In America
Stories of struggle—and improbable success—from the colonias of South Texas.
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Maria Elena Morales
Some residents even leave the country to obtain medical help. “When I need health care, I go to Mexico,” says Maria Elena Morales, who lives in Colonia La Mesa, north of Mercedes. “My mother is diabetic. We take her to Mexico every month. It costs $150. It’s a ten- to ï¬fteen-minute drive. I take my daughters there, even though they get Medicaid. Doctors here won’t prescribe everything they need.”
Guadalupe Regional Middle School
Finding ways to keep kids in school is another local challenge. Cathy Thomas is the principal at Guadalupe Regional Middle School, in Brownsville: “The struggles these kids go through are personal ones. They worry a lot. They worry about the fact that their parents have not been able to pay rent for three months and the landlady will kick them out. We have a girl whose father entered the country illegally, and he’s now in prison. The mother doesn’t drive, and one of her children is ill. This girl is worried all the time.”
Shrine at St. Joseph the Worker Church
For many kids, the military is seen as the best way to get ahead. “I got my ROTC diploma,” says Luis Quintanilla, an eighteen-year-old high school senior from Colonia East Indian Hills, in Mercedes. “But I’m not sure about joining. Recruiters tell me that if I join, they will help me with my citizenship. The Marines have called me two times.” (In fact, the military cannot assist with immigration status for its recruits.) Marist Father Mike Seifert, of the San Felipe de Jesus Catholic Church, in Cameron Park, is tired of seeing so many recruiters in the schools: “Every day the students see them at the high school. They call every kid once a week. Recruit and recruit and recruit. And after they’re in the Army, you see them stripped of their engagement, the spark of life. They trade that spark for sitting up straight.” There are now roughly 41,000 legal aliens in the U.S. military. “We went to a high school the other day,” says Sister Sanchez, “and there were about one hundred names on the wall—our parishioners in the armed forces. Every church has an altar with the pictures and names. The Rio Grande Valley has the highest percentage of soldiers who have been killed. About ten percent of the soldiers who have gone to war have come back in body bags.”
Ramona Gonzalez and Gabriel Nava
In 1968 Ramona Gonzalez, here with her grandson, moved into a house so small that her eight children had to sleep on the floor. For years they put all the extra money that the family earned as migrant farm workers aside to build a home in San Juan. The work was always hard; sometimes a five-gallon bucket of tomatoes would yield only 20 cents. But after twelve years of unflagging devotion to their plan, Ramona and her husband, Atanasio, have a ï¬ne home. They have also seen five of their children graduate from college.
Maria Guadalupe Sanchez
Maria Guadalupe Sanchez, of Cameron Park, is a data collector for the University of Texas at Brownsville. She grew up in Matamoros and then moved with her husband in the eighties to live in a trailer in Texas and work as a migrant worker. “There was no light,” she says. “A neighbor would run an electrical cord past one trailer through to the other. One house gave water to fifteen people.” She and her husband, Sergio, finally moved into a new home in 1998. Sergio works for Anfels, an oil rig builder, and one of their daughters dreams of going to medical school.
Blandina and David Ibarra
Not all the stories I encountered in the colonias had a happy ending. Blandina and David Ibarra and their four children live in Cameron Park in a dilapidated trailer that offers almost no protection from the elements. Since David lost his construction job, they’ve been unable to build anything new, and the children share a tiny room that doubles as a space for storage. “My children confront me, questioning, ‘Why did we come here?’” says Blandina.
Father Mike Seifert
There are few places in Texas where residents are so united by a common struggle. Father Seifert says this is one of the aspects that make the colonias special: “What is in the colonias that’s of value to the rest of our American community? The sense of community continues to be of value. But it’s not a gated community. Here you are a part of something bigger than yourself. You’re not anonymous. There’s a sense of purpose about things.” He tells me about the tragedy that befell the Alvears, a family of seven who lived in a ramshackle trailer without wiring in Cameron Park: “The kids were sleeping on the floor because it was hot as blazes. They had an extension cord under the rug, and it caught fire. The mother and father each pulled a daughter out of the smoke-filled trailer, but when they tried to rescue their small son, Emmanuel, who could not reach the latch on the door that closed behind them, the propane tank exploded. The mother and one girl were horribly burned. Emmanuel was killed.” Today the Alvears live in an attractive brick home that stands on the same site. It was the neighbors who got together and provided the materials. On the right wing is a small shrine to Emmanuel.
Eusebio Alvear
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Argelia and Juan Diego Lopez
Argelia Lopez homesteads with her family in El Flaco, a newer colonia near Mission. Her trailer is one of many set back from the road into a flat landscape of hastily built homes. One of her sons attends South Texas Community College; another is graduating from high school. “The first thing I want is for the kids to get a good job. Construction is not steady. My son says, ‘One day, I’ll build you a big house.’ I say, ‘Yes, but that’s your dream.’ They say they won’t get married until I’m taken care of. They know how hard we struggled.” She points to the trailer next door. “Everybody helps here. A neighbor’s trailer burned down two weeks ago. The neighbors all got together, sold plates of food at the church, and raised money to help her out.”
Teresa and Inocente Barrera
Humberto Barrera
Antonio Barrera
For Teresa and Inocente Barrera, the American dream is close to a reality. They moved to Colonia El Jay in 1985 and raised a family while riding out the colonias’ roughest times. “Originally, there was no water, no phones, no street,” says Teresa. “Just dirt. When it rained, the cars would get stuck. There was one water faucet for the whole colonia. So I and other housewives from El Jay would go together to the county commissioners. ‘If you pave the roads, then the school buses will come,’ we said. They said, ‘You’ll have to wait.’ We kept having the meetings and seeing the commissioners. We would call, write letters. We got potable water in 1987, and in 1994 they ï¬nally fixed the streets.” The Barreras have been married for 46 years, and they have eight children. Two of them are teachers and one owns a construction business. Their four sons, Silvestre, Ramiro, Fidencio, and Antonio, have their own houses (shown below) within sight of their mother and father’s. Antonio, a tractor salesman, followed his parents’ example. “It took me five years to build the house,” he says. “A lot of people, when they get the tax refund, they buy cars or take vacations. We put it into the house and looked for sales on materials. When we first came here with Dad, it was still hard living here. This life teaches you discipline. It wasn’t a difficult life, because we appreciate what we have. It helps to have people who don’t ask for things but work for what they have. A family makes a big difference. You have to think about your family.”
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