Learning English Was 1st Step to Harvard for ‘Good Citizen’

Like thousands of other Mexicans, Artemisa and Federico Velarde brought their three children across the border to the United States to build them a better life, to give them a more promising future.

Illegal aliens with little formal education between them, the Velardes set Alma, Isabel and their youngest, Carlos, on the trail that generations of immigrants have followed in hope of success.

They enrolled them in public school.

“We came over here because we wanted them to learn English,” Artemisa said, “so that by being bilingual they’d have twice as much opportunity to get jobs, to excel in the future.”

Both Alma and Isabel completed high school. But Carlos excelled. Before he could speak English, he began a sparkling scholastic career by outpacing his third-grade peers in mathematics. Last month he ended it by becoming the first student in the 11-year history of South San Diego’s Southwest High School to be accepted at Harvard University.

Along the way, Carlos was inducted into the county’s student Hall of Fame for his football and academic prowess, was elected attorney general of Southwest High’s student government, and became, in the words of his guidance counselor, “the kind of kid you hope your son will grow up to be.”

“All the mothers dream that their children will be good children, good students and good citizens,” Artemisa said in Spanish that Carlos translated. “By being accepted to Harvard, it means that (Carlos) is a good citizen and a good student. As a mother, I did not fail. I succeeded.”

School officials asked no questions when Artemisa listed a Logan Avenue address as Carlos’ home in September, 1976, the year he started third grade at San Diego’s Logan elementary school. Carlos was not legally entitled to live in this country, but the address was true enough. It was his father’s rented warehouse, where the family lived on the floor behind the cooler that held the fruit and vegetables he sold.

The Velardes cooked on a portable electric stove and bathed in large industrial sinks in the warehouse. “My mom used to make us beds on the floor with blankets and cushions and that’s the way we slept,” Carlos remembered.

Life in the warehouse was far different from the home they had owned in Tijuana, but Artemisa wanted to be here with her husband, who was starting out in business for himself. Within eight months, the family moved to an apartment on Kearny Avenue. Today, they live in their own home in San Ysidro.

Carlos recalls his quick transfer from elementary school English-as-a-second-language classes into “mainstream” classes. In an autobiography written for a scholarship application, he called that the key to his success in American schools.

“It was very difficult to adjust to the U.S. way of life,” Carlos wrote, “since I could not communicate with the other students, I realized that the only possible way to survive this change of culture was to learn English. With hard work and great determination, I progressed in the ESL curriculum and in one year was placed in a mainstream English program.”

“My parents were born in Mexico and did not complete grammar school,” the autobiography continued. “Both had to work in minimum wage, manual labor jobs to support their large families. I looked upon this and decided to pursue higher education and to take advantage of the opportunities afforded me so that I would not have to suffer my parents’ fate.”

His achievements in the Sweetwater Union High School District should guarantee that. Carlos will graduate with a 3.79 GPA, ranked seventh in a class of 361. He scored 1080 of a possible 1600 on the nationwide college entrance exam, the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In football, the 225-pound Carlos starred at offensive center and defensive tackle. In his senior year, he was elected attorney general of the student government.

“I think Carlos takes a great deal of pride in himself,” said Ann Stevens, his guidance counselor. “And as a result of that pride, he does the very best he can, no matter what. I’ve seen him play football in pain . . . because that was his responsibility and he had to be out there.”

Carlos and his teachers attribute his drive to his parents.

“A lot of our kids come across the border, and they want to get as good an education as possible,” said one school official. “But at the same time, their role model isn’t that great.”

“I’ve done what I’ve done because of them,” Carlos said. “And if I came from a different style, from a different home life, I might not have accomplished as much.”

Self-improvement runs in the Velarde family. Carlos’ father, Federico, crossed the border with a passport in 1958 and stayed on to work illegally, journeying north to pick tomatoes and fruit for $1.25 an hour on farms near San Jose and Merced.

Later, he obtained a legal work permit and took jobs in a car-wash and gas station before joining large produce companies. For most of the next two decades, he worked as a packer, foreman and delivery truck driver in San Diego, while raising his family in Tijuana.

In 1976, with $100 cash, a rented warehouse on Logan Avenue and a produce refrigerator, Velarde went into business for himself. This year, family-operated F.V. Produce will net Velarde about $100,000 in profits--an income that makes Carlos ineligible for need-based scholarships. Carlos’ Harvard education will cost his father about $21,000 a year.

“I love this nation, because it’s one of the few countries in the world that gives an individual an opportunity to reach his maximum potential,” Federico said in Spanish.”It’s the only place that greets you with open arms and then allows you to be free and be honest and do what’s right.”

To Carlos, success meant grasping the opportunities his father and the schools held out to him. He said he never believed that “only the white kids, only the rich kids, can go to college. That’s not true. Anybody can go to college, if they’re willing.”

“I feel bad, because a lot of the Mexican kids are a bit ignorant,” he said. “They’re not taking advantage of the opportunities to learn. They’re there and they don’t want to go for it.”

The family plan calls for Carlos to earn a law degree, then come back to the barrio and take over the family business. Carlos said he has agreed to do that but plans to use the business as a springboard to run for local office someday.

“I feel that Hispanics are not equally represented, as they should be,” he said. “And it’s nobody’s fault but the Hispanics, that they’re not willing to go out there and run. . . . I feel that I’ll be able to go out there and run and fill those shoes that are empty now.”