mother would run after him and bring him home. 4
At the end of sixth grade, Lucero, who had never liked school, refused to continue his education. As the oldest son, he felt it was his duty to take care of the family, but in Gualaceo the options were limited. At first, he started helping in the kitchen, pounding on the corn mixture his mother prepared to make the pastries the family sold in the open market next to the church. Later, as ateenager, his mother found him a job selling locally made silver jewelry—much admired all over the country—in Quito, the capital, and other towns and cities, but his heart wasn’t in it. What he wanted was to follow his friends to the United States.
At sixteen he tried to leave for the first time. As always, he turned to his mother for help and he asked her to borrow money from her acquaintances to fund his trip, but Doña Rosario, fearing the journey and the separation from her firstborn, didn’t ask anyone for help. She lied and told him no one had wanted to lend money to such a young man supported by a single mother. What were the chances that they would ever get their money back?
At the time, the family lived in a small apartment. The girls slept with their mother in one bed, the boys bedded together in another. They shared a bathroom with three other families. A lightbulb in the courtyard was always on, which bothered Lucero and didn’t let him sleep through the night.
I have to leave this house, Mama, he announced one day, and she understood that she couldn’t hold him back much longer. What am I doing here? he would ask and look around with mournful eyes, as if searching for the friends he knew were already living in the United States and doing well.
The evidence was all around them. Their neighbors, the parents of his friends, were building houses two and three stories high. Young men in the United States were sending torn pages from magazines to their parents and pointing to the features they wanted to see in their new houses. An entertainment room, a formal dining room, a rooftop terrace, multiple bathrooms, marble counters, light-colored tiles on the floors, large television screens. The men sending their dreams home, one paycheck at a time, often slept in stables in eastern Long Island, next to the horses they tended, or crammed into basement apartments in Queens and elsewhere. They lived for the future, and the future began with a safe, elegant, and clean house that would bring all family members together.
Before the massive exodus of Gualaceños, few homes in that town had more than one bathroom, more than one floor, or a bedroom for each child. But once the town’s youth started to go north, Gualaceo changed its character. It doubled in size, and the stark differences between the haves and have-nots became even more pronounced.
Lucero’s family belonged to the have-nots. Sometimes there was not enough food in the house to eat. A paternal uncle would often come to the rescue, and the family would rally until they ran out of money again. Instead of helping his mother by getting a job, Lucero became depressed, getting out of bed at 11:00 a.m. or later and moaning all day about how he was wasting his life and not fulfilling his role as the oldest son.
One day, he got his siblings together for a meeting. “We have to have a better future. Mom, she’s not going to work forever,” he told them. “We have to sacrifice; we have to go over there to reach for the American dream.” 5
His opinion was important to his siblings, who looked up to him and had considered him the man of the family since he had been nine. All of them, including Doña Rosario, hung on his every word. What would Marcelo say? What would he do? How he felt tended to change the atmosphere of their household and to color their moods.
A sister, Catalina, knowing well how desperate her brother was and how afraid her mother remained, counseled their mother to let him go. This time, Doña Rosario
At the end of sixth grade, Lucero, who had never liked school, refused to continue his education. As the oldest son, he felt it was his duty to take care of the family, but in Gualaceo the options were limited. At first, he started helping in the kitchen, pounding on the corn mixture his mother prepared to make the pastries the family sold in the open market next to the church. Later, as ateenager, his mother found him a job selling locally made silver jewelry—much admired all over the country—in Quito, the capital, and other towns and cities, but his heart wasn’t in it. What he wanted was to follow his friends to the United States.
At sixteen he tried to leave for the first time. As always, he turned to his mother for help and he asked her to borrow money from her acquaintances to fund his trip, but Doña Rosario, fearing the journey and the separation from her firstborn, didn’t ask anyone for help. She lied and told him no one had wanted to lend money to such a young man supported by a single mother. What were the chances that they would ever get their money back?
At the time, the family lived in a small apartment. The girls slept with their mother in one bed, the boys bedded together in another. They shared a bathroom with three other families. A lightbulb in the courtyard was always on, which bothered Lucero and didn’t let him sleep through the night.
I have to leave this house, Mama, he announced one day, and she understood that she couldn’t hold him back much longer. What am I doing here? he would ask and look around with mournful eyes, as if searching for the friends he knew were already living in the United States and doing well.
The evidence was all around them. Their neighbors, the parents of his friends, were building houses two and three stories high. Young men in the United States were sending torn pages from magazines to their parents and pointing to the features they wanted to see in their new houses. An entertainment room, a formal dining room, a rooftop terrace, multiple bathrooms, marble counters, light-colored tiles on the floors, large television screens. The men sending their dreams home, one paycheck at a time, often slept in stables in eastern Long Island, next to the horses they tended, or crammed into basement apartments in Queens and elsewhere. They lived for the future, and the future began with a safe, elegant, and clean house that would bring all family members together.
Before the massive exodus of Gualaceños, few homes in that town had more than one bathroom, more than one floor, or a bedroom for each child. But once the town’s youth started to go north, Gualaceo changed its character. It doubled in size, and the stark differences between the haves and have-nots became even more pronounced.
Lucero’s family belonged to the have-nots. Sometimes there was not enough food in the house to eat. A paternal uncle would often come to the rescue, and the family would rally until they ran out of money again. Instead of helping his mother by getting a job, Lucero became depressed, getting out of bed at 11:00 a.m. or later and moaning all day about how he was wasting his life and not fulfilling his role as the oldest son.
One day, he got his siblings together for a meeting. “We have to have a better future. Mom, she’s not going to work forever,” he told them. “We have to sacrifice; we have to go over there to reach for the American dream.” 5
His opinion was important to his siblings, who looked up to him and had considered him the man of the family since he had been nine. All of them, including Doña Rosario, hung on his every word. What would Marcelo say? What would he do? How he felt tended to change the atmosphere of their household and to color their moods.
A sister, Catalina, knowing well how desperate her brother was and how afraid her mother remained, counseled their mother to let him go. This time, Doña Rosario
Similar Books
