Distant Dreams : Family Trades Hardships of Mexican Village for Uncertain Life in U.S.

These were the dreams of Marcella Ramirez Vargez in the early 1980s: Married and the mother of four children, she hoped that her only son, Tonio, who was such a good student, would be able to complete his education and have some sort of career; that if secondary school were not possible for her three daughters, they would at least learn a skill such as haircutting to give them some independence, something to fall back on in hard times.

In general, Marcella said recently, she simply wanted a better life for them. Better than the poverty she and her husband, Rafael, a laborer with no land of his own, had so often endured, whether in their village or in Mexico City, where they tried to make a go of it for a few years.

She had missed out on an education and had made her peace with that. She had skills: haircutting and dressmaking. And those skills had served her well, when her husband was out of work, or was on “ el otro lado ,” the other side (of the border), looking for work and temporarily out of touch.

Marcella was resigned to life in the village. It would be enough to see her children succeed, and maybe, just once in a while, have some small treat or luxury for her home, a bit of whimsy like a china cupboard, one made of polished wood with glass doors. That would be lovely.

But Marcella’s future did not quite work out that way.

At 38, she lives with her family in an apartment on a Bay Area street with no trees, across from a factory that emits industrial noise day and night, “without relief.” No one in the family has a green card. Her husband has a temporary residency card; her son has some sort of document saying his papers are being processed; she and her daughters have no papers at all.

Unable to speak English, afraid of “ la migra ,” (immigration authorities), and uncertain of making her way in an alien culture, Marcella is something of a displaced person. She seems a little stunned and sad, but tries to maintain her sense of humor as she makes enormous adjustments and sorts out the past.

Marcella is a slight, youthful-looking woman, although her face is beginning to line with fatigue and worry. She knows she is a worrier, but she continues to dream, letting herself entertain aspirations, displaying an interest in the outside world, even if she cannot always partake of it personally.

With her husband and son away at work, and her daughters off with a cousin on an errand, she sat in the strange room that is now her home and talked of how she got there.

In Mexico, Tonio was able to complete three years of secondary school in a nearby town after sixth grade. He then enrolled in a business course, but within six months had dropped out. There were problems, the main one being money. Three years ago, at 16, he said goodby to his education and family and took off across the border looking for work. Young, strong, bright and agreeable, he was lucky enough to find construction work in the Bay Area. From time to time his father would join him and pick up temporary factory or restaurant jobs. They would send money to the village when they could.

Marcella and her daughters, Letitia, Teresa and Josie, stayed behind in Villachuato, a village increasingly populated by the elderly and women. Hard times simply got worse, she said, and she listed the results: 100 people from their village now work in a meat processing plant in Nebraska; others left for farm work in Merced and factory work in Santa Ana and Anaheim.

In April of this year, Tonio returned to the village and persuaded his mother and sisters to pack up. He sold his truck, and with that money they made their way to Tijuana where they paid a coyote (smuggler) $250 each to smuggle them over the border.

“It was ugly crossing,” Marcella said of her family’s run from Tijuana to the U.S. side. They ran from one clump of bushes to the next in the cold, foggy night. They were caught and incarcerated until dawn, at which point they were sent back to Mexico. Marcella was ready to return to the village, but Tonio insisted they try again. On the second night they made it.

“I would never do it that way again,” Marcella said of the frightening and undignified experience.

The family apartment here is in a new building, beige stucco inside and out. Although the rooms are small, the place is light and airy. A dining nook separates the kitchen from the living room. Two small bedrooms and a bath are off to the side.

Rafael found the apartment and rented it while Tonio was in Mexico bringing his mother and sisters across the border. They arrived to an empty place, but a nearby Roman Catholic parish gave Marcella and Rafael a bed and they bought a used kitchen set at a San Jose open market.

Money or not, Tonio said, “We can’t sit on the floor.”

The apartment is fully furnished now. At first glance the living arrangements bespeak relative affluence for a family of landless peasants who had lived in a roughly built adobe house with uneven concrete floors and sparse furnishings.

In the living room, three tan plush couches, covered with flowered cotton throws, cluster around a huge wood and glass coffee table, an arrangement of artificial flowers centered on it. A tape deck and stereo system stand against one wall. A television sits on a white and gold French provincial table, a toy tiger looking down from the top. There is a velour rug-sized tapestry of the Last Supper hanging on the dining nook wall; a framed poster of two white kittens with pink bows smiles from the hallway. A few framed photographs and albums are the only mementos of the village.

