An Interview With Victor

I met Darlene at a downtown Starbucks.  It was hard for us to schedule an appointment to meet since I have three jobs that fit tightly in hours of the day. This is important.  I wanted to make time because it is important for us to talk about immigration. Americans will understand better with more talk about why we come here.  We have so much to offer this country.  It is exciting to be a part of the community.  That is why it is hard to leave.

            I come from the Tamaulipas.  It is on the east coast of Mexico.  We are neighbors to Texas.  Beautiful country.  I left home when I was eighteen years old.  I tried to go back after leaving college, but the town was not a good fit any longer.  The difference between me and the someone from Jalisco, Michoacan or Guannajuato is that those people are “majados.” You know what that means?  Wetback.  See it used to be hard to cross the Rio Grande at one time it was fast and wide.  It is nothing but a trickle now.  The people crossing the river would get wet making the trip to the U.S. so they got the name wetbacks.  I don’t like for people to hear me talking about this, but that is where the term comes from.  Jalisco, Michoacan and Guanajuato are crowded with people with no industry, no jobs and they are poor.  Many people live together with not enough food or space.  Many times before a person would immigrate to the United States they would try to improve their circumstances by moving to a larger city.  Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterey would be likely stops because of their size and industry. 

            When I was four and a half years old my father died.  My mother died when I was six.  I had five sisters and two brothers.  My sisters are the elders.  In Mexico it is the job of the eldest children to care for the younger children, even when parents have not died.  So this responsibility fell to my sisters.  They were married and had their own lives.  Me and my brothers were divided between three sisters’ families. 

            We have been able to see each other recently, but while they were growing up there was not much contact.  Then both brothers became wetbacks and I did not see them for many years.  Two months ago, my oldest brother went to Mexico to get his son and took the boy to live with him in New York.  The boy was four years old when his father left for the U.S. and nineteen years old when his father returned for him.  I heard this from my sister. I call them and send money, especially now that one sister has cancer.

            When I turned eighteen, I moved to San Luis Potosi with a friend to continue schooling.  I had missed large portions of school due to working to help support the family as a teenager.  San Luis Potosi is beautiful.  Have you heard of it?  Julia Roberts came there when they were filming The Mexican.  They filmed The Mexican there.  It is very old with gold and silver mines.  The conquistadors stayed there a long time to steal the gold and silver.  Anyway I was able to finish high school. 

            At twenty-two, I moved on to Mexico City to study economics. The course work proved too difficult due to the schooling I missed in my earlier years.  I was sorry not to finish the course, but that taught me all I needed to be a man today. 

            While at school, I fell in love with the ASU student who was volunteering at a local orphanage.  Our relationship grew, but then he ran out of money.  We tried to go back to Tamaulipas, but it was no good.  He returned to the U.S.  I spent the next year trying to join him.  I worked in Juarez, Mexico for a year at a Holiday Inn.  This was a good job.  In order to get a visa, I had to show that I had a good job.  Through a friend at the consulate I got a student visa and moved to Tempe. 

            The relationship with my student friend soon fell apart.  By then I had enrolled in college, was learning English well and found a job.  You know when you have a student visa, you are restricted where you work.  Only on campus.  So that’s what I did.  I worked in the cafeteria and the Taco Bell.  My tuition was through my friend’s father’s Rotary Club.  Soon they stopped paying it.  I had to make a decision.  If I continued to stay in the United States it would be without documentation.  Now I know how it feels to have a different life.  I became illegal.  Even if I am not a wetback, I am illegal.  When a visa expires, they send you a letter that says you have to report to the local office in ten days.  I have never gotten that letter. 

            I used to be afraid about going back, but if that happens it will be alright.  If  I stay here it will be alright too.  About a year and a half ago, I started seeing a counselor through ASU who helped me understand a lot of things.  There are some things that I don’t have control over.  The death of his parents, physical and sexual abuse when I was a child and some of the things I had to do to survive in Mexico. 

            I never felt secure in Mexico City.  I always carried two dollars in my wallet in case I was robbed.  On the streets or public transportation there is a good chance of getting robbed.  If the robbers did not find money, they would beat you.  That beating could kill you.     

            There was no chance for courtesy.  If you showed softness someone would take advantage of you or worse. We are so strong in Mexico to survive.   Here I carry money or credit cards with no worry.  I can also be myself.  My  friend used to say that I was like an M&M with a hard shell on the outside.  To be safe, that is why I want to stay here.

            Just because I am safe now, does not mean that I don’t have to protect myself.  I have to stand up for myself sometimes.  In Mexico City there is discrimination against farmers or persons from the mountains- other people from within the country, but not against the tourists.  Mexicans rely on tourism for income.  In the United States the discrimination is different.  The discrimination starts at the moment I open my mouth.  When people hear my accent they think I am stupid.  The other day a guy said to me, “You speak good English and you are smart!” as if this were unusual for a Mexican. 

            Other people from Mexico have to be open to different cultures.  In order to change, you have to be different.  The first thing to do is to learn English.  Break the pattern of being passive and push yourself to new goals and life changes.  That’s why the March for Fair Immigration Laws was so important to me. 

