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https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/c52c32e14f31285083f38ffb1c51c41f.mp3
696bef109dd4537de14e0d9c8dde7076
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/46981fdfa2994df0f4bc1a55ce807cd0.pdf
465a611e43b1c7556e21b7de1a5dfcb7
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1017
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-03-14
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Cáceres Rodríguez, Andrés Jésus.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Students
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
2003
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Chacao -- Caracas (Miranda) -- Venezuela
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Raleigh -- Wake County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-66.855787 10.4932844), 2003, 1;POINT(-80.7440174 34.9248125), 2014, 2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Montes, Gabriella.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
In this interview, interviewer Gabriella Montes learns about Venezuela’s recent history as experienced by her long-time friend, Andrés Cáceres. He describes the first ten years of his life in his city of origin, Caracas, Venezuela. He explains details about his family relationships, home life and school life as he grew up in the economic turmoil occurring in Venezuela since the 1940s. He shares his experience being a new student, his struggle in school in North Carolina, and how difficult this overall adjustment was. Andrés recounts that despite this struggle in the U.S., as well as Venezuela, he misses his home country, and mentions some of the happier moments he had back home and the friends and experiences he’s made here.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Andrés Jésus Cáceres Rodríguez by Gabriella Montes, 14 March 2023, R-1017, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29364
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Citizenship and immigration; K12 education; Migratory experience; Language and communication; Receiving communities
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Estudiantes
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
En esta entrevista, Andrés nos cuenta acerca de los primeros diez años de su vida en su país natal de Caracas, Venezuela. También nos habla sobre sus relaciones familiares, vida en casa y vida escolar mientras crecía en la crisis económica que ocurre en Venezuela desde la década de 1940. Nos lleva de regreso a su experiencia como nuevo estudiante, su lucha en las escuelas en Carolina del Norte y lo difícil que fue este ajuste general. Andrés relata que a pesar de esta lucha en los Estados Unidos, así como en Venezuela, extraña su país natal y nos habla de algunas de las memorias más felices que tuvo en Venezuela, y también de los amigos y experiencias que ha creído aquí.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Andrés Jésus Cáceres Rodríguez por Gabriella Montes, 14 March 2023, R-1017, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
ciudadanía e imigración; comunidades receptoras; educación básica y media; experiencia migratoria; lenguaje e comunicación
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Gabriella: Ok, My name is Gabriella Montes. I am here with…
Andrés: Andrés.
Gabriella: And we are at my house. The time is 8:57 p.m., and today is March 14th 2023, and today we will be discussing Andrés’ migration journey from Venezuela to North Carolina, and yeah, are you consenting to this interview, Andrés?
Andrés: Yes [pause] I consent.
G: All right, so, if you want to just like start off and just say like your name, age, occupations, school, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:00:55] A: So my name is Andrés Jésus Cáceres Rodriguéz, I’m twenty years old, I turned twenty not too long ago on March 5th, I'm currently going to school at NC State, trying to get my degree in chemical engineering, my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, and I've previously worked at a cabinet manufacturing company as a cabinet painter, so that was really good. That was my first real job, and right now I'm looking into getting an internship at Sherwin-Williams, engineering internship, so that's cool.
G: Awesome, okay, and can you tell just like a little bit more about yourself, and just like, briefly describe your connection to like, your migration journey and your heritage?
[00:02:30] A: so, I was born in a smaller subdivision in Caracas, so I was born in Chacao, which is – a lot of people say its Caracas, but it's like, technically not – it’s like two minutes away from the main city, so it's technically not Caracas, but it's so close that people still call it that. I was born in a small clinic, and I lived in my grandparents’ house for 9 years until I moved to – we moved to our own apartment, but, I was basically raised mainly by my grandparents ‘cause, my parents were always working. They were always out and doing their own thing, and my grandparents were always at home.
G: And, like, do you want to talk a little more about your relationship with your grandparents, was it like your mom's parents or your dad's parents?
A: It was my mom’s parents, so my dad's parents – they lived a little bit farther away and we got to see them like for family reunions and stuff like that but – it was mainly, I mainly lived around my mom's parents, and they're always very, very nice and very patient, because they certainly didn't have to do that for my parents, but the fact that they were still able to be there with us, and take care of us and take us to school it was, it was something that I'm sure my parents are very thankful for and I'm very thankful for it, ‘cause I got to spend more time with them, so yeah.
G: They were like a second set of parents for you, for like, the first, almost, ten years of your life?
A: Yea basically, they were always there for me, my grandpa was actually the one who… I was into sports when I was younger. I did baseball for five years, and I swam for 3 years, and he was always the one to take me to practice, he was always the one to, basically drive me around and I would always do stuff with him. Yeah, he was my main guy for like a really long time, so…
G: That's so sweet – and are those the grandparents – do they still like, visit you guys or do you still visit them?
A: Yea, so they actually still live here. They live in Miami right now, but they rotate six months in Miami, and six months here.
G: Ok, and they live with you guys, like, when they come here. Do they live with you guys for like a few months in the summer?
A: Yea, so, this past year they actually lived the whole six months, because my aunt, she wasn't really in a situation where she could have them. We welcomed them to our house because she couldn't, but it's usually… they usually live 3 months with my aunt, and 3 months with us.
G: Thats nice.
A: Yeah they… it's not really, Venezuela is not really in a suitable situation for them to go back.
G: Yeah, so, when was the last time they were there?
A: I wanna say 2020… definitely before the pandemic, that's for sure… tempted to say 2018, was the last time they were back there.
G: And then, those are your mom’s parents?
A: My mom’s parents, yeah.
G: And so, just for the recording, Andrés and I have been friends for like, I don't know, seven years, I think, and you’ve talked to me about your grandpa before, and is this the same grandpa that lived in Puerto Rico?
A: He is Puerto Rican.
G: Ok.
A: He is Puerto Rican.
G: Ok, and do you wanna expand on that a little more on that?
A: Sure, yea, so my grandpa, his mother was German and his father was Dominican, but they – during the second World War – my grandma, well my great grandma, my grandpa’s mom, she had to leave. She had to leave Germany, so she did, and she went to, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and then she met my grandpa’s dad there, and then they settled down in Puerto Rico, not long after, and that's where they had him. And then he lived there for, I’d say like, 2 years of his life, and then they moved to Puerto Rico – or sorry – they moved back to Santo Domingo, so he ended up living in Dominican Republic for, for a while and then, I can't remember exactly when he left to go to Venezuela, but it was – he was still young, he was still young.
G: And then, that's where he met your grandma?
A: My grandma, mhm, so he met my grandma… it's a funny story, he would go – he was really in love – he would go 12 hours to see her every weekend, like, ‘cause he was working at a research lab – I think it was a research lab – because he was a agriculture engineer, he did a lot of work with meat production and dairy production, and when he was off, he would drive 12 hours to go see her in Merida, ‘cause he was working – I can't remember where he was working – but I just know it was 12 hours away from where my grandma lived.
G: Yea.
A: Which was in a very small town close to the Andes, it was very small.
G: Oh wow, wow, ‘cause Merida is like in the northern part of-
A: Very close to Colombia, yea.
G: Wow, that's so cute, aw.
A: Yea, twelve hours…
G: Wow, so he’s dedicated!
A: He was dedicated!
G: Ok, so what was, to get back into like more about you, what was school like while you were in Venezuela?
[00:08:15] A: So I went to a private Catholic school, it’s called Santo Tomas de Villanueva, and I went there, from, I want to say right before first grade, – so what we call it over there is preparatorio – and I went there all the way up to 5th grade, which was right when I left, and that school, it really shaped me, like, I'm not necessarily the most religious person today, but the values it instilled in me, I think school had a lot to do with that. They had a lot of core values, that we were exposed to everyday, basically, because we had a lot of classes that dealt with values and family and stuff like that.
G: And is that like, common for kids in Venezuela to go to private Catholic schools or?
A: It is more common for kids to go to private schools, because public schools over there don't really function that well, and they’re no longer – it's not like here where you have a public school system, its kinda like, you have several schools scattered around. It's mainly more common for people to go to private schools, and private schools over there – back when I was still there – they were not that expensive, so people with middle to lower income could still afford putting their kids in private school.
G: So like families who had kids, it was typically like they were either going to private Catholic schools or just private schools?
A: Yea, pretty much.
G: I guess like, do you want to talk a little more about like, the friends you met, ‘cause you said it was like very formative for you, so do you want to talk more about any teachers that were memorable to you?
A: Oh yea, oh yea, so I still regularly communicate with a lot of the friends I made over there, yea we – I like to play videogames, and they play a lot of the same video games that I do, and so that's one of the main ways I keep in contact, you know, just playing video games when I have time, whenever I’m not doing schoolwork, I’m probably just talking or playing with them. As for teacher, my mom actually still keeps in contact with one of the professors over there, who still – she kind of asks about me from time to time and I talked to her through – I still don't know why I don't have her number – but whenever my mom, whenever she gets a message from her, she'll show me, and I'll respond but –
G: It's always through your mom?
A: It's always through my mom.
G: Yea.
A: Just haven't gotten around to – there's really no reason as to why, I just haven't gotten her, in contact with her, personally – but yeah I’ve gotten into contact with her from time to time. Whenever she reaches out – she was my fifth grade, third and fifth grade math teacher – and she always said I was good with numbers and she thought I would go into like something related to numbers and I did, so.
G: Does she know that you're currently studying chemical engineering?
A: Yea she knows, yea I talked – we had a conversation about it four months ago,
G: Really?
A: Yeah, that I was in a chemical engineering program here.
G: And like, what was like, her reaction?
A: She was – she told my mom, ‘cause I had to I had to go back to what I was doing, but she was telling my mom like how proud she was of the achievements, and the fact that I've been able to find a program and be successful here after after moving. She was very proud that she met me and had such a good time with me as her student, and to see me like be successful somewhere else was really cool for her to see. She was proud, she was proud.
[00:13:17] G: That's awesome, awe, ok, so I guess to kinda like, take a bit of a sharp left turn, were you ever aware of the instability in Venezuela, and with the riots that were going on, ‘cause, when exactly did you leave Venezuela?
A: I left in October of 2014, and the riots had been going on for about two years, or maybe even more actually, but I remember my family constantly like, talking about the fact there's a riot close to where I went to school, semi-often, you know, you could see a little bit of smoke in the distance, you could see it above the treeline, you could see smoke, you couldn't hear anything, but you could see the smoke, and my parents usually knew that, “oh, there's something going on over there like,” ‘cause it's not usually normal just seeing smoke over the tree line.
G: Yeah.
A: So, yeah, so, those have been going on for a while.
G: Did it ever, like, interfere with your school week, like did you ever have school canceled because of those riots?
A: I don't, I don't actually think school was ever canceled because of the riots, I think maybe once, but, you know, they were mainly in the city. I was a little bit farther away from the capital city, I was like 5 minutes away, so they were mainly over there in the very-
G: Ohhh
A: -populated, like super dense areas, ‘cause where I went to school, it was still a really dense area, but it was more-
G: Definitely away from the center of it all,
A: And it was a little bit of a, there was more money in the area, so people didn't really go there to riot.
G: And did you like, so with the riots basically just being like so close to your school, did you ever have any kind of like, first-hand experience or exposure to them, besides seeing the smoke from the tree line?
A: No but I did have other experiences, not in school. I had seen them before, I saw them when I was going to my other grandparents house, my dad’s parents. They live in a little bit of a more unsafe area, where a lot of those things would tend to happen.
G: What area is that?
A: It's El Valle. It's a little bit of more, I guess, poor area, where they lived, and that's where a lot of those things would happen, a lot of the riots would happen there. I remember one time we were going over there just for a family reunion to see my grandparents, and it was going down, it was really going down, yea I was… the police were posted up in a line formation with their shields,
G: Oh my gosh.
A: And the people were in the – what are they called?
G: Goggles?
A: No not goggles, they were like, balaclavas or something?
G: Ohh yea yea.
A: Yea, everyone was wearing those, to protect themselves from the smoke bombs, cause they would use tear gas on them, the military or the police would use tear gas on them, and it was only that one time that I really gotta see it, that was close.
G: How did you feel, how old were you?
A: So, it was in 2012, or 2013, the year before I left, so I was 10, I was almost 11.
G: And how did you like feel in that moment, that must’ve been scary, was it right outside?
A: It was not outside my grandparent’s place, it was a little bit off to the side, closer to a mall that they had close. So there was a lot of traffic, so we kind of were forced to look at it for a while and see everyone like, see the chaos pretty much, it was pretty chaotic.
G: Wow.
A: But I was never physically in one of those. I do remember my grandparents, they felt compelled to go to the protests, they weren’t riots, they were more like protests where people, you know, masses of people would gather and basically gather from one end of a really long avenue to another, and they did that to like raise awareness, and retaliate against the government. But it was never violent, it was more like a, you know just, a peaceful protest.
[00:18:40] G: Yeah. So in mentioning the protest, you said like, “raising awareness about what was going on in the government,” can you like describe more of what exactly was going on with the government?
A: So the government… Venezuela is incredibly corrupt. They steal, and they launder money, and they traffic a lot of drugs – they traffic drugs to the United States – they steal from the people, and they've cheated their way through every single election since they've been elected, since Chavez was elected in ‘99. I remember my parents, when Maduro got elected, it was like, they voted for the other candidate, I don't remember the other candidate, but whenever we got the news that Maduro had been elected, they weren't really surprised, they were kind of just like, “we really didn't want it to happen, but we're not surprised that it did.”
G: Yea.
A: Because it's just how the government operates, it's corrupt, and it's… it's just full of liars, so yeah in that regard, I've always been aware of the people in charge and how they are, and I've always been around it.
G: And how long, cause, it was Chavez, but now it's Maduro, right? So how long has he been in power?
A: He got elected, well he didn't get elected, presidency was passed down to him, because he was the vice president, and then-
G: From Chavez?
A: Yea, and then they had their elections, but they weren't really elections ‘cause he was gonna win anyways,
G: Yea.
A: So, they had their democratic elections after Chavez died from cancer back in 2013, he died, and then Maduro got elected, or he stepped into the presidency, that's when he became president.
G: So, he's been in power for almost 10 years now?
A: Yea, almost, I think yea.
G: Under the guise of, quote unquote, democracy.
A: Yea, under the guise of “democracy.”
[00:21:20] G: Wow, so that was around the same time you guys basically like, moved to the U.S. and, do you want to explain more on like, I know you already said when, it was like October 2014, so, why did you guys come to the specifically North Carolina, you could’ve gone anywhere else, why North Carolina?
A: Yeah, so, my parents had been talking to my aunt, who also lives in North Carolina, and she basically said that, you know, if we kind of wanted to break from the city, and the busy life, that Waxhaw – which is where she lived – would be a pretty drastic, but good change for us, and also the fact that, you know, she could give us a place to live at least until we got our bearings.
G: Yeah.
A: Yeah so we moved with her for about six months, she was always great to us, I'm really thankful for her and the time that she was able to give us, to get our bearings. And then we we moved to Indian Trail, but I think my parents decided to move here – they've been in the process of getting our documentation since 1999, which is when Chavez got elected, because my mom was like, “all right…” she really did not like him as a presidential candidate or as a president, so she kind of kick-started the process of getting all our papers and getting — well, getting their papers first, ‘cause I wasn't even in the picture in 1999, but the turning point, I think, for actually finishing out the process was 2012, which is when my mom really was like, cause it was kinda in the back of their minds in 1999 all the way through like 2010, they were kind of like, “stuff is good,” you know, my dad had a very stable job, my mom also had a stable job, so they kind of put it off, and they didn't really think about it, ‘cause they didn't think we were going to have to move. My mom still wanted to have that, just as a safeguard, and it wasn't until 2012, where she was like, “all right, we, we need to, we need to finish this.”
G: So when did, like, I'm not very well versed with the whole like, papers and documentation things, so when did like, your mom, get papers? So was it like the green card first or like?
A: So we had to, I actually don't don't know the order of things, but I do remember the day that they were finalized.
G: Yeah.
[00:23:45] A: I do remember going to the Embassy, US Embassy, we were there for
roughly 8 hours.
G: Yeah.
A: We were there maybe, maybe a little bit more, and we were waiting for our turn to, basically, ‘cause my parents had to talk to one of the Embassy agents, I don't really know what they're called, but, they had to sign documents and go through, like, the small interview process, and then they would be sworn in. They would have to take an oath to the United States, that's when I remember seeing like, our actual documents in their hand.
G: So it was all four of you guys at the same time?
A: Yea, it was all four of us.
G: And how old were…
A: I was ten.
G: So, like 2013?
A: Yep, it was, I think it might have been right before, a little bit before my birthday… that time is kind of, I don't really remember dates that well from that time, but, it was definitely between the end of 2013 and October 2014. It was really close actually I think, it was really close to October 2014.
G: It was like, just in time.
A: Yea, it was just in time.
G: Ok, yea those Embassy and like, naturalization process takes..
A: They take a while, yeah.
[00:25:40] G: Can you talk a little more about your adjustment to your new life in North Carolina, so like, in terms of like, making new friends, going to school, all that kind of stuff.
A: So I went to, when I moved to Waxhaw, I went to Cuthbertson, which is a predominantly white middle school, so I didnt, I’d say I kinda struggled to make friends there, ‘cause I didn't know the language yet, but I did meet this one Colombian kid who was really, we were good friends until I moved away. His name is Federico and he was cool, but making friends was hard at Cuthbertson, and I'd say I really only had him as my friend, and it was, it was I think, the most difficult part of it for me was the fact that I was always kind of high achieving… I was always like, I was kind of like, a little bit rough on myself if I didn't excel in academics, which I did not at Cuthbertson, because of the language barrier.
G: Yea.
A: Yea like I, it was like-
G: They just kinda threw you in there.
A: Yea, they kinda just threw me in there, which I really had no other choice, ‘cause I had to go to school, but I didn't know the language and that was kinda, that I was just really hard on myself for, for a time because, I wasn't used to… I just have really high standards for myself and underperformance is something I couldn't really handle very well back then, and I wasn't really aware of how to handle, so I'd say that was one of the harder things, making friends was also really hard, and then just communication, was just, I just really wanted to talk to my professor, and my teacher and classmates, but it was just wasn't possible for like a few months, and there was also the, like, there's also a little bit of bullying, from like, like two kids. I didn't really know what they were saying, at the time, but I could tell they were like talking about me, but, overall I think I got pretty lucky, actually, going to Cuthbertson, ‘cause it was a really nice school, I liked it, it was just hard at the beginning, it was just something really huge, it was just a really huge change, going from-
G: It's a hard change.
A: A large Catholic school to a school in a completely different language and completely different country. I was with my friends, I've been with my friends from the school in Venezuela, from before first grade all the way up to 5th grade.
G: Yeah.
A: So, I didn't really have that support system anymore, I didn't have those friends that have been with me for 6 years.
G: Yeah.
A: You know, I was with a completely new group of people and new teachers and new faces and completely new language, so, that was… that was hard to adjust to but, yea.
G: And then, so, you went to Cuthbertson for your first year of middle school right?
A: Mhm, well I left Cuthbertson halfway through the year, and I went to Sun Valley, which is where I met you, about… I wanna say like, a month after I moved to Sun Valley is when I met you.
G: I remember it was the summer before seventh grade.
A: Summer before seventh grade?
G: Yea.
A: Well I remember seeing you in the hallways, and… but maybe we didn't have a real conversation until the summer.
G: Yea, yea, and then, so like, and that was like finally some stability for you, and like, you graduated from Sun Valley middle, so, talk more about… if it was nice to have that stability.
A: So yeah we were finally done moving. My parents had like, “I think we can settle down here for a while,” and we ended up settling down, and I stayed in Sun Valley until 8th grade, which was when I graduated middle school, so that was nice. It was nice to finally have some sense of belonging and in a new place, ‘cause at Cuthbertson, I barely got to adjust, and even when I left I still didn't feel like, fully adjusted, but then I got to Sun Valley and it was that same process all over again. At least at that point I kind of had the language to kind of-
G: Yeah.
A: – Kinda had it, but not fully, but I could at least make friends and communicate with people and communicate any concerns to my, my teachers and stuff like that, but it was the point where I was like, okay we’re just gonna settle down and be fine, yeah.
G: Do you have any like, moments in middle school after Cuthbertson, where, like… did you have any friends in Sun Valley where it was like, “okay they're like, a bit of a godsend, thank God, I have a friend who's gonna look out for me,” or even like teachers too?
A: Yea, I would say you were definitely one of those people for me, in seventh grade, I definitely saw you as a, as a person I could rely on, in terms of other people, I'd say, I had really good science eighth grade Professor – I don't know if you remember him – Mr. Barron, he was great.
G: Mr. Barron…
A: Mr. Barron.
G: I remember the name, was it for the AIG team?
A: No I was only in the AIG for English.
G: Ok.
A: Yea I only had AIG for English, but he was great, he was always like, super friendly and nice and understanding, and yea I think that's it.
[00:33:10] G: Yeah ok, well I kind of wanted like, to backtrack ‘cause, I don't know if you mentioned it in the recording, or during the recording, but it was before the recording. Do you think you can talk a little bit more about the CLAP program, and what you know about it and what your friends have told you about it?
A: Yeah, so, this program, the one that Gaby's mentioning right now, is a mitigation program for the people of Venezuela, so it's trying to deal with the fact that food items are very scarce, your basic necessity items are really scarce, so back in 2016, Maduro established a program to try to mitigate, quote unquote, mitigate the humanitarian issue, which is the food problem in Venezuela. And it's basically a little box of a protein, but most of the time it's going to be rice, pasta, any sort of bean, usually it's black beans, but it's usually for lower income families. They get them once every 2 months. So, it's definitely not something that is sustainable, that program isn't sustainable for people getting a box of that size every 2 months is not the solution to the problem, and this problem has been going on for, ever since I left. The problem’s been getting worse, but it was always present, ever since 2010 is when it really started. But, in 2014 is when it started getting really bad, where you couldn't find your, you know, basic need items like, toilet paper or chicken or rice – rice was especially hard to find – and yeah, you, I remember, I just remember seeing really, really long lines at the supermarket like, huge like probably 50 meter, maybe 100 meters lines.
G: Yeah.
A: Just of people just waiting to get food.
G: Yeah, and like basic necessities.
A: Yeah, I don't know if you've seen videos like that, of people, in Colombia, like, people line up for food.
G: Yeah, it's ridiculous and sometimes like, stores will close while people are in line and they won't get their stuff.
A: They won't get their food, no.
G: That is, yeah, that is not very sustainable for a country.
A: No it’s not.
[00:36:05] G: Before I forget, do you have any family left in Venezuela?
A: I do, so, I have some of my cousins, It's mainly my, my dad's side still over there in Venezuela, I have some aunts, great aunts, cousins… they're still all, they're scattered around the country, some of them are in Maracaibo, some of them are in Caracas, and some of them are closer to the coast, but I still have a lot of people over there.
G: And do you know, like, do you like communicate with them often to know, like, how they're doing?
A: I communicate mainly with my cousins, because a lot of my family members over there don't really have phones, or they don't really have social media like that so, I mainly communicate with my cousins. My closer cousins. And they, I always saw them during our family reunions, so I've been, kept in contact with them because of, mainly because they have social media and they have a cell phone and they're just closer.
G: Ok, and the same thing with like, your friends, you just keep in contact with them through like, social media and video games?
A: Yes I do, a lot of like, a lot of them, it's been real easy to keep in contact with a lot of them, because they're, they're a lot younger than the, most of my family is, over there, there's a lot of the family that I have left over there is a little bit older, they're probably in like their 50s or 60s.
G: Even your cousins?
A: No my, everyone except for my cousins, is more like in their 50s and 60s, because the people that are a lot younger have left.
G: And where, like, are they in North Carolina?
A: No, there's some in Germany, there's some in Spain, there's one in Italy, and I think that's it.
G: And did they leave for the same reason?
A: Yeah, they left for the same stability/instability reasons as I did, it's just a really unsustainable place to live in right now, it's just, there's no way with the food, the food issue and the income issue, it's just not sustainable.
G: I remember like, in middle school, learning about all the instability and, like, learning about the inflation there, and how like the inflation was ridiculous, like.
A: Yeah, it is, I think the rate of inflation there is the highest in the world.
G: Alright, well I think this is a good place to end it, did you want to share anything else that may have come up that I didn't ask you about?
[00:39:40] A: I didn't talk, I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about the election process over there, and how it was, it was just, the election process over there, my parents would always, I remember getting up really early to go with my parents to vote, and they were always really excited to go do it because, you know, they wanted to do their, their job as citizens, which was to vote, but I remember one time we were going, it was, I don't remember the year of this election, but we were going down there, and there was a protest nearby, and that was one of the times where I've actually seen it, like, seen a protest, not, not a riot, but a protest that was like, really the only time where I've been close to what it, what it was like for people to go and protest, yeah.
G: How did you feel and like, how old were you?
A: It was scary, it was a lot of people, I was definitely younger, I was younger than 10 years old, but yeah I remember, I just remember just seeing like, a huge gathering of people. It was not too far away, it was probably like a block, maybe two blocks away, it was a huge mass, but yeah, it was like the one time where I really saw, like, what it was like to be in a… closer to a protest, ‘cause I was never actually in a protest, I never actually protested.
G: Did your parents ever protest?
A: No they didn’t, they didn't, it was mainly my grandparents that went to protests and stuff like that.
G: Did they go, like your parents, or not parents, grandparents, did they go protesting like in the 90s, or like into the 2000s?
A: No, it was mainly, ‘cause they never had, they never felt a reason to protest with previous government, that's not to say they were perfect, because every government, I think, ever since the 1940’s to now has been corrupt, so they’ve never actually been good institutions, but they didn't start doing it until 2009-2010, that's when they really started doing it.
G: And that was in protest during-
A: Chavez’s rule, yea.
