested. The only thing they asked for was the addresses of whoever else lives in the house to be sure they don’t have a police record. If they find out that anyone in the house has problems, they can’t issue the permit. Because the number I have is legal and they didn’t find anything criminal on me, they accepted me even though I’m not a legal resident and also don’t have Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
I filled out one form for myself and another for my husband and sent them in along with all my data and that of those who live in the house: if I have a child, how many children and so on. If the children are 13 or older, they need a paper for each one; if they’re minors I don’t have to fill one out. Then they decide to approve me or not. I had to fill out a bunch of applications and send them in. These are their rules.
They have their rules and you have to follow them. You can’t have a lot of people living in the apartment. You have to send in a check for $14-$15 with each application. What they’re most insistent about is that you take the first aid classes so you can help if a child chokes or swallows something or whatever. It’s an eight-your course and they give us the telephone numbers of teachers who are accredited. The course can cost $80 but if the group is large, it’s cheaper: it drops to $50, $40. But it takes a lot longer if the class is big. I called a man who charged me $85 and I passed the course in two and a half hours. Much quicker.
“They teach us everything
we need to do this job” Once you’re in the process, the county sends you papers every month. For example, they send you ones that say on such a day they’re giving some class with three, four hours of credit… They don’t charge us for the class or require that we to go to any specific one, but it’s useful to go because we learn more. For example, they gave us a two-hour course on food preparation.
While you aren’t obliged to take every class, you do have to complete 14 hours of courses each year to get your permit renewed, and if you can’t show them a certificate saying you did, they’ll annul your permit and take the children away. You get a certificate from the teachers with your name on it and all the classes you’ve passed—they give us tests in the class—and how many hours each class is worth. Everything is free, we’ don’t have to pay anything. They even sent me congratulations.
At 3 pm we set aside the feast, which had started at 11 am, to visit another sister. From there I accompanied them to a clinic where they have an appointment with an Indian nutritionist who has designed a diet for them. The number of notices in Spanish on the office walls may be an indication of the predominance of a Latino clientele. So is the list of foods to avoid: chicharrones [deep-fried pork skin], tamales, pupusas, riguas, etc. After paying $90 for the consultation, we go on another bout of shopping.
My social worker is from India too, just like the diet lady. She helped me when I showed interest in the job and told me it’ll work if I want it to and that it’s very valuable work. Now when she comes, she asks how many children I have and I tell her five and she’s impressed because it’s a lot of work every month.
You have to fill out the food forms. The county makes out the menu. They have a nutritionist who prepares it so it’s varied, with vegetables, proteins… The food mustn’t be oily, it must be healthy. They send you a menu and you go ticking it off. If I have to give the kids an apple and don’t have one, I give them a pear or other fruit instead and I mark it down. If the menu says ‘You must give them grilled beef this afternoon’ and I don’t have it, I can give them chicken, then I mark in the code for chicken. They send a copy of the children’s menu for the week to the parents too, the same as at school. That’s how I know the children don’t want to miss class on Fridays, because they get pizza that day and they like it.
“We aren’t important to the government,
but the children are since they were born here” Some people get sick from all this work. Paola, a fellow babysitter, got stressed out by all the paperwork. She got depressed. Óscar, my husband, told me “You’re going to end up sick too.” He sees all that I do.
Yesterday it was his turn to fax in some papers because I couldn’t. I put some in the mail; take others and leave them at the office and others I fax. I could also send them by email, but that’s harder for me because they all have to be done on a computer. So you know what I do? I just don’t let things pile up. I start filling out forms, marking and ticking them, in the morning. Before I know it, I’ve finished. It’s hard at first but you get used to it. Besides, I’ve always liked taking care of children.
Are these parents undocumented? If they are, why does the government spend so much on them?
The parents are undocumented but the children were born here. The key isn’t the parents, it’s the children. The parents don’t matter to the government here. They can do what they want but the children are a different story because they’re from this country and they take care of children here like you wouldn’t believe. They don’t care if the parents have papers or not. It’s the children they’re helping.
