Her

Image: Shiny Coat Watch by Trojan_Llama in Flickr CC

KC:  You are an American citizen, Marta, aren’t you?

ME: Yes I am. The minute I could become a citizen, I did. And have voted in every election. I didn’t want to be a citizen of El Salvador any longer; a country that doesn’t protect its women. Can you imagine that I didn’t have the right to the custody of my son? That’s why I came. If I could be abroad and have more rights… So in legal terms, I kidnapped my son. I made fake papers, a grandmother of a friend of mine went to the city hall in a village and swore that she had delivered my son and forgot to report it to City Hall. and because of her…. My son came here with his passport under another name, as my illegitimate son. If I had used his real papers, I would have needed permission from the father, which he would never give. I crossed the border with Guatemala with my son, on foot. It was in the summertime, so the river was very low and my parents were on the other side waiting for me and my son. Nothing happened but I will tell you, those were probably the longest 10 minutes in my life. I crossed the river with my son in my arms and got in the car, went to Guatemala and took the plane from Guatemala to the United States.

I think for me it was economic migration in reverse. When I came to the United States, I hadn’t ever made my bed; I was totally not prepared to live a life here in the United States where you have to do everything. So, it was a total change but I don’t think I ever felt like people say, a cultural shock. I was home. I got off that plane and I was home. When I landed in San Francisco in the “Summer of Love”, I was at home with the hippies. I was very lucky, I came in the middle of a generational change, most married women did not work, they stayed home, took care of the children and a family could buy a house with only the husband working.
Because my husband and I were both immigrants we had no rule to follow like Americans so I went to work when the opportunities came. It was something else and I really felt at home. I had a lot of things to work out, a lot of trauma, because of my first husband. I tried to work it out through volunteer work. I was in a group that founded a refuge for abused women in San Francisco “La Casa de las Madres”… and let’s see, I was a board member of the San Mateo county Economic Opportunity Commission to provide low income residents with opportunities and information.
With only Tony working, we were considered low income, both my sons were eligible for the Head Start Program, a pre-school program for low-income children and I was very active in the Head Start Paretn Association of the County. But wherever I was involved, it was because of something that I or my my children were going through.
I became a citizen as soon as I was eligible –5 years after being a legal resident— I wanted to work, I wanted to vote, I am a registered Democrat although I’m not completely satisfied. I am a little bit too much to the left of the Democrats. The US is a 2 party system and being a Republican is not an option.

We were talking about not knowing what you wanted to do in life before: I didn’t find it out until I came to Sacramento and. I worked for a corporation that imported and exported fruits from Chile, and we had to set up the system to import the fruit to the USA.  In my first day of work, I was congratulated for being the first “Mexican” to be allowed to work in the corporate offices. Hearing those words, I knew I had to look for a job very quickly  and at that time my husband opened a restaurant, and the medical insurance for the family came from my job so I had to stay at that job for a year and a half. It was really hard to keep my mouth shut, when they used derogatory terms for Mexicans and farmworkers.

The next job, I had for 15 years, at a non profit organization that helped farmeworkers securing affordable housing and clean and sanitary water. My first job wtih the organization was to teach residents in rural areas how to maintain their septic tanks.I did that for about 1 year and a half and then I applied for a position in the farm workers’ housing department. In that position I found my calling: Community Organizer, I was in a team that developed farm workers’ housing in California, Arizona, and later Hawaii —this was very interesting because we don’t think of farm workers in Hawaii, only hotels and beaches! Best of all, it gave me a chance to see my granson every 4 months, during my business trips.

I‘m an American, I love it here. It gave me most opportunities in my life. I don’t know where I would be if I would have stayed in El Salvador. Most of my highschool classmates are dead due to the civil war or are here in the USA running away from the violency and lack of economic opportunities. Do you remember this friend of mine, she was our tour guide when we went to El Salvador a few years ago. She lives now in the United States, she was afraid, hopeless and depressed of finding dead people in her backyard on a weekly basis. 