[00:42:09] G: Yeah… Yeah, well this was very awesome, very enlightening to talk to you about, and I think we’re just gonna end it here. Thank you, Andrés.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
TRANSCRIBED BY: Gabriella Montes, March 22, 2023
EDITED BY: Gabriella Montes, April 5, 2023
Es: Transcripción
Gabriella: Ok, My name is Gabriella Montes. I am here with…
Andrés: Andrés.
Gabriella: And we are at my house. The time is 8:57 p.m., and today is March 14th 2023, and today we will be discussing Andrés’ migration journey from Venezuela to North Carolina, and yeah, are you consenting to this interview, Andrés?
Andrés: Yes [pause] I consent.
G: All right, so, if you want to just like start off and just say like your name, age, occupations, school, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:00:55] A: So my name is Andrés Jésus Cáceres Rodriguéz, I’m twenty years old, I turned twenty not too long ago on March 5th, I'm currently going to school at NC State, trying to get my degree in chemical engineering, my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, and I've previously worked at a cabinet manufacturing company as a cabinet painter, so that was really good. That was my first real job, and right now I'm looking into getting an internship at Sherwin-Williams, engineering internship, so that's cool.
G: Awesome, okay, and can you tell just like a little bit more about yourself, and just like, briefly describe your connection to like, your migration journey and your heritage?
[00:02:30] A: so, I was born in a smaller subdivision in Caracas, so I was born in Chacao, which is – a lot of people say its Caracas, but it's like, technically not – it’s like two minutes away from the main city, so it's technically not Caracas, but it's so close that people still call it that. I was born in a small clinic, and I lived in my grandparents’ house for 9 years until I moved to – we moved to our own apartment, but, I was basically raised mainly by my grandparents ‘cause, my parents were always working. They were always out and doing their own thing, and my grandparents were always at home.
G: And, like, do you want to talk a little more about your relationship with your grandparents, was it like your mom's parents or your dad's parents?
A: It was my mom’s parents, so my dad's parents – they lived a little bit farther away and we got to see them like for family reunions and stuff like that but – it was mainly, I mainly lived around my mom's parents, and they're always very, very nice and very patient, because they certainly didn't have to do that for my parents, but the fact that they were still able to be there with us, and take care of us and take us to school it was, it was something that I'm sure my parents are very thankful for and I'm very thankful for it, ‘cause I got to spend more time with them, so yeah.
G: They were like a second set of parents for you, for like, the first, almost, ten years of your life?
A: Yea basically, they were always there for me, my grandpa was actually the one who… I was into sports when I was younger. I did baseball for five years, and I swam for 3 years, and he was always the one to take me to practice, he was always the one to, basically drive me around and I would always do stuff with him. Yeah, he was my main guy for like a really long time, so…
G: That's so sweet – and are those the grandparents – do they still like, visit you guys or do you still visit them?
A: Yea, so they actually still live here. They live in Miami right now, but they rotate six months in Miami, and six months here.
G: Ok, and they live with you guys, like, when they come here. Do they live with you guys for like a few months in the summer?
A: Yea, so, this past year they actually lived the whole six months, because my aunt, she wasn't really in a situation where she could have them. We welcomed them to our house because she couldn't, but it's usually… they usually live 3 months with my aunt, and 3 months with us.
G: Thats nice.
A: Yeah they… it's not really, Venezuela is not really in a suitable situation for them to go back.
G: Yeah, so, when was the last time they were there?
A: I wanna say 2020… definitely before the pandemic, that's for sure… tempted to say 2018, was the last time they were back there.
G: And then, those are your mom’s parents?
A: My mom’s parents, yeah.
G: And so, just for the recording, Andrés and I have been friends for like, I don't know, seven years, I think, and you’ve talked to me about your grandpa before, and is this the same grandpa that lived in Puerto Rico?
A: He is Puerto Rican.
G: Ok.
A: He is Puerto Rican.
G: Ok, and do you wanna expand on that a little more on that?
A: Sure, yea, so my grandpa, his mother was German and his father was Dominican, but they – during the second World War – my grandma, well my great grandma, my grandpa’s mom, she had to leave. She had to leave Germany, so she did, and she went to, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and then she met my grandpa’s dad there, and then they settled down in Puerto Rico, not long after, and that's where they had him. And then he lived there for, I’d say like, 2 years of his life, and then they moved to Puerto Rico – or sorry – they moved back to Santo Domingo, so he ended up living in Dominican Republic for, for a while and then, I can't remember exactly when he left to go to Venezuela, but it was – he was still young, he was still young.
G: And then, that's where he met your grandma?
A: My grandma, mhm, so he met my grandma… it's a funny story, he would go – he was really in love – he would go 12 hours to see her every weekend, like, ‘cause he was working at a research lab – I think it was a research lab – because he was a agriculture engineer, he did a lot of work with meat production and dairy production, and when he was off, he would drive 12 hours to go see her in Merida, ‘cause he was working – I can't remember where he was working – but I just know it was 12 hours away from where my grandma lived.
G: Yea.
A: Which was in a very small town close to the Andes, it was very small.
G: Oh wow, wow, ‘cause Merida is like in the northern part of-
A: Very close to Colombia, yea.
G: Wow, that's so cute, aw.
A: Yea, twelve hours…
G: Wow, so he’s dedicated!
A: He was dedicated!
G: Ok, so what was, to get back into like more about you, what was school like while you were in Venezuela?
[00:08:15] A: So I went to a private Catholic school, it’s called Santo Tomas de Villanueva, and I went there, from, I want to say right before first grade, – so what we call it over there is preparatorio – and I went there all the way up to 5th grade, which was right when I left, and that school, it really shaped me, like, I'm not necessarily the most religious person today, but the values it instilled in me, I think school had a lot to do with that. They had a lot of core values, that we were exposed to everyday, basically, because we had a lot of classes that dealt with values and family and stuff like that.
G: And is that like, common for kids in Venezuela to go to private Catholic schools or?
A: It is more common for kids to go to private schools, because public schools over there don't really function that well, and they’re no longer – it's not like here where you have a public school system, its kinda like, you have several schools scattered around. It's mainly more common for people to go to private schools, and private schools over there – back when I was still there – they were not that expensive, so people with middle to lower income could still afford putting their kids in private school.
G: So like families who had kids, it was typically like they were either going to private Catholic schools or just private schools?
A: Yea, pretty much.
G: I guess like, do you want to talk a little more about like, the friends you met, ‘cause you said it was like very formative for you, so do you want to talk more about any teachers that were memorable to you?
A: Oh yea, oh yea, so I still regularly communicate with a lot of the friends I made over there, yea we – I like to play videogames, and they play a lot of the same video games that I do, and so that's one of the main ways I keep in contact, you know, just playing video games when I have time, whenever I’m not doing schoolwork, I’m probably just talking or playing with them. As for teacher, my mom actually still keeps in contact with one of the professors over there, who still – she kind of asks about me from time to time and I talked to her through – I still don't know why I don't have her number – but whenever my mom, whenever she gets a message from her, she'll show me, and I'll respond but –
G: It's always through your mom?
A: It's always through my mom.
G: Yea.
A: Just haven't gotten around to – there's really no reason as to why, I just haven't gotten her, in contact with her, personally – but yeah I’ve gotten into contact with her from time to time. Whenever she reaches out – she was my fifth grade, third and fifth grade math teacher – and she always said I was good with numbers and she thought I would go into like something related to numbers and I did, so.
G: Does she know that you're currently studying chemical engineering?
A: Yea she knows, yea I talked – we had a conversation about it four months ago,
G: Really?
A: Yeah, that I was in a chemical engineering program here.
G: And like, what was like, her reaction?
A: She was – she told my mom, ‘cause I had to I had to go back to what I was doing, but she was telling my mom like how proud she was of the achievements, and the fact that I've been able to find a program and be successful here after after moving. She was very proud that she met me and had such a good time with me as her student, and to see me like be successful somewhere else was really cool for her to see. She was proud, she was proud.
[00:13:17] G: That's awesome, awe, ok, so I guess to kinda like, take a bit of a sharp left turn, were you ever aware of the instability in Venezuela, and with the riots that were going on, ‘cause, when exactly did you leave Venezuela?
A: I left in October of 2014, and the riots had been going on for about two years, or maybe even more actually, but I remember my family constantly like, talking about the fact there's a riot close to where I went to school, semi-often, you know, you could see a little bit of smoke in the distance, you could see it above the treeline, you could see smoke, you couldn't hear anything, but you could see the smoke, and my parents usually knew that, “oh, there's something going on over there like,” ‘cause it's not usually normal just seeing smoke over the tree line.
G: Yeah.
A: So, yeah, so, those have been going on for a while.
G: Did it ever, like, interfere with your school week, like did you ever have school canceled because of those riots?
A: I don't, I don't actually think school was ever canceled because of the riots, I think maybe once, but, you know, they were mainly in the city. I was a little bit farther away from the capital city, I was like 5 minutes away, so they were mainly over there in the very-
G: Ohhh
A: -populated, like super dense areas, ‘cause where I went to school, it was still a really dense area, but it was more-
G: Definitely away from the center of it all,
A: And it was a little bit of a, there was more money in the area, so people didn't really go there to riot.
G: And did you like, so with the riots basically just being like so close to your school, did you ever have any kind of like, first-hand experience or exposure to them, besides seeing the smoke from the tree line?
A: No but I did have other experiences, not in school. I had seen them before, I saw them when I was going to my other grandparents house, my dad’s parents. They live in a little bit of a more unsafe area, where a lot of those things would tend to happen.
G: What area is that?
A: It's El Valle. It's a little bit of more, I guess, poor area, where they lived, and that's where a lot of those things would happen, a lot of the riots would happen there. I remember one time we were going over there just for a family reunion to see my grandparents, and it was going down, it was really going down, yea I was… the police were posted up in a line formation with their shields,
G: Oh my gosh.
A: And the people were in the – what are they called?
G: Goggles?
A: No not goggles, they were like, balaclavas or something?
G: Ohh yea yea.
A: Yea, everyone was wearing those, to protect themselves from the smoke bombs, cause they would use tear gas on them, the military or the police would use tear gas on them, and it was only that one time that I really gotta see it, that was close.
G: How did you feel, how old were you?
A: So, it was in 2012, or 2013, the year before I left, so I was 10, I was almost 11.
G: And how did you like feel in that moment, that must’ve been scary, was it right outside?
A: It was not outside my grandparent’s place, it was a little bit off to the side, closer to a mall that they had close. So there was a lot of traffic, so we kind of were forced to look at it for a while and see everyone like, see the chaos pretty much, it was pretty chaotic.
G: Wow.
A: But I was never physically in one of those. I do remember my grandparents, they felt compelled to go to the protests, they weren’t riots, they were more like protests where people, you know, masses of people would gather and basically gather from one end of a really long avenue to another, and they did that to like raise awareness, and retaliate against the government. But it was never violent, it was more like a, you know just, a peaceful protest.
[00:18:40] G: Yeah. So in mentioning the protest, you said like, “raising awareness about what was going on in the government,” can you like describe more of what exactly was going on with the government?
A: So the government… Venezuela is incredibly corrupt. They steal, and they launder money, and they traffic a lot of drugs – they traffic drugs to the United States – they steal from the people, and they've cheated their way through every single election since they've been elected, since Chavez was elected in ‘99. I remember my parents, when Maduro got elected, it was like, they voted for the other candidate, I don't remember the other candidate, but whenever we got the news that Maduro had been elected, they weren't really surprised, they were kind of just like, “we really didn't want it to happen, but we're not surprised that it did.”
G: Yea.
A: Because it's just how the government operates, it's corrupt, and it's… it's just full of liars, so yeah in that regard, I've always been aware of the people in charge and how they are, and I've always been around it.
G: And how long, cause, it was Chavez, but now it's Maduro, right? So how long has he been in power?
A: He got elected, well he didn't get elected, presidency was passed down to him, because he was the vice president, and then-
G: From Chavez?
A: Yea, and then they had their elections, but they weren't really elections ‘cause he was gonna win anyways,
G: Yea.
A: So, they had their democratic elections after Chavez died from cancer back in 2013, he died, and then Maduro got elected, or he stepped into the presidency, that's when he became president.
G: So, he's been in power for almost 10 years now?
A: Yea, almost, I think yea.
G: Under the guise of, quote unquote, democracy.
A: Yea, under the guise of “democracy.”
[00:21:20] G: Wow, so that was around the same time you guys basically like, moved to the U.S. and, do you want to explain more on like, I know you already said when, it was like October 2014, so, why did you guys come to the specifically North Carolina, you could’ve gone anywhere else, why North Carolina?
A: Yeah, so, my parents had been talking to my aunt, who also lives in North Carolina, and she basically said that, you know, if we kind of wanted to break from the city, and the busy life, that Waxhaw – which is where she lived – would be a pretty drastic, but good change for us, and also the fact that, you know, she could give us a place to live at least until we got our bearings.
G: Yeah.
A: Yeah so we moved with her for about six months, she was always great to us, I'm really thankful for her and the time that she was able to give us, to get our bearings. And then we we moved to Indian Trail, but I think my parents decided to move here – they've been in the process of getting our documentation since 1999, which is when Chavez got elected, because my mom was like, “all right…” she really did not like him as a presidential candidate or as a president, so she kind of kick-started the process of getting all our papers and getting — well, getting their papers first, ‘cause I wasn't even in the picture in 1999, but the turning point, I think, for actually finishing out the process was 2012, which is when my mom really was like, cause it was kinda in the back of their minds in 1999 all the way through like 2010, they were kind of like, “stuff is good,” you know, my dad had a very stable job, my mom also had a stable job, so they kind of put it off, and they didn't really think about it, ‘cause they didn't think we were going to have to move. My mom still wanted to have that, just as a safeguard, and it wasn't until 2012, where she was like, “all right, we, we need to, we need to finish this.”
G: So when did, like, I'm not very well versed with the whole like, papers and documentation things, so when did like, your mom, get papers? So was it like the green card first or like?
A: So we had to, I actually don't don't know the order of things, but I do remember the day that they were finalized.
G: Yeah.
[00:23:45] A: I do remember going to the Embassy, US Embassy, we were there for
roughly 8 hours.
G: Yeah.
A: We were there maybe, maybe a little bit more, and we were waiting for our turn to, basically, ‘cause my parents had to talk to one of the Embassy agents, I don't really know what they're called, but, they had to sign documents and go through, like, the small interview process, and then they would be sworn in. They would have to take an oath to the United States, that's when I remember seeing like, our actual documents in their hand.
G: So it was all four of you guys at the same time?
A: Yea, it was all four of us.
G: And how old were…
A: I was ten.
G: So, like 2013?
A: Yep, it was, I think it might have been right before, a little bit before my birthday… that time is kind of, I don't really remember dates that well from that time, but, it was definitely between the end of 2013 and October 2014. It was really close actually I think, it was really close to October 2014.
G: It was like, just in time.
A: Yea, it was just in time.
G: Ok, yea those Embassy and like, naturalization process takes..
A: They take a while, yeah.
[00:25:40] G: Can you talk a little more about your adjustment to your new life in North Carolina, so like, in terms of like, making new friends, going to school, all that kind of stuff.
A: So I went to, when I moved to Waxhaw, I went to Cuthbertson, which is a predominantly white middle school, so I didnt, I’d say I kinda struggled to make friends there, ‘cause I didn't know the language yet, but I did meet this one Colombian kid who was really, we were good friends until I moved away. His name is Federico and he was cool, but making friends was hard at Cuthbertson, and I'd say I really only had him as my friend, and it was, it was I think, the most difficult part of it for me was the fact that I was always kind of high achieving… I was always like, I was kind of like, a little bit rough on myself if I didn't excel in academics, which I did not at Cuthbertson, because of the language barrier.
G: Yea.
A: Yea like I, it was like-
G: They just kinda threw you in there.
A: Yea, they kinda just threw me in there, which I really had no other choice, ‘cause I had to go to school, but I didn't know the language and that was kinda, that I was just really hard on myself for, for a time because, I wasn't used to… I just have really high standards for myself and underperformance is something I couldn't really handle very well back then, and I wasn't really aware of how to handle, so I'd say that was one of the harder things, making friends was also really hard, and then just communication, was just, I just really wanted to talk to my professor, and my teacher and classmates, but it was just wasn't possible for like a few months, and there was also the, like, there's also a little bit of bullying, from like, like two kids. I didn't really know what they were saying, at the time, but I could tell they were like talking about me, but, overall I think I got pretty lucky, actually, going to Cuthbertson, ‘cause it was a really nice school, I liked it, it was just hard at the beginning, it was just something really huge, it was just a really huge change, going from-
G: It's a hard change.
A: A large Catholic school to a school in a completely different language and completely different country. I was with my friends, I've been with my friends from the school in Venezuela, from before first grade all the way up to 5th grade.
G: Yeah.
A: So, I didn't really have that support system anymore, I didn't have those friends that have been with me for 6 years.
G: Yeah.
A: You know, I was with a completely new group of people and new teachers and new faces and completely new language, so, that was… that was hard to adjust to but, yea.
G: And then, so, you went to Cuthbertson for your first year of middle school right?
A: Mhm, well I left Cuthbertson halfway through the year, and I went to Sun Valley, which is where I met you, about… I wanna say like, a month after I moved to Sun Valley is when I met you.
G: I remember it was the summer before seventh grade.
A: Summer before seventh grade?
G: Yea.
A: Well I remember seeing you in the hallways, and… but maybe we didn't have a real conversation until the summer.
G: Yea, yea, and then, so like, and that was like finally some stability for you, and like, you graduated from Sun Valley middle, so, talk more about… if it was nice to have that stability.
A: So yeah we were finally done moving. My parents had like, “I think we can settle down here for a while,” and we ended up settling down, and I stayed in Sun Valley until 8th grade, which was when I graduated middle school, so that was nice. It was nice to finally have some sense of belonging and in a new place, ‘cause at Cuthbertson, I barely got to adjust, and even when I left I still didn't feel like, fully adjusted, but then I got to Sun Valley and it was that same process all over again. At least at that point I kind of had the language to kind of-
G: Yeah.
A: – Kinda had it, but not fully, but I could at least make friends and communicate with people and communicate any concerns to my, my teachers and stuff like that, but it was the point where I was like, okay we’re just gonna settle down and be fine, yeah.
G: Do you have any like, moments in middle school after Cuthbertson, where, like… did you have any friends in Sun Valley where it was like, “okay they're like, a bit of a godsend, thank God, I have a friend who's gonna look out for me,” or even like teachers too?
A: Yea, I would say you were definitely one of those people for me, in seventh grade, I definitely saw you as a, as a person I could rely on, in terms of other people, I'd say, I had really good science eighth grade Professor – I don't know if you remember him – Mr. Barron, he was great.
G: Mr. Barron…
A: Mr. Barron.
G: I remember the name, was it for the AIG team?
A: No I was only in the AIG for English.
G: Ok.
A: Yea I only had AIG for English, but he was great, he was always like, super friendly and nice and understanding, and yea I think that's it.
[00:33:10] G: Yeah ok, well I kind of wanted like, to backtrack ‘cause, I don't know if you mentioned it in the recording, or during the recording, but it was before the recording. Do you think you can talk a little bit more about the CLAP program, and what you know about it and what your friends have told you about it?
A: Yeah, so, this program, the one that Gaby's mentioning right now, is a mitigation program for the people of Venezuela, so it's trying to deal with the fact that food items are very scarce, your basic necessity items are really scarce, so back in 2016, Maduro established a program to try to mitigate, quote unquote, mitigate the humanitarian issue, which is the food problem in Venezuela. And it's basically a little box of a protein, but most of the time it's going to be rice, pasta, any sort of bean, usually it's black beans, but it's usually for lower income families. They get them once every 2 months. So, it's definitely not something that is sustainable, that program isn't sustainable for people getting a box of that size every 2 months is not the solution to the problem, and this problem has been going on for, ever since I left. The problem’s been getting worse, but it was always present, ever since 2010 is when it really started. But, in 2014 is when it started getting really bad, where you couldn't find your, you know, basic need items like, toilet paper or chicken or rice – rice was especially hard to find – and yeah, you, I remember, I just remember seeing really, really long lines at the supermarket like, huge like probably 50 meter, maybe 100 meters lines.
G: Yeah.
A: Just of people just waiting to get food.
G: Yeah, and like basic necessities.
A: Yeah, I don't know if you've seen videos like that, of people, in Colombia, like, people line up for food.
G: Yeah, it's ridiculous and sometimes like, stores will close while people are in line and they won't get their stuff.
A: They won't get their food, no.
G: That is, yeah, that is not very sustainable for a country.
A: No it’s not.
[00:36:05] G: Before I forget, do you have any family left in Venezuela?
A: I do, so, I have some of my cousins, It's mainly my, my dad's side still over there in Venezuela, I have some aunts, great aunts, cousins… they're still all, they're scattered around the country, some of them are in Maracaibo, some of them are in Caracas, and some of them are closer to the coast, but I still have a lot of people over there.
G: And do you know, like, do you like communicate with them often to know, like, how they're doing?
A: I communicate mainly with my cousins, because a lot of my family members over there don't really have phones, or they don't really have social media like that so, I mainly communicate with my cousins. My closer cousins. And they, I always saw them during our family reunions, so I've been, kept in contact with them because of, mainly because they have social media and they have a cell phone and they're just closer.
G: Ok, and the same thing with like, your friends, you just keep in contact with them through like, social media and video games?
A: Yes I do, a lot of like, a lot of them, it's been real easy to keep in contact with a lot of them, because they're, they're a lot younger than the, most of my family is, over there, there's a lot of the family that I have left over there is a little bit older, they're probably in like their 50s or 60s.
G: Even your cousins?
A: No my, everyone except for my cousins, is more like in their 50s and 60s, because the people that are a lot younger have left.
G: And where, like, are they in North Carolina?
A: No, there's some in Germany, there's some in Spain, there's one in Italy, and I think that's it.
G: And did they leave for the same reason?
A: Yeah, they left for the same stability/instability reasons as I did, it's just a really unsustainable place to live in right now, it's just, there's no way with the food, the food issue and the income issue, it's just not sustainable.
G: I remember like, in middle school, learning about all the instability and, like, learning about the inflation there, and how like the inflation was ridiculous, like.
A: Yeah, it is, I think the rate of inflation there is the highest in the world.
G: Alright, well I think this is a good place to end it, did you want to share anything else that may have come up that I didn't ask you about?
[00:39:40] A: I didn't talk, I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about the election process over there, and how it was, it was just, the election process over there, my parents would always, I remember getting up really early to go with my parents to vote, and they were always really excited to go do it because, you know, they wanted to do their, their job as citizens, which was to vote, but I remember one time we were going, it was, I don't remember the year of this election, but we were going down there, and there was a protest nearby, and that was one of the times where I've actually seen it, like, seen a protest, not, not a riot, but a protest that was like, really the only time where I've been close to what it, what it was like for people to go and protest, yeah.
G: How did you feel and like, how old were you?
A: It was scary, it was a lot of people, I was definitely younger, I was younger than 10 years old, but yeah I remember, I just remember just seeing like, a huge gathering of people. It was not too far away, it was probably like a block, maybe two blocks away, it was a huge mass, but yeah, it was like the one time where I really saw, like, what it was like to be in a… closer to a protest, ‘cause I was never actually in a protest, I never actually protested.
G: Did your parents ever protest?
A: No they didn’t, they didn't, it was mainly my grandparents that went to protests and stuff like that.
G: Did they go, like your parents, or not parents, grandparents, did they go protesting like in the 90s, or like into the 2000s?
A: No, it was mainly, ‘cause they never had, they never felt a reason to protest with previous government, that's not to say they were perfect, because every government, I think, ever since the 1940’s to now has been corrupt, so they’ve never actually been good institutions, but they didn't start doing it until 2009-2010, that's when they really started doing it.
G: And that was in protest during-
A: Chavez’s rule, yea.
[00:42:09] G: Yeah… Yeah, well this was very awesome, very enlightening to talk to you about, and I think we’re just gonna end it here. Thank you, Andrés.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
TRANSCRIBED BY: Gabriella Montes, March 22, 2023
EDITED BY: Gabriella Montes, April 5, 2023
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
R-1017 -- Cáceres Rodríguez, Andrés Jésus.