Yadira drove, in total control of the steering wheel and the complicated geography of DC and surrounding area. She offered to leave Maryland and take us to our counties in Virginia. Is there some problem?
My license is restricted but I can use it to drive anywhere in the country. It doesn’t let me get it in to see Obama. It doesn’t serve as an ID but it does let me drive. I’m not interested in other papers. I’d just use them for the toilet. What I’m interested in is having work so my children can eat and go to school.
A day in the life of Lito Melgar
I met Lito in February 1990, when he was three years old. He was playing with plastic dolls on a dirt floor, next to the room where his grandmother was dying. He lived in a settlement on a small plateau built by Plan Padrino, an NGO, for an agricultural cooperative of people displaced by the war. His father was a guerrilla, who later tried twice to migrate to the United States twice but both times was deported back to El Salvador where he now lives growing corn on just over a sixth of an acre that Lito’s paying for at a rate of $80 a month for ten years.
Back then Lito had never even heard the words “United States,” except perhaps in bitter, contemptuous tones. Three months before I met him the Salvadoran Army, financed and advised by the US government, had led a military counteroffensive that killed thousands of Salvadorans, among whom I specially grieve for six young people from this cooperative.
I worked in this community for four years as a member of the Jesuit Service for Refugees. Our presence was supposed to make the Army realize it had international support and prevent threats of further repression. I spent two or three days a week there, sometimes more, and that’s how I became friends with Lino’s family.
I’m godfather to two of his sisters and one brother. I visit them almost every year although I wish it were every week. I watched Lito grow up: go to school, pluck piñuela flowers for the porridge, dance at parties, take part in the Way of the Cross, sing Chayanne’s songs like any enraptured teenager at his sisters’ 15th birthday parties [considered a girl’s “coming of age” in many Latin American countries], go through his first amorous setback, walk two hours a day to high school in La Libertad and leave for the United States in November 2005, a peak deportation year. In February of this year, exactly 24 years after our first meeting, we had a warm father-son embrace in the Vienna metro stop, the end of the orange line in Washington, where Lito had come to pick me up “good and early in the morning” as true Salvadorans say.
Do you remember taking me to the port of La Libertad, the last time we saw each other in El Salvador? I asked you then what the United States was like and you said ‘It’s another world.’ Now I know how true that is.
Winter was just starting when I arrived, the hardest for many years. I began going to the stores and understood what another world this all was: the shops, apartments all well-painted with carpets, kitchens with cabinets, a sofa, a fireplace… Wow, that’s so cool, I thought. My father, who was here then, took me to a laundry and explained: ‘You wash your clothes here in these machines and fold them like this.’ During the day he took me to cut trees in a frozen forest. He used a chainsaw and I carried the logs to the car. He had loaned me some wet gloves that I was ashamed to take off. I was shivering and all hunched up. My father said, ‘What’s the matter? Are you cold? Well, that’s how it is here. Get used to it. You wanted to come. Well, this is the United States. Man up.’
“The first two years
here are the hardest”
People say the first two years here are the hardest. It’s very different, so lonely. Here they always say the family doesn’t exist. They say that when you first come, perhaps so you’ll take responsibility for yourself. And little by little you find out that it’s so, and end up agreeing that it’s true.
My half-brother once told me: ‘Look, Carlos, when you want a car, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll get you plates.’ I eventually bought a car and, and as I couldn’t get insurance and plates, I asked him to do me the favor since he’s legal. He’s got a TPS permit and works driving garbage trucks. He pays $500 to renew his permit every year. But he told me: ‘My work is very complicated, and if anything happens they’ll take my license away.’ So for whatever reason he didn’t help me, and he was totally in his right not to. Now I get it: nobody wants to stick their neck out for someone else.
When I was in El Salvador I didn’t understand why people here don’t call you up. How come they don’t have five minutes to call and just say: ‘Hey, how are you?’ It’s incredible, incomprehensible. But life here moves very quickly. You feel so engrossed.
