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Here's my analysis of a migrant from Nicaragua. If you want to read the

interview click here.

Lorena Gutierrez: A Nicaraguan Representative in a Valley of Migrants

      Lorena Gutierrez’s migration to the United States is but a single grain of sand on the shores of global resettlement. Her reasons for tearing herself and her family away from all she’s ever known are very similar to the common push-factors faced by immigrants across the globe. She symbolizes many characteristics of typical migrants, but has important differences as well. The indispensable result of her relocation has enabled her family to take root within a new land, to experience political and societal freedom, and to establish for themselves a new home.

            Lorena was born and raised in Masaya, Nicaragua, where she married her husband and had her first child. Although the couple had close family ties in their homeland, they did not want to subject their children to the substandard education system of Nicaragua.             Dreams of sending their children to college seem somewhat idealistic in a country where the country’s illiteracy rate is 34% and only twelve of every hundred youths attend a university. Robert Arnove’s article A Political Sociology of Education and Development in Latin America is an illustrative account of the detriments the political system has on the education system in Central American countries. Lorena’s firsthand account of these challenges, which in fact are a sharp reality to the majority of the citizens in Nicaragua, really causes the magnitude of the problem hit home.

            Lorena included in her testimony a strong sense of family values. Her family is very close and she still maintains strong ties to her relatives living in Nicaragua. This resilient bond between “transnational families” is actually quite common on a global scale. In Jo Ann Koltyk‘s New Pioneers in the Heartland: Hmong Life in Wisconsin, substantial evidence is presented regarding the unbreakable and intimate ties that migrants hold with family members who have remained in their homelands.

            One of Lorena’s main concerns about the culture of the United States is that a strong priority is placed on careers and work. She realizes the needs and causes of this focus, but she nevertheless misses the more family-oriented atmosphere of her homeland. Once she moved to the United States her husband began working in the field of medicine and undoubtedly devoted many long hours to the job. Thus, the couple acclimated to the demands of American society, although they did not completely divert from their strong family traditions. This is also a common struggle faced by those leaving family-centered cultures. Cathy Small’s ethnographical work, Voyages: from Tongan Villages to American Suburbs describes a similar situation within migrants from Tongan villages to the United States. Her study exposes a forced realignment and prioritization of conventions that migrants face when they enter into American society.

            Lorena’s story does not entirely fit the traditional “transmigrant” model. Although she left Nicaragua because of political and societal weaknesses within the country, she does not send remittances back to remaining relatives. Also, because of her husband’s education and experience in the field of medicine, a supposition must be made that she does not come from an impoverished background. As Saskia Sassen‘s article Why Migration? so clearly illustrates, many migrants come the United States because their situations are so drastic that migration is necessary for their survival. Lorena’s case was not as severe as this. She represents a more affluent faction of migrants that are nonetheless seeking the freedom and opportunities American society presents.

            All over the globe people are transcending borders, oceans and continents in search of the coveted “better life.” Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan’s innovative work Crossing the Border: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America is a compelling collection of stories of migrants residing on a single boulevard in New York City. Here in Phoenix, Arizona, Lorena Gutierrez’s story presents an appealing addition to this model.

In a city full of migrants who have arrived from all over the globe, Lorena’s story is but a single chapter in the broader “crossing the valley” manuscript.