At night, much of the middle-class affluence disappears. Marcella and Rafael sleep in one bedroom; her brother, his wife and little daughter sleep in the other--for which they contribute $300 a month to the family expenses. Letitia, Teresa and Josie sleep on the couches in the living room, while, a few feet away, Tonio and a cousin move the kitchen table every night to sleep on the floor.

“Tonio aspires to live well,” Marcella said, adding that he has a deal with a friend, she said, and “shares” his credit.

They are up to their necks in expenses and debts. Everything in the apartment was bought on time. One paycheck of Tonio’s a month goes for the rent, a steep $900; the other goes for payments on the car he bought to replace the truck, the furniture, stereo and a video camera, and utilities (the phone runs more than $150 a month--”we have relatives in Nebraska, Mexico, Merced . . . “). Rafael’s paycheck from his job in a restaurant kitchen goes for the family’s food.

There is nothing left, nothing to save. Marcella and her daughters brought a few clothes with them, and cannot afford others. As a result, they have received some used garments from the parish, a fact that embarrasses all of them. Marcella worries about what they would do in an emergency. And, she hates to see the son whom she so clearly adores working so hard, spending everything on them, and unable to either save for his future or have fun. He spends his weekends in front of the television, she said, and occasionally his friends stop by.

Perhaps things will improve in the fall. Teresa and Letitia, who are 17 and 16, and have been out of school since finishing sixth grade, have been promised factory work when the plant, which makes patio and beach equipment, goes on a double shift.

Knowing the tough laws about hiring illegals, knowing how hard it is to get papers, knowing there is not much work to be had anyhow, knowing how costly everything is, how expensive and perilous the border crossing can be, they came anyway. Why?

Not everything is directly attributable to economics. It is true that economic necessity drove the men to come. But life could have continued for Marcella and her daughters in the village, with Rafael occasionally finding work in the village and Tonio making rare visits from the States.

Holding her arms out and lifting her hands up, Marcella explained why she came: “For the love of Tonio.”

She was never happy when he was away from her, she said. She would worry about him, and about all the money he was sending, leaving none for himself. She feared she would gradually lose him, that the family would gradually drift apart. Tonio urged her to come. Now they are all together.

Marcella thinks she should look for work, too, but, she said, “Tonio tell me no, that I should rest now, because I worked so hard when I was young.” Her husband has told her to do whatever she wants.

Certainly, for the time being, life is easier for her in terms of physical work. Housekeeping in the village was hard labor. Water had to be drawn from the communal well. To wash the dishes, Marcella would stand in the tiny courtyard in the entry to her house and fill two basins with cold water, one for soaping, one for rinsing. Toilets and bath facilities were non-existent. Those needs were taken care of haphazardly in the corral behind the house. Laundry was done with the rest of the village women in the pila , a roofed pavilion with a trough of water running through and concrete ledges where they beat and scrubbed the clothes. It was hard work, but it was also a place to exchange gossip, joke and socialize.

Now she feeds quarters into the washer and dryer downstairs. The kitchen and bath have modern everything. Cleaning is easier in the new, well-appointed quarters.

“I’m going to get younger here, and fat,” Marcella said, smiling wryly.

But she does not use the dishwasher.

It is not a matter of learning how. Rather, “I think I should wash the dishes,” she said. “I have so much time.”

Marcella does have time on her hands. For the most part, she is getting to know the four walls of the apartment and not much else of America. She sees no one other than family and relatives, and has her reasons for not befriending others in the building--gossip, drinking, lack of trust. . . . She keeps the house spotless, and, with her daughters, watches the novelas on Spanish-language television. Thus far, she ventures out alone only to the church or grocery.

In the grocery, she said, because of the language problem, she tends to buy familiar foods that she knows. The midday meal she prepared on the day of her interview bore some traces of the new culture she has not yet assimilated. The tortillas were store bought. There was salad and chicken, as there would have been at home, except that this salad included lettuce, a rarity in the village. And, instead of rice, she cooked spaghetti, spooning huge dollops of mayonnaise onto it before serving.

Recently, she did make one excursion. A family friend took her and the girls to lunch at the restaurant where her husband works. A cheerful man, Rafael was amused to see them. Wearing a colorful apron and cap, he was engaged in work that had been more familiar to Marcella in their village days. He was making tortillas.