Some days I’ve had up to 100 calls on my cell; 100 problems to solve. I usually eat in the car. I sometimes leave at 5 in the morning and get back at 11 at night. I leave the children sleeping and come home to find them sleeping. This is what I want to change when I get my papers. My wife is raising the children, she doesn’t work. All income depends on me. We want to put up a daycare someday. She knows a lot about it and we need the money.
“Everybody here lives in debt”
Sometimes I find myself sitting here wondering how I got into all this. I worry just thinking about my credit cards; I owe on nearly all of them. The minimum interest on this one is 16%, and it’s the lowest. The first one I got was Capital One, then American Express and Discovery. And I did it to prepare myself for the future. In total, I owe these companies $3,000 and then there’s $7,000 for the big car I’m also paying for. The other, smaller one, cost me $3,000, and is already paid for. Here everybody lives like this, in debt.
We traveled in a pickup truck with the logo “Transfiguración Services Inc.” and the inscription: “Reglaze and Refinishing Services, info@transfiguración-services.com, Bathtubs-Sinks-Vanities-Cabinets-Kitchen Countertops-Tile Walls and Floors.” We headed straight to the apartment where Lito had to work that morning.
We’d both had breakfast. Together with a Honduran and a Guatemalan—also undocumented—I was staying with, I’d eaten a massive cinnamon bun, part of the ration the parish of St. Anthony of Padua in Falls Church distributes twice a week to the “homeless,” who are really Latinos who, like me, don’t mind eating day-old bread from the exquisite bakeries that can’t sell them and donate them to the churches. These bakery goods and other food we’re so generously given considerably reduced my research costs and undoubtedly do the same for the finances of many migrants. We unloaded the materials and Lito began to paint.
“Hispanics with power
are the most racist”
I said to myself that when I got there I was going to get three jobs. The first one I had, some Mexicans picked me up at 6 in the morning and left me back at 10 at night. They were contractors who made houses out of ‘shiroc’ [Sheetrock, or drywall]. My God, what a job! I was wrecked when I got home. They taught me to use stilts to reach the highest sheets and told me: ‘Toughen up, son of a bitch. Break a sweat, don’t be a wimp!’ The hardest part is that Hispanics with power are the most racist, whether in the police, in organizations or at work. Another Mexican told me about another company: ‘Go with them, they won’t screw you around.’ I went there with some others and learned a little more. Then I worked in air conditioning.
Then I went to Pennsylvania with another Salvadoran. They taught me quickly but said they couldn’t pay me more. They got work that paid $18 an hour and only gave me $10 so they turned a nice profit. I left that and got into restaurants, working in a steakhouse at night. I learned how to cook meat there: medium, medium rare, rare, well cooked and almost burned. I earned $10.70 an hour but only worked four hours a day.
“If I ever get married, I already know
how to cook and clean the house”
During the day I cleaned houses with my future mother-in-law. I went to help her, to learn how to clean houses here, because it’s not the same as back there. With that I thought: Man, if I ever get married, I already know how to cook and clean house. I was fine there but a friend was leaving to start up his own Indian restaurant so he told me: ‘Come with me. You’ll have Saturdays and Sundays free and earn $700 a week.’
Wow! What a deal! I started work at 10 in the morning and left at 10:30 at night. That was in Rosslyn, close to Washington, and I lived in Manassas. I commuted every day in my green Nissan. It was very stressful. I wasn’t used to this kind of life.
I was stopped by the police twice, once because I fell asleep at the traffic lights. The light turned green, I stayed there and when I woke up it had turned red again. When I hit the gas, a cop was waiting and stopped me. I have a Maryland license and can’t say I live here in Virginia, so I invented a story: ‘I’m coming from work and came to visit some friends here.’ ‘OK, be careful,” and he didn’t give me a ticket that time.
In fact, they only paid me $350 a week and I did work weekends. I only had Monday or Tuesday free. It came out at $5 an hour and I did everything: cleaning, cooking, chopping, preparing… The restaurant was just starting up and had to make headway. I finally left; the owner was a decent person but also a sharp businessman.
