United States – Mexico – El Salvador – United States
Luis was at the airport waiting to see his mom for the first time since he was a baby. He was walking and he looked up towards where his mom was (there was like a box where people could stand and look down). They both knew how they both looked like because his mom would send them pictures and videos all the time. That was a big thing for their family. Luis’s mom was already crying, but when their eyes met, she lost it.
The first thing Luis thought was “what is my sister doing here”; his mom and his sister looked a lot alike back then. He walked all the way out and then she came. She just hugged him, and she cried even more. Luis was emotionless. He didn’t know what was happening, he was really confused. Everything around him was new and strange. He saw people and things that he had never seen before in his life. He grew up in a small valley, seeing the same people every day. All of this was a shocked to the senses. Even his mom hugging him was strange, he didn’t know what to do because he didn’t know what to feel.
Luis Marquez was born in Houston, Texas. Less than a year after being born, his mom sent him to live with his grandmother, his father’s mother, in Torreon, Mexico. Luis lived there for a while, and then he lived in Canton El Rosario, El Salvador for a few months with his grandparents, his mother’s parents. Then he went back with his mom in Houston, and at the age of three Luis and his mom moved to Los Angeles. After a few months in LA, Luis’s mom sent him back to El Salvador to live with his grandparents for a few years.
Luis’s mom was in the United States by herself. She was a single mom with no family nor someone around that could help her. That is mainly the reason why she sent him to El Salvador to live with his grandparents. When she had a job and a place to live for her and Luis, she decided it was time for Luis to come back to her and live together in LA. He was, in fact, born in the United States, so why not use that opportunity to have a “better life”.
Some day in March in 2000, Luis, his grandma, his great-uncle, his uncle, his siblings and his cousins drove to the airport that was more than three hours away from where they use to live, “Canton El Rosario”. All together in a little Toyota pick-up truck. The adults in the front and the kids in the back playing. It was the first time for Luis in an airport; besides when he was a baby. It was the first time ever that he had pizza. He still remembers the smell of pizza and dough and tomato sauce. When they were inside the airport, on like a rooftop, they saw airplanes taking off so close to them. The kids were so excited; that was something that they would only see in movies.
When Luis’s family and he were all together inside the airport, his grandma came up to him and said:.
“Vas a ir a los Estados Unidos y vas a estudiar (You are going to the United States and you are going to study)”, she said.
Luis just nod. He did not really understand what was really going on.
One of the flight attendants gave Luis a little pouch and a pin with the name of the airplane, Taca. Right before entering to the airplane, his grandma got on her knee, put his passport and boarding pass in the pouch, and told him:
“No lo vayas a perder. Los vas a enseñar cuando subas (Do not loss them. You are going to show them when you get on)”, she said in a very intense way.
“Esta bien (okay)”, Luis said.
As a child he did not really understand what it meant to leave his home and go to a completely different country that he did not knew anything about. “I remember being kind of confuse, but also intrigued by the idea of something that I didn’t know”, Luis said. He was also a little bit upset because his brother and his cousins would bother him a lot. They would call him “gringo” and say things like you’re going back to where you’re from. “I almost felt like an alien, going back to a different place, to an unknown world”, Luis said.
Luis lived in a very rural and poor country. Sometimes here in the United States we look at that and we do not really understand, and we feel bad for kids that live in places like that. “When you are a child, in the mountains, in the wilderness, there is just so much freedom and joy, and that is something that kids here in the United States would never experience,” Luis said.
Luis has amazing memories of growing up in El Salvador, things that he still thinks about till this day. “I remember the feeling of being just free, running down the street barefoot, no shoes on, where the street was full of rocks and just dirt” Luis said. When you grew up in a place where you are able to be free, where you are able to go outside and climb trees and puck up rocks and walk down to the river, where there are some different plants and trees and hills, there is so much entertainment for a child.
While living in El Salvador, Luis had to work. His abuela (grandma) used to say, “si no trabajas, no comes (if you don’t work, you don’t eat)." When Luis was 5 years old, his uncle, his cousins and him would go to the “milpa” (cornfield). A milpa is very interesting system for growing corn. They are usually on the side of hills; they are re not on plain ground like here in the United States. You spend weeks cutting down the trees that are there in your land. You have a “machete” (a large heavy knife) in your hand and you have to hold yourself up while you cut everything. Then you have to light it on fire, and after that you start growing. Luis used to that when he was 5/6 years old with his little machete cutting little sticks, thinking that he was helping.
When Luis’s mom decided that it was time for Luis to come back, he was seven years old. He came to the United States only knowing Spanish; he did not speak a word of English. He felt really out of place, very lonely at times, and he felt like people did not like him. He could not relate to people because he could not communicate with anyone. It was tough being in a new environment with so many strange people around him, feeling like an alien and feeling like he did not belong there. It was very hard for him to adjust to this country, but he was able to find the way to have a life here.
“Living in poverty and living in a rural place it really makes you strong, it really builds character. Like I said, like my grandma used to say, si no trabajas, no comes (if you don’t work, you don’t eat). So, a lot of times you don’t want to do things, but you have to suck it up and do it anyways. Oh, look there is snake in the kitchen, somebody has to take that snake out of there. It’s kind of a silly example but you have no choice sometimes, especially when you live in places like that.”
Luis had to start over when he was 7 years old. The life he knew in El Salvador was completely different from the life he had to learn to live here in the United States. It was hard mostly because he had to learn to behave differently, to speak a new language and to live in a different way. Luis had to do all those things to be able to “survive” in this country. And despite all that, all the unknown, he would not take the chance to have a different life. Luis struggled, his mom, his grandma, his family also did, but without all the things that he went through when he was a child and until this day, he would not be as grateful, as humble, as human.
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