            I want to support this country. I want to stand up when something is not right.  Gandhi did something good to imitate. If we do something wrong there are consequences, but not mistreatment.  We have feelings and emotions.  We are not like a table.  It was very emotional holding the American flag in the march.  I felt pride. 

            Some Americans hate the cultural transformation that is taking place today.  The U.S. is used to being the dominator and now they feel like they will be dominated by the new immigrants.  They get mad, but they must accept.  Americans do not want to pay the price for being the number one country in the world.  If you say your number one then it is natural that people would want to come to this country.   

ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVIEW

               I picked the state capitol as a place to start my search for the border in Phoenix.  That place were two cultures bump into each other and eventually mesh, but not before throw up signals of impermeability to each other.  The state government is a good example of where two counties meet and sometimes bloody themselves.  Before I met Joe (link to that story), I asked a number of people going in and out of legislative hall their opinions of the latest battle in the cultural wars, the march supporting immigrants on March 24th.      Most of the workers looked at me suspiciously, even after I showed them my student I.D.  The animated conversations in which they had just been engaged with co-workers abruptly changed to a hesitant reply with carefully chosen words that did not reflect an actual opinion.  Joe said that was because they wanted to be careful not to offend anyone.  That may be true but offending people has not really been a concern of the state legislature.  
                  The period of rhetoric surrounding the marches for fair immigration has been particularly rankling.  News magazines use alarmist headlines that use war analogies in comparison to cry the danger of migrants from Mexico (Chavez, 2001).  We have had a picture of migrants that may no longer be appropriate.   
                It is no longer appropriate to think that the multitudes are here to adopt our way of life and language, to blend in seamlessly in a generation and to never look back.  In Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration, the authors refer to this new conception of migration as “transnationalism.” (Schiller, Basch, Blanc-Szanton 1992)  Those migrants who keep a foot in the old world as well as the new, maintain supportive relationships in both spheres as well.  The authors suggested that difficulties migrants faced in gaining a foothold in the United States would facilitate this “transnational existence.”  
                   Instead this wave of migration may be more of a business proposition.  Many times it is similar to a proposition that we, as a country, have made with these new migrants on their own soil.  Our businesses have gone forth into the global quest for reduced employee costs and cheaper operations.  Were we expected to become one with this country and melt into the population, learn the language, or adopt the dress?  Or we were just expected to write the checks for the goods or services delivered?
                   Many times undocumented migrants are here for a short while to improve home circumstances.  Fear of contact with authorities due to their undocumented status make it unlikely that they would apply for welfare or other state benefits (Chavez, 2001).  Many migrants have brought with them the local customs of pooling resources and collective ownership that ignore the U.S. infrastructure for development (Davis, 2000).
                    In 1943, during World War II alien workers were allowed in the United States, but exempted from labor laws.  In effect, business was allowed to treat certain people differently than they could treat U.S. citizens.  That is very similar to the conditions we have today.  We do not stop the workers from entering the country, we just make it very difficult for them while they are here.  
                 When I first heard the term “subsistence farmer,” I remember the dark connotations that drew.  In my mind’s eye, these were people barely able to eek out an existence and their concentration on survival left little resources for “improving” their lives. Today that term draws a different picture of people able to feed themselves at the result of their efforts without starvation looming nearby.  That forced growing of crops for export, plantation appropriation of the best land, encouraged dependence on imported foods and suppression of local farmers’ productivity, that colonialism brought to Africa, Central America and the world has produced mass starvation and exploitation that plagues these countries today (Lappe, Collins 1977).  
                 Nancy Splain led a workshop on conflict resolution at the Border Justice Conference at Arizona State University.  Ms. Splain asked each of us to share our stories of family immigration.  We talked about how those stories get changed or lost with the passage of events and time, but they are essentially the same stories of today’s migrants.  She noted that our immigration stories are not remembered when we talk about immigration issues today.  
                  Analysis of long term trends in migration from Mexico note that the western regions of Mexico as the largest suppliers of migrants to the United States.  The authors point to Mexican migration trends that span a century.  Migration appears to be firmly entrenched in this region of Mexico. (Durand, Massey, Zenteno, 2001)  Legislation attempts to address these issues based on U.S. economic forces without looking to understand the reasons migrants are coming here, taking responsibility for our participation in the climate of migration or considering the validity of our attempts at regulation over the last 100 years.  

References

  • Chavez, Leo R. ( 2001) Covering Immigration Popular images and the Politics of the  Nation. University of California Press
  • Durand, J. & Massey, D.S.. & Zenteno, R.M..(2001). Mexican Immigration to the United States: Continuities and Changes. Latin American Research Review,1,  107-127.
  • Lappe, Frances Moore & Collins, Joseph. ( 1977) Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Institute for Food and Development, Ballentine Books
  •  Schiller, Basch, Blanc-Szanton (1992) In Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.

 
Migration and Culture Last revision 05/10/06 e-mail  me