Description
An account of the resource
In this interview, interviewer Gabriella Montes learns about Venezuela’s recent history as experienced by her long-time friend, Andrés Cáceres. He describes the first ten years of his life in his city of origin, Caracas, Venezuela. He explains details about his family relationships, home life and school life as he grew up in the economic turmoil occurring in Venezuela since the 1940s. He shares his experience being a new student, his struggle in school in North Carolina, and how difficult this overall adjustment was. Andrés recounts that despite this struggle in the U.S., as well as Venezuela, he misses his home country, and mentions some of the happier moments he had back home and the friends and experiences he’s made here.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-03-14
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29364">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1017_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/967b0f17dc4c9f9ac0b85b1c32a0a225.mp3
884572e51e9b66a0f6184c94491976b5
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/90dfba9151c6a073aa4ebc9013b485b2.pdf
b8235f474a31398262d72a91ff78bdf5
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1013
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-04-15
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Bredenberg, Cynthia.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Teachers
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1972
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Hudson Falls -- Washington County -- New York
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Pittsboro -- Chatham County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
N/A
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Andrew, Lindley.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Cindy Bredenberg discusses her experiences and observations as a Spanish teacher at Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City, North Carolina. She shares about her school’s demographics and the school culture and reflects on her experiences working with students throughout her fifteen years working at Jordan-Matthews, many of whom Latinx. Cindy also describes the challenges faced by many of her students, specifically those related to financial strain, the lack of quality affordable housing, anxiety, and the impact of stigmatization by community members. She differentiates between the experiences of her U.S.-born students and those who have migrated to North Carolina from other countries, and she shares some challenges specific to her undocumented students, including the stress of financially providing for family members in their home country and lack of access to federal financial aid for higher education. Cindy also details the importance of relationship-building between teachers and students and explains how students are more likely to reach out to teachers and school staff for help if they have a previously established trusting relationship. She also describes the “grassroots” nature of helping students and shares some of the in-school and community-based resources available to students and those specifically targeted to help students newly arriving from other countries. Finally, she describes the rise of charter schools in Chatham County and shifts in school demographics.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Cynthia Bredenberg by Lindley Andrew, 15 April 2023, R-1013, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29355
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
K12 education; Citizenship and immigration; Health; DREAMers and DACA; Community and social services and programs
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Maestros
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Cindy Bredenberg describe sus experiencias y observaciones como maestra de español en la escuela secundaria Jordan-Matthews en Siler City, Carolina del Norte. Ella habla sobre la demografía y el ambiente de su escuela y reflexiona sobre sus experiencias ayudando a varios estudiantes durante sus quince años trabajando en Jordan-Matthews, muchos de los cuales han sido latinos. Cindy también describe los desafíos que enfrentan muchos de sus estudiantes, específicamente aquellos relacionados con la tensión financiera, la falta de vivienda asequible de calidad, la ansiedad y el impacto de la estigmatización por los miembros de la comunidad. Ella distingue entre las experiencias de sus estudiantes nacidos en los EE. UU. y aquellos que han emigrado a Carolina del Norte desde otros países. Ella también habla de algunos desafíos que enfrentan sus estudiantes indocumentados, incluido el estrés de mandar dinero a los familiares que han quedado en el país de origen y la falta de acceso a financiación federal para la educación superior. Cindy también describe la importancia de construir relaciones entre maestros y estudiantes y explica cómo es más probable que los estudiantes se comuniquen con los maestros si tienen una relación de confianza ya establecida. También describe el modo ""grassroots"" de ayudar a los estudiantes y comparte algunos de los recursos escolares y comunitarios disponibles para los estudiantes, incluyendo aquellos específicamente destinados a ayudar a los estudiantes recién llegados de otros países. Finalmente, ella describe el crecimiento de las escuelas “charters” en el condado de Chatham y los cambios en la demografía de las poblaciones escolares.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Cynthia Bredenberg por Lindley Andrew, 15 April 2023, R-1013, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Educación básica y media; Ciudadanía e inmigración; Salud; Movimiento de jóvenes 'Soñadores' y Acción Diferida; Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00] START OF RECORDING
Lindley Andrew: Hi, my name is Lindley Andrew, and I’m here with Cindy Bredenberg, a high school teacher. It is April 15th, 2023, and we’re here in Chatham County, North Carolina. Today we’ll be discussing the effects of immigration-related stressors on the health and well-being of youth in Latinx immigrant communities, specifically Siler City, North Carolina. Cindy, just to get your oral consent, do I have your permission to continue interviewing you and for it to go on the New Roots website?
Cynthia Bredenberg: You do.
LA: Awesome. So just to start out, can you tell me a little bit about your school and the community that it’s in?
CB: Sure. I teach at Jordan-Matthews High School, which is located in Siler City, North Carolina. We’re maybe about forty minutes from Chapel Hill and about twenty minutes from Asheboro. We’re a small community. We’re located in Chatham County, and so our school district-- the northern part of our district is right in Chapel Hill, but for us, we’re kind of on the line with Randolph County, so a totally different demographic than what you would find near Chapel Hill. So, our school has about 850 students right now, and we’re sixty percent Hispanic, twenty-five percent Caucasian, and fifteen percent African American.
LA: Awesome. So, can you tell me a little bit about your-- what you do as a teacher, what you teach, specifically, and just kind of like the culture of your school?
CB: Sure. I have been teaching at Jordan-Matthews-- this is my fifteenth year. I am a non-native Spanish speaker, and when I was hired as a Spanish teacher, they asked me if I could teach native speakers Spanish because there was a need for that, so I said, “Sure!” [laughs] So that was my first time doing that, but I’ve been there for fifteen years now. I teach everything from Spanish one, two, three, and four, that would be for our non-native, non-heritage speakers. I’ve taught Spanish one and two native speakers, I teach AP Spanish Language and Culture, and I also teach a Syracuse University Project Advance class, Spanish 201. So, I pretty much taught anything at Jordan-Matthews, anything and everything. I work with students who speak English at home and students who speak Spanish at home, but predominantly students who speak Spanish at home.
LA: Awesome. And so, I guess because we’re going to be talking about immigrant youth and families, in your experience working with these kinds of students and their families, what have you observed are some of the most pressing stressors by these individuals? And how have students brought these stressors to your attention?
CB: Sure. Obviously, economics play a huge role in our families, and that’s a stressor. Over the fifteen years of working at Jordan-Matthews, I’ve had many students who worked night jobs. They might go to work at 5:30 in the afternoon and work until 3:00 in the morning, and then they go to bed for a couple hours and then come to school. I’ve had students who-- when I started at J-M, we still had students who were working in the cotton fields. And I had students who would go and pick cotton when the sun came up and then they would come to school, and then they would go back and pick cotton in Lee County. Maybe not so much in Chatham County, but they were traveling to where their parents were working. So, economics are a big thing. The lack of safe housing, sustainable housing. We do have about three trailer parks in Siler City, and so I believe that there is housing available, but it’s not quality housing, and some of the trailer parks where students live are very old, and it’s no place that you would ever want to live, yourself. So affordable housing that’s safe and quality housing-- finances are a huge part, and then also I think the stressors of children always worried about whether or not their parents will be taken away. I think that plays a huge roll in our students’ everyday lives.
LA: Yeah, and how have students typically brought these issues to your attention? Is it just kind of something you observe, or do they often reach out to you, or what is that like?
CB: So, it’s a little bit of both. Being that I’m established at the school, a lot of families know me, and so they feel comfortable coming to me. But if it’s a student who’s new, and they don’t know me -- you know, I’m a white lady who has an accent when she speaks Spanish -- so they don’t necessarily trust me right off the bat that, you know, we have to earn that trust. But, for a lot of the kids, they know me, I know their parents now, and so I think they probably do feel a little bit more comfortable coming to talk to me. And some, I think, with our students who are newly arrived to the United States, because I speak Spanish and they speak Spanish and they don’t speak English, I think it’s probably out of desperation, maybe, that they come and see me because they don’t know who else to talk to and I’m a teacher that speaks Spanish. Being a woman, I do have girls who will come and talk to me; maybe they wouldn’t talk to anyone else.
LA: Yeah, and just to kind of clarify and give a little bit of a distinction, could you distinguish between some of the challenges that are specific to students who are immigrants themselves, maybe newcomers like you just mentioned, versus the challenges faced by students who maybe have parents or family members who are immigrants, but they themselves were born in the U.S.?
CB: Sure. I didn’t really know about that distinction until I really saw it in my classroom. About ten years ago when I was teaching an AP Spanish class, I had students who were born here, but their parents were immigrants -- Hispanic students -- and in the same class, I had Hispanic students who had just come to our country. And I was really shocked and surprised by the way that the students who were citizens treated the non-citizens. Not overtly rude, but it was almost like passive aggressive, the way that they treated them. So that was really my first eye-opener to, “Wow they don’t see them as equals” or “They don’t see them as part of them.” So over the years we really try to work with kids at our school to try to get the kids who were born here and see themselves as, although they may be of Mexican or Guatemalan descent, they see themselves as American-- how can we get them to help the students who are new to our school. And so that’s something that we work on. So those students that are new to our school oftentimes they only socialize with each other, so they’re only speaking Spanish. Oftentimes they don’t know how to navigate the school system, they don’t know how to use the computer, they don’t -- because they’re only talking with each other in Spanish -- it does take them longer to learn English. And one thing that’s good about our school is we have a lot of courses that are offered in Spanish. In some ways I think that’s bad because it doesn’t enable those students to get out with the other students and to meet other kids. So that’s something that I think we try to work on to help our kids, who are typically an ESL student, interact with other students in the building. The other thing is getting those students who are U.S. citizens to work with those kids who are newcomers, to make them see that, you know, “We’re all human,” and they’re not so far removed from that. The students who are citizens already have many more opportunities than the students who aren’t. I have students who maybe came here at three years old or four years old and don’t remember anything about Mexico, but they’re not citizens. They receive an education, just like everybody else, and then when they’re seniors in high school and they’re applying to college, it’s really hard for them, really difficult to realize that their friends sitting next to them can pay a thousand dollars to go to the local community college, and they’re going to have to pay eight thousand dollars. And it just doesn’t seem fair. And it’s not fair. So that’s one thing I see also between citizens and non-citizens.
LA: Yeah. And do you think that many people in Siler City, in North Carolina, are aware of that kind of distinction between youth who are immigrants themselves versus youth who are children of immigrants? Because I often see them lumped together in a lot of popular narratives, and so is that something that you’ve noticed?
CB: Definitely lumped together. If we’re talking about Siler City, in particular, the white or African American population who are established in Siler City, they often lump all of our immigrants together as Mexican, and they do not understand the difference between if a child is a citizen or not a citizen, the opportunities that are afforded to the child that can apply for FAFSA, for financial aid, for all the scholarships, as compared to the child who is just as smart and has worked just as hard in high school and they don’t have those opportunities. No, people definitely don’t see that. So it’s interesting, I think, as -- I’m not originally from North Carolina. Like I said, I’ve been here fifteen years, so as an outsider, it’s interesting for me to see other groups of people that have historically been disadvantaged, how they treat now these Hispanic people who are now disadvantaged. It’s an interesting thing for me to see as an outsider.
LA: Yeah. Could you just elaborate on that just a little bit more?
CB: Sure. In Siler City, for example, we have a charter school. And the charter school, historically, was for white families. And now we have a lot of African American families sending their students there because they don’t want to send them to the public school because we are sixty percent Hispanic. Whereas so many of our Hispanic students at school, they’re fantastic, they’re super smart, they’re great, they’re funny, they’re great kids, but there’s this view of, “Oh, we’re not going to send our kids there.” And so, again, as an outsider, I see it as, “Well wait a minute, that’s how you were treated years ago,” but people don’t see it that way. They see it as the charter school is providing more opportunities for their kids. But I definitely see that our Hispanic students, and Hispanic families, are treated as second-class citizens many times in Siler City.
LA: Yeah, thanks for kind of giving a little bit more detail about that. I think that’s really important, and--.
CB: I think--. Can I speak to that also about Chatham County?
LA: Yeah.
CB: Because in--. So in Chatham County we have two elementary schools that offer a dual-language program. So, in Siler City, we have many more Hispanic students in the program than we have white or African American. Not that we don’t have the kids to fill those seats. The parents aren’t sending their kids to the dual-language school. So, in Siler City, the majority of the students in the program are Hispanic. In the same county, just forty minutes away, right near Chapel Hill, we have another elementary school, North Chatham, and the predominantly white students go there, and we don’t have enough Hispanic students. So the interesting part is, that in North Chatham, those white parents value their children being bilingual, but in the same county -- which, we know those parents are predominantly from other places, they’re not from Chatham County originally. Whereas in the same county, in Siler City, the white and African American parents from Chatham County do not typically send their kids to the dual-language school. They do not value their children being with those other kids, and they do not value their children being bilingual. It’s very interesting.
LA: That is really interesting. And in your fifteen years, have you noticed any shift in that perception or has it kind of maintained?
CB: I think it’s gotten worse. I think for a while we had parents sending their children to Siler City Elementary. Now, that speaks to the administration that was at Siler City Elementary at the time. A local person who was the principal at Siler City Elementary, I think the parents valued that person’s opinion. But I think as time has gone on, we see more of them sending their children to the charter schools.
LA: Interesting. Yeah, that would be fascinating to do research about, and collect perspectives and kind of map those.
CB: If people would be honest with their perspectives, it would be very interesting, yes.
LA: This is kind of switching gears a little bit, but in your experience knowing some mixed-status families -- which for listeners who may not exactly know what mixed-status is, that’s when there are some family members who are documented and others who aren’t -- what are some of the additional responsibilities and challenges that U.S. citizen-born children take on to help their undocumented parents or family members.
CB: Yeah, or siblings.
LA: Or siblings.
CB: We’ve had families at our school that two siblings have been citizens and one or two have not been citizens, and that’s so hard, when one of the children gets into college and applies for financial aid, and can go on, and the other child cannot, although they’re super smart. One thing I see when the parents were not born here, but the children were, or the children were raised here from a young age, the children oftentimes act not only as a translator, but the children act as the go-between between the school, between the local government, between the doctor’s office, dentist office-- and that’s a big responsibility. It’s also-- language is a powerful tool. Many times, I’ve seen children who maybe don’t want to tell their parents everything that’s being translated. It may be an uncomfortable topic, or maybe that they don’t want their parents to know, or maybe even they’re not sure how to translate some of the conversation. So that puts a big stressor on the child. And again, we have families that, you know, children are told not to answer the door. Children are told, maybe, not to talk to police. Children are told not to divulge any information to teachers or to counselors. And so those children are keeping that all inside. And so, we see by the time that they get to high school a lot of these kids are treated as adults. I have a seventeen-year-old son. When I look at some of the things that some of my kids who are seventeen -- my Hispanic students who are seventeen -- the things, the responsibilities that they carry, whether its mental, physical, you know, helping the family financially, caring for all the children while the parents are at work, things that my child just doesn’t have an idea about. So, I think we see these kids come to school with--. Oh, and another thing, sometimes I’ll say to the kids, “Hey, can you come in tomorrow like quarter of eight?” “No, maestra, I have to take my little brother to school, and I have to take my cousin to school.” Especially if they were born here and can get a driver’s license, then the family really depends on them for the transportation of younger siblings, of parents to doctors’ appointments. Kids often miss school because they are the driver and the translator for family members to go to appointments.
LA: Right. Are many of the newcomers that arrive in Siler City, are they unaccompanied minors or do some come with family members, or what’s the breakdown there? And how are they maybe received differently depending on that?
CB: Okay, so just this year, I’ve had ten new students who have come across the border unaccompanied. And they have family members who live in Siler City. Maybe an uncle, a cousin. And some of them, I don’t even know how they’ve reached Siler City. I think crossing the border. I think COVID in their country was probably--. They were on their own. Crossing the border, I think was an adventure, coming to Siler City was an adventure, and now the United States Government says, “Well you have to go to school,” and it’s just kind of another adventure for them right now. They don’t really see the benefit in education. They’re almost in a limbo, some of these kids, because they’re living with one family member, they’re not living with their parents. They, definitely right now, in our community, they all hang together. Where our families that have been here for a generation don’t necessarily communicate with them so much. Does that make sense?
LA: Yes.
CB: They have their families, they have their jobs, their kids are in school. And then these newcomer students that we have, they’re still trying to figure out what the whole education system is, what our schedule is like, why do you have to go to four classes a day, why can’t you leave when you want to leave. Honestly, I think these kids have been on their own for a couple years, and now they’re saying, “We have to stay at school? We can’t just walk out? Well at our school, we can just walk out.” And so, it’s not only coming to the United States, it’s just the whole school culture that is really foreign to them. Right now, we have a lot of kids at our school trying to work through that.
LA: And what resources, maybe within the school or just the community, state, are available to those students who are trying to just understand the realities of living in Siler City, North Carolina after coming from a country far away?
CB: Right, right. So, within our school system, I think our school -- Chatham County Schools -- we try to work really hard to help those students. We have counselors, we have bilingual staff. From when you walk in the door of our schools that have dual-language programs -- and even, I think some of the other schools -- the minute you walk in, we have staff who are bilingual who greet you. We have counselors. If they don’t speak Spanish, we make sure that a translator is there. Same with our social workers. We have therapists that offer services to the students. We also have in Chatham County, in Siler City, in particular, we have Vínculo Hispano, which is a great resource for newcomers to help them just with the whole process of-- well anything. Anything that they might encounter, whether it’s government, doctor, whatever, Vínculo Hispano helps them with that. And I think, on the county level, also they really try to help give resources to Siler City. We also have I think in Siler City-- we also culturally try to really recognize the Hispanic culture and celebrate that. You know, whether it might be September 15th, and independence, or whether it’s Cinco de Mayo, or whatever it might be, I think that culture, we do try to celebrate that within Siler City.
LA: Yeah. So, I know we’ve talked quite a bit about the stressors and challenges faced by youth who are immigrants themselves or family members of immigrants. Could you talk a little bit about how these stressors and challenges affect students’ mental or physical health, and then, I know we just touched on the services available, but if you have any others to add that are related directly to mental or physical health--.
CB: Sure. I think particularly since COVID, I think one thing that I see in anxiety. I can speak of, right now, I have two students who are suffering from some anxiety issues, and I think it’s because they are working while attending school and trying to send money home to their families, and they’re teenage girls. And they’re in AP Spanish, and, you know, they have to do some homework, and I definitely try to limit the amount of work that I send home with my students, especially those that work outside of school because they really are trying to help support their families. And so that anxiety comes over into the classroom. You know, when I’m asking a student to write a timed essay on a topic that--. I think we do a good job at Jordan-Matthews offering classes in Spanish. I don’t know that we offer enough levels of the classes in Spanish. We have AP Spanish Language and Culture, we have AP Spanish Literature, we have Spanish for native speakers, we have a history class in Spanish. But what we’ve found right now is we need to start looking at some varying levels of these classes because we’re really just grouping all those kids together. “Oh, you speak Spanish? Oh, we’re going to put you in the history class,” but that’s causing some more anxiety because maybe they’ve never studied at that level before. And so yes, the class is being given in Spanish, but they don’t understand the process of having to take notes, or, you know, “Read a chapter for tomorrow and answer these questions.” So that’s adding another stressor to them. We do have an ESL Academy, which is pretty successful, but I almost think maybe we need to offer some varying levels of our Spanish classes so that students can be more successful, and they wouldn’t be so stressed for that.
LA: Right. Can you talk a little bit about the ESL Academy, and just kind of what that is and how that benefits students?
CB: Sure. So our ESL Academy really exists to help--. Because we’ve had so many students who are coming from a predominantly Spanish-speaking country, we’ve had a few students from other countries, but predominantly Spanish-speaking, we have so many students who are coming from Spanish-speaking countries that we just did not offer enough classes for them to assimilate into our school. So, they started this ESL Academy, is what it’s called, and at least two out of the four classes a day, the students are with the ESL teachers. Now, we offer one of those classes as physical education, so, you know, they’re outside running around and doing physical activity, but we have it within ESL Academy. Another class that we have within ESL Academy is, well, we have a few, whether it’s like reading and writing or public speaking, or whatever it might be. I think the students benefit because they do try to focus on English, but those students are together at least one or two classes a day so they can kind of touch base with each other. Now I think they touch base with each other in Spanish, but at least they get to see each other.
LA: Yeah. Let’s see, so--.
CB: Oh, services.
LA: Yeah.
CB: I’m sorry.
LA: No, it’s okay.
CB: I didn’t talk about the services.
LA: It’s okay, yeah, what services are available to these students that may be experiencing, like you said, anxiety in the classroom, or who’ve brought some other mental health concern to the teachers?
CB: Well, and even physical.
LA: Yeah.
CB: I had a student who, over the course of a couple days, I realized he had a terrible toothache, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do so I contacted the school nurse who kind of called around our town and found a dentist who said, “Oh yes, bring the student. Bring him in, let’s see how we can help him,” and ultimately the student needed a root canal, and this dentist just stepped forward and was like, “Let him pay what he can pay. Yes, this is another human being, and I’m going to help him as much as I can,” which really, I loved that because I was like, “Ok, yes, there are good people.” So, it’s kind of grassroots sometimes how we help our students. In terms of serviced offered right at school, like with our nurse, she’s fantastic, we had a student who needed glasses. The mom didn’t speak any English, but we got a translator who was able to go to the eye doctor with them right in our town, and the local Lion’s Club paid for the student’s classes. So there definitely are good people in our community who want to help our newcomers. At school, definitely I think the resources that are used the most are our--. We offer therapists, and our school counselors, and our social workers, and I think that they are probably utilized the most. And we have translators. We have two translators at school who sit in on those meetings and translate as necessary.
LA: Yeah, thanks for sharing about the services about the services. I really liked how you mentioned kind of the grassroots nature of sometimes how students are able to be helped as kind of like a joint effort between a lot of kind of random people--.
CB: How we get things done.
LA: Yeah. I don’t know if you have any more to expand on that, but if you do, I would love to hear a little bit more about that just--. You know, if a service doesn’t inherently exist, but you kind of can reach out to so-and-so or whatever to provide for student.
CB: Well, we had a student a few years ago, who came to me and she’s a DACA student, and she had applied to a scholarship specifically for DACA students, and she won a scholarship. There are a number of universities in the U.S. that offer free four-year degrees, a four-year education, for DACA students. And so, the school that she was awarded was at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. And so, she came to me, and she said -- and she really wasn’t excited -- and she said, “Well, I won the scholarship.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh!” I was acting crazy, “You won the scholarship!” And she said, “But it’s in Memphis, Tennessee,” and I said, “So?” And she said, “Maestra, how will I get to Memphis?” And I said, “We’re going to work it out.” So, what we did was, we packed up the car, her parents got in the car, we drove, she checked out the college, they had a fantastic program, we drove back, and ultimately, she went there, and she graduated with a four-year degree. So, she’s not our only student who has won the degree at Christian Brothers University. So, each time, I think the teacher support, and I think it’s kind of grassroots because the teachers that help these students who are undocumented or who have no idea about college, but we know that we can get them a scholarship--. You know, we’re still checking up on them after they go away to college. “Hey, how are you doing? What do you need? How can we help you?” So, I think definitely at Jordan-Matthews, there are a lot of teachers who understand the situation the students are in. Now there are some who are new, and they don’t. But the teachers -- there’s probably a good core of five or six teachers -- who understand that student situation, and they try to help however possible. Reach out to the community, reach out to local resources, to get that grassroots stuff done.
LA: Awesome. That’s really heartening to hear that there are people doing good work, even when it’s not necessarily in their job title. So, this kind of leads right into the next question. So, in your experience, were teachers and other support staff -- like counselors, therapists, school social workers -- are they prepared to help students with these specific stressors that are specifically for children who are immigrants themselves, whether documented or undocumented, and then who are children of immigrants?
CB: I think it’s like anything else. I think you have some teachers who really do want to figure out what’s going on with that child in their room, and where is this coming from. And I’m a big proponent--. I would like to do more home visits. I think that we could reach more parents doing home visits. But then there are some teachers who are like, “Whoa, no, I don’t want to go to their home. I just want to come do my job and go home at night.” And that’s all personality, you know, how people are. We have some teachers who, yes, they understand, and they want to know more about it, and then I think we have some teachers that don’t understand, and maybe--. And the interesting thing is, we have some teachers who are from other Spanish-speaking countries -- they’re visiting international teachers -- over the course of the years. Some of them really understand the plight of our immigrants, and some of them don’t, depending on what country they come from. So, one thing that we try to do, we do try to have informational sessions about, that we are a dual-language school, and that, “Information that you send home needs to be in both languages, or if you need to make a call home, let us know and we will translate for you so that you can communicate effectively with the parent.” So, I think being a dual-language school we do try to promote that more, making sure that communication is there, making sure that outreach is there, but there’s always more we could do. Definitely.
LA: And so, I know that you just said that being a dual-language school has helped in that there are more translators available and maybe an increased awareness of the struggle that a lot of these students face. Do you think that is unique to Jordan-Matthews primarily because it’s a dual-language school. In other words, is that awareness present in the other high schools in Chatham County that you’ve seen or is there less awareness in other schools that don’t have this immersion program?
CB: There is less awareness. I don’t think it’s due to the dual-language program. I think it’s due to the demographics. We were invited to another high school in the county, and the experience that my students had at that high school was eye-opening, that we are in the same county, and my students were treated like they were not equals. And it was all addressed, but I don’t think just being a dual-language school has to do with it. I think it’s the demographics of the school where you are, and the people that you have in the school.
LA: Do you see in Siler City, or in Chatham County more broadly, a stigmatization or kind of marginalization of your students and their families, and if so, how does that manifest and what is done about it?
CB: Sure. Language and economics are a powerful thing. It’s no secret that the families in Siler City don’t have much money, don’t have many resources. Would I like to see more resources in our schools? Always. Now, that being said, as the dual-language chairperson at Jordan-Matthews, Chatham County Schools has been great in our program. They really work with us. Just about anything I ask for, we get for our students. So, I think resources are really good. I do think that public perception--. How should I say this? Coming out of COVID and, I don’t want to be too political, I’m really not a political person, but I thought that I saw more negativity during the last presidential administration towards our immigrants. And so, coming out of COVID, I do think that there is a little more negativity towards immigrants as a whole, not only in our town, our county, our state, our country. And so that’s something that we’re always working on to try to break that stigma of, “Yes, our students at Jordan-Matthews might be majority Hispanic. They might be poor, but don’t try to tell me that they’re gang members, and don’t try to put on stereotypes that don’t exist.” So yes, I think that’s something that we’re always working for, to promote the excellent things happening at our school with our students to break stereotypes that people have.
LA: And what effect do those stereotypes have on students themselves? Is it something that they even think about or notice or is it something that they take really personally? Does it vary? What have you noticed?
CB: I notice it because as a white woman, there are white people in our community that think I share the same ideas that they do because I’m white. And so, people will make comments to me about, “All those Mexicans.” I’m like, “Well, actually, they’re from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela,” and then they kind of look at me, you know. So, are the students aware of the stigma? I think when they’re in our school, they’re maybe not necessarily aware of that, but when they go to other schools--. You know, there’s a brand-new high school on the other side of the county, and I think the kids do say, “Wow, why don’t we have this? Is it because we’re not as good?” And as a teacher you have to go, “No, that’s not why. No, you guys are awesome.” But I do think perceptions of--. And I don’t think it’s Chatham County, it’s not our Chatham County Schools, it’s not our local government, it’s more members of the community have negative perceptions about our kids. And so those are definitely stereotypes. We’re always trying to lift our kids up and remind them of how fantastic they are. And we’re trying to grow our own. We try to have Hispanic students who go off to college and maybe want to be teachers come back so that our students can see themselves reflected in the staff of our school. But that being said, obviously, I don’t look like my students, but I think they know that I support them to the very end, you know. But it would be nice if they could see themselves reflected in the community.
