Special Report: Moving to the Valley : CANOGA PARK : Bolivians’ Dreams Change in New Home

Last July, Enrique Carmona traded one valley for another, moving his family nearly 5,000 miles from a small city in the shadow of the Andes Mountains to a polyglot suburb sprawled at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The 38-year-old Bolivian brought with him a wife and three children, a degree in architecture, and fond dreams--aspirations he now carries in altered form into 1994.

“My point of view has changed, because one leaves one’s country with ideas that are, at times, illusions,” said Carmona, seated in the sparsely furnished Canoga Park home owned by his brother, Luis. Nine people live in the one-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac that clings tenuously to a tidy suburban image.

Carmona came to the United States legally, allowed in because his family includes parents who are naturalized U.S. citizens. With college degrees behind them as well, Enrique and his wife, Ruth, left their home city of Cochabamba for the San Fernando Valley.

Not surprisingly, it was the urban architecture that struck Enrique Carmona most profoundly when he arrived in Los Angeles by jet last July.

“Lamentably, I got here on a cloudy day and I couldn’t see the city like I imagined it was,” he said. “But in the 45 minutes (driving) from the airport, what impressed me was it was all city. In my country, traveling 45 minutes, and the distance that implies, you would leave the city, go into the country and maybe enter another city.”

There were smaller culture shocks as well, like eating the day’s big meal in the evening instead of the afternoon. Enrique Carmona also learned a new form of Spanish--one loaded with Mexican sayings and words he had never heard. He laughed, imitating a Mexican accent and rattling off a favorite Mexican swear word.

Like many Latinos, Enrique Carmona worries that gains garnered from life in San Fernando Valley come with an equal loss of cultural identity. “In this country, they have so many different people and customs, in a certain sense you lose your identity and tradition,” he said.

Life also moves at a quicker pace here, something both Carmonas said they like.

“Things can happen quickly here,” Enrique Carmona said. “It’s dynamic and moves faster. You can make up for lost time here. That’s another difference from my country.”

“Life in Bolivia is more tranquil, more plain,” said Ruth Carmona. “Here in San Fernando (Valley), it’s a nice life. I like it, probably because my personality matches it--running around, doing things here and there. It’s a more intense life, like in all of the United States. There’s a lot, a lot more opportunity.”

For the short term, the Carmonas hope 1994 will be the year in which they become fluent in English, a language their children, aged 7 through 15, have begun to learn in bilingual public school classes.

“We’ve seen, quite sadly, people who’ve lived here for years and years and still live terribly,” said Enrique Carmona. “They don’t know the language. I think this small advantage will bring us ahead more quickly. I hope it will show people from Bolivia are good, hard workers.”