“Some people want
to bring out the Indian in you”
Then came painting bathtubs. I contacted an undocumented Salvadoran I met named Rubén, who’s with a minister named Mr. Miguel, and he got me a job in a company called Bluestone, owned by a terrific Venezuelan guy. I worked there four years and left last year to come to Transfiguración, a company Rubén and another boy named Leonardo founded about three years ago. I’m doing okay here.
I’m the company supervisor. It’s complicated because many of them don’t accept me since I came in after the company was formed and there are people who’ve been working there since day one. But while they’ve been there longer I have more time than them learning the work. I do the best I can and try to get on well with everyone but there are always those who, seeing only the negatives, try to bring out the Indian in you; make you angry. But I go and check their work and tell them, ‘This isn’t right, you have to do it again.’
I think maybe they put me in this job because they know me, but they don’t know me all that well and they also know the other boys. They know a little about my history and I think they believe I’m good because I’m in their church, I know how to talk to people and I’m serious and responsible. It isn’t the same as when you’re single, leaving things in God’s hands and doing whatever you want. You’re more focused with a family and two children and think things through before doing anything. I’ve been leading a youth group and I know how to talk to people, how to act with people and say things in a way that won’t hurt others. The man who was here before was very heavy handed and employees left. That’s why the owner found me.
“I always send my
family a little money”
I order and distribute the materials, which takes a lot of
my time and is the only bad part. I start at seven in the morning and from then I don’t stop getting phone calls: this one doesn’t have materials, the lady has a complaint, there’s not enough material to finish, the bathtub got damaged… A lot of calls about problems I have to solve, because that’s my job. I also have to paint bathtubs to make more money. My bosses don’t want me painting bathtubs; they just want me to supervise and get more contracts so there’s more work, but then I’ll only earn eight hours a day and that’s not enough. So I paint bathtubs. Two tubs counts as eight hours, and I can do three and even four or more, which means that I can earn 16 hours in a day and only work 8. That works for me, but it’s not steady.
It depends on the number of contracts and right now I can’t just be finding new contracts because I’m in the process of getting my papers fixed, have a lot of debts and need to get together as much money as I can. I always send a little to my family in El Salvador so we’re all living as decently as possible. Work has gone down a lot lately. Let’s see what happens. I hope it improves. We currently have contracts in Maryland, Virginia, DC and even Baltimore, close to Philadelphia. And even in Winchester.
Lito spent the morning painting. He mixed the paint, put protective paper on the walls, and activated the extractor. At midday a group of African Americans entered the apartment led by a lady who smiled warmly and was visibly impressed with the work. “That’s amazing,” she kept saying. The people with her were a couple of potential tenants.
Only blacks live here in this building. They don’t leave the house when we paint, they hang around. They like that smell. I paint bathtubs with a spray gun and the finish is like on a car. They taught me here and now I teach others. We use masks but the smell is very, very strong… So strong that if you’re in a bathroom without a mask, you could die. I want to quit because I feel it’s affecting me a lot. I’ve been doing the work for nearly six years but I haven’t found another, better job and furthermore they pay me twice the minimum wage.
Transfiguración has a policy of always paying over the minimum. I get $16 an hour, which is the highest pay after Raúl, one of the company’s two owners. The Dominican earns the least, $12 an hour, but as the work is paid by completed task and each task is rated at a fixed number of hours, he can earn up to 20 hours a day, which equals $240. The Guatemalan earns $13 an hour. There are six workers in all.
“This with not having papers
and not speaking English...”
I want to start my own company, make something of myself, but two things I don’t have are papers and English. I began studying third level basic on January 7, a month and a half ago, and I go twice a week. I’m learning English and already know how to say: How are you? I almost never speak English with my wife and if she says something to me in English, I don’t understand her. It’s our fault that we don’t practice but I’m studying to prepare for the future because our daughter will soon be starting school and we have to be able to talk to the teachers. It’s a little easier for me because they taught English back in high school—not much but it helps. Sometimes I put on films in English with English subtitles and I’m making progress that way.
We headed out to another apartment because Lito got an SOS, asking for more thinner. The call was from the Dominican twins and Lito used the opportunity to check their work. The atmosphere became livelier as the Dominicans taunted each other and sprinkled all their words with Spanglish: ‘I told him that he shouldn’t tochar that because it was frizado and it would be better to move back to continue weldiando.’ We had to work our way around hills of snow to get back to the pickup and on the way we continued talking.