LA: Yeah, I love that you brought that up. What benefits do you think students receive from having a teacher who does reflect themselves. Like, I know that Jordan-Matthews has quote a few teachers who are native Spanish-speakers and are not originally from the United States, and so even if their countries of origin aren’t the same and their stories are very different, what benefits do students have from having those kinds of teachers.
CB: Sure. Just being able to relate to that person or just being able to say, “Hey that teacher not only looks like me, but is from another country.” Or, “that teacher had that experience like I did.” We definitely had some teachers who came here as immigrants and now they’re citizens. So, it makes it more possible also, like, “Hey, they did that so maybe I can do that.” I did have a conversation this year with one of my students, who is a senior, and I said to that student, it’s a female, and I said, “How do you feel about this topic? Do you feel bad sometimes that we don’t have more representation,” and she said, “Oh yeah, I would love to have teachers that look like me.” I mean, I love her. We get along great, but I apologized. I’m like, “I’m so sorry.” So that’s something that we have to work on as a country, I think. Valuing education, valuing teachers so that we get more diversity and more people going into education so then our students and our class can look up and go, “Hey, that person looks like me,” or “Hey, they did it so I can do it.” I think that is really important.
LA: Yeah, and that is definitely an issue way bigger than Siler City, Chatham County. Valuing teachers to encourage everyone to join the profession is a huge issue across the country.
CB: Yeah, as a mom of boys, I mean, I wish my kids had more male teachers. So, I can see where my Latino students, there is--. Now, that being said, I mean we have four, five, six teachers right now who are Latinos, but we have almost nine hundred students. We could have a whole bunch more.
LA: And what’s interesting is that some schools don’t even have four, five, six, you know. In this county, which is interesting. Speaking of teachers and school staff, what resources or trainings or really anything, do you think could better prepare them to work with students like the ones we’ve been talking about.
CB: Yeah, so I think a lot of the training that teachers go through when they have professional development, they feel like it’s not valuable or, “How can I use this in my classroom?” We had a student a few years ago who now has a full scholarship to Wake Forest University. She’s fantastic, and she actually came -- she was newly arrived, she was an ESL student, but she was passionate about the environment -- and she came and did a presentation to the faculty about starting a recycling program at school, how important recycling was, and she did it in English of a student who’d only been there a year. It was fantastic because she was so passionate about this topic, and all the teachers were like, “Wow, listening to this student, and she’s in ESL, and she’s really trying, she’s really--.” And that made that connection with that student with the faculty. So I think one thing that we need to do is just remind faculty members about where these students are from, what their backgrounds are, but that they are super smart and that they’re passionate about different topics, and things like that. Another thing I think that we have done well in the past and that we need to remember to do well, is a lot about language acquisition and, “How do students learn in in your English classes, and how can they take that learning, whether it’s in math or science or English or whatever class it is, and put it back into their own language?” Our teachers are spending a lot of time translating and trying to figure out how to best reach these kids whose first language is Spanish, who are newcomers. And I don’t think it’s just Siler City or Chatham County. I think across North Carolina, across the United States, we need to try to do more to help teachers with second-language acquisition with their students.
LA: Yeah. I guess this is kind of going back just a little bit, but what might make a student more or less likely to reach out to teachers or support services for help? You know, you talked about building the relationship between students and faculty and how that increases awareness and visibility, but are there other thing that make a student more likely or less likely to reach out to school staff for help if needed?
CB: Definitely our newcomer students are not going to reach out to people like me if they don’t know me. They see me as a white lady. They don’t know that I’m trying to help them. So, establishing the relationship with your students is so important. That’s why I think at Jordan-Matthews, it’s really good that the first people that they encounter, you know, they walk in the building and our two translators are both Hispanic, super nice, warm, inviting people, really try to get to know the kids, help them out, and so then they’re the translators for the guidance counselors. That kind of breaks the ice with that. So, I do know that a lot of those kids who’ve just come to our country, immediately go to our secretaries because they’re bilingual and they can help them out. So, building the relationships, it’s really important. And also, I think for the kids to see you in other roles. Maybe they see you helping a different Hispanic student in Spanish or maybe a topic that you talk about in class they think, “Oh, well maybe this person’s not the stereotypical white person.” But I think for our newcomers, having those people who speak Spanish is a game-changer for them. I think they’re the people that they relate to first.
LA: Right.
CB: Does that help?
LA: Yeah, that’s great. I think those are all the questions that I have. I have really enjoyed talking with you. Are there any parting thoughts? If not, I will go ahead and end it here.
CB: No, thank you for letting me participate. I appreciate it.
LA: Of course, it’s been awesome.
CB: Okay.
[00:43:34] END OF RECORDING
Transcribed by Lindley Andrew on April 20th, 2023
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00] START OF RECORDING
Lindley Andrew: Hi, my name is Lindley Andrew, and I’m here with Cindy Bredenberg, a high school teacher. It is April 15th, 2023, and we’re here in Chatham County, North Carolina. Today we’ll be discussing the effects of immigration-related stressors on the health and well-being of youth in Latinx immigrant communities, specifically Siler City, North Carolina. Cindy, just to get your oral consent, do I have your permission to continue interviewing you and for it to go on the New Roots website?
Cynthia Bredenberg: You do.
LA: Awesome. So just to start out, can you tell me a little bit about your school and the community that it’s in?
CB: Sure. I teach at Jordan-Matthews High School, which is located in Siler City, North Carolina. We’re maybe about forty minutes from Chapel Hill and about twenty minutes from Asheboro. We’re a small community. We’re located in Chatham County, and so our school district-- the northern part of our district is right in Chapel Hill, but for us, we’re kind of on the line with Randolph County, so a totally different demographic than what you would find near Chapel Hill. So, our school has about 850 students right now, and we’re sixty percent Hispanic, twenty-five percent Caucasian, and fifteen percent African American.
LA: Awesome. So, can you tell me a little bit about your-- what you do as a teacher, what you teach, specifically, and just kind of like the culture of your school?
CB: Sure. I have been teaching at Jordan-Matthews-- this is my fifteenth year. I am a non-native Spanish speaker, and when I was hired as a Spanish teacher, they asked me if I could teach native speakers Spanish because there was a need for that, so I said, “Sure!” [laughs] So that was my first time doing that, but I’ve been there for fifteen years now. I teach everything from Spanish one, two, three, and four, that would be for our non-native, non-heritage speakers. I’ve taught Spanish one and two native speakers, I teach AP Spanish Language and Culture, and I also teach a Syracuse University Project Advance class, Spanish 201. So, I pretty much taught anything at Jordan-Matthews, anything and everything. I work with students who speak English at home and students who speak Spanish at home, but predominantly students who speak Spanish at home.
LA: Awesome. And so, I guess because we’re going to be talking about immigrant youth and families, in your experience working with these kinds of students and their families, what have you observed are some of the most pressing stressors by these individuals? And how have students brought these stressors to your attention?
CB: Sure. Obviously, economics play a huge role in our families, and that’s a stressor. Over the fifteen years of working at Jordan-Matthews, I’ve had many students who worked night jobs. They might go to work at 5:30 in the afternoon and work until 3:00 in the morning, and then they go to bed for a couple hours and then come to school. I’ve had students who-- when I started at J-M, we still had students who were working in the cotton fields. And I had students who would go and pick cotton when the sun came up and then they would come to school, and then they would go back and pick cotton in Lee County. Maybe not so much in Chatham County, but they were traveling to where their parents were working. So, economics are a big thing. The lack of safe housing, sustainable housing. We do have about three trailer parks in Siler City, and so I believe that there is housing available, but it’s not quality housing, and some of the trailer parks where students live are very old, and it’s no place that you would ever want to live, yourself. So affordable housing that’s safe and quality housing-- finances are a huge part, and then also I think the stressors of children always worried about whether or not their parents will be taken away. I think that plays a huge roll in our students’ everyday lives.
LA: Yeah, and how have students typically brought these issues to your attention? Is it just kind of something you observe, or do they often reach out to you, or what is that like?
CB: So, it’s a little bit of both. Being that I’m established at the school, a lot of families know me, and so they feel comfortable coming to me. But if it’s a student who’s new, and they don’t know me -- you know, I’m a white lady who has an accent when she speaks Spanish -- so they don’t necessarily trust me right off the bat that, you know, we have to earn that trust. But, for a lot of the kids, they know me, I know their parents now, and so I think they probably do feel a little bit more comfortable coming to talk to me. And some, I think, with our students who are newly arrived to the United States, because I speak Spanish and they speak Spanish and they don’t speak English, I think it’s probably out of desperation, maybe, that they come and see me because they don’t know who else to talk to and I’m a teacher that speaks Spanish. Being a woman, I do have girls who will come and talk to me; maybe they wouldn’t talk to anyone else.
LA: Yeah, and just to kind of clarify and give a little bit of a distinction, could you distinguish between some of the challenges that are specific to students who are immigrants themselves, maybe newcomers like you just mentioned, versus the challenges faced by students who maybe have parents or family members who are immigrants, but they themselves were born in the U.S.?
CB: Sure. I didn’t really know about that distinction until I really saw it in my classroom. About ten years ago when I was teaching an AP Spanish class, I had students who were born here, but their parents were immigrants -- Hispanic students -- and in the same class, I had Hispanic students who had just come to our country. And I was really shocked and surprised by the way that the students who were citizens treated the non-citizens. Not overtly rude, but it was almost like passive aggressive, the way that they treated them. So that was really my first eye-opener to, “Wow they don’t see them as equals” or “They don’t see them as part of them.” So over the years we really try to work with kids at our school to try to get the kids who were born here and see themselves as, although they may be of Mexican or Guatemalan descent, they see themselves as American-- how can we get them to help the students who are new to our school. And so that’s something that we work on. So those students that are new to our school oftentimes they only socialize with each other, so they’re only speaking Spanish. Oftentimes they don’t know how to navigate the school system, they don’t know how to use the computer, they don’t -- because they’re only talking with each other in Spanish -- it does take them longer to learn English. And one thing that’s good about our school is we have a lot of courses that are offered in Spanish. In some ways I think that’s bad because it doesn’t enable those students to get out with the other students and to meet other kids. So that’s something that I think we try to work on to help our kids, who are typically an ESL student, interact with other students in the building. The other thing is getting those students who are U.S. citizens to work with those kids who are newcomers, to make them see that, you know, “We’re all human,” and they’re not so far removed from that. The students who are citizens already have many more opportunities than the students who aren’t. I have students who maybe came here at three years old or four years old and don’t remember anything about Mexico, but they’re not citizens. They receive an education, just like everybody else, and then when they’re seniors in high school and they’re applying to college, it’s really hard for them, really difficult to realize that their friends sitting next to them can pay a thousand dollars to go to the local community college, and they’re going to have to pay eight thousand dollars. And it just doesn’t seem fair. And it’s not fair. So that’s one thing I see also between citizens and non-citizens.
LA: Yeah. And do you think that many people in Siler City, in North Carolina, are aware of that kind of distinction between youth who are immigrants themselves versus youth who are children of immigrants? Because I often see them lumped together in a lot of popular narratives, and so is that something that you’ve noticed?
CB: Definitely lumped together. If we’re talking about Siler City, in particular, the white or African American population who are established in Siler City, they often lump all of our immigrants together as Mexican, and they do not understand the difference between if a child is a citizen or not a citizen, the opportunities that are afforded to the child that can apply for FAFSA, for financial aid, for all the scholarships, as compared to the child who is just as smart and has worked just as hard in high school and they don’t have those opportunities. No, people definitely don’t see that. So it’s interesting, I think, as -- I’m not originally from North Carolina. Like I said, I’ve been here fifteen years, so as an outsider, it’s interesting for me to see other groups of people that have historically been disadvantaged, how they treat now these Hispanic people who are now disadvantaged. It’s an interesting thing for me to see as an outsider.
LA: Yeah. Could you just elaborate on that just a little bit more?
CB: Sure. In Siler City, for example, we have a charter school. And the charter school, historically, was for white families. And now we have a lot of African American families sending their students there because they don’t want to send them to the public school because we are sixty percent Hispanic. Whereas so many of our Hispanic students at school, they’re fantastic, they’re super smart, they’re great, they’re funny, they’re great kids, but there’s this view of, “Oh, we’re not going to send our kids there.” And so, again, as an outsider, I see it as, “Well wait a minute, that’s how you were treated years ago,” but people don’t see it that way. They see it as the charter school is providing more opportunities for their kids. But I definitely see that our Hispanic students, and Hispanic families, are treated as second-class citizens many times in Siler City.
LA: Yeah, thanks for kind of giving a little bit more detail about that. I think that’s really important, and--.
CB: I think--. Can I speak to that also about Chatham County?
LA: Yeah.
CB: Because in--. So in Chatham County we have two elementary schools that offer a dual-language program. So, in Siler City, we have many more Hispanic students in the program than we have white or African American. Not that we don’t have the kids to fill those seats. The parents aren’t sending their kids to the dual-language school. So, in Siler City, the majority of the students in the program are Hispanic. In the same county, just forty minutes away, right near Chapel Hill, we have another elementary school, North Chatham, and the predominantly white students go there, and we don’t have enough Hispanic students. So the interesting part is, that in North Chatham, those white parents value their children being bilingual, but in the same county -- which, we know those parents are predominantly from other places, they’re not from Chatham County originally. Whereas in the same county, in Siler City, the white and African American parents from Chatham County do not typically send their kids to the dual-language school. They do not value their children being with those other kids, and they do not value their children being bilingual. It’s very interesting.
LA: That is really interesting. And in your fifteen years, have you noticed any shift in that perception or has it kind of maintained?
CB: I think it’s gotten worse. I think for a while we had parents sending their children to Siler City Elementary. Now, that speaks to the administration that was at Siler City Elementary at the time. A local person who was the principal at Siler City Elementary, I think the parents valued that person’s opinion. But I think as time has gone on, we see more of them sending their children to the charter schools.
LA: Interesting. Yeah, that would be fascinating to do research about, and collect perspectives and kind of map those.
CB: If people would be honest with their perspectives, it would be very interesting, yes.
LA: This is kind of switching gears a little bit, but in your experience knowing some mixed-status families -- which for listeners who may not exactly know what mixed-status is, that’s when there are some family members who are documented and others who aren’t -- what are some of the additional responsibilities and challenges that U.S. citizen-born children take on to help their undocumented parents or family members.
CB: Yeah, or siblings.
LA: Or siblings.
CB: We’ve had families at our school that two siblings have been citizens and one or two have not been citizens, and that’s so hard, when one of the children gets into college and applies for financial aid, and can go on, and the other child cannot, although they’re super smart. One thing I see when the parents were not born here, but the children were, or the children were raised here from a young age, the children oftentimes act not only as a translator, but the children act as the go-between between the school, between the local government, between the doctor’s office, dentist office-- and that’s a big responsibility. It’s also-- language is a powerful tool. Many times, I’ve seen children who maybe don’t want to tell their parents everything that’s being translated. It may be an uncomfortable topic, or maybe that they don’t want their parents to know, or maybe even they’re not sure how to translate some of the conversation. So that puts a big stressor on the child. And again, we have families that, you know, children are told not to answer the door. Children are told, maybe, not to talk to police. Children are told not to divulge any information to teachers or to counselors. And so those children are keeping that all inside. And so, we see by the time that they get to high school a lot of these kids are treated as adults. I have a seventeen-year-old son. When I look at some of the things that some of my kids who are seventeen -- my Hispanic students who are seventeen -- the things, the responsibilities that they carry, whether its mental, physical, you know, helping the family financially, caring for all the children while the parents are at work, things that my child just doesn’t have an idea about. So, I think we see these kids come to school with--. Oh, and another thing, sometimes I’ll say to the kids, “Hey, can you come in tomorrow like quarter of eight?” “No, maestra, I have to take my little brother to school, and I have to take my cousin to school.” Especially if they were born here and can get a driver’s license, then the family really depends on them for the transportation of younger siblings, of parents to doctors’ appointments. Kids often miss school because they are the driver and the translator for family members to go to appointments.
LA: Right. Are many of the newcomers that arrive in Siler City, are they unaccompanied minors or do some come with family members, or what’s the breakdown there? And how are they maybe received differently depending on that?
CB: Okay, so just this year, I’ve had ten new students who have come across the border unaccompanied. And they have family members who live in Siler City. Maybe an uncle, a cousin. And some of them, I don’t even know how they’ve reached Siler City. I think crossing the border. I think COVID in their country was probably--. They were on their own. Crossing the border, I think was an adventure, coming to Siler City was an adventure, and now the United States Government says, “Well you have to go to school,” and it’s just kind of another adventure for them right now. They don’t really see the benefit in education. They’re almost in a limbo, some of these kids, because they’re living with one family member, they’re not living with their parents. They, definitely right now, in our community, they all hang together. Where our families that have been here for a generation don’t necessarily communicate with them so much. Does that make sense?
LA: Yes.
CB: They have their families, they have their jobs, their kids are in school. And then these newcomer students that we have, they’re still trying to figure out what the whole education system is, what our schedule is like, why do you have to go to four classes a day, why can’t you leave when you want to leave. Honestly, I think these kids have been on their own for a couple years, and now they’re saying, “We have to stay at school? We can’t just walk out? Well at our school, we can just walk out.” And so, it’s not only coming to the United States, it’s just the whole school culture that is really foreign to them. Right now, we have a lot of kids at our school trying to work through that.
LA: And what resources, maybe within the school or just the community, state, are available to those students who are trying to just understand the realities of living in Siler City, North Carolina after coming from a country far away?
CB: Right, right. So, within our school system, I think our school -- Chatham County Schools -- we try to work really hard to help those students. We have counselors, we have bilingual staff. From when you walk in the door of our schools that have dual-language programs -- and even, I think some of the other schools -- the minute you walk in, we have staff who are bilingual who greet you. We have counselors. If they don’t speak Spanish, we make sure that a translator is there. Same with our social workers. We have therapists that offer services to the students. We also have in Chatham County, in Siler City, in particular, we have Vínculo Hispano, which is a great resource for newcomers to help them just with the whole process of-- well anything. Anything that they might encounter, whether it’s government, doctor, whatever, Vínculo Hispano helps them with that. And I think, on the county level, also they really try to help give resources to Siler City. We also have I think in Siler City-- we also culturally try to really recognize the Hispanic culture and celebrate that. You know, whether it might be September 15th, and independence, or whether it’s Cinco de Mayo, or whatever it might be, I think that culture, we do try to celebrate that within Siler City.
LA: Yeah. So, I know we’ve talked quite a bit about the stressors and challenges faced by youth who are immigrants themselves or family members of immigrants. Could you talk a little bit about how these stressors and challenges affect students’ mental or physical health, and then, I know we just touched on the services available, but if you have any others to add that are related directly to mental or physical health--.
CB: Sure. I think particularly since COVID, I think one thing that I see in anxiety. I can speak of, right now, I have two students who are suffering from some anxiety issues, and I think it’s because they are working while attending school and trying to send money home to their families, and they’re teenage girls. And they’re in AP Spanish, and, you know, they have to do some homework, and I definitely try to limit the amount of work that I send home with my students, especially those that work outside of school because they really are trying to help support their families. And so that anxiety comes over into the classroom. You know, when I’m asking a student to write a timed essay on a topic that--. I think we do a good job at Jordan-Matthews offering classes in Spanish. I don’t know that we offer enough levels of the classes in Spanish. We have AP Spanish Language and Culture, we have AP Spanish Literature, we have Spanish for native speakers, we have a history class in Spanish. But what we’ve found right now is we need to start looking at some varying levels of these classes because we’re really just grouping all those kids together. “Oh, you speak Spanish? Oh, we’re going to put you in the history class,” but that’s causing some more anxiety because maybe they’ve never studied at that level before. And so yes, the class is being given in Spanish, but they don’t understand the process of having to take notes, or, you know, “Read a chapter for tomorrow and answer these questions.” So that’s adding another stressor to them. We do have an ESL Academy, which is pretty successful, but I almost think maybe we need to offer some varying levels of our Spanish classes so that students can be more successful, and they wouldn’t be so stressed for that.
LA: Right. Can you talk a little bit about the ESL Academy, and just kind of what that is and how that benefits students?
CB: Sure. So our ESL Academy really exists to help--. Because we’ve had so many students who are coming from a predominantly Spanish-speaking country, we’ve had a few students from other countries, but predominantly Spanish-speaking, we have so many students who are coming from Spanish-speaking countries that we just did not offer enough classes for them to assimilate into our school. So, they started this ESL Academy, is what it’s called, and at least two out of the four classes a day, the students are with the ESL teachers. Now, we offer one of those classes as physical education, so, you know, they’re outside running around and doing physical activity, but we have it within ESL Academy. Another class that we have within ESL Academy is, well, we have a few, whether it’s like reading and writing or public speaking, or whatever it might be. I think the students benefit because they do try to focus on English, but those students are together at least one or two classes a day so they can kind of touch base with each other. Now I think they touch base with each other in Spanish, but at least they get to see each other.
LA: Yeah. Let’s see, so--.
CB: Oh, services.
LA: Yeah.
CB: I’m sorry.
LA: No, it’s okay.
CB: I didn’t talk about the services.
LA: It’s okay, yeah, what services are available to these students that may be experiencing, like you said, anxiety in the classroom, or who’ve brought some other mental health concern to the teachers?
CB: Well, and even physical.
LA: Yeah.
CB: I had a student who, over the course of a couple days, I realized he had a terrible toothache, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do so I contacted the school nurse who kind of called around our town and found a dentist who said, “Oh yes, bring the student. Bring him in, let’s see how we can help him,” and ultimately the student needed a root canal, and this dentist just stepped forward and was like, “Let him pay what he can pay. Yes, this is another human being, and I’m going to help him as much as I can,” which really, I loved that because I was like, “Ok, yes, there are good people.” So, it’s kind of grassroots sometimes how we help our students. In terms of serviced offered right at school, like with our nurse, she’s fantastic, we had a student who needed glasses. The mom didn’t speak any English, but we got a translator who was able to go to the eye doctor with them right in our town, and the local Lion’s Club paid for the student’s classes. So there definitely are good people in our community who want to help our newcomers. At school, definitely I think the resources that are used the most are our--. We offer therapists, and our school counselors, and our social workers, and I think that they are probably utilized the most. And we have translators. We have two translators at school who sit in on those meetings and translate as necessary.
LA: Yeah, thanks for sharing about the services about the services. I really liked how you mentioned kind of the grassroots nature of sometimes how students are able to be helped as kind of like a joint effort between a lot of kind of random people--.
CB: How we get things done.
LA: Yeah. I don’t know if you have any more to expand on that, but if you do, I would love to hear a little bit more about that just--. You know, if a service doesn’t inherently exist, but you kind of can reach out to so-and-so or whatever to provide for student.
CB: Well, we had a student a few years ago, who came to me and she’s a DACA student, and she had applied to a scholarship specifically for DACA students, and she won a scholarship. There are a number of universities in the U.S. that offer free four-year degrees, a four-year education, for DACA students. And so, the school that she was awarded was at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. And so, she came to me, and she said -- and she really wasn’t excited -- and she said, “Well, I won the scholarship.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh!” I was acting crazy, “You won the scholarship!” And she said, “But it’s in Memphis, Tennessee,” and I said, “So?” And she said, “Maestra, how will I get to Memphis?” And I said, “We’re going to work it out.” So, what we did was, we packed up the car, her parents got in the car, we drove, she checked out the college, they had a fantastic program, we drove back, and ultimately, she went there, and she graduated with a four-year degree. So, she’s not our only student who has won the degree at Christian Brothers University. So, each time, I think the teacher support, and I think it’s kind of grassroots because the teachers that help these students who are undocumented or who have no idea about college, but we know that we can get them a scholarship--. You know, we’re still checking up on them after they go away to college. “Hey, how are you doing? What do you need? How can we help you?” So, I think definitely at Jordan-Matthews, there are a lot of teachers who understand the situation the students are in. Now there are some who are new, and they don’t. But the teachers -- there’s probably a good core of five or six teachers -- who understand that student situation, and they try to help however possible. Reach out to the community, reach out to local resources, to get that grassroots stuff done.
LA: Awesome. That’s really heartening to hear that there are people doing good work, even when it’s not necessarily in their job title. So, this kind of leads right into the next question. So, in your experience, were teachers and other support staff -- like counselors, therapists, school social workers -- are they prepared to help students with these specific stressors that are specifically for children who are immigrants themselves, whether documented or undocumented, and then who are children of immigrants?
CB: I think it’s like anything else. I think you have some teachers who really do want to figure out what’s going on with that child in their room, and where is this coming from. And I’m a big proponent--. I would like to do more home visits. I think that we could reach more parents doing home visits. But then there are some teachers who are like, “Whoa, no, I don’t want to go to their home. I just want to come do my job and go home at night.” And that’s all personality, you know, how people are. We have some teachers who, yes, they understand, and they want to know more about it, and then I think we have some teachers that don’t understand, and maybe--. And the interesting thing is, we have some teachers who are from other Spanish-speaking countries -- they’re visiting international teachers -- over the course of the years. Some of them really understand the plight of our immigrants, and some of them don’t, depending on what country they come from. So, one thing that we try to do, we do try to have informational sessions about, that we are a dual-language school, and that, “Information that you send home needs to be in both languages, or if you need to make a call home, let us know and we will translate for you so that you can communicate effectively with the parent.” So, I think being a dual-language school we do try to promote that more, making sure that communication is there, making sure that outreach is there, but there’s always more we could do. Definitely.
LA: And so, I know that you just said that being a dual-language school has helped in that there are more translators available and maybe an increased awareness of the struggle that a lot of these students face. Do you think that is unique to Jordan-Matthews primarily because it’s a dual-language school. In other words, is that awareness present in the other high schools in Chatham County that you’ve seen or is there less awareness in other schools that don’t have this immersion program?
