The Payoff: Successful Business, United Family
Irma Murrietta has spent most of her life trying to keep her family together while struggling to overcome the hardships that tear many immigrant families apart.
As the oldest of 11 children, Murrietta grew up sharing the responsibility of caring for her six brothers and four sisters during her childhood in Mexico. As a young woman, she worked long hours to keep her family out of poverty, in Mexico and the United States.
Murrietta says she has succeeded in both of her ambitions. Most of her brothers and sisters live nearby in Orange County and her 19-year-old business has prospered. She owns and operates El Toro Bravo Tortilleria with husband, Cecil. The tortilla factory and takeout restaurant is tucked away in the corner of a small Costa Mesa shopping center on 19th Street where her brothers and sisters own three other businesses.
“We worked day and night, every day, when we first opened,” said the 59-year-old Tustin resident. “I was worried because my husband quit his job with the post office. We used his retirement money to start the business and we did not know if we were going to make it or not.”
After 18 years with the U.S. Postal Service, her husband invested all of his retirement money in the new business, about $20,000. The Murriettas risked everything they had, knowing that if the business failed, they would not get a second chance.
“It was very hard. Our first day that we opened the store, we made about $60. We were down to nothing, just worrying if we were going to get sick. We were worried, but you just have to keep going.”
They now sell about 36,000 tortillas a day to individual customers and local restaurants. It took about three years for the business to prosper, and she said there are still times when business sags.
“It’s a little slow right now because the [Orange County] Fair takes our business away. But we only have to put up with it for a short time each year. We survive.”
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Her brothers and sisters own a market, a restaurant and a record store at the shopping center, which has become a kind of home away from home for local Mexican immigrants. Many left family members behind when they came to the United States, Murrietta said.
“They can find all the food they ate in Mexico here and at the market. They’re very happy living here, but they’re very sad because they think they might never go back to Mexico and see their families. It would be hard for them to go back because life here is so much better. They can make a living here.”
Murrietta says her customers are increasingly worried about tougher immigration rules and enforcement policies, even those Latino customers who were born in the United States.
“A lot of people feel like they are being discriminated against more, in schools or restaurants or other public places. Some people are afraid that the people who come here from Mexico are taking good jobs and food away from them. But they are doing the worst jobs and they work for the minimum wage.
“It has something to do with the economy. When there was a lot of money in the country, nobody would care because they were all making money. But now, when a lot of businesses have closed and people are having a harder time, some people feel like they have to blame somebody.”
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Murrietta’s grandparents were born in Mexico and her mother was born in Arizona, but the Depression kept her from being born in the United States. Her mother’s family moved back to Mexico in 1929 at the urging of the U.S. government.
“At that time, this government would pay the passage for anyone who would go back to their homeland, because of the Depression. There was more opportunity for them in Mexico.”
When Murrietta was 18, her mother returned to the United States so that her children could become American citizens, moving to Santa Ana. Most of the family made the trip together, except for Murrietta’s father, who was unwilling to adapt to life in a new country.
Murrietta says the United States has become a promise fulfilled, the same promise that continues to attract so many others from Mexico, where she says hope is in short supply. Even with the defeat earlier this month of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has ruled Mexico since 1929, Murrietta is not optimistic about the country’s future.
She reserves her greatest optimism for the future of her three young grandchildren. She believes they will find easier acceptance into the fabric of American society than did those of her own generation.
“They have many choices, where we didn’t,” Murrietta said.
“Sometimes I worry that if things get harder, this society may make it tougher for them to get ahead. But the way they are being educated and the way they’re being prepared, they will overcome all that. I am sure of it.”
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Profile:
Irma Murrietta
Age: 59
Hometown: Fresnillo, Mexico
Residence: Tustin
Family: Husband, Cecil; one grown son; three grandchildren
Education: Graduated from Palmore Catholic High School (Chihuahua, Mexico)
Background: Eldest of 11 children, cared for and helped support her brothers and sisters while they were growing up in Mexico and U.S.; left Mexico with her family at age 18 and moved to Santa Ana, becoming a U.S. citizen; packed tortillas for shipping at La Grande Tortilleria in Santa Ana for two years; cook’s assistant at Woolworth’s for two years; began El Toro Bravo Tortilleria in Costa Mesa with her husband in 1978
On survival: “It’s so much easier to make money here than in Mexico right now. People have to make a living and they will do anything for their children, for their families. They have to survive and they will keep coming here, no matter how hard it gets.”
Source: Irma Murrietta; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times