The boss in the last company was a good person. For my honeymoon, he gave me tickets to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida, and we went by road because I already had my driver’s license. Twelve hours driving. At that time I liked to drive fast—when you’re young it’s rather exciting—and I was fined in Georgia for going 99 in a 70 mph zone. They gave me a $450 ticket. That was tough.
I’ve paid a lot of money to the court for traffic violations. I‘ve learned a little because I haven’t had a ticket for two years now. Before it was constant and almost always for speeding, but I’ve learned and am still learning. And I’ve always taken the blame: no matter what the police nab me for, I tell them okay, but let me go. It’s how you think when you see a cop: You want to give me a ticket? Do it then, but let me go. Whatever.
“I’d like to speak English
to be able to say things”
I understand a lot of English but I don’t speak it. The problem is that I can’t explain myself and that’s why the police do what they want. I’ve seen that when people speak English and give a good explanation, the cop sometimes doesn’t write out the ticket. Those people can defend themselves well and even persuade the police; they aren’t afraid of anything; they talk freely. I want to be like that, to be able to talk, to have the right to say anything.
One time the police stopped a kid who was going 10, 15 miles over the speed limit and he just told them he’d been talking by phone and hadn’t realized he was going at that speed; he thought he was just within the limit, and they didn’t give him a ticket. Another boy, who didn’t speak English, came along that same day and they did give him one. He had a license and everything, but he didn’t speak English well and looked Hispanic so they gave him a ticket. In fact he was following someone who was going at the same speed. The police stopped both of them and gave one a ticket and not the other. Both were Salvadorans but the one who didn’t get the ticket was whiter and grew up here, and he spoke perfect English.
We got to the house and in his comfortable living room Lito told me more about why his situation is complicated. Years ago a traffic cop stopped him saying that the air-freshener hanging from the rear view mirror was blocking his view. Mistakenly, on the advice of a supposedly more experienced friend, Lito identified himself with a false name. The cop was distrustful and after a careful inspection he found a complete set of false documents: driver’s license, social security card and green card. He arrested Line who was tried for fraud, a felony that stayed on his record like a scarlet letter. Although he’s married to a US citizen of Salvadoran origin, his path to regularization has stumbled on this obstacle.
“Many of our rights are
violated by not having papers”
Many of our rights are violated by being without papers. You often say nothing or let something pass just so they don’t ask if you have papers or not. You never stop feeling like a criminal. They shout at you when they feel like it and you feel you have a lot less dignity. That’s why I’ve started to take out my papers.
I’ve already gone through most of the stages. I’m requesting pardon for having come in illegally and having broken the law. I’ve already paid more than $ 5,000 to a process lawyer to get to the stage of requesting pardon. If it’s approved, I’ll ask for a waiver and will have to go to El Salvador.
I didn’t process the papers earlier because I wasn’t sure that if I applied I wouldn’t have to go wait in El Salvador for an indefinite period of time. It was very complicated but this situation has been relieved since last year when Obama approved legislation that you don’t have to leave to wait for anything.
If I go now, I can return and won’t have to wait for anything; just take the paperwork to the US embassy in El Salvador. Let’s see what happens. It’s been expensive and slow. I paid $800 twice for a psychological examination to show the damage the children would suffer from family separation if I have to go to El Salvador and wait for ten years, as the law required.
“For my plans I need
papers, residency”
My father had told me he wasn’t afraid of the police here and assured me there’s no problem with Migration here in Manassas. But we did have anti-immigrant legislation for a time. They began to collaborate with the feds asking for documents about legal status.
Because of it migrants began to move to other areas of Virginia and to Maryland, and businesses felt their absence. Supermarkets were empty; diners had no customers, foremen couldn’t find bricklayers. The county had to backtrack. That’s when the opportunity came up to get plates and a driver’s license in Maryland. That improved the situation a lot but for my plans I need residency.
