Following a Dream : Ex-Mexican Laborer Earns Diploma on Way to Good Life in U.S.

Jose Antonio Martinez remembers clearly that it was a Thursday--a payday at the Mexican factory where for seven years he labored alongside his uncle--when despair jarred something inside him.

The 15-year-old, worn out by factory life and so poor he had never owned new clothing, feared he might remain an impoverished laborer for the rest of his life. So, on that Thursday four years ago, he picked up his $15 paycheck to head for the border and a country where he knew no one.

“I knew that, no matter what, I was going to make it,” Martinez said. “I didn’t care if I had to wash dishes or sweep floors, I knew I could make it alone.”

Martinez, now 19, graduated Wednesday from Bell Gardens High School and has won the admiration of many who marveled that a boy on his own who could speak almost no English could succeed.

A solid-B student, Martinez has won scholarships from the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, the Bicycle Club, the Assn. for the Advancement of Mexican American Students, the Bell Gardens High School faculty and others.

He captured a gold medal in the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Regional Occupation Program contest, in which he beat out 300,000 other students by demonstrating his skills as a communicator in retail sales. He was also a California gold-medalist in an arc welding demonstration and will represent the state in a national contest in August.

“He is a most remarkable young man,” said Bell Gardens Principal Chuck Norton. “He is a man of extreme integrity who believes in the good in everybody.”

“He has had a tough life and could have easily gone to the negative side, but he went the other way,” said Ricardo Jimenez, the youth’s metal and welding teacher. “He’s got the character that it takes to make it. I don’t think there is anything that can stop him.”

An earnest young man who speaks with a maturity that belies his age, Martinez said he accomplished so much because he believes “the only limits people have are the ones that they place on themselves.”

“I’ve been afraid a lot of times,” he said. “But I think, ‘What is the worst that can happen?’ If I don’t try, I am just a regular person and I have a regular life, but my dreams will probably never come true.”

In Mexico, Martinez started working in the factory when he was about 8 years old. By age 11, he was repairing industrial motors, he said.

When he could, he also attended his classes. But mostly he worked, sometimes spending the night in the factory because he was too drained to make it home.

In his 25-year-old uncle, Martinez saw his own future--working long hours for little pay, with a hungry wife and children to support.

“My uncle is going to be working all his life and then he is going to die. What will he have done in his life. He will have worked as a slave,” Martinez said. “I said to myself, ‘If I stay in Mexico, I will be nothing more than a slave.’ I wanted more than that.”

Martinez went home to the one-bed room apartment he shared with his mother, two sisters, aunt and uncle, and told his mother he was going to the United States. “She did not believe me.”

He left the next day.

First, he traveled to Idaho to pick beets, potatoes, corn and onions. When he saved enough money, he came to California and enrolled at Montebello High School. He was almost 16, working two jobs, and spending his nights in his Dodge Colt or at friends’ homes. There was no place for him to study or sleep without interruption, and he was exhausted.

Martinez dropped out and went to Miami to seek help from a distant relative he had never met. When he arrived he found the relative had moved to Guatemala. In desperation, Martinez approached a restaurant owner.

“I told him, ‘I haven’t eaten for two days. If you give me food, I will wash dishes. I will clean the restaurant. I will sweep.’ ”

The owner hired him, and after several months of work, Martinez returned to California, where he became a legal U.S. resident through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and enrolled at Bell Gardens High School. He found a full-time job at a Montebello office supply store, where he won the employee-of-the-month award three times in a row.

“I’m super proud of him,” said co-worker and friend Victor Mercado. “He finds a way to get around his problems. I’m not half as good as him.”

Now, Martinez plans to study sociology at Cal State Los Angeles. Later, he wants his own business, because he said that is the only way to become a rich man. Eventually, he would like to teach.

Most important, he said, he will work toward the day when he can return to his mother and say, “ ‘Mom, here is your house. Now we are going to enjoy what life did not give us.”