I did encounter racism in my job… As an example, my co-workers used to dress like hippies, I, on the other hand to be credible, needed to dress like in a business school, well put together, because of my accent. The bureaucrats and business for the most part did not take me seriously, I was dressed in a suit and the two of them dressed like hippies, but if there was a question about the project, they wouldn’t ask me, they would ask them. And my co-workers would say: “Well, it’s Marta’s project, so ask her.” But that went on, that disrespect. Because you have an accent, they think you are an idiot.

I have been called “spic”, especially in the rural areas of the United States, in Eastern Washington; a wetback, which is a derogatory term for mexicans. “How come a wetback like you have a job like this?” I remember once I was doing a presentation (…) and a guy from the back yelled “Hey spic!” and I didn’t know what the meaning of spic was. I didn’t know it was a derogatory term. And I asked “Can you spell it for me? English is my second language and I have never heard this term, would you please spell it for me? He spelled ” S-P-I-C” and I rolled my eyes and said: “I’m sorry, but I still don’t know the meaning of this word” and people in the crowd were laughing because they thought I was trying to show the guy up, and he kept looking at me, and I said “I’m sorry I don’t know what you are saying” and the guy left. Later I found out that it was a derogatory term to immigrants, to foreigners. My boss thought that I was being clever and thatI had handled the situation wonderfully. So the difficulties I think of being an immigrant….we all have our own stories.

For me, as a community organizer around affordable housing issues, I had the blessing and good luck, of being involved in a many exciting and innovative projects.

It was kind of exciting but there was a lot of institutional discrimination. One of my projects with farm workers, “La Cooperativa San Gerardo”, was one of the first in the nation completely farm-worker owned, it took the development team 5 years from beginning to end to develop the housing project. The City of Salinas  refused to allow connection to their water and sewer connection. And at that time a coworker, a civil engineer, newly arrived from the Peace Corps in Nigeria designed a water and sewer system that tthe farmeworkers could maintain themselves. So we said “Ok we are ready to go” and then the city asked where the kids were going to go school. The school district wouldn’t allow the kids living in the project to go to school because the “Mexican kids had lice” and they didn’t want the mexican kids to contaminate the white kids. So we did not get the permit. We went to several small towns around the project, who did have schools, and finally one town said “We’ll take your kids, but we don’t have a bus to transport them. So you get a bus and we’ll get your kids in a school.” So in November I wrote a proposal to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the social services part of the Catholic Church, and they only fund projects that affect institutional change. They agreed to give us a grant to buy the bus.

But the discrimination didn’t end there. The project didn’t get the permit because the city did not want to send their garbage trucks to come and collect the garbage — the excuse was — too far from city center.. So we had to go and apply for other grants to buy a garbage truck, To make a long story short, it was 5 years from the beginning until the families could move in, and all of those barriers were put up by discriimination and trying to stop farmworkers and hispanics getting control of their lives. So I was very fortunate to be there at the time and have that experience. Anyways, don’t get me started, I had a long life. it has been quite a life.

I don’t know how Brazil is with women….

AKC: I don’t think it is as bad as El Salvador but it is worse than the US or Europe. Like we have laws protecting women, they are somewhat respected but not often. It depends on who is the woman too, the social class, the ethnicity, race, etc.

ME: We have laws too but don’t call the police. The police thinks a woman is a chattel of the husband. The constitution says that men and women are equal in front of the law. That’s not true. So I don’t know if I qualify as an economic refugee, even though I have done everything here, I have cleaned toilets… In the US, for the first time in my life, I was hungry. I was never hungry in El Salvador, isn’t that something? 

AKC: like an economic migrant…

ME: … I worked in a Mexican restaurant, for food and tips, no wages…. I think it is part of the immigrant experience. I have a lot of respect for immigrants because we all have gone through a lot. And some of us have had it tougher than the others. After all these years, I’m really happy where I am at. I ha ve a wonderful life. My children and grand children are more educated and will have a better future than my husband and I. The USA gave me a place where I could grow, and a lot of opportunities to participate, to create change that I could not have had in El Salvador. I’m really content with my life. I’m so different than the young girl from El Salvador that arrived in the US without speaking English… Yes I have been lucky and blessed!!!