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Andres
Muro
Project
Director
The
project was conducted in El Paso a community with a
large number of economically and academically disadvantaged
immigrants. The contributors to this collection are
Spanish GED students from migrant families. The purpose
of putting together this collection was to enhance the
educational experience of the students, and the community’s
knowledge of the migrant experience. This effort has
multiple dimensions, namely, pedagogical, historical,
social, and cultural.
Pedagogically,
we felt that students would become better writers if they
wrote about their own experiences. Also, we felt that
students would relate better to other people’s histories
if they first explored their own. So, in this project,
students not only became historians and writers, but also
developed skills necessary to pass the GED. From the cultural
and social perspective we felt that it was important to
give students a voice and for us, readers, to learn from
that voice. While we all know about the existence of migrants,
we know very little about their lives. We occasionally
hear about them when the media, or politicians portray
them, often in a negative light. This is sad, considering
how much migrants impact our lives, especially in El Paso.
Most
Americans grow up learning that our ancestors came from
Europe in the Mayflower and landed in Plymouth Rock. Yet,
most El Pasoans have a very different history which is
being written as we speak, by people coming, not from
Europe, but from Mexico, in search of a better life. And,
yet, we go about our lives unconscious of the fact that
people have risked their lives, many dying in the process,
and have struggled and continue to do so, to come and
live here, just like the pilgrims did. Little do we know
that the local economy and that of the US, depends on
the labor of migrants. We may not realize that most of
the food that we put in our mouths was likely planted,
grown, harvested, picked, processed, slaughtered or packed
by migrants.
In
addition to agricultural work, migrants care for our yards,
raise our children, repair our cars, build our houses,
cook and clean for us, and until recently, they made much
of our clothes. And, no, they don’t take our jobs
away. There is no police force stopping us, American citizens,
from going to the “pizca” of chile, orange,
cotton, grapes, apples and cherries. Nobody stops us from
working as maids, baby sitters and gardeners. Nor do we
have to hide from “la migra” on the way to
landscape someone’s yard, babysit a child, or clean
someone’s toilette. Also, “la migra’
doesn’t show up to deport us on pay day. I have
yet to hear from an American citizen who went to work
in the fields and was told: “No! You can’t
work here. You aren’t a Mexican”.
So,
through this collection, we may learn a little about
the migrant experience, directly from the migrants.
Hopefully, after learning about them, we may be able
to say: “Thank you for risking your lives to come
here to grow our food, raise our children, build our
homes and care for them. Thank you for landscaping our
yards and sewing our clothes. Thank you and welcome.
Is there anything that we can do for you?”
Andres Muro |
