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Armando Vazquez.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Once my indio mother and father agreed and decided over painstakingly difficult years of deliberation filled with near starvation, chronic exploitation by the caciques and the local government officials of the village, and frequent near death episodes plaguing the large nuclear family, to head to EL Norte there was no turning back. The year was 1942 and news was slowly getting back to the village of Ahualulco, Jalisco that in California the gringos where hiring every Mexican they could find to work in the agricultural fields. My father was about 26 years old, my mother around 22 years of age. My parents already had a large family of four children, two grandmothers (my grandfathers were killed), a collection of uncles, aunts and other relatives that lived and worked collectively for the sole purpose of daily survival. The daily living arrangement was unsustainable if they we to survive. My parents knew that soon starvation or a deadly illness would devastate the family. Sure enough Miguel one of my older brother came down with some type of deadly and contagious disease that killed many inhabitants of the village. Without money to pay for proper medical care in Guadalajara all my parents could do was pray and wait. The near death of my brother is when my father decided to become the village migrant trailblazer and head north.
Pedro and Santos knew that they would be separated for longs periods of time, years perhaps, maybe forever. They had no choice. Once they made the decision to migrate to El Norte it became a single minded mission, there was no room for doubt, and failure was never an option. That is what I remember most of my parents; their total commitment and resolute life of monastic planning and action taken daily to assure that all of the family would one day get to El Norte. The Vazquez family, all of us, would finally legally immigrate to the United States in 1958.
There were periods that my father was gone for years at time, but each time he returned we all know with absolute certainty that we were getting that much closer to reunification of the entire family. It was during these brief visits by my father that my mother became pregnant and four other siblings were conceived. I was the eighth and last child to be born in Mexico, the year was 1950.
We were miracles children procreated and conceived by miracle parents. Through their sacred union our lessor god assured my parents that the family would survive, but not without monstrous hardship and pain. Here I think is where so much of the current narrative of so called illegal immigration is tragically distorted, politically revised, ignorantly overlooked or completely ignored; namely in the omission of the many years of poverty, near starvation, wanton violence, daily desperation that nearly all immigrant(documented and undocumented) endure before they cross into the United States.
It would be approximately 18 years before my father was able to get the necessary employer sponsorship, completion all of the necessary immigration documents and petitions to the United States Immigration authorities and finally obtain legally immigration status for his entire family. During that 18 year period both my grandmothers died, three uncles died, we lost our plot of land that we had farmed for many years, confiscated by the government without explanation. We lost (stolen) our home that had been in the family for generations, the horse and the few goats and chickens we had were stolen or killed by the government or caciques. Schooling was a luxury that we could not afford, all of us, from the youngest to the oldest sibling, had a job to preform if we were to survive. With a few gringo dollars that my mother judiciously utilized from her secretly stashed savings we were no longer facing imminent starvation, but we were powerless and at the mercy of the local authorities and the caciques. Without protection from our absent father life became a living hell for my mother and the family. In grinding oppression and powerless against the forces that threaten to kill or destroy us my incredible mother never wavered. My courageous mother alone handled the constant threat of violence against her and her children, the frequent illness and death in the family, the devastating loneliness and fear that she, most assuredly, held in heart and mind was never, ever revealed to her children.
Pedro and Santos eleven (11) children, like all the worlds migrants, carry in their genes the blood and soul of the timeless, tireless, courageous and incredibly ingenious migrant warrior spirit. A kind of noble highly creative blood that faces impossible adversities and challenges and through single-minded love and a visceral sense of survival that can overcome any obstacle that monstrous men puts in the way. So no matter how high the wall is built, or any other obstacle that Trump and his minions try to put in their way the migrant will find a way to overcome it and reach his/her ordained destination. In the end love, justice and sanctity of life will always defeat hate, injustice and greed. The immigrant bring the essence of the very best of who we are as humans, the sacred sense and real “hechos” miraculous accomplished daily that illuminate for anyone honest enough to see that nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible to anyone us if we are driven by love of family. Just ask Pedro or Santos, for that matter anyone of millions of migrants who today desperately traversing the world trying to find a place where they will be loved and welcomed.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.