If I manage to get papers and a high school diploma, it will open many doors for me. I’ve even thought about going into the army after getting my high school diploma. I can follow any dream if I have papers and I’ve heard that those who are serving the country have a lot of benefits… I’ve been thinking about it because I don’t have health insurance. I have a driver’s license and tax ID but no social security. Neither does my wife; only the children. They have the right because they were born here and I think it lasts until they’re 18 years old. You have to apply and qualify because if you earn more than $30,000 or so a year, they’re no longer eligible. It depends on how many family members there are. They count everything. And you have to renew it every year. It’s quite a process but, Thank God, that insurance for them is a big help.
“We didn’t have to pay anything
for the pregnancy or childbirth”
When Janet was pregnant with Josué she applied for insurance and they helped us with it. That insurance covered the whole pregnancy and childbirth. We didn’t have to pay anything. It covered medicine and medical care but not milk. You have to earn really little in order for them to give you food. You have to be dying of hunger. We wouldn’t even be able to live here. You have to be in one room with the whole family and earn about $200 a week.
My father-in-law manages a Greek restaurant and he helped us get this apartment. It’s in his and my wife’s name because when the police caught me with those documents I ended up with a police record for 10 years and can’t apply for anything. I can’t buy a house. I know I can’t because I tried. I can’t even buy a car. When you go to buy one, they check your credit. You give your number, they check your credit history and everything comes out. When it came up that I had presented false documents, nobody wanted to give me anything. All this information stays in the system and only they know how it is.
“In the church I’ve understood
what it is to be a person”
We ate some delicious pupusas Janet made with cheese, loroco [a vine flower bud found in Central America], beans and shredded pork. Then we rested. The next day Lito took me on a tour of several churches. His friend José Manuel, the Honduran in whose house I’m staying, also came, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary that he placed at the doors to the churches on the table where they have leaflets about spiritual retreats.
I felt such scorn and humiliation at not having papers but, Thank God, I joined this church group and there I understood better what it is to be a person from the spiritual point of view. Previously I valued people by what they have. I was bouncing from job to job but, Thank God, joining the church group and then starting to meet good people gave me greater stability and helped me not to get lost in drugs and vices. Everyone in the group is Hispanic. That’s where I met Janet and where we fell in love. That’s also where I found work. Transfiguración, the company I work for, is owned by two members of Mr. Miguel’s congregation.
Mr. Miguel, who was ordained when he was 20 years old, encouraged me to begin the legalization process. Start, he said, because otherwise you’ll never do it. The reason I didn’t begin was that I didn’t have the money so he lent us $2,500; that’s how I began to get my papers fixed. I’m paying him back for that loan. I try to pay regularly to keep the door open. He also paid to get me out when they held me for the false papers and even left $150 so I could get here because they took all the money I had on me and the car. He’s helped us a lot.
Lupe, also undocumented, uses the car, which is in Mr. Miguel’s name. Lupe and José Manuel stay in this house; it belongs to the congregation but Mr. Miguel doesn’t want you to say anything about that. He says that if he has a lot of people in the house, they could accuse him of promoting trafficking in undocumented migrants. He doesn’t want problems with migration.
“We’re going around
winning men for God”
We go to mass in the All Saints church in Manassas but I move through virtually the whole area. The group I go to promotes silent retreats for men over 18 years of age. Previously, I worked directly with Mr. Miguel, who works with adolescents, but now we’ve formed a group of married men and work with them on silent retreats. We’ve seen that society needs silence. Therefore we go around winning men for God so they can have a weekend of silence. We go to several parishes. I know almost all the churches here in Northern Virginia and we always invite the Hispanic community.
We stayed up late that night talking about what holiness is, if the army is a good or bad option, the uncertainty of the regularization process, his dreams of being independent and starting up his own business… The talks continued over new get-togethers and work days, and now through Skype. And Lito continues to build his history with the materials the world makes available to him, his own measure of disobedience and adaption, his dreams and his audacity.
Jose Luis Rocha is a member of the envío editorial council, and the Institute of Sociology of Phillips University, Marburg, Germany.
|
a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America