‘When I See This, I See Strength’

Max Amenero had every reason to feel alone, or so it seemed.

Months before, he had bid farewell to his mother and his boyhood home in the northern plains of Peru. He had flown to Mexico and had stolen across the border into El Paso pretending to sleep in the back of a station wagon as an unwitting guard waved the car through. Now he was staring at the ceiling of the Orthopaedic Hospital in Los Angeles, 16 years old, stricken with polio, unable to shift his body into a comfortable position, unable to ask the nurses for help.

“Me duele mucho!” he cried. (It hurts a lot!)

A nurse shouted back: “What are you saying?”

It was 1978. In fact, Amenero was not alone for long. In that tumultuous decade, eight of his nine siblings would enter the United States. At one time or another, all were here illegally. But they and other relatives provided Amenero with an uncompromising social fabric, cradling him as he secured medical care, learned English, graduated from high school, found work and crafted a new life in a new world. Centered in Southeast Los Angeles, the Amenero clan evolved as one -- seven of eight siblings are citizens -- all the while remaining invisible to much of the country, until now.

On Monday, Amenero and his wife of 16 years, Margarita, were two of the hundreds of thousands of people who packed the streets of Los Angeles, demanding amnesty for undocumented immigrants and looking to place their nascent and controversial movement on equal footing with the social justice movements that have shaped modern life in America.

Amenero is 44 now. He has an easy, soothing smile that pushes his gray stubble high onto his cheeks. He loves his wife and dotes on his four children, ages 2 to 23, and coaches their basketball teams and goes to Mass on Sundays and chuckles at his middle-aged paunch even as he eats chicken wings for breakfast. But it has not been an easy life, and it never will be.

He came to the United States for educational and workplace opportunity, but he had other motives too. The back surgery that enabled him to stop wearing a stifling body sleeve was not available in Peru and was paid for largely by a nonprofit organization. Peru also does not require the wheelchair ramps that are used in public and commercial buildings in the United States.

Amenero worked for 13 years as a teacher’s assistant and a bill collector and became a citizen in 1986.

Fourteen years ago, his doctor told him that his body could fail altogether if he continued working; grudgingly, he began receiving permanent disability checks through Social Security.

“All those years, I didn’t understand why they were taking so much money out of my paycheck,” Amenero said. “Now I know. Social Security works.”

His body seems to betray him at every turn. In the two-bedroom house he rents for $900 a month, turning the corner to go from the living room to the bathroom requires him to make a three-point turn in his wheelchair. To get into the car, he grabs the steering wheel and heaves himself into the front seat, pulling his legs in behind him.

On Monday, for a day, anyway, he set all of that aside. His heritage and the caramel hue of his skin were a ticket to uncommon solidarity. At times, he appeared overwhelmed by the numbers and vibrancy of the demonstrators.

At the corner of 9th and Broadway, Margarita backed his wheelchair against a storefront and he watched the protest rumble by, as the sound of drums caromed off the walls of the Orpheum Theatre, as young girls passed by with hand-painted signs that read, “I am marching for my Nana,” and: “If you deport my parents, who will take care of me?”

Amenero fell silent, his brow furrowed in pride and his jaw jutted out. Finally, he volunteered, to no one in particular: “Something is happening here.

“Maybe people who were born in the United States don’t like people who come here like this,” he said. “But when I look at the people who clean the floors and wash the dishes, I see people doing jobs that a lot of people don’t want to do. We have a system that punishes those people, and it is not working.”

Like many of the protesters who have taken to the Los Angeles streets in recent weeks, Amenero has never been politically inclined.

He learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement at school, but never about Cesar Chavez or the grape boycott or the “Brown Power” movement that was once so boisterous. He votes, but only in the “big elections,” and even then he’s often the only person from his quiet cul-de-sac who makes it down to the precinct.

But now, Amenero has been swept up in what he believes is a massive political awakening.

There is plenty of room for disagreement among the new activists. Amenero is more moderate than many of the others; he believes that flags from other countries have no place at a protest in the United States and that “The Star-Spangled Banner” should be sung only in English. He decided after some debate that he would not allow his children to skip school Monday to attend the protest in downtown L.A.

But regardless of their differences, the protesters are acutely aware that their vote could one day determine the course of political power in the West.

And that, Amenero said, means that Monday’s protests are only the beginning.

“When I see this, I see strength,” he said. “I see power.”

Amenero and his wife began the day Monday at a smaller protest in the cities of Maywood and Bell, close to their Cudahy home.

Working himself into a pocket of space toward the front of the crowd, he was handed three small U.S. flags, which he waved periodically. (He also noted that each carried a small sticker reading, “Made in China,” but that was an issue for another day.)

He rapped his knuckles against the spokes of his wheelchair, knocking out the rhythm of what has become a familiar chant: “El Pueblo! Unido! Jamas sera vencido!” (The people united will never be defeated.)

Amenero drove downtown at noon but by midafternoon was heading home. It had been an exciting day, but life needed tending to.

His frail and elderly mother, now a U.S. citizen as well, was waiting for Margarita to bring by some food. Then the children had to be collected from school.

By the time Amenero pulled his minivan into the driveway -- a Chrysler with 136,000 miles under its belt and a Colombian salsa album in the stereo -- the sun was low in the sky over the pillbox houses in Cudahy, reflecting off the shuttered tortillerias and florerias that line the boulevards.

Amenero, his wife and his three youngest children sat down to dinner; it was a Peruvian dish of arroz con pollo, rice and chicken, and platanos fritos, fried bananas.

They talked about the kids’ homework and they prayed, in Spanish, not about the weighty issues of the day but for his mother’s health and the unity of family.