CB: There is less awareness. I don’t think it’s due to the dual-language program. I think it’s due to the demographics. We were invited to another high school in the county, and the experience that my students had at that high school was eye-opening, that we are in the same county, and my students were treated like they were not equals. And it was all addressed, but I don’t think just being a dual-language school has to do with it. I think it’s the demographics of the school where you are, and the people that you have in the school.
LA: Do you see in Siler City, or in Chatham County more broadly, a stigmatization or kind of marginalization of your students and their families, and if so, how does that manifest and what is done about it?
CB: Sure. Language and economics are a powerful thing. It’s no secret that the families in Siler City don’t have much money, don’t have many resources. Would I like to see more resources in our schools? Always. Now, that being said, as the dual-language chairperson at Jordan-Matthews, Chatham County Schools has been great in our program. They really work with us. Just about anything I ask for, we get for our students. So, I think resources are really good. I do think that public perception--. How should I say this? Coming out of COVID and, I don’t want to be too political, I’m really not a political person, but I thought that I saw more negativity during the last presidential administration towards our immigrants. And so, coming out of COVID, I do think that there is a little more negativity towards immigrants as a whole, not only in our town, our county, our state, our country. And so that’s something that we’re always working on to try to break that stigma of, “Yes, our students at Jordan-Matthews might be majority Hispanic. They might be poor, but don’t try to tell me that they’re gang members, and don’t try to put on stereotypes that don’t exist.” So yes, I think that’s something that we’re always working for, to promote the excellent things happening at our school with our students to break stereotypes that people have.
LA: And what effect do those stereotypes have on students themselves? Is it something that they even think about or notice or is it something that they take really personally? Does it vary? What have you noticed?
CB: I notice it because as a white woman, there are white people in our community that think I share the same ideas that they do because I’m white. And so, people will make comments to me about, “All those Mexicans.” I’m like, “Well, actually, they’re from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela,” and then they kind of look at me, you know. So, are the students aware of the stigma? I think when they’re in our school, they’re maybe not necessarily aware of that, but when they go to other schools--. You know, there’s a brand-new high school on the other side of the county, and I think the kids do say, “Wow, why don’t we have this? Is it because we’re not as good?” And as a teacher you have to go, “No, that’s not why. No, you guys are awesome.” But I do think perceptions of--. And I don’t think it’s Chatham County, it’s not our Chatham County Schools, it’s not our local government, it’s more members of the community have negative perceptions about our kids. And so those are definitely stereotypes. We’re always trying to lift our kids up and remind them of how fantastic they are. And we’re trying to grow our own. We try to have Hispanic students who go off to college and maybe want to be teachers come back so that our students can see themselves reflected in the staff of our school. But that being said, obviously, I don’t look like my students, but I think they know that I support them to the very end, you know. But it would be nice if they could see themselves reflected in the community.
LA: Yeah, I love that you brought that up. What benefits do you think students receive from having a teacher who does reflect themselves. Like, I know that Jordan-Matthews has quote a few teachers who are native Spanish-speakers and are not originally from the United States, and so even if their countries of origin aren’t the same and their stories are very different, what benefits do students have from having those kinds of teachers.
CB: Sure. Just being able to relate to that person or just being able to say, “Hey that teacher not only looks like me, but is from another country.” Or, “that teacher had that experience like I did.” We definitely had some teachers who came here as immigrants and now they’re citizens. So, it makes it more possible also, like, “Hey, they did that so maybe I can do that.” I did have a conversation this year with one of my students, who is a senior, and I said to that student, it’s a female, and I said, “How do you feel about this topic? Do you feel bad sometimes that we don’t have more representation,” and she said, “Oh yeah, I would love to have teachers that look like me.” I mean, I love her. We get along great, but I apologized. I’m like, “I’m so sorry.” So that’s something that we have to work on as a country, I think. Valuing education, valuing teachers so that we get more diversity and more people going into education so then our students and our class can look up and go, “Hey, that person looks like me,” or “Hey, they did it so I can do it.” I think that is really important.
LA: Yeah, and that is definitely an issue way bigger than Siler City, Chatham County. Valuing teachers to encourage everyone to join the profession is a huge issue across the country.
CB: Yeah, as a mom of boys, I mean, I wish my kids had more male teachers. So, I can see where my Latino students, there is--. Now, that being said, I mean we have four, five, six teachers right now who are Latinos, but we have almost nine hundred students. We could have a whole bunch more.
LA: And what’s interesting is that some schools don’t even have four, five, six, you know. In this county, which is interesting. Speaking of teachers and school staff, what resources or trainings or really anything, do you think could better prepare them to work with students like the ones we’ve been talking about.
CB: Yeah, so I think a lot of the training that teachers go through when they have professional development, they feel like it’s not valuable or, “How can I use this in my classroom?” We had a student a few years ago who now has a full scholarship to Wake Forest University. She’s fantastic, and she actually came -- she was newly arrived, she was an ESL student, but she was passionate about the environment -- and she came and did a presentation to the faculty about starting a recycling program at school, how important recycling was, and she did it in English of a student who’d only been there a year. It was fantastic because she was so passionate about this topic, and all the teachers were like, “Wow, listening to this student, and she’s in ESL, and she’s really trying, she’s really--.” And that made that connection with that student with the faculty. So I think one thing that we need to do is just remind faculty members about where these students are from, what their backgrounds are, but that they are super smart and that they’re passionate about different topics, and things like that. Another thing I think that we have done well in the past and that we need to remember to do well, is a lot about language acquisition and, “How do students learn in in your English classes, and how can they take that learning, whether it’s in math or science or English or whatever class it is, and put it back into their own language?” Our teachers are spending a lot of time translating and trying to figure out how to best reach these kids whose first language is Spanish, who are newcomers. And I don’t think it’s just Siler City or Chatham County. I think across North Carolina, across the United States, we need to try to do more to help teachers with second-language acquisition with their students.
LA: Yeah. I guess this is kind of going back just a little bit, but what might make a student more or less likely to reach out to teachers or support services for help? You know, you talked about building the relationship between students and faculty and how that increases awareness and visibility, but are there other thing that make a student more likely or less likely to reach out to school staff for help if needed?
CB: Definitely our newcomer students are not going to reach out to people like me if they don’t know me. They see me as a white lady. They don’t know that I’m trying to help them. So, establishing the relationship with your students is so important. That’s why I think at Jordan-Matthews, it’s really good that the first people that they encounter, you know, they walk in the building and our two translators are both Hispanic, super nice, warm, inviting people, really try to get to know the kids, help them out, and so then they’re the translators for the guidance counselors. That kind of breaks the ice with that. So, I do know that a lot of those kids who’ve just come to our country, immediately go to our secretaries because they’re bilingual and they can help them out. So, building the relationships, it’s really important. And also, I think for the kids to see you in other roles. Maybe they see you helping a different Hispanic student in Spanish or maybe a topic that you talk about in class they think, “Oh, well maybe this person’s not the stereotypical white person.” But I think for our newcomers, having those people who speak Spanish is a game-changer for them. I think they’re the people that they relate to first.
LA: Right.
CB: Does that help?
LA: Yeah, that’s great. I think those are all the questions that I have. I have really enjoyed talking with you. Are there any parting thoughts? If not, I will go ahead and end it here.
CB: No, thank you for letting me participate. I appreciate it.
LA: Of course, it’s been awesome.
CB: Okay.
[00:43:34] END OF RECORDING
Transcribed by Lindley Andrew on April 20th, 2023
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
R-1013 -- Bredenberg, Cynthia.
Description
An account of the resource
Cindy Bredenberg discusses her experiences and observations as a Spanish teacher at Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City, North Carolina. She shares about her school’s demographics and the school culture and reflects on her experiences working with students throughout her fifteen years working at Jordan-Matthews, many of whom Latinx. Cindy also describes the challenges faced by many of her students, specifically those related to financial strain, the lack of quality affordable housing, anxiety, and the impact of stigmatization by community members. She differentiates between the experiences of her U.S.-born students and those who have migrated to North Carolina from other countries, and she shares some challenges specific to her undocumented students, including the stress of financially providing for family members in their home country and lack of access to federal financial aid for higher education. Cindy also details the importance of relationship-building between teachers and students and explains how students are more likely to reach out to teachers and school staff for help if they have a previously established trusting relationship. She also describes the “grassroots” nature of helping students and shares some of the in-school and community-based resources available to students and those specifically targeted to help students newly arriving from other countries. Finally, she describes the rise of charter schools in Chatham County and shifts in school demographics.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-04-15
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29355">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1013_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/f885adfe3707c930ffcdc83129c73612.mp3
33409c2b16ab0de166459e8cfb034f72
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/38e1dacb2d7c12b3fab2517e8b43b0c9.pdf
473283bdd66a8a65480bf8369871a41f
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1012
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-04-18
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Molina, Ana Muñoz.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Students
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
2002
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Camagüey -- Camagüey -- Cuba
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-77.9055 21.39248),2022,1;POINT(-79.047753 35.905035),2023,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Ciano, Anthony.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Ana Muñoz Molina is a student at UNC Chapel Hill from Cuba who shares her experience emigrating to the United States and her role within the Latino community in Chapel Hill and Miami, where she lives with her family. Ana discusses her family’s struggles to make ends meet in Cuba and discusses the challenges she faces to feel integrated within the university’s Hispanic community, made up mostly of first-generation Americans whose experiences differ from the conditions in which she was brought up both in Miami and under the Cuban authoritarian regime. While Ana is one of over a million people of Cuban heritage living in the Miami area and her experiences may be commonplace in south Florida, Ana shares the challenges of connecting to her culture in a university environment. She also provides advice for those in similar situations: coming to the United States, being surrounded by one’s own culture, and leaving that for a journey of independence and academic growth.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Ana Muñoz Molina by Anthony Ciano, 18 April 2023, R-1012, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29352
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Culture; Identity; Migratory Experience; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Estudiantes
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Ana es una estudiante cubana en UNC Chapel Hill que comparte su experiencia al emigrar a los Estados Unidos y su papel dentro de la comunidad latina tanto en Chapel Hill como en Miami, donde vive con su familia. Ana discute las luchas de su familia para ganar lo suficiente y mantenerse solvente en Cuba, y habla sobre los desafíos que enfrenta para sentirse integrada dentro de la comunidad hispana de la universidad, compuesta en su mayoría por estadounidenses de primera generación cuyas experiencias difieren de las condiciones en las que se crio tanto en Miami como bajo el régimen autoritario cubano. Mientras que Ana es una de las más de un millón de personas que viven en el área de Miami de herencia cubana y por ende sus experiencias pueden ser comunes en el sur de Florida, ella comparte los desafíos de conectarse con su cultura en este ambiente universitario. También brinda consejos para aquellos en situaciones similares: viniendo a los Estados Unidos, rodeándose de su propia cultura y dejándola para un emprender un trayecto de independencia y crecimiento académico.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Ana Muñoz Molina por Anthony Ciano, 18 April 2023, R-1012, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Cultura; Experiencia migratoria; Identidad; Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hil
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00] START OF RECORDING
[00:00:03] Anthony Ciano: Hello, my name is Anthony Ciano and today I am here with Ana Munoz Molina in Dey Hall on UNC Chapel Hill's campus. Today is April 18, 2023. And the time is 3:48 PM. So, to start, Ana, would you be able to share a little bit about yourself and how you came to North Carolina?
[00:00:23] Ana Muñoz Molina: Yes. So, I was born and raised in Cuba until I was eight years old. I come from a family who was very into the medical industry. My Grandpa was a doctor, mom is a nurse, Dad was a pharmacist. And around that age, me and my family decided that we were going to emigrate to the United States. And we actually migrated to Florida, Miami, Florida, where I did my elementary years, my middle school, high school. And at the time that it was time for college, I did community college in Miami for two years, and I decided to transfer to UNC in Chapel Hill.
[00:01:15] AC: And you're a junior this year?
[00:01:16] AMM: Yes. A junior majoring in biology, hopefully going into the pre-dental track.
[00:01:23] AC: Very cool. Um, so you said you were from Cuba, and you moved to the US when you were eight. So where- like where in Cuba are you from?
[00:01:29] AMM: So, I was born in Camagüey, Cuba. There, we lived with my grandparents, in a house around like four or five bedrooms in a very tight-knit community, and neighborhood, everyone knew each other. My family was extremely close. My cousins lived around, just a block away. So, we were very close. I've lived with my grandparents my whole life as far as my parents, my sister. But yeah, in Camagüey, Cuba.
[00:02:08] AC: Very cool. So, you moved when you were eight. You said that you studied here, you went to community college in Miami, and then now you came to UNC. So, I guess what I was wondering is what were some of the reasons why your family emigrated to the United States and how did the Cuban laws or policies impact your family's decision to come to the US?
[0002:34] AMM: Overall, I would say it was because of better opportunities. How I had mentioned before, my family was very into the medical fields and they did their years studying for this specific job or profession for them later to not be able to help anyone out due to a lack of materials or hospitals or clinics. Although they studied, they would not be provided economically to maintain the family. So, for example, my mother, although she was a nurse, who worked seven days a week, alongside my father, who was a pharmacist, they still had to go out in the streets of Cuba have of Camagüey and sell treats that they would make just to provide for our family when that shouldn't be, that's not ideal. So, it was essentially, I would say that they wanted to provide me and my sister with better opportunities, that is, professionally and future to have to be able to provide for their family better. And regarding the policies. I would say that after the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, everything went downhill, there was no food to be found. Professionals were not being paid enough to provide for their families. And so that's when my family decided that it was reason enough to emigrate to the United States.
[00:04:15] AC: Okay, that makes sense. So, I know that, like Fidel came into power in like the middle, like middle of the 20th century, and a lot of people left, like in those coming years after that. So, you've said that your family moved here when you were eight and you're 21 now?
[00:04:36] AMM: 20.
[00:04:36] AC: You're 20, so I guess why did your family like only decide to leave like 12 years ago? Why didn't your family come sooner? Like I know, like a lot of other Cuban people did.
[00:04:48] AMM: Yes, So there's various reasons. For example, when Fidel Castro first became president, I remember my grandma telling me the stories that she was extremely happy. That all his speeches seemed like they all made sense and that they were going to help the people of Cuba. Her and her family went on the streets to celebrate alongside all Cuban families. And so, it really took a turn when it wasn't going as planned. And when there was shortages of food, of material, of utilities, and that's when they really started thinking about what is happening, and what will happen in the future if it's gonna get better or worse. So, from there, I specifically remember my family getting together and at the time, I was only eight. So, I was extremely confused as to what was actually happening. And so, I remember them getting together and just discussing what they should do, if they change their whole life around, if they should migrate to a whole new country where the language is not known, where they barely know anyone, to provide a better future for our family. And so I do feel like the timing was the correct one, as things did get worse in Cuba, as well as it was good timing since my aunt at the time who lived in the United States, and a US citizen, managed to sort of sponsor us, where we would enter the United States with residency, almost, I would say, like six months into living here. So, we were provided with various help, financially, when we got to the United States. As well as my parents were given certain jobs, English classes. So, I do feel like my family picked the right time, knowing where things were sort of going to go futuristic in Cuba in the island, as well as, when was the right time for us to get here, knowing that we were gonna be helped by the government, the US government.
[00:07:13] AC: Were your parents able to like work in the same sort of jobs that they did, like in Cuba?
[00:07:19] AMM: So, definitely not when they got here. It's very, very difficult, especially the language barrier, kept them from doing this right away. But for example, my mother started as a medical assistant, she worked her way up, and studied for the nursing boards. And eventually, in two to three years, I want to say, did manage to get her nursing license, in the United States. So currently, she is working as a nurse and is very happy with her job. However, my father, on the other hand, who was a pharmacist in Cuba, did not think that it was the right time, or the right choice to do all that studying, and decided that he was going to work various jobs. Right now, he does still work in the medical field. But he's more towards insurance and clinics, and that sort of industry instead of pharmaceutical.
[00:08:21] AC: So, I know that you talked about like, the economic challenges that your family faced while living in Cuba. Do you think that like the embargo, or like “el bloqueo” has impacted? I guess, like, has that do you think had an impact on like, the Cuban economy?
[00:08:39] AMM: So, um, when I was in Cuba, just to share a small story, I was very confused. I lived a good- I had a good childhood. Just because my parents, my family overall, made a really- hid it really well that the island wasn't doing well, economically. So, I would always have food on a plate. I would always have toys to play with. But little did I know that my family, my parents specifically, would stop eating so I could. Or that my family, my parents had to work an extra shift for that one toy. So as an eight-year-old, I was really confused when we made the move. And about the embargo, I would now, knowing more about the situation in Cuba and being more active about being an immigrant and seeing and facing what's currently happening with Cubans right now, I would say it's hard. Because yes, I understand the embargo but at the same time those people in Cuba, it's hard to really, how do I say this, like it's hard to see what they live day by day because there's nothing. So sometimes the only thing that they could get, the only sort of food that they could obtain, is from family that they have over at the United States. So, let's say that that is cut off, I will not know how it would feel to go hungry at night for children to not have food, and so on.
[00:0:19] AC: So, well, thank you for sharing that. Besides like, the lack of economic opportunities that your family experienced while living in Cuba, do you think like, how did the government's oppression, or how did the government of Cuba specifically impact your family? Do you ever experience any- I guess like, does your family have any experience- negative or positive experiences with the government?
[00:10:52] AMM: I don't recall any negative experiences. We never had some sort of business that they took away, or, or any, thankfully, none of us had any tragedy within the family that occurred. But I do feel like as a child, even when I didn't know much, I did experience some trauma. For example, a short story that I want to share is that in Cuba, as a kid, we were always told that you can't say the word "libtertad" out loud, which is freedom in Spanish. Since Cuba does not have rights, you couldn't just be in the streets asking for freedom. You would get- you would have this trauma that you would get taken away from your family arrested, shot at. So, I specifically remember arriving from Cuba in the Miami Airport. And the first thing I asked my mother was, Mom, could I say the word "libertad" here? And my mom just started crying. I was extremely confused as an eight-yearold. I was like, okay. But I do feel like it always gives us some trauma. Yes, the government did give me some trauma, for sure.
[00:12:13] AC: Have you had the opportunity to go back to visit Cuba? Or like do you want to?
[0012:20] AMM: Yes, so I do have basically all my mom's side still in Cuba. Two little cousins, actually. So, I did get the opportunity to visit once. However, it is extremely expensive for us born in Cuba to go and visit it. I would have to get a Cuban passport which is over $500 plus a ticket, which could easily cost you from $400, $300. So, all the expenses just for one trip to Cuba, plus all the money that you have to give your family to help them out, and friends. So, I've only been able to go back once. And I really felt how different it was, I felt sorry, for my family there. I saw how my little cousins would cry, because all they wanted to do is eat a plate of spaghetti when there wasn't any. So yes, I went back, but it was also very emotional. I saw friends that I had gone to school with. And I would explain to them what a mall was, for example, and they were just extremely confused by it because they had- they can't even picture something like that. So yeah, I did have the chance to go back. I would like to go back. However, I would like it even more for my family to come here instead.
[00:13:47] AC: How do you feel when Americans talk about Cuba? Like, I guess, you know, people in the United States have their own opinions about Cuba. Practically everyone here does have an opinion on it. But when you hear people talk about Cuba, saying it's the United States fault, for all the problems that are there, how does that make you feel? Or like what do you think when people like just like blame the United States for the problems?
[00:14:17] AMM: I highly disagree with them. I feel like Cuba's problems is Cuba's president and corrupt governments. The United States has actually, I would say, saved my life, as many other Cubans. It's the States was a place that you know us Cubans who were escaping oppression could come and live our- as you could say, American dreams. And I feel like blaming the United States for what is happening or what's happening is a mistake in my opinion. And if anything, sometimes they did even like help Cubans out, but that's just my opinion. I also feel like people who might be saying things about Cuba who haven't experienced living there or gone there aside the, the whole traveling just to see Havana which is the Capitol, should not be stating their opinion because they don't know what a life to life is for looking for food when there isn't any or providing for a family that they don't have over there.
[00:15:35] AC: Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you feel like, I guess when you came, like, in North Carolina, when you tell people that you're Cuban, what do they think? Like? I mean, like, obviously, Miami, there are a lot of Cuban people. But in Chapel Hill, maybe not so much. So, you introduce yourself, you say, "Hi, I'm Ana. I'm from Cuba." What do people say?
[00:16:00] AMM: Yes, it's very, it's very cool. I would say like, it's nice to feel like they want to know more about you, like why you moved. They want to know your story, which I feel heard. Like, I really enjoy when I present myself as Cuban that I was born in Cuba and raised in Cuba, and they want to know more. I think it's very exciting. I really enjoy it. I really do. I you know, tell them I share a little bit about myself. Sometimes they're--. They don't know much about the government and what's happening. So, I like to share a little bit with them about the current situation. I feel like knowledge is always a good thing. And yeah, I really enjoy it. I enjoy when people ask me, oh, why did you migrate? Oh, that's very nice how's Cuba, like and even like to share a bit of knowledge with them.
[00:16:54] AC: Do you feel like your experiences- I actually, before I ask you this question? What like, what label? Do you like to use for yourself? When you're referred to? Like you being someone of Latin American descent? Like, do you say, do you tell people that you're Hispanic? Do you say that you're like Latina? Do you just say you're Cuban? Like, what?
[00:17:16] AMM: I typically go with Cuban just to be more specific. If not I, yeah, I use either Latina or Hispanic. I haven't I've never been really much into, "oh what am I." Or if you know, someone refers me to something that I might not be I'm not the type to really get offended, if not, maybe correct them, and share a little bit about myself with them so they understand better. But I mostly would say Cuban. For sure. Just because I like to get specific.
[00:17:50] AC: Yeah, that makes sense. So, I guess like, like speaking more broadly, do you feel like your experiences as an immigrant mirror the experiences of other Latinos in North Carolina?
[00:18:06] AMM: I feel like every immigrant or Latino is different just because everyone sort of has their own stories, their own immigrant story, their own personal struggles. Many people, for example, might have come from their home country, on a plane, or on a ship, or anything along those sorts. So, everyone has or even maybe have different reasons. But I do feel like we're sort of like a community and somehow share the same experiences, like we could understand each other more, just because we relate to other people's stories. You know, at the end of the day, I feel like most of us emigrate for a better future or to escape dictatorship. And that passion for a country or our different cultures sort of like come together and we sort of know what we're feeling emotionally and physically about what's going on back home. So yes, I do feel like we're all different, and we have different experiences. But I do at the end of the day feel like my story is very relatable to other immigrants here, or Latinos in North Carolina.
[00:19:27] AC: So, like, obviously, Miami, a lot of the people that live there are Cuban or Venezuelan or Nicaraguan, and I guess they have similar situations back in their home countries, while a lot of the immigrants who come to North Carolina are from Central America, and maybe they come due to, I guess, more economic reasons rather than political. Do you feel like you've noted that difference like, do you feel like it's harder to connect with, with Latinos here versus in Miami, when they've really like, you know, a lot of them have even come from the same country that you have? What do you think about that?
[00:20:13] AMM: I do, I really do. For example, Miami, there's a really, really big percentage of Cubans, where you just spot them in the street. And you know, they're Cuba. You might even actually know them. So, it's very funny. You in Miami, you're just another Cuban or another, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan. It is very different, Miami, immigrants, I guess, to North Carolina. And I do feel some sort of, you know, besides our differences, some sort of, how could I say this, connection as well. Just because most immigrants, I'd like to say from Miami, have recently moved from Miami, whereas immigrants, I guess, from North Carolina, are- their parents are immigrants not really themselves. So yes, they like to share their culture proudly, and so on. But they lived it through their parents and their parents' struggles. Whereas I feel like Miami, since it's currently happening right here right now, it's very sudden, and everyone knows that it's more impacting since you just moved from another country. That also could be however, because Chapel Hill, I feel like it's very university town, location. So, you're gonna see students from a lot of places, from different backgrounds, whose parents might have migrated instead of them. Whereas Miami is a really, really big city with a lot, a lot of Latin Americans, Latins. So, I do feel it's impacted by location, as well as heritage. Yeah.
[00:22:27] AC: Would you say that the transition from living in Cuba to Miami was challenging, or very different?
[00:22:35] AMM: Yes, definitely. So, I was- so I was eight, right in Cuba, and sort of to get, like, life, I guess, figure it out, my father left first to the United States. Six months prior to when me my mom and my sister moved. And I was extremely confused. One day, my dad was gone and I was like, really confused by the situation. My family always tried to protect, like, protect me from the scenario. So, I wasn't told much. I was told that I was gonna see him very soon, that he's helping us out. But again, really, really confused. I was just going to school one day, came back and he wasn't there. I did, however, of course get to say goodbye. But it was just a really confusing situation for an eight-year-old. When we got here, that my dad was all settled, we moved in with my aunt and uncle who thankfully accepted us into their home with open arms. I started school, and I started school in the late like late third grade, I like to say, where everyone was taken already. The FCAT I think I believe there was called, I was an ESOL. I was the smallest tiniest little girl on ESOL. And I didn't know anything. All I knew is that whenever a teacher would ask me a question, or there was some sort of quiz or exam, I would cry. The only thing I would do was cry, just because of how frustrated I was to not know the language, the culture, what was happening around me. It was a very difficult time I would come home with panic attacks, explaining to my mom that I did not want to do it anymore. I wanted to go back. That where was I? I really did not like it at first. It was a really hard transition for a kid. And thankfully, that opinion has changed now. I would- I love it here. I loved Miami and the States. But yeah, at the beginning, it was definitely rough. And I feel like it's a story that many people we'll share at first having not knowing the culture or anyone or the language. But you get used to it, you get used to it one day at a time. I remember, I learned English one day to from one day to another, I don't even remember how. I remember though, how my mom would do little flashcards with pictures and names of cat for example, or dog. And little by little I learned, got used to it. School was better. Make some friends, which always helps and, yeah.
[00:25:37] AC: Very cool. So, I'd like to know a little bit, a little bit more about how you moved here. So, you said that you came on a plane and that your aunt and uncle sponsored you? Do you know how that process works? I guess like how did you like how were you able to come here? Because I know a lot of other immigrants, unfortunately, don't have that same experience.
