I had the pleasure of having Nube as my host mom during my time here. I lived with her, her husband and two children. She does not work right now, instead caring for her two kids Lisseth, aged 17 and Esteban, aged 12, and her nephew Mathew, aged 2.
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I was 19 when I got married. I met my husband just outside of Sigsig, my hometown. I had my daughter when I was 20, and my son 4 years later. At age 27, I went to live in the United States, two years after my husband.
Like many other people from here, I immigrated illegally. I remember it as an extremely strenuous and difficult journey. My husband went through the desert. It was brutally hot, there was little water, and he said that the path was filled with the skulls of people who didn’t make it. I went another way, by crossing the river at the border, the Rio Grande. Here, we call it the “Rio Bravo” because it is so dangerous, many people drown because the currents are so strong. I remember a mural next to the river, filled with crosses for the dead. For a month and eight days I traveled from Mexico across the border to the United States, mostly walking, sometimes in buses. Finally I arrived to New Haven and where I met up with my husband in a McDonalds after both of our journeys.
The United States is a country of opportunity, and you are lucky to be from a country with so much opportunity. Even though the economy isn’t always so good there, for the most part there’s always some jobs to be found. Here, it’s much more difficult. People say that to get a job here you need a “padrino” (godfather) to give you one, because always the same people stay in the same jobs. You aren’t going to be able to get a job unless you know someone working there with a lot of influence. In the United States it isn’t like that. For that reason so many people immigrate, like me and my husband.
With our money that we earned in the United States, we were able to buy a house, my husband bought his own bus, and now we have a much more stable living situation than before.
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Tenía 19 años cuando me casé. Conocí mi esposo en una fiesta en Jima. Mi hija nació cuando tenía 20, y mi hijo cuatro años después. Cuando tenía 27 años, migré a los Estados Unidos.
Yo y mi esposo fuimos con “coyotes”, traficantes de personas. Crucé la frontera por el río, mi esposo fue por el desierto, en Arizona. Era muy peligroso, mi esposo vio muchos cráneos en el desierto de personas quienes murieron tratando cruzar. En Río Bravo hay una parte en la que hay un muro, allí es la frontera. Tiene muchas cruces; miles de cruces de personas quienes se ahogaron en el río. Se llama Río Bravo porque tiene un caudal muy peligroso. A mi me tomó un mes y 8 días para llegar a Estados Unidos. Llegue a New Haven y allí me encontre con mi esposo.
Para nosotros la situación económica mejor porque no tenemos que pagar renta, compramos una casa y mi esposo compró un bus. Es una economía más estable que la de antes. Pero al mismo tiempo aquí en Sigsig y en Ecuador no hay oportunidades de trabajo, porque siempre en un trabajo está la misma gente. No entra otra gente, siempre se queda la misma, la misma, la misma. Como se dice aqui en el Sigsig, necesita tener padrinos para poder tener un trabajo. Si usted quiere un trabajo, es difícil encontrarlo. Pero si tiene alguien allí, alguien con mucho influencia, si le da. En Estados Unidos, no es así. Por eso muchísima gente migra.
