COMMUNITY COMMENT : Inching Up Toward the Middle Class

When GLORIA MEJIA left the Nicaraguan capital’s poor San Cristobal neighborhood for the United States eight years ago, she had a college degree in accounting but little else. “I came with my dreams,” she remembers. “I didn’t come thinking of becoming a janitor.” But that’s the job she took in 1987. She started at minimum wage but, with a recent raise, now makes $6.80 an hour, working from 5:30 p.m. until 2 a.m. Her husband, Jose Suarez, is also a janitor and makes similar wages. They send part of their wages back to Nicaragua, where Mejia’s 80-year-old mother cares for the couple’s two teen-age children. Mejia spoke at her union headquarters with KEVIN BAXTER, who also translated the interview from Spanish.

My major dream is to be an accountant here. I can’t go back and do that in Nicaragua because the job wouldn’t pay enough to even buy milk for my children. It’s better to work as a janitor here than as an accountant there. But (here) you need a sponsor, someone to help you, someone to show you around, help you get a job. It’s hard to find someone when you have to work all the time.

I was very happy when I got the first check (with the new salary). I didn’t feel superior, because it was the fruit of my labor. If we, day by day, work eight hours, we’ve earned this money. Every two weeks, this check says what your work is worth.

We don’t live well. But the extra $2 an hour allows us to feel a little more tranquilo, less troubled. People can’t live on $4.25 an hour. It’s impossible.

There were days when we had to go to work without having eaten because we had no food. There were days when we had to walk to work because we didn’t have money for the bus. I had to be at work at 6 p.m., so I had to leave at 3:30 or 4. I didn’t have any clothes. The same clothes I wore to work I had to use as my Sunday best. Now I can change this blouse. I can save a little.

But we have to be good administrators to distribute the little money we make. I want a standard of living that is, as you say, normal. I don’t want abundance, but I would like what I need to live decently. For entertainment, we just watch TV. I haven’t been to Disneyland. I don’t know what Dodger Stadium is like.

One of my goals is to learn English. So I sleep three or four hours and then wake up early every morning to go to school. When I feel that I can speak in English with everyone, I want to tell them what I think, what I feel, in their language. I’d like to bring my children here, so they can learn English and go to school in the United States.

I still feel like I’m poor. But I’m going to have a house, I’m going to have a car that’s not too old. A 1974 pickup is what we have now, but it’s not running and we can’t use it (for our second job delivering newspapers) until we get it fixed. And if I can’t be what I was in my country, I’m still going to live and work.