[00:25:59] AMM: Yes. So, the reason why my uncle and aunt were here in the first place and could sponsor me was because back then in Cuba, they had like some I would say, raffle where citizens of Cuba would get randomly selected for residency in the United States. And thankfully, they both were really nice. So, they took their chance. I'm not sure what year this was. It might have even been before Fidel Castro came to govern. So, they left and they had made a life here, have been here for over 30, 40 years, I would like to say now. And when things got bad, since they were US citizens, they managed to sort of sponsor me on my family. And that process, I believe, is still going on today, but it's paused. Back then, when they sponsored us, it was a faster process, and was working more like continuous. And I believe it only took a couple of months, right after they put in like the request. And my father came six months after me, my family. I said, my mom and my sister came. And when we became US citizens, we sponsored our grandparents and our grandparents' parents sponsored other family that we have from our dad's side. And that's sort of how my family grew here in the United States. Basically, sponsor after sponsor, and I believe that once we arrived here, we did have some help from the government. So that was really beneficial for me and my family. Yeah.
[00:27:55] AC: So, it seems that you have a pretty big family. Now, like in the US, do you feel like- how would you compare Miami to Chapel Hill? Do you feel like it's hard to connect with, like your, like "Cubanidad" or "Latinidad" like living in Chapel Hill?
[00:28:16] AMM: Yes, um, I really, really had been having a hard time. Thankfully, though, I did transfer here with Miami students who were also from Cuba, Nicaragua. And I already knew some Cubans here, because we all went to the same community college in Miami. So that was really extremely helpful at the beginning, for sure. However, I don't feel like I have found like the right group of people at Chapel Hill. I do believe like, like, our community has a certain like sense of humor that maybe others here might not get along with or our personality. And so that's been extremely hard just to find my sort of people. But it is helpful that I do have some Cubans here from Miami, who have always like, kept the door open for whatever I needed, or help. And yeah,
[00:29:22] AC: Have you been able to, like meet people or connect with other people who aren't of like Cuban origin? Or do you feel like you're mostly like around other people from Miami?
[00:29:34] AMM: So, I did try, I think it was my first semester, very first or second week that this certain organization did like a meeting and it was mostly Hispanics so I was like, "Oh this is very, very nice. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna meet people. However. I was the only Cuban. And most people if not all, spoke Spanish- spoke sorry, English. I didn't feel very, I'm not gonna say welcomed, but very, I don't know, not really accepted just because most of them already had their community from their certain country, I believe it was Mexico. So, after that, I was like, "okay, I gave it a try." But I sort of always kept going back to the Cuban people that I knew here. Which I feel like I do connect more with.
[00:30:42] AC: Um, what advice? Like, I mean, I guess, like, I this can be a two-part question. So what advice would you give? Like, first off, what advice would you give somebody from Cuba coming to the United States?
[00:30:59] AMM: Okay, um, it depends. Where would they be arriving? What states like-
[00:31:05] AC: Let's say they go to Miami.
[00:31:06] AMM: Okay! I feel like Miami is a very safe place to arrive at, just because you basically speak more Spanish than English on your day-to-day. And you will know many people, it's very unlikely that you won't just because so many people have migrated. So, I do feel like you're gonna get adjusted well, you're gonna feel welcome into a community, you're gonna have people loving you every step of the way and helping you out. So, I do feel like Miami is the right place. Or at least one of them, where a Cuban could come with not knowing any language, not being as, I guess, well educated, and so on to really feel like they could make something of themselves and a future that is with the right people surrounding them.
[00:32:05] AC: Now, what advice would you give someone coming from like, Miami? Like, look, so you, you really grew up in Miami after you moved to Cuba or after you moved from Cuba. And now you're going to this new state with a new sort of demography, new people. If you were to- if someone were to ask you, what advice would you give to that person?
[00:32:30] AMM: I would admire them. I feel like one of the reasons why I decided to make the move was because I wanted a change. I was so used to my day-to-day Miami. I felt like I wasn't unique enough, just because everyone around me was Cuban, and was pursuing the same dream. I wanted to change sort of myself, like put myself not in like such a comfort zone, I wanted to get out of that comfort zone that Miami was for me. And that's essentially why I made that big change of moving from Miami to North Carolina to study. The environment was very different. I like the weather. And I was like, I think if I don't do it, now, I'm not gonna do it. And the advice that I would give that person besides telling them that they're brave, because it is a very hard decision. I feel like Hispanics are very tight with their families. And so that big move from your family is extremely emotionally draining at first. But besides telling them that they're brave, basically telling them as well that to get out there to meet people in class, talk to them. Go to club meetings, even if they're not your thing at first. If you keep trying and keep trying, I'm sure you will find the right one with the right community of people where you will feel welcome, accepted, where you could express your Cuban-ness and Hispanic descent and even share with people more about your country and why you moved. So, I think that would be my main advice.
[00:34:15] AC: Do you feel like you've grown from the transition from Miami to North Carolina?
[00:34:21] AMM: Yes, definitely. Since I've said before my family, my Cuban family, is very tightly sort of together. We do everything together. If there's a party happening, we're all going. If- we celebrate all holidays together, we eat dinner together all at one table every day at a certain time. So, I've definitely feel like I've become more independent for sure. I- since in Miami I live with both my grandma's and our mom, for example that love to cook. When my mom is stressed, the only thing that will relax her is cooking. So I- before coming here, I didn't know how to fry an egg, literally. So definitely a lot of things have changed. I feel like I've become more independent as a student, as well as a woman growing up in my 20s. So, I do feel like that's another reason why I made the move, I wanted to grow. And I felt like if I stayed at my house in Miami, with my very close family- that I feel like if I would have stayed in Miami that I would not have had the chance to experience American culture in a specific way as the one that I do in UNC. So, I do feel like this change, this move between states, especially as a student like me, was not only practical, but necessary.
[00:36:01] AC: Do you ever want to go back to Miami, like after you graduate? Do you see yourself there and like around your culture in the future?
[00:36:09] AMM: So, since I've mentioned that, I am planning to go into dental school, I don't mind where. I'm very open to moving around for dental school. However, I do feel like I've talked with friends and family about this, that Miami is home, and where I am just more comfortable with. So, I do feel like in the long run, where I want to create a family and experience life with in would be Miami at the end of the day. Yeah.
[00:36:49] AC: If you were to have stayed- So obviously, like Miami and Cuba are different in many different ways. But you know, do you feel like, if you were to have stayed in Cuba, how would your life be different now?
[00:37:05] AMM: I feel like it would have been extremely different. Not only professionally, but me as a person, I feel like I would not have been able to pursue my passion of becoming a dentist just because I saw how my parents struggled, my grandpa, my whole family essentially struggled as medical professionals. So, I do feel like I would have had to let go of that dream of becoming a dental professional. And instead, I would have probably joined the tourist industry, which pays people more than being a medical professional, it sounds crazy, but it's very realistic. Also, I feel like I would have a very unstable and stressful life, just because you don't know when your next plate of food- where it's going to come from or if you're going to find it. And that's just more stress than a human being with rights or in a country that the government should take care of, if not providing you with the essentials for you to make a living. So I- in overall I feel like one, I would have to stop pursuing my dream professionally. And two, it would just be a very stressful life. I would not be living to enjoy it. On top of that, there's no traveling. The only traveling you could do is in Cuba. So, there will be no going to Europe, going to the States, going all around the world if you wanted to just to visit. one because there's no money, and the other because Cuba doesn't allow you to.
[00:38:49] AC: So, you talk about the struggles that you feel like you would face if you had stayed in Cuba. What is life like for your family now in Cuba, like what did they do to manage?
[00:39:00] AMM: Yes, currently, the family that I have most in Cuba is my Mom's side. And that includes mostly her brother, so my uncle, his wife, and my two little cousins that are, I would say around the age of like- one is six years old and the other one is like 11. And I see their struggles, and I see how horrific it is. So, my mom thankfully provides them with food when it's needed. Because they- although my uncle works-, he's a mechanic and his wife, I believe, does something in the tourist industry, they can't provide for themselves alone. They can't pay for their housing and they can't pay for their expenses from what they make. And so, my family, especially my mother, sends them food, monthly, as well as utilities, anything that they aren't able to find in Cuba, my mom sends them- sends it to them. However, it's way more expensive. It takes time to get there, it's not assured that they will get it. So, it's very unstable, an unstable sad life. My uncle is currently battling depression just because he sees that most of his friends and most of his family are gone. And they are waiting for the same thing that was done to me, my mom, my father, and my sister, so that sponsorship from us. However, since it's from brother to- from sister to brother, it does take longer. And since that program is currently on pause, it's been, I believe, like eight years and no response. So definitely a difficult time. However, it does make it a little easier that they have our help from the States. But it still doesn't make it okay, that they're struggling this much just to provide for their family and live on a day-to-day basis[00:41:16] AC: Well, we are almost out of time, but I just wanted to ask you what else- like what do you want people to know about Cuba? About you being from Cuba?
[00:41:26] AMM: Yes, I want the people to know, even within this interview that even though there's a lot of struggles with the economy, with the government, dictatorship, and the people suffering, that we are a very rich culture island and that our identity is known. That the people are just very good people that care about each other. I remember how back when I was over there living, if any neighbor needed something, they will stop what they're doing just to help that other person. So, we are a very likeable people. Love to just talk, be communicative and help out. And I feel like if it's something that you should take from this interview, is to learn a little bit more about Cuba and how you could help and just know that its culture really is something that no other island could have. And yeah.
[00:42:30] AC: Well, thank you very much, Ana, for sharing your story with me today. And good luck with the rest of the semester.
[00:42:36] AMM: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:42:39] END OF INTERVIEW
Transcribed by: Anthony Ciano
01/20/2023
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00] START OF RECORDING
[00:00:03] Anthony Ciano: Hello, my name is Anthony Ciano and today I am here with Ana Munoz Molina in Dey Hall on UNC Chapel Hill's campus. Today is April 18, 2023. And the time is 3:48 PM. So, to start, Ana, would you be able to share a little bit about yourself and how you came to North Carolina?
[00:00:23] Ana Muñoz Molina: Yes. So, I was born and raised in Cuba until I was eight years old. I come from a family who was very into the medical industry. My Grandpa was a doctor, mom is a nurse, Dad was a pharmacist. And around that age, me and my family decided that we were going to emigrate to the United States. And we actually migrated to Florida, Miami, Florida, where I did my elementary years, my middle school, high school. And at the time that it was time for college, I did community college in Miami for two years, and I decided to transfer to UNC in Chapel Hill.
[00:01:15] AC: And you're a junior this year?
[00:01:16] AMM: Yes. A junior majoring in biology, hopefully going into the pre-dental track.
[00:01:23] AC: Very cool. Um, so you said you were from Cuba, and you moved to the US when you were eight. So where- like where in Cuba are you from?
[00:01:29] AMM: So, I was born in Camagüey, Cuba. There, we lived with my grandparents, in a house around like four or five bedrooms in a very tight-knit community, and neighborhood, everyone knew each other. My family was extremely close. My cousins lived around, just a block away. So, we were very close. I've lived with my grandparents my whole life as far as my parents, my sister. But yeah, in Camagüey, Cuba.
[00:02:08] AC: Very cool. So, you moved when you were eight. You said that you studied here, you went to community college in Miami, and then now you came to UNC. So, I guess what I was wondering is what were some of the reasons why your family emigrated to the United States and how did the Cuban laws or policies impact your family's decision to come to the US?
[0002:34] AMM: Overall, I would say it was because of better opportunities. How I had mentioned before, my family was very into the medical fields and they did their years studying for this specific job or profession for them later to not be able to help anyone out due to a lack of materials or hospitals or clinics. Although they studied, they would not be provided economically to maintain the family. So, for example, my mother, although she was a nurse, who worked seven days a week, alongside my father, who was a pharmacist, they still had to go out in the streets of Cuba have of Camagüey and sell treats that they would make just to provide for our family when that shouldn't be, that's not ideal. So, it was essentially, I would say that they wanted to provide me and my sister with better opportunities, that is, professionally and future to have to be able to provide for their family better. And regarding the policies. I would say that after the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, everything went downhill, there was no food to be found. Professionals were not being paid enough to provide for their families. And so that's when my family decided that it was reason enough to emigrate to the United States.
[00:04:15] AC: Okay, that makes sense. So, I know that, like Fidel came into power in like the middle, like middle of the 20th century, and a lot of people left, like in those coming years after that. So, you've said that your family moved here when you were eight and you're 21 now?
[00:04:36] AMM: 20.
[00:04:36] AC: You're 20, so I guess why did your family like only decide to leave like 12 years ago? Why didn't your family come sooner? Like I know, like a lot of other Cuban people did.
[00:04:48] AMM: Yes, So there's various reasons. For example, when Fidel Castro first became president, I remember my grandma telling me the stories that she was extremely happy. That all his speeches seemed like they all made sense and that they were going to help the people of Cuba. Her and her family went on the streets to celebrate alongside all Cuban families. And so, it really took a turn when it wasn't going as planned. And when there was shortages of food, of material, of utilities, and that's when they really started thinking about what is happening, and what will happen in the future if it's gonna get better or worse. So, from there, I specifically remember my family getting together and at the time, I was only eight. So, I was extremely confused as to what was actually happening. And so, I remember them getting together and just discussing what they should do, if they change their whole life around, if they should migrate to a whole new country where the language is not known, where they barely know anyone, to provide a better future for our family. And so I do feel like the timing was the correct one, as things did get worse in Cuba, as well as it was good timing since my aunt at the time who lived in the United States, and a US citizen, managed to sort of sponsor us, where we would enter the United States with residency, almost, I would say, like six months into living here. So, we were provided with various help, financially, when we got to the United States. As well as my parents were given certain jobs, English classes. So, I do feel like my family picked the right time, knowing where things were sort of going to go futuristic in Cuba in the island, as well as, when was the right time for us to get here, knowing that we were gonna be helped by the government, the US government.
[00:07:13] AC: Were your parents able to like work in the same sort of jobs that they did, like in Cuba?
[00:07:19] AMM: So, definitely not when they got here. It's very, very difficult, especially the language barrier, kept them from doing this right away. But for example, my mother started as a medical assistant, she worked her way up, and studied for the nursing boards. And eventually, in two to three years, I want to say, did manage to get her nursing license, in the United States. So currently, she is working as a nurse and is very happy with her job. However, my father, on the other hand, who was a pharmacist in Cuba, did not think that it was the right time, or the right choice to do all that studying, and decided that he was going to work various jobs. Right now, he does still work in the medical field. But he's more towards insurance and clinics, and that sort of industry instead of pharmaceutical.
[00:08:21] AC: So, I know that you talked about like, the economic challenges that your family faced while living in Cuba. Do you think that like the embargo, or like “el bloqueo” has impacted? I guess, like, has that do you think had an impact on like, the Cuban economy?
[00:08:39] AMM: So, um, when I was in Cuba, just to share a small story, I was very confused. I lived a good- I had a good childhood. Just because my parents, my family overall, made a really- hid it really well that the island wasn't doing well, economically. So, I would always have food on a plate. I would always have toys to play with. But little did I know that my family, my parents specifically, would stop eating so I could. Or that my family, my parents had to work an extra shift for that one toy. So as an eight-year-old, I was really confused when we made the move. And about the embargo, I would now, knowing more about the situation in Cuba and being more active about being an immigrant and seeing and facing what's currently happening with Cubans right now, I would say it's hard. Because yes, I understand the embargo but at the same time those people in Cuba, it's hard to really, how do I say this, like it's hard to see what they live day by day because there's nothing. So sometimes the only thing that they could get, the only sort of food that they could obtain, is from family that they have over at the United States. So, let's say that that is cut off, I will not know how it would feel to go hungry at night for children to not have food, and so on.
[00:0:19] AC: So, well, thank you for sharing that. Besides like, the lack of economic opportunities that your family experienced while living in Cuba, do you think like, how did the government's oppression, or how did the government of Cuba specifically impact your family? Do you ever experience any- I guess like, does your family have any experience- negative or positive experiences with the government?
[00:10:52] AMM: I don't recall any negative experiences. We never had some sort of business that they took away, or, or any, thankfully, none of us had any tragedy within the family that occurred. But I do feel like as a child, even when I didn't know much, I did experience some trauma. For example, a short story that I want to share is that in Cuba, as a kid, we were always told that you can't say the word "libtertad" out loud, which is freedom in Spanish. Since Cuba does not have rights, you couldn't just be in the streets asking for freedom. You would get- you would have this trauma that you would get taken away from your family arrested, shot at. So, I specifically remember arriving from Cuba in the Miami Airport. And the first thing I asked my mother was, Mom, could I say the word "libertad" here? And my mom just started crying. I was extremely confused as an eight-yearold. I was like, okay. But I do feel like it always gives us some trauma. Yes, the government did give me some trauma, for sure.
[00:12:13] AC: Have you had the opportunity to go back to visit Cuba? Or like do you want to?
[0012:20] AMM: Yes, so I do have basically all my mom's side still in Cuba. Two little cousins, actually. So, I did get the opportunity to visit once. However, it is extremely expensive for us born in Cuba to go and visit it. I would have to get a Cuban passport which is over $500 plus a ticket, which could easily cost you from $400, $300. So, all the expenses just for one trip to Cuba, plus all the money that you have to give your family to help them out, and friends. So, I've only been able to go back once. And I really felt how different it was, I felt sorry, for my family there. I saw how my little cousins would cry, because all they wanted to do is eat a plate of spaghetti when there wasn't any. So yes, I went back, but it was also very emotional. I saw friends that I had gone to school with. And I would explain to them what a mall was, for example, and they were just extremely confused by it because they had- they can't even picture something like that. So yeah, I did have the chance to go back. I would like to go back. However, I would like it even more for my family to come here instead.
[00:13:47] AC: How do you feel when Americans talk about Cuba? Like, I guess, you know, people in the United States have their own opinions about Cuba. Practically everyone here does have an opinion on it. But when you hear people talk about Cuba, saying it's the United States fault, for all the problems that are there, how does that make you feel? Or like what do you think when people like just like blame the United States for the problems?
[00:14:17] AMM: I highly disagree with them. I feel like Cuba's problems is Cuba's president and corrupt governments. The United States has actually, I would say, saved my life, as many other Cubans. It's the States was a place that you know us Cubans who were escaping oppression could come and live our- as you could say, American dreams. And I feel like blaming the United States for what is happening or what's happening is a mistake in my opinion. And if anything, sometimes they did even like help Cubans out, but that's just my opinion. I also feel like people who might be saying things about Cuba who haven't experienced living there or gone there aside the, the whole traveling just to see Havana which is the Capitol, should not be stating their opinion because they don't know what a life to life is for looking for food when there isn't any or providing for a family that they don't have over there.
[00:15:35] AC: Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you feel like, I guess when you came, like, in North Carolina, when you tell people that you're Cuban, what do they think? Like? I mean, like, obviously, Miami, there are a lot of Cuban people. But in Chapel Hill, maybe not so much. So, you introduce yourself, you say, "Hi, I'm Ana. I'm from Cuba." What do people say?
[00:16:00] AMM: Yes, it's very, it's very cool. I would say like, it's nice to feel like they want to know more about you, like why you moved. They want to know your story, which I feel heard. Like, I really enjoy when I present myself as Cuban that I was born in Cuba and raised in Cuba, and they want to know more. I think it's very exciting. I really enjoy it. I really do. I you know, tell them I share a little bit about myself. Sometimes they're--. They don't know much about the government and what's happening. So, I like to share a little bit with them about the current situation. I feel like knowledge is always a good thing. And yeah, I really enjoy it. I enjoy when people ask me, oh, why did you migrate? Oh, that's very nice how's Cuba, like and even like to share a bit of knowledge with them.
[00:16:54] AC: Do you feel like your experiences- I actually, before I ask you this question? What like, what label? Do you like to use for yourself? When you're referred to? Like you being someone of Latin American descent? Like, do you say, do you tell people that you're Hispanic? Do you say that you're like Latina? Do you just say you're Cuban? Like, what?
[00:17:16] AMM: I typically go with Cuban just to be more specific. If not I, yeah, I use either Latina or Hispanic. I haven't I've never been really much into, "oh what am I." Or if you know, someone refers me to something that I might not be I'm not the type to really get offended, if not, maybe correct them, and share a little bit about myself with them so they understand better. But I mostly would say Cuban. For sure. Just because I like to get specific.
[00:17:50] AC: Yeah, that makes sense. So, I guess like, like speaking more broadly, do you feel like your experiences as an immigrant mirror the experiences of other Latinos in North Carolina?
[00:18:06] AMM: I feel like every immigrant or Latino is different just because everyone sort of has their own stories, their own immigrant story, their own personal struggles. Many people, for example, might have come from their home country, on a plane, or on a ship, or anything along those sorts. So, everyone has or even maybe have different reasons. But I do feel like we're sort of like a community and somehow share the same experiences, like we could understand each other more, just because we relate to other people's stories. You know, at the end of the day, I feel like most of us emigrate for a better future or to escape dictatorship. And that passion for a country or our different cultures sort of like come together and we sort of know what we're feeling emotionally and physically about what's going on back home. So yes, I do feel like we're all different, and we have different experiences. But I do at the end of the day feel like my story is very relatable to other immigrants here, or Latinos in North Carolina.
[00:19:27] AC: So, like, obviously, Miami, a lot of the people that live there are Cuban or Venezuelan or Nicaraguan, and I guess they have similar situations back in their home countries, while a lot of the immigrants who come to North Carolina are from Central America, and maybe they come due to, I guess, more economic reasons rather than political. Do you feel like you've noted that difference like, do you feel like it's harder to connect with, with Latinos here versus in Miami, when they've really like, you know, a lot of them have even come from the same country that you have? What do you think about that?
[00:20:13] AMM: I do, I really do. For example, Miami, there's a really, really big percentage of Cubans, where you just spot them in the street. And you know, they're Cuba. You might even actually know them. So, it's very funny. You in Miami, you're just another Cuban or another, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan. It is very different, Miami, immigrants, I guess, to North Carolina. And I do feel some sort of, you know, besides our differences, some sort of, how could I say this, connection as well. Just because most immigrants, I'd like to say from Miami, have recently moved from Miami, whereas immigrants, I guess, from North Carolina, are- their parents are immigrants not really themselves. So yes, they like to share their culture proudly, and so on. But they lived it through their parents and their parents' struggles. Whereas I feel like Miami, since it's currently happening right here right now, it's very sudden, and everyone knows that it's more impacting since you just moved from another country. That also could be however, because Chapel Hill, I feel like it's very university town, location. So, you're gonna see students from a lot of places, from different backgrounds, whose parents might have migrated instead of them. Whereas Miami is a really, really big city with a lot, a lot of Latin Americans, Latins. So, I do feel it's impacted by location, as well as heritage. Yeah.
[00:22:27] AC: Would you say that the transition from living in Cuba to Miami was challenging, or very different?
[00:22:35] AMM: Yes, definitely. So, I was- so I was eight, right in Cuba, and sort of to get, like, life, I guess, figure it out, my father left first to the United States. Six months prior to when me my mom and my sister moved. And I was extremely confused. One day, my dad was gone and I was like, really confused by the situation. My family always tried to protect, like, protect me from the scenario. So, I wasn't told much. I was told that I was gonna see him very soon, that he's helping us out. But again, really, really confused. I was just going to school one day, came back and he wasn't there. I did, however, of course get to say goodbye. But it was just a really confusing situation for an eight-year-old. When we got here, that my dad was all settled, we moved in with my aunt and uncle who thankfully accepted us into their home with open arms. I started school, and I started school in the late like late third grade, I like to say, where everyone was taken already. The FCAT I think I believe there was called, I was an ESOL. I was the smallest tiniest little girl on ESOL. And I didn't know anything. All I knew is that whenever a teacher would ask me a question, or there was some sort of quiz or exam, I would cry. The only thing I would do was cry, just because of how frustrated I was to not know the language, the culture, what was happening around me. It was a very difficult time I would come home with panic attacks, explaining to my mom that I did not want to do it anymore. I wanted to go back. That where was I? I really did not like it at first. It was a really hard transition for a kid. And thankfully, that opinion has changed now. I would- I love it here. I loved Miami and the States. But yeah, at the beginning, it was definitely rough. And I feel like it's a story that many people we'll share at first having not knowing the culture or anyone or the language. But you get used to it, you get used to it one day at a time. I remember, I learned English one day to from one day to another, I don't even remember how. I remember though, how my mom would do little flashcards with pictures and names of cat for example, or dog. And little by little I learned, got used to it. School was better. Make some friends, which always helps and, yeah.
[00:25:37] AC: Very cool. So, I'd like to know a little bit, a little bit more about how you moved here. So, you said that you came on a plane and that your aunt and uncle sponsored you? Do you know how that process works? I guess like how did you like how were you able to come here? Because I know a lot of other immigrants, unfortunately, don't have that same experience.
[00:25:59] AMM: Yes. So, the reason why my uncle and aunt were here in the first place and could sponsor me was because back then in Cuba, they had like some I would say, raffle where citizens of Cuba would get randomly selected for residency in the United States. And thankfully, they both were really nice. So, they took their chance. I'm not sure what year this was. It might have even been before Fidel Castro came to govern. So, they left and they had made a life here, have been here for over 30, 40 years, I would like to say now. And when things got bad, since they were US citizens, they managed to sort of sponsor me on my family. And that process, I believe, is still going on today, but it's paused. Back then, when they sponsored us, it was a faster process, and was working more like continuous. And I believe it only took a couple of months, right after they put in like the request. And my father came six months after me, my family. I said, my mom and my sister came. And when we became US citizens, we sponsored our grandparents and our grandparents' parents sponsored other family that we have from our dad's side. And that's sort of how my family grew here in the United States. Basically, sponsor after sponsor, and I believe that once we arrived here, we did have some help from the government. So that was really beneficial for me and my family. Yeah.