Later that day, the family gathered together in the small apartment. The last to arrive home was Tonio, covered with dust from the construction site. A sweet young man with the same thoughtful good manners that characterize the whole family, he was tired, hungry and longing for a shower. But he stopped first to greet visitors and talk for a while.

The message on Tonio’s hat was bolder than anything that came out of his mouth. “Just look; Don’t touch,” the embroidered message warned.

He allowed himself to be teased about girlfriends and marriage, but he probably is in accord with his parents: At 19, he is too young to be thinking about marriage.

The family members talked uneasily about their legal status. In part, they wanted their names changed for this article because of their fear of immigration authorities. But there is another reason that seems to carry equal weight: What will people say? Que diren la gente? One way or another word would make its way back to the village, and Marcella is convinced they would be judged harshly or jealously.

Villagers can be tough on each other, and fears of “ que diren la gente “ is a constant preoccupation and rules much behavior. Tellingly, when Marcella spoke of her concerns about the village, she often used the present tense. It is still very much a part of her.

While still in the village, Marcella managed, briefly, to send her two elder daughters, Letitia and Teresa, by bus each day to a cosmetology course in a nearby town. She was criticized for that.

“ ‘Why do you allow that?’ the village women asked me. ‘They should help you wash dishes and clothes. You’re stupid.’ I liked to see them dressed and clean, with their little purses, going off to school. I did not want to send my daughters, like so many of the others do, to pick strawberries and have to see them in the mud and heat with their hands all cut up. I’m accused of spoiling them.”

There is much disagreement in the village, she said, about the wisdom of whole families going to the United States. Some think it will lead to a better life; others warn no good will come of it, that, for example, “your daughters will go bad.”

For this reason the family told no one until the last few days that they were leaving with Tonio. What bothered her most, Marcella said, was leaving her widowed father. He is not well, and, although he has other daughters in the village, she worries and wishes she could take care of him.

And her dreams now?

She smiles a little sadly and shrugs.

All of the family’s goals seem short-range now, and the distant future cannot be planned. They simply speak of hopes for “a better life.”

For Tonio, there is no thought of school. He never mentions it and has no time to study. “But,” Marcella said, “he is picking up English, working with Americans.”

Here for a just a few months, the older girls already seem somewhere between being villagers and American teen-agers. Like their mother, they have yet to wear makeup and do not yet venture out on their own, but they dress in cutoffs and T-shirts saying “San Francisco,” look ready to go, and, in fact, have picked up a few English phrases, one of which is “Let’s go.”

If Marcella is too dispirited just now to have many dreams, she is quick to say her son does.

“He has many plans for his sisters. He wants to show them how to drive, to be independent. He wants to buy a car for one, so they will be able to drive to work.”

Meanwhile, Josie is looking forward to entering the sixth grade in September. A bright, contented child, she does not seem fazed at the prospects of learning English.

Only Rafael ever talks of going back to the village. As in “maybe some day.” The girls are sold on America, Marcella said. And Tonio says simply he will never go back. Perhaps it would be different, if their family had land. But for families without land, Tonio said, the village has nothing to offer.

Marcella and her daughters are taking one positive, decisive step towards building their new life. They are starting English classes at night. Marcella is determined to learn.

What remains of the life that might have been is locked behind a door in the village. With the exception of the television and VCR that Tonio bought for them on time and paid off--items now safe in a relative’s house in the village--the rest of the furnishings and belongings sit in the house. A bedroom set “of pure wood,” Marcella said, is in the new room that money from Tonio enabled them to build. And a rather grand set of dining room furniture fills the tiny, vacated kitchen.

There are photos of these things, taken at the last birthday the house knew, Josie’s 11th. There stands a tiered cake on the new table, and in the background of the pink room, against the wall opposite a small stove, stands a china cabinet of polished wood and glass doors.

Her eyes filling with tears, Marcella murmured “ ooooh, tristeza” (sadness) and said of the china cabinet, “That was bought with the first money Tonio ever sent home.”

She said she worries that the roof will leak and damage her things. But she did not say whether she thought those things would ever be part of her life again.

“My son tells me, don’t worry about them. Just let them go.”

How does she feel about all this change? About her life now?

Her smile catching for a moment, she shrugged gently, and admitted to a little sadness. She can not quite say why. She gamely offers that it is still early. They’ve been here such a short time.

“What can I say? I’m here now.”