“Zacatecas, Mexico, I remember it like it was yesterday,” said my grandmother Elvita Domingo-Ramos, as she began reminiscing and sharing her life background with me over the phone. She was born in April 1949 to a family of six and a father with an illness called alcoholism. “We were considered poor and ignorant. Extreme poverty and inequality haunted us,” she said. Her mother died right before she turned thirteen years old and with only a third grade education level because her father took her out of school and moved the family on to a ranch. Barely able to read at all she had to now grow up and help around the ranch and raise her siblings because her father said that was her place. She told me how she remembered growing up and always thinking that when she had her own family she would give them her all to provide the best she could. She met her husband—she just didnt know it at the time, at the age of fourteen years old. He was sixteen and a hard working kid in town as a tailor. Miguel, my grandfather, had lost his mother around the same time that he met my grandmother. His mother left Mexico and went to America where she was originally from.Their backgrounds brought them together and so did their goals and dream of a better life.
They fell in love quickly and started a family at a very young age. My grandmother laughs as she explains, “Your grandfather had given me the best wedding he could have at the time in the beginning of 1969. He and I were not satisfied with the way our lives were going so far. It was towards the end of the year 1970 now and I had just given birth to our fifth baby. We were both working from sunrise to sunset struggling just to put food on the table for the family. We were living with a corrupt government and no room for advancement. It was not safe for our kids to walk the streets even to and from school. The worst part being you couldn't trust the police. We were trying our best and it wasn't good enough. One morning your grandfather made the decision and he advised me that he would be leaving the next day traveling to the states to settle down and build a home. Your grandfather packed one bag with some clothes, enough money to cross the border and the shoes he was wearing. His mother was a US citizen and lived in Oakland, California which helped your grandfather make a decision on where he will go to start a new life for his family.”
Meanwhile in Mimbres ValParaiso, Zacatecas, my grandmother Elvita was worried about her husband's safety and well being but still had her own daily obstacles to overcome. With no husband around she had to be strong, tending to the household, caring for the children making sure they made it to school and back home, and worked for two years without her husband. While my grandfather fought over obstacles in Oakland with no scholastic education, could not speak English, and was barely able to read and write. He woke up everyday with the determination and motivation for a better future for his family. “There was a lot of racism back in those days not only for the African Americans but for any one with different skin color,” she tells me. My grandfather became a legal resident in the US and found a job as a furniture maker and sewed customized items for people such as couches and clothes. Two years had passed when he finally was able to build a foundation and save enough money and go back to Mimbres Valparaiso, Zacatecas, for my grandmother and their five children.
My grandmother said, “The two year journey was difficult itself,” and in August 1972 my grandfather was back in town to take her and the kids on a journey to California. She recalls the actual migration being the most trying because traveling from their hometown with five children on one bus to Tijuana was not easy. The whole time my grandfather was telling her everything was fine but all she could do was worry about the kids and what would happen if they got caught trying to cross the border. She had many horrific thoughts like what would happen if she got arrested because my grandfather was already a citizen. Or, what would happen to the kids. It was a matter of right timing which felt like a lifetime. I asked my grandmother about where they slept during their journey to California, and she said, “For the time being we had to find a hotel to stay in until our ride arrived a week later so we could cross the border to Baja, California, to Los Angeles then finally, to Oakland. Finally in Oakland I could relax and breathe a sigh of relief once we got to our new home which we shared with my husband's mother. The kids shared one bedroom and the adults got their own bedroom.”
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