[00:27:55] AC: So, it seems that you have a pretty big family. Now, like in the US, do you feel like- how would you compare Miami to Chapel Hill? Do you feel like it's hard to connect with, like your, like "Cubanidad" or "Latinidad" like living in Chapel Hill?
[00:28:16] AMM: Yes, um, I really, really had been having a hard time. Thankfully, though, I did transfer here with Miami students who were also from Cuba, Nicaragua. And I already knew some Cubans here, because we all went to the same community college in Miami. So that was really extremely helpful at the beginning, for sure. However, I don't feel like I have found like the right group of people at Chapel Hill. I do believe like, like, our community has a certain like sense of humor that maybe others here might not get along with or our personality. And so that's been extremely hard just to find my sort of people. But it is helpful that I do have some Cubans here from Miami, who have always like, kept the door open for whatever I needed, or help. And yeah,
[00:29:22] AC: Have you been able to, like meet people or connect with other people who aren't of like Cuban origin? Or do you feel like you're mostly like around other people from Miami?
[00:29:34] AMM: So, I did try, I think it was my first semester, very first or second week that this certain organization did like a meeting and it was mostly Hispanics so I was like, "Oh this is very, very nice. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna meet people. However. I was the only Cuban. And most people if not all, spoke Spanish- spoke sorry, English. I didn't feel very, I'm not gonna say welcomed, but very, I don't know, not really accepted just because most of them already had their community from their certain country, I believe it was Mexico. So, after that, I was like, "okay, I gave it a try." But I sort of always kept going back to the Cuban people that I knew here. Which I feel like I do connect more with.
[00:30:42] AC: Um, what advice? Like, I mean, I guess, like, I this can be a two-part question. So what advice would you give? Like, first off, what advice would you give somebody from Cuba coming to the United States?
[00:30:59] AMM: Okay, um, it depends. Where would they be arriving? What states like-
[00:31:05] AC: Let's say they go to Miami.
[00:31:06] AMM: Okay! I feel like Miami is a very safe place to arrive at, just because you basically speak more Spanish than English on your day-to-day. And you will know many people, it's very unlikely that you won't just because so many people have migrated. So, I do feel like you're gonna get adjusted well, you're gonna feel welcome into a community, you're gonna have people loving you every step of the way and helping you out. So, I do feel like Miami is the right place. Or at least one of them, where a Cuban could come with not knowing any language, not being as, I guess, well educated, and so on to really feel like they could make something of themselves and a future that is with the right people surrounding them.
[00:32:05] AC: Now, what advice would you give someone coming from like, Miami? Like, look, so you, you really grew up in Miami after you moved to Cuba or after you moved from Cuba. And now you're going to this new state with a new sort of demography, new people. If you were to- if someone were to ask you, what advice would you give to that person?
[00:32:30] AMM: I would admire them. I feel like one of the reasons why I decided to make the move was because I wanted a change. I was so used to my day-to-day Miami. I felt like I wasn't unique enough, just because everyone around me was Cuban, and was pursuing the same dream. I wanted to change sort of myself, like put myself not in like such a comfort zone, I wanted to get out of that comfort zone that Miami was for me. And that's essentially why I made that big change of moving from Miami to North Carolina to study. The environment was very different. I like the weather. And I was like, I think if I don't do it, now, I'm not gonna do it. And the advice that I would give that person besides telling them that they're brave, because it is a very hard decision. I feel like Hispanics are very tight with their families. And so that big move from your family is extremely emotionally draining at first. But besides telling them that they're brave, basically telling them as well that to get out there to meet people in class, talk to them. Go to club meetings, even if they're not your thing at first. If you keep trying and keep trying, I'm sure you will find the right one with the right community of people where you will feel welcome, accepted, where you could express your Cuban-ness and Hispanic descent and even share with people more about your country and why you moved. So, I think that would be my main advice.
[00:34:15] AC: Do you feel like you've grown from the transition from Miami to North Carolina?
[00:34:21] AMM: Yes, definitely. Since I've said before my family, my Cuban family, is very tightly sort of together. We do everything together. If there's a party happening, we're all going. If- we celebrate all holidays together, we eat dinner together all at one table every day at a certain time. So, I've definitely feel like I've become more independent for sure. I- since in Miami I live with both my grandma's and our mom, for example that love to cook. When my mom is stressed, the only thing that will relax her is cooking. So I- before coming here, I didn't know how to fry an egg, literally. So definitely a lot of things have changed. I feel like I've become more independent as a student, as well as a woman growing up in my 20s. So, I do feel like that's another reason why I made the move, I wanted to grow. And I felt like if I stayed at my house in Miami, with my very close family- that I feel like if I would have stayed in Miami that I would not have had the chance to experience American culture in a specific way as the one that I do in UNC. So, I do feel like this change, this move between states, especially as a student like me, was not only practical, but necessary.
[00:36:01] AC: Do you ever want to go back to Miami, like after you graduate? Do you see yourself there and like around your culture in the future?
[00:36:09] AMM: So, since I've mentioned that, I am planning to go into dental school, I don't mind where. I'm very open to moving around for dental school. However, I do feel like I've talked with friends and family about this, that Miami is home, and where I am just more comfortable with. So, I do feel like in the long run, where I want to create a family and experience life with in would be Miami at the end of the day. Yeah.
[00:36:49] AC: If you were to have stayed- So obviously, like Miami and Cuba are different in many different ways. But you know, do you feel like, if you were to have stayed in Cuba, how would your life be different now?
[00:37:05] AMM: I feel like it would have been extremely different. Not only professionally, but me as a person, I feel like I would not have been able to pursue my passion of becoming a dentist just because I saw how my parents struggled, my grandpa, my whole family essentially struggled as medical professionals. So, I do feel like I would have had to let go of that dream of becoming a dental professional. And instead, I would have probably joined the tourist industry, which pays people more than being a medical professional, it sounds crazy, but it's very realistic. Also, I feel like I would have a very unstable and stressful life, just because you don't know when your next plate of food- where it's going to come from or if you're going to find it. And that's just more stress than a human being with rights or in a country that the government should take care of, if not providing you with the essentials for you to make a living. So I- in overall I feel like one, I would have to stop pursuing my dream professionally. And two, it would just be a very stressful life. I would not be living to enjoy it. On top of that, there's no traveling. The only traveling you could do is in Cuba. So, there will be no going to Europe, going to the States, going all around the world if you wanted to just to visit. one because there's no money, and the other because Cuba doesn't allow you to.
[00:38:49] AC: So, you talk about the struggles that you feel like you would face if you had stayed in Cuba. What is life like for your family now in Cuba, like what did they do to manage?
[00:39:00] AMM: Yes, currently, the family that I have most in Cuba is my Mom's side. And that includes mostly her brother, so my uncle, his wife, and my two little cousins that are, I would say around the age of like- one is six years old and the other one is like 11. And I see their struggles, and I see how horrific it is. So, my mom thankfully provides them with food when it's needed. Because they- although my uncle works-, he's a mechanic and his wife, I believe, does something in the tourist industry, they can't provide for themselves alone. They can't pay for their housing and they can't pay for their expenses from what they make. And so, my family, especially my mother, sends them food, monthly, as well as utilities, anything that they aren't able to find in Cuba, my mom sends them- sends it to them. However, it's way more expensive. It takes time to get there, it's not assured that they will get it. So, it's very unstable, an unstable sad life. My uncle is currently battling depression just because he sees that most of his friends and most of his family are gone. And they are waiting for the same thing that was done to me, my mom, my father, and my sister, so that sponsorship from us. However, since it's from brother to- from sister to brother, it does take longer. And since that program is currently on pause, it's been, I believe, like eight years and no response. So definitely a difficult time. However, it does make it a little easier that they have our help from the States. But it still doesn't make it okay, that they're struggling this much just to provide for their family and live on a day-to-day basis[00:41:16] AC: Well, we are almost out of time, but I just wanted to ask you what else- like what do you want people to know about Cuba? About you being from Cuba?
[00:41:26] AMM: Yes, I want the people to know, even within this interview that even though there's a lot of struggles with the economy, with the government, dictatorship, and the people suffering, that we are a very rich culture island and that our identity is known. That the people are just very good people that care about each other. I remember how back when I was over there living, if any neighbor needed something, they will stop what they're doing just to help that other person. So, we are a very likeable people. Love to just talk, be communicative and help out. And I feel like if it's something that you should take from this interview, is to learn a little bit more about Cuba and how you could help and just know that its culture really is something that no other island could have. And yeah.
[00:42:30] AC: Well, thank you very much, Ana, for sharing your story with me today. And good luck with the rest of the semester.
[00:42:36] AMM: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:42:39] END OF INTERVIEW
Transcribed by: Anthony Ciano
01/20/2023
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1012 -- Molina, Ana Muñoz.
Description
An account of the resource
Ana Muñoz Molina is a student at UNC Chapel Hill from Cuba who shares her experience emigrating to the United States and her role within the Latino community in Chapel Hill and Miami, where she lives with her family. Ana discusses her family’s struggles to make ends meet in Cuba and discusses the challenges she faces to feel integrated within the university’s Hispanic community, made up mostly of first-generation Americans whose experiences differ from the conditions in which she was brought up both in Miami and under the Cuban authoritarian regime. While Ana is one of over a million people of Cuban heritage living in the Miami area and her experiences may be commonplace in south Florida, Ana shares the challenges of connecting to her culture in a university environment. She also provides advice for those in similar situations: coming to the United States, being surrounded by one’s own culture, and leaving that for a journey of independence and academic growth.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-04-18
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29352">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1012_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/298ca38d2763a06b517a900848960d16.mp3
3e706a8db25c484f6d269afb52471448
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/b5bf15eab8a7e0044521de1d998d98bb.pdf
6110c9bd3c6f983f5da42b664f16b609
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1011
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-04-21
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
García Rico, Yazmin.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Health services administrators
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1989
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Orizaba -- Veracruz -- México
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Graham -- Alamance County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-97.1046371459961 18.84562110900879),1989,1;POINT(-79.40039825439453 36.06760025024414),2002,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Velásquez, Daniel.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Yazmin García Rico is Director of Latinx and Hispanic Policy and Strategy at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS). She recounts her activism during her tenure in college, helping Latinx youth navigate college enrollment and her outreach efforts to connect farmworker communities with healthcare and other resources. Thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, Yazmin was able to continue helping farmworkers after college in various positions, and also earn a Master’s degree in social work at UNC-Chapel Hill. Yazmin expresses deep regret at her father’s passing from COVID-19 at a time before vaccines or treatments were available. She subsequently joined NC DHHS in her current role to coordinate vaccine distributions and address disparities in the pandemic’s impact on the state’s Latinx population. Yazmin’s journey is marked both by her own determination and the determination of others in her network to help open doors for her. In that vein, Yazmin emphasizes the need for support systems that can help uplift Latinx youth and address underrepresentation across state leadership.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Yazmin García Rico by Daniel Velásquez, 21 April 2023, R-1011, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29349
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Activism; COVID-19; DREAMers and DACA; Education; Social networks
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Administradores de servicios de salud
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Yazmin García Rico es Directora de Política y Estrategia Latinx en el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos de Carolina del Norte (NC DHHS, por sus siglas en inglés). Cuenta sobre su activismo durante su estancia en la universidad, ayudando a jóvenes latinos a matricularse y sus esfuerzos de alcance (outreach) para conectar a las comunidades de trabajadores agrícolas con atención médica y otros recursos. Gracias a la Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA, por sus siglas en inglés), Yazmin pudo seguir ayudando a los trabajadores agrícolas después de la universidad en varios puestos, como también obtener una maestría en trabajo social de la UNC-Chapel Hill. Yazmin lamenta no haber podido ayudar a su padre en Veracruz, quien falleció de COVID-19 cuando ella trabajaba en un hospital del Condado de Alamance organizando la distribución de alimentos y recursos para combatir la pandemia. Posteriormente se incorporó al NC DHHS en su puesto actual para coordinar la distribución de vacunas y abordar las disparidades del impacto de la pandemia en la población latina del estado. La trayectoria de Yazmin está marcada tanto por su propia determinación como por la de otras personas de su red que le han ayudado a abrir puertas. En ese sentido, Yazmin enfatiza la necesidad de contar con sistemas de apoyo que puedan ayudar a impulsar a la juventud latina y a abordar la falta de representación en el liderazgo estatal.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Yazmin García Rico por Daniel Velásquez, 21 April 2023, R-1011, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Activismo; COVID-19; Educación; Movimiento de jóvenes 'Soñadores' y Acción Diferida; Redes sociales
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: I'm Daniel Velasquez. Today is April 21st, 2023. I'm here today with Yazmin García Rico, who is Director of Latinx and Hispanic Policy and Strategy at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Yazmin, thank you so much for sitting with me today for your oral history.
Yazmin García Rico: Thank you so much for having me.
DV: Okay, Yazmin, let's get started with some basic information. Could you tell me about your personal background? Where were you born and raised and any early life experiences that you would like to share?
YGR: Yeah, so a little bit about myself. I was born in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, which is, Veracruz is in the Gulf Coast, and I was there for the first few years of my life. Some of the experiences that are the most memorable are really the times that I spent with my grandparents who were very crucial in my upbringing. I really enjoyed spending time in their house, eating the food that my grandma used to make, and I am just really grateful for the time that I had with them. They both passed away when I was in the US, so I didn't get a chance to see them in the last couple years of their lives or last few years of their lives. So, it's something that I really cherish a lot. And I also remember a lot the train, for some reason, because the train was a very, sort of, central part of my life. My dad used to work for the railroad company of Mexico and so we used to travel in the train to see family. I could hear the train from my house, from my grandparents’ house, and so I think for me that reminds me even here now as an adult every time I hear the train I think of home, I think of my dad and really what I think he wanted us to learn from him which is work ethic and dedication to, you know, to whatever you're passionate about. So, Mexico, when I think of, you know, childhood, I think of Mexico. I think about my culture and in a completely different life in a way because everyone around me looked like me. And I think that really shaped me in a way that may be different for other people that don't have that same experience.
DV: Thank you. What brought you to the United States, and to North Carolina, specifically?
YGR: So, I think definitely it was to seek a better life, to have a little bit more stability financially and more opportunities in terms of an education. I remember thinking about maybe one day I'll grow up and I'll be able to work for the government, which was crazy to think about as a child. So, when it actually happened was it like, oh, you know, I did think that I probably was around 13, 12 when I had that idea. One of the ideas crossed my mind, I think I was like--. I watched a lot of movies and American shows and, I don't know what I watched at that moment but I remember thinking about growing up and doing a job that served in government, in that capacity. So that's the initial reason why I ended up in the United States, not really knowing the complexity and the, you know, challenges and how life would be. I only had movies as a, you know, baseline of what the United States was.
DV: Tell us about your education and any other formative experiences here in North Carolina. I know that you've held many internships and have been involved in various volunteer positions. And you probably have gained some leadership experience along the way, so tell us about all that.
YGR: Yeah, so this is for me a long journey. [Laughter]
DV: Okay.
YGR: For me, being able to get an education really has been a path that has taken a long time. I got to the US when I was about 13 years old and I started eighth grade. So the first couple years were really trying to get a sense of the school, the language, the culture. I had no idea what Thanksgiving was, Halloween, just different things that are the normal here that I didn't have awareness of. So I had to learn a lot about just the culture in the South too, if you add that layer. So, education was something that I was always interested in. I don't think it was ever a question for me if I was going to go to college. At that point I just didn't know how, but I knew I wanted to go to college. And so going through high school I think that was really when I developed a little bit more in my understanding of English and I still tried to grasp a sense of what everyone around me already knew and that I was trying to, you know, catch up with. I only knew about one school, one college, and that's because a friend of mine in high school who was three years older, I was a freshman he was a senior, he was also from Veracruz. He took the same classes that I was taking. He took French. He had the same math teachers, and he went to college. He was also undocumented at the time, so I just thought of like, okay, if he can do it and he has pretty much the same path, I can do it too. And so, I only applied to one college, which was Guilford College. And I applied there because my friend was there. He gave me a tour himself. He took me around. And, you know, thinking back, it's crazy because that was a time where not everyone had a computer. Everything was done, you had to print your application, you had to mail it, you had to call and see if they received it. You know, it was back in the day and so applying just to one college was really hard for me. It was you just felt this is an extensive, you know, sort of process getting those letters of recommendation, putting everything together to submit it to the school. And I was really grateful to have--there were two, three teachers in high school that were very supportive. My math teacher, I remember she encouraged me to take more challenging classes, like statistics. And if it wasn't for people like her that challenged me to take college prep classes and continue to push myself, I don't know that I would have had that support system that gave me the letters of recommendation and that sort of re-assured that I could do it, that I was capable. My English teacher, Mr. Ringwalt, he also went to Guilford, so he was knowledgeable with the college. He gave me that letter of recommendation. And so that was definitely--. Those years are really fun to think about because I would not--. I'm a shy person overall, but not knowing the language well can add a little pressure in terms of being nervous to speak. And so, I remember in the classroom I would never raise my hand to speak up, but I knew all the answers because I was studying really hard at home. And so, I remember one of my teachers from world history, he started telling everyone in the class that I got a hundred, it was like a hundred questions. And it was one of the final tests and I got them all right and he was telling everybody, how come just me who doesn't speak ever in class and who's still learning English, has every question right and a lot of you know the language and you still don't get it? So that was like, okay, thank you. But also, that you don't have to, you know, showcase me in front of everyone. So, I think he was fun.
DV: He was proud.
YGR: He was proud. He was highlighting, how dare you not do well. [Laughter]. And Yazmin, you know, who you know--. Everyone knew I was still learning English. I was not comfortable speaking up. The classes where I did the best were, like math--. Because I feel when I came to the U.S. my math, my level of knowledge in math was more advanced than everyone else, so for two, three years I was just, you know, going with the flow. I was not learning something new. I knew all the concepts and I knew how to do it because back in Mexico there were no calculators. Here you were given a calculator, literally was in the desk. And so I just knew how to do everything without relying, you know, on a device
DV: Wow.
YGR: So those were the classes where I--. Strategically I think it was helpful because I had friends who were Latino who, they were not good at math, but they spoke English. And so, I would be like, let me show you and help you but you help me in other classes so that's how I navigated eighth and ninth grade, I think. Just kind of exchanging the skill sets because for a lot of eighth grade--. I don't know how I passed ninth grade because I honestly didn't know anything but math. Somehow I ended up in high school and that's where I really dedicated a lot of time to watching movies and trying to learn English and really pushing myself to understand even if I wasn't able to speak fluently. So high school was definitely fun. I mean, challenges, you know, that age, that time, it's hard, bullying and stuff like that, but I feel like for me I was really focused on just trying to understand and trying to learn and trying to do well. And I think it was around, probably eleventh grade when I started to be more conscious of the barriers that I was going to be confronted with. Because I knew I wanted to go to college, I didn't know that it was going to be hard in terms of my immigration status being one of those barriers. That's when I started to hear a lot about out-of-state tuition for public universities for people who didn't have documents, and also not being able to obtain my driver's license. I went to the driver's ed class and by the end when I got my certificate is when that changed in North Carolina.
DV: Oh wow.
YGR: So, I was not able to get my driver's ed even though I went to the course just because by the time I finished is when things shifted.
DV: The rules changed.
YGR: And then there were other, sort of, institutions of higher education that were switching their policies of who could come to school. And maybe you could register but if someone else wanted to be in the class you would be kicked out and you would still have to pay out-of-state tuition or you would just not be welcome. So it was a lot of just--. It was hard. It was just hard to kind of think about where would I go. And so, meeting my friend who went to Guilford sort of opened up that one opportunity for me to think about, you know, he did it, I'm going to do it too. And somehow I made it to Guilford College. There was a program there called Bonner Scholars Program that provided scholarship support for low-income students that were interested in doing service, community service and service learning.
DV: What was the name of the program?
YGR: Bonner Scholars Program. And it's a national program, but not every school has it. That program at Guilford at the time was a four-year program where you started as a freshman and took a class and did service hours during the semester, did internship experiences during the summer, and all as a part of a cohort with your class, but also connecting to other Bonners from other classes. And I think for me, thinking back, I mean I've been aware of this for a long time that I was definitely one of--. A fortunate student that got that opportunity because not many students like myself at the time and even still now were able to have that opportunity. I think it was a combination of knowing certain people, like the program, that I got admitted to the school, my grades I guess, but also my dad helped me a lot because he was in Mexico, and he would support me financially as much as he could to be able to pay tuition.
DV: Wow.
YGR: So, the difference was that if I was to go to a public institution, I would have paid out-of-state tuition that can be like two, three times as much as the regular tuition. In Guilford College, being a private school, you get charged the same. You might not get as much help, but at least it's not more money than what you know already that you're going to get charged. And with the scholarships, we were able to piece it together. And Guilford was definitely, again, one of those shaping experiences for me because since I got to the school, I had a group of people that came along that I know had shared values in a way or shared goals of giving back to the community. And it was really cool because it was people from all over the world, from all over the United States but also all over the world. And getting to see how we're different, but we have very similar experiences, was really nice. I remember one of the trips we took which was our first-year experience summer trip, and we went to a Native American reservation for a couple weeks. And so, at that point I was undocumented, so I didn't have a driver's license. I didn't have anything but my Mexican passport and so I called my dad, and I told him that there's this trip that falls in my birthday and that I wanted to go and that, you know, there were risks because I would be flying. And he told me do you want to go, and I said yes. He's like, well, do it. So, I went on that trip pretty nervous because, I mean, I had a little fear of what could happen but thankfully everything went well. And I spent two weeks in that reservation. Some of my peers, I had peers from like Kenya and peers from different parts of Middle Eastern just like Europe and then U.S. So it was really neat to be in that space and get to know even more, like a diverse group. And I remember they asked us if we wanted to stay at a cabin or in one of the teepees. And a lot of us being international, what you would consider an international student or not an American student, we were like, we're not sleeping in the teepee. It's like, we've been there, you know, we've been already in conditions that may not be the most desirable, so we're like, no.
DV: We want to be comfortable.
YGR: Yes, we want to be comfortable. And so that was really funny to see that you just share experiences or just thinking with other peers that were trying to be more comfortable, not suffer more than we need to.
DV: What was the destination?
YGR: That was Montana.
DV: Okay.
YGR: So we were in Montana in a Native American reservation. We arrived to Billings and then drove out and everyone there in that reservation was really nice to me and to another Mexican student because we look alike. When I got to the reservation I was like, oh, is this--. It looked like people could be, you know, I could have been in Mexico because we look alike. And so, I definitely saw that treatment in a better way towards us and we got to cook for them pozole, also tacos, tacos dorados with buffalo meat. It was an interesting mix and just a really cool experience, and all that to say that, that program really shaped me because it kind of got us out of our comfort zone, got us to learn a lot about other cultures and about ways of connecting because we're people and finding those commonalities. That week when we were there, we didn't know that Obama was going to be at the reservation.
DV: Oh wow
YGR: This was when he was running for his campaign, the first time. And there were no phones, no clocks, nothing. We were like no technology, no TV. We were disconnected in the reservation, and we were told one morning after breakfast, get ready, we're going to go to this event. So, we got ready and left and it was Obama who was visiting the reservation and that was really neat. One of those really cool experiences. And then get to see him, you know, actually become president--. But going back to Bonner Scholars Program and Guilford College, I was highly involved in different activities that related to the Latino community, more specifically Latino youth or Latino students. I ran an after-school tutoring program called Latino Impact, and we went to McLeansville to a middle school and did tutoring of students. So I would have volunteers come with me and we helped with their homework. It was sixth graders for the most part, sixth, seventh, eighth graders. And then once a year, I helped to co-found a conference for Latino students called Soy Un Lider. So my fall semester, my first fall semester at Guilford, we co-founded a conference with a friend that went to high school with me. He was a senior, I was a freshman, and so he had this idea and sort of brought me on board to help co-found this one-day conference. And then he graduated, and so I felt I needed to keep it going. And we brought--.We started by bringing 150 to 200 students. And then it just grew from there every fall. And they had the experience of visiting the college, eating in the cafeteria, going to workshops, and the whole point was sharing with them information, resources that would help them to get to college, and hopefully not struggle as much as we did in not knowing what was even available or what options we had, and that was very geared towards undocumented and first-generation Latino students. And those experiences I feel like, it really gave me the ability to think through what is in our reach to push for change, what resources we have, and make the most with what you have. Because we were just, you know, college students. We would visit high schools and just talk to the administration and be like, we want to invite students. So little by little, we grew those relationships. We got school systems to provide their bus, the transportation for students to get to the conference. It was on a Saturday. We got funding from the school to pay for the breakfast and to give them gear, so it was just really cool to kind of give back in that sense. Even if it was one day, even if it was, you know, just a tiny piece of information. It was nice to see that hopefully they will hear something today that will have an impact in them. And I think for me the most favorite memory of that conference every year was coming into the cafeteria when they were eating lunch and just to see how many Latinos were in that space. And to see other students from campus walking in and just being like, who are these people? This is not the norm, right? A lot of us were one student who identifies Latino in the classroom; and so to be able to have that many people on campus and to see themselves there, but also to see other people acknowledge their presence, those are the moments that I live for in a way.
DV: So, you started it with your friend freshman year and then you continued it, until?
YGR: I continued every year until I graduated and it's still happening.
DV: Wow.
YGR: Like everything that, you know, they have up and downs in terms of leadership and support from school with administration change. And so that results in more resources or less resources that go into the conference, but it's still happening.
DV: That’s great.
YGR: And that just, you know, sort of uplifts my spirit because I know that at that moment we were focused on the Latino students. There are other students who also need that same support, like international students, refugees, asylees. And Greensboro has a large population of--. A really diverse population. So they also broadened a little bit the confidence to make sure that they were doing outreach to those students as well. So it is still happening, and it is one of those things that keeps me really close with the school, knowing that even after 10 plus years, it is still a need and there's still people who are willing to do that work. And other couple things that Guilford was, at that moment, the Latino club on campus was Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. And, you know, there's different ways that people identify themselves, so I use Latino a lot, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic. At that moment in time, from 2007 to 2011, Hispanic was the word that most people used. So, the club was Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. And we did a lot of activities throughout the year, celebrated Farm Work Awareness Week, celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. I also was seen as an international student to Guilford because of my application. So I also did a little bit of the international club. So, I don't know, it felt like it was a small campus and had a lot of resources. And it gave me the ability to do different things and connect with different groups of students and bring them all together in a way. And so that was inspiring for me to see that, okay, people follow me. For some reason, people volunteer to help me. And it's what we need, right? We need groups of people who are excited about something. And for me, that was really energizing. And that conference, the Soy Un Lider Conference, is like I'm a leader. And sometimes, a lot of times, even students, even adults, we doubt ourselves of our abilities to do something. And I think for me, that learning lesson there was like, you might be the one leading or pushing but you need a group of people because one person cannot do it alone. And in leadership also looks different in a way. I might be a quiet leader right, but you can still do things in front of people, behind the scenes. So that's something that I really learned at that moment, and I try to remind myself because sometimes it's still hard. You know, imposter syndrome comes back, and you try to question, am I in the right place? Do I belong? Can I do this? So just thinking about that younger Yazmin who was able to do something, and people believed. And it had an impact. It helps me to move through. And you asked about internships.
DV: Right.
YGR: I did two internships that I recall more clearly. My first internship was at Student Action with Farmworkers and that was, again, an internship that my friend did. So, I was like he did it I'm going to go and do it. And he was--.
DV: The same friend?
YGR: Same friend
DV: Wow
YGR: Same friend. And so, he told me about the internship. As a Bonner Scholar, we were supposed to do an internship. And so, I worked in a clinic of Piedmont Health Services in Prospect Hill as a farm worker, outreach worker, doing outreach to farm worker camps. And so, we visited farms or like camps, we call it camps, which is the housing where farm workers live. It might be a trailer; it might be a big building that looks like a warehouse. And it can vary from like 3, 4, 5, 10 farm workers to like 150 or more farm workers. A lot of them come from Mexico and through the H-2A visa , and work in the fields for a time frame and go back home. And so, we would bring to them information around health, health education, we would take their blood pressure and talk to them about diabetes. And just trying to provide information and resources to them, connect them to the clinic if they needed an appointment, if they needed medicine. And that really, that internship is something that I feel really shaped me again because even if I grew up in Alamance County, I had no idea that just 40, 20, 30 minutes away there are farms and there's farm workers. And that a lot of them are actually from my home country and that looked like they could have been my dad, my grandpa, my granddad, or one of my siblings, or someone I know. And just to see the disparity in terms of access to healthcare, resources, and a lot of injustices that may happen because of their job. The different power dynamics that come into play. And that really got me into the sort of farm worker justice movement here
DV: It galvanized you.
YGR: Yes. In North Carolina.
DV: So this internship is happening while you're in college?
YGR: Summer yeah, a whole summer. So, during college I was doing the tutoring, I was doing the club on campus, and I was doing also the conference once a year. During the summer we had an internship, and it was--. This first one was a Student Action with Farmworkers, and this summer internship is called Into the Fields. And so it brings students from North Carolina and farmworker students from other parts of the country like Idaho, California, Texas, where there's other farm worker populations that at that time were bigger, and that--. Either it could be children of farm workers or even children that worked as farm workers at some point. So it was a really cool space because a lot of--. To be part of the internship, you had to speak Spanish. And so even those that were not Latino, like they spoke Spanish and liked the culture, and it was like a cohort, you know. Sort of a program where there's retreats, there's trainings, there is just different types of activities that help you feel more comfortable with who you are. And I think one of the things for me, too, is I didn't have a problem with being who I am because that's who I am. I grew up in Mexico, so I feel very grounded on my language and my culture, but I know other people who grow up here sometimes have a challenge because it's like, at home it's one culture and outside it's another culture so you're trying to grapple with who you are and what's okay because of the pressure. So I really got to see other students who were at the beginning a little shy to speak Spanish, or a little shy to say where they were coming from, or a little shy to dance, you know, bachata salsa whatever and then by the end they were this is who I am and like--.
DV: Embracing it.
YGR: Yeah, embracing their culture. So I loved being part of that experience and to also learn it's okay to be who I am in terms of the context of being an immigrant and having you know English as my second language, having an accent, like those things I think that those were the things that I got from the experience as well. And that having this bicultural, bilingual experience and a skill set also can contribute in different ways in the workplace, because at the end of the day we were increasing capacity for organizations that were doing this outreach. And this was at the time where there were no smartphones, so we would do outreach based on a map. We would pull a big map and then try to find the street where the camp was and then drive around the country and then try to figure out where this house is. And there would be notes like, you know, look at the tree in this intersection. A lot of farmworker housing is not like a regular housing that you can see from the road. It might be a dirt road that you have to go. And then, you know, it's kind of hidden from communities. So it's really crazy to think now that we just put something on the GPS, and it tells us, sometimes even shows you a picture of what it looks like, but back in the day, it was really pairing up with one more student, intern, or the supervisor and driving with them and figure out where the housing was. So I learned a lot and got to network a lot through that internship. I feel that led me to my second internship the following summer, which was at American Friends Service Committee, AFSC, which is a Quaker organization. And at the time it was based in Greensboro. And the director at the time of the immigrant rights program, she was also SAFista. And we call SAFista anyone who has done any SAF program, any Student Action with Farmworkers program. So she was a SAFista from back in the day, leading this program in immigrant rights and I applied for an internship there and got to learn more about the immigrant rights space like the advocacy happening at the time in general, advocacy for issues that we still face today like immigration reform, humane immigration reform, driver's license, tuition equity, all those issues that are still present. And I got to learn and be in the space and support those efforts during that summer. And that person, that director, really became one of the people, too, that became part of my support system. And I think that is what I'm really grateful for; that all throughout my journey I have found those people. Like I mentioned in high school, teachers, in my internships and in the different spaces that I was part of finding people that are going to be there for you no matter, you know, how you move in life through other spaces. She's been one of those people that has been job references for me, you know, one of those people that I call and try to ask at different points for her thoughts and feedback and that got to know me more during that time of my life. So those are the main internships that I think really took me in terms of helping me to develop my resume per se. So, by the time that I graduated, I had a lot of things. Like, I was, not just--.
DV: You were just busy.
YGR: I was busy, not just participating, but I was leading on campus and also participating in the internships. And I think that I'm grateful for that. I don't regret it. But looking back, I know that I was overcommitted. And I guess the weight that I was carrying, it was like, if I don't do it, who will do it because there were not a lot of Latino students on campus at the time. It was only a few of us. It was like three Mexican students, different classes, you know, Puerto Ricans, a couple. Some people that were adopted from Latin America and were trying to connect with their, you know, culture of the country where they were born, but there were not a lot of Latino students, so it just felt like I was trying to do it all.
DV: You felt like it was your responsibility, then?
YGR: Yes, yes, because I knew, and I was very aware that a lot of students that went to high school with me didn't make it to college. And it wasn't because they didn't want to, it was because it was not easy, or it was because they were discouraged very early on because they were told there is not going to be a way for you to do it even if you have documents. That's what really is really crazy, and I know it's still happening. If your family hasn't gone through higher ed, and if you're a person of color, if you're Latino, if you're a child of immigrants, a lot of times this system and people around it still kind of, don't see that in you or don't encourage that in you. Or even worse, like discourage you and tell you that's not an option. I know, I went to my counselor in high school, and they didn't know how to help me. There's no supports in many places still, or not enough for students. So, I definitely felt like I wanted to give back and that's why Soy Un Lider Conference focused on Alamance County, Guilford County, and Forsyth because it was sort of my hometown and surrounding counties where the conference took place. And that really sort of pushed me to do so much, which I think helped me in my professional sort of career path. But my senior year was really stressful because I was trying to graduate, fulfill my requirements. I was a business--. I was a French and business, sort of French major. Business was supposed to be my second major, but I ended up having to graduate. I think I ended up graduating with two minors in business and one more thing I don't even remember, oh my gosh. I had completed three minors, but they don't let you graduate with three minors. I had major in French and three minors in business related but I had to pick two, so I think it was business and business law. And the reason was, I was short one class to finish my major in business. But at that point I was like, I'm done, I don't need to, I didn't have the money, I didn't have the energy to come back and finish one more class to complete that business double, to have a double major. So, I was like, I'll just graduate. And I think it was just, I was so over committed and tired because I was also, towards the end, I tried to find ways to work to earn a little money so that I could still sort of be okay, because every year tuition goes up. And so, by the time I started I think it was like 10K a semester, no, 15K a semester. By the time I finished, it was way higher than that. So it was a lot of, sort of, pressure, and I was just ready to graduate. When I graduated I was still undocumented, so that year was hard, 2011 to 2012, because I had a degree and it was sort of--. I found myself in a place where a lot of people had sort of questioned, before, what are you going to do when you graduate and you still don't have documents to work. I heard that a lot during my time in college and that was hard because it's like you want to be motivated, you want to keep pushing, you want to show that you're doing the most with the opportunity, but that’s a real question that I tried to ignore because I didn't want to lose sight of my goal which was to graduate. And it was hard to kind of keep going that year just trying to figure out what am I going to do, and I knew that maybe I needed to go back to Mexico if I couldn't work here. And that's why I was going for business and French in college, because I wanted something that could maybe help me if I had to go back to my home country or end up going to a different country. I couldn't graduate with anthropology or sociology because my family would have been like what are you going to do with that, you know. What do you do with that degree in another country like Mexico. So, it was 2012, the summer of 2012 when President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and that was the light that I was waiting for. That was the moment that I was preparing for. And so, I didn't doubt enrolling into the program as soon as it was an option. I remember I heard about it, I was so excited, started putting all my documents together, thinking through what they would be asking for. And as soon as the day came to be able to apply and submit an application, I was one of those first ones that I know of in my circle of friends. And I know a lot of people were fearful because, I mean, you know we don't trust the government a lot of times for various reasons, and so people were really fearful of coming forward. And then you know not knowing what really could happen once you did that. But I just felt like what am I going to lose, I don't have anything to loose. And so I applied, and I was going through that process, waiting to hear back, going to do my biometrics, my fingerprints and all that. And then I saw this job that opened up at the Student Action with Farmworkers, which was the first internship, the first organization that I interned for. And so, I was like, I'm going to apply. And so, I applied, and the position was National Organizer. And so I was going through the application process and waiting to hear back about DACA. And I went to two or three interviews, and I got a call on a Friday saying that I got the job and I was so happy. And I wanted to say yes but I still didn't have my work permit, so I asked for a couple days to think about it but I know I didn't have anything to think about. I wanted a job. I just wasn't ready.
DV: Were you giving yourself time to get those permits, maybe?
YGR: Yeah. And so, in that call I was like, oh yes, can I think about it and get back to you next week? And that weekend I got my work permit. It just felt like it was meant to be and everything lined up. So I got my work permit, I started working that December at Student Action with Farmworkers leading up to 2013. And that really opened up the doors for me in so many ways. Having DACA, being able to use--. Because a lot of jobs they don't ask you--. I mean they say preference in a degree on this, right? But they're looking at the education level, like bachelor's degree, master's degree, or whatever. And so, I had the degree, I had the experience, and I wanted to be able to do something, get a job that I was passionate about. And so DACA opened up that for me. And this organization means a lot to me because it was the first organization that opened the doors to give me an internship knowing my situation. Because I've always been pretty open about, you know, my situation and who I am, so it meant a lot for me that that was my first job. And I was there for about three, four years working in different roles as a national organizer, coordinating National Farmworker Awareness Week, doing a lot of the alumni engagement. Later became director of the youth program, so working with youth, farmworker youth, and really networking and connecting and supporting a lot of that farmworker advocacy movement in the state to improve the working and living conditions of the population. And during that time, it was towards my last year and a half working there, that I realized that I wanted to go back to school. And it was a combination of, started looking at people around me. Well, I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I didn't know for what. Because at that point, I only knew my one friend. [Laughter]. Going back to my one friend that had gone to Guilford from my high school, he went and did his MBA. And so, I knew that there was Master’s in business administration, but I was like, ah, I knew I did business in college, but that's not where my heart is. And so that was not what I wanted to do. I didn't know many people personally, you know friends, close friends or family that had a Master’s, but I started looking at everyone around me and trying to figure out what their degree was. People that I looked up to in the work. This was before LinkedIn. You couldn't just you know figure out what people's journey was. I started meeting with people for coffee. I ended up meeting with 15 or more social workers. And they were all doing different work, in farmworker-related, immigrant rights-related, just different type of work. And I was like, I want to be a social worker, because they're all doing work that I would love to be able to do, positions that I would love to have. And that's one of the reasons why I chose social work. And the other one is because I was working with the farmworker youth, and it was really working with them, their families, their siblings, their networks, because they would connect. They would know that there was a need, and they would refer people to me to try to find support and resources for them or just hear them out. And a lot of those concerns and just things that people were going through were really heavy and I didn't know how to deal with that. I couldn't go home and not think about it, or I couldn't get frustrated that there was nothing else that could be done to help them and so I knew that social work would give me a little bit more of that training on to figure out how you even help, and how do you respond, what's your role. How to push systems and how to continue to advocate for people in different ways, and that's when I ended up going to the school social work at UNC. That was a whole different journey. A whole different journey because I had been out of school for years. I still, I was DACAmented, as they say, and still had to pay out-of-state tuition if I wanted to go back to school. And it felt selfish to want to go back to school when there were a lot of people still that hadn't had the opportunity to even go to a community college or a college or university for a four-year degree, and I wanted more. So that kind of, I think I put those ideas on myself but it was just hard to kind of want more. And it was my support system, it was people around me that encouraged me to not give up and to find a way. And I met--. I had someone on Facebook that I thought it was the Facebook of this person that worked in the same building as me, and I did a lot of presentations and supported a class that happened for university students. So my support was really around farmworker information, presentations, and farmworker education for those students. So I had this person on Facebook, I thought it was this professor, but it really was that he shared that Facebook page with his wife. So it was the kids' Facebook page, and they both used it. They shared pictures of their children. So I posted something that like--. He knew that I wanted to go to school. I posted that I was trying to go to school, trying to find resources, scholarships and all that. And he connected me with his wife and said: I think you really want to talk to my wife, you should meet. She's also a social worker. And she wants to help you. And I didn't know that this whole time she had been--. She knew who I was because of Facebook, and so I met with her a weekend in this office, in her office, and we came up with a plan on how I was going to be able to go to grad school.
DV: Wow.
YGR: Like, who I needed to reach out to at the school, how I was going to try to pull in enough funding. And I walked away from her office with this big sheet of paper with everything on it and I really went on that path. I ended up having to fundraise for my education because there were not many scholarships for students like me. The ones that were available I applied out of the school, and I didn't get those. Very competitive national scholarships. And people like her and others connected me with people at the School of Social Work. Everyone at the School of Social Work knew that I was coming, who I was. There had seen emails about me, people advocating for me to be thought of for a scholarship support. It could be a little embarrassing. [Laughter]. You know, because people were like, this is just me and this is everything she's done, and she would be amazing, and these are the challenges that she has. So I think for me the most difficult part was to try to fundraise. And the moments that really were like--. That brought me a lot of joy. And just what surprised me a lot is people that didn't know me that supported me. Like people in my network spoke highly of me to their network and I got checks from people that I had never met. And some people didn't want me--. They wanted to be anonymous, they didn't need me to contact them and thank them and I was like I want to thank you, I want to know who you are. And people from my community, people from the community where I grew up also supported that.
DV: In Mexico?
YGR: Here.
DV: Oh, here.
YGR: Here in Alamance County. And so, to me it meant people believe in me, people are cheering for me, supporting me. And so I just went all in and fundraised for my whole grad school cost, and went into grad school trying to be the best student ever. Like read everything and do everything. I got to be an RA all throughout both years and the summer and learn from different professors. It was really one of those, again, life-changing experiences, because I never thought I would be able to be there. Even with DACA, even with a driver's license and a social security number, it's still a place that is not that accessible to DACAmented and undocumented students. So it felt surreal. And also hard because you're one of a few Latino students. There was, not that I knew of, any other student that was in the same situation that I was. And it's an institution at the end of the day, so there's things that could be better. We're always, as students, we're always challenging the system. We're always questioning, especially at the School of Social Work where in the code of ethics it's like social justice is one of those things that, you know, we care about. So it was interesting because I was sort of part of the advocacy but also working for professors and being an RA for the assistant dean, and you know. [Laughter]. Pushing here, but also this is my research assistantship and this is how I'm able to be in school. Because I was working for the school so that they could help me with my tuition, with part of the tuition, at least not pay out-of-state tuition, but pay it sort of the mid-level point through the funding that the research assistantship came with. So it was an incredible experience and I was able to do a couple internships there at the Hispanic Family Center through Catholic Charities in Raleigh. And then my final internship was an internship that I found on my own. It wasn't one listed. The list of internships, there was nothing that really spoke to me. And so I went to try to find an organization that had a social worker that could supervise me and that had the work that I wanted to do. And so I reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union who had two social workers. I knew one of them and I ended up being an intern there. And that's when DACA was rescinded. So it was when the Trump administration was trying to get rid of DACA and it was very fearful because DACA is what had opened the doors for me, it was the way that I could work for the school and finish grad school. And so I was in the middle trying to keep organizations informed, like support on that end, trying to support the advocacy efforts and be part of that work again, now as a grad student. Very nerve-wracking too because I felt like, I don't know, I just--. You just put ideas on yourself. I was--. The expectations are high on how I'm supposed to, you know, do the work because now I'm in grad school. I just felt it was I have to do my best and even better than, you know, two years ago because I'm a grad student and I put a lot of pressure on myself at that time. And I was able graduate from the School of Social Work and land on my first job. I applied for different things that felt sort of comparable, like going back to the farmworker space. I tried to get into philanthropy which didn't work at the time. I was seen as very young, not a lot of experience on that sort of area. And then I ended up being sort of recruited or encouraged to apply for a position at the hospital in town. And it was working under the supervision of the person that was really crucial in helping me come up with a plan on how I was going to get to grad school. That woman that I mentioned that brought me to her office, that I knew her husband, and so also social worker. And I ended up applying for jobs. I got a job in farmworker health and I declined that job and ended up coming to work for the hospital. And I actually, I don't know, it's full circle in a way because I got to work in the community where I grew up, got to learn, got to meet more people. And understand the dynamics that happen in the county between non-profits, hospital, health department, things that work, things that could be better, contributing in the ways that I could to make spaces more welcoming of Latinos. Or try to bring a little bit more awareness of why you might not be seeing Latinos and how you could improve in your outreach. And having the supervisor I had was an amazing experience because she was a leader that tried to uplift and to give you the tools you needed to do what needed to be done. And it was a little crazy when she said that she wasn't in the office much because she was covering a broader region and that she was going to give me her office. And I was like, what?! The office where I first met her to come up with a plan on how I was going to get to grad school. That's what it meant to me. I was like, the office with three windows, I'm getting that office? So that just felt like, oh my god, full circle. I can't believe that two years ago, two and a half years ago, I was sitting in this office not knowing that I was going to be able to go to grad school and not knowing that I was going to be able to, you know, move on in my career thanks to having a master's degree.
DV: Wow.
YGR: And that work in the hospital was really rewarding, was really hard, too, because it was coming--. It was putting me out of my comfort zone not being in the immigrant rights space, farmworker advocacy space where everyone is aware of the community needs or trying to serve or have that shared goal. It was more of just different people, right, with different jobs, serving the broader community, very mainstream in a way, where there were little to no Latinos in the spaces where I was moving. And so that was hard to navigate, but also rewarding to see little by little sort of the impact of just my presence or a comment or a question or my--. Or giving input. We were able to do a lot of programming to grow the programming for the Latino population in Alamance County, connect people to resources that were available for free or little cost like mammogram, you know, just information on pre-diabetes, like connecting people to different resources. And that's when the pandemic hit. And that's when we all shut down in terms of showing up to the office. And my supervisor being very supportive allowed me to do the work that I thought was needed, which was to support with basic needs to the community because people were staying home, losing their jobs or not being able to work, like not having food. It was just really like a chaos. And so I worked closely with the Dream Center in Burlington. Past Lisa had this idea of doing a food giveaway and trying to find meals and give it out to the community. And it was literally her family, my husband and I, and one more couple on the first day. And they bought food, they found funding, and I came up with ways to improve our system. I supported that day. We had cars coming through one end of the building going all around and we had a tent we were giving out the food it was very, like, the first day was a mess. It was good but it was like we were just trying to improve, and we served, I don't know if the first day we served like 120 families. I don't know, a crazy number of just cars that came by and we just gave them food and you know trying to have PPE on us and protect ourselves and protect others but give food. And that just grew and grew and grew and every week we were giving more and more food. So many people came along to help after that first day, we had nonprofits showing up, Elon University leadership, people from the city of Burlington, the mayor was out there, former mayor was there giving out food. And just different people came and helped and it just grew from giving this full menu that people can choose from American and Latino food and diapers and fruit and getting donations and giving out masks and giving out, you know, what we could. And it was definitely like--. Thursday was the day where even people that didn't know what was going on they would see the lines of cars and would come and get in line. They were like we don't know what's happening, but everybody's coming so we want to come and see. And it had a huge impact on nonprofits and organizations who had heard about Latinos, who had heard about the Dream Center, but really didn't come close yet, so they got to see the community and that was impactful too because a lot of times people may ask where are the Latinos, right? They're not coming, and we're here, we're part of the community. They're just busy working jobs that sometimes are not visible and they're keeping to themselves because it's what's comfortable and it's what feels safe. And the Dream Center became that sort of place that a lot of people start to recognize the habit trust in the community that was in the, in the part of town where we needed resources the most. And so, it was really neat to be able to give back during those times that were really difficult. That was before testing. Then testing came around and we coordinated, I helped to coordinate in the county different places for testing. We were going to the places in the community where we could see the higher rates or where we wouldn't, we didn't see rates because we also thought people were not being tested there. In rural parts of the county, different parts of the county, and it was free testing for anyone that wanted it in a drive-thru sort of way in collaboration with the health department. And so I was in that time when I got a call that my dad was feeling, was ill, was not doing well in Mexico, and had to go back to Mexico. And he had gotten COVID, it was July, and he didn't make it. So that was really hard because I was here, you know in the response and trying to provide what I could to the community and then my dad was home, not feeling well, not telling us for some days because, my dad. And I got to Mexico and by the time I got there he was at a hospital, and I was not able to go in. I was not able to see him. And that just was so hard for my family and for myself. And a lot to kind of deal with and process in that sort of very scary way of you not being able to be there for your loved one, you not being able to even do the proper traditional way of a funeral. Or doing the things that we usually would do for the people we love. And so that 2020 was definitely a rough year for me and then coming back to--. Having to come back and go back to work and still processing that for a long time. And my husband was running for office, too, at that time, so it was a lot to kind of grieve for my dad, be strong for family, and support my husband as he was running his first campaign for office. And that fall is when, I was supposed to become a citizen in March, but it happened that the pandemic got here and everything got shut down, so it got pushed to October, and I was able to become a citizen in October. And that was sort of, one of the first sort of big painful moments because it was one of the first few life milestones that I wasn't able to call my dad and tell him. And I remember that being really hard just because it's a moment that I should be happy but it was, you know--. When he, when someone you love is no longer a part of your life, it's really hard to kind of figure out the thing that I would do is not something that I can do anymore. But I guess the little happiness or the little sort of moment that brought comfort was knowing that, I feel like I know that he's with me, you know, in different ways now and that he would be happy for me. And also, that same day, because of the pandemic, it was very weird citizenship ceremony where it was three of us in this huge room and nobody else could come into the building. They asked the questions. They did my interview, my final interview, and then right away put us in this room for the oath. So I did everything in one day instead of doing two parts as usually the process would be, and then I got out of there and drove directly to early voting. It was the last day of early voting, and so I registered to vote during early voting before it closed, and I voted for my husband. And I was like, I cannot believe that this is happening and then drive straight to the library to request my passport because I was like, there's no going back, they can't take this away from me. I'm going to do everything I need to do--.
DV: Yeah, you made it.
YGR: To get this, you know, to get to this point. So it was a full day of, you know, just--. I feel like I was running, before anybody changed their mind, to do what I needed to do. So 2020 was definitely bittersweet in many ways, for many of us, but definitely very high highs and very low lows. And then that fall I got a call from a friend that said, do you want to do the work that you're doing at the county level but at the state? And I was like, no, I got enough with my county. There's plenty of work to do here and I'm doing all I can. And I was like, still doing the work with the hospital, canvassing. Well we were starting to do lid drops, not canvassing, that fall, and just juggling everything and grieving. And it was probably a month later that I saw the job description for the job that I have now and I fell in love with it because it was the focus on the Latino community, it was really working at a systems level. It felt that every part of my journey was leading me to this job, from a personal, to a professional, to an educational experience. And so, I put my name in the hat. I applied, went through three interviews and was waiting to hear back and left to Mexico to see family. It was probably between November and December. I think it was like November, December.
DV: Still 2020?
YGR: In 2020. November December of 2020. I applied around September, October and then it was November, December, I was in Mexico riding a taxi with my husband. An old taxi, it was an old car, you could hear the engine, one of those cars. And so, I got a call from who would be my supervisor and I was in this car and the engine you could hear the eeeeh, and I was like this is embarrassing but I have to talk to her. So my husband try to tell the taxi driver to pull to the side because literally the sound was horrible and so he pulled over. And then she gave me the job offer and she said that, you know, congratulations you got the job. Gave me a little bit of information and said that I could review the documents that were coming to my email and then get back to them. And so that moment is very memorable because I was in Mexico, you know, the place where I was born, the city where I was born. And then getting to--. I'm getting to hear that I got a job working in the government in this place that I went to for better life and better opportunities, in a taxi with this horrible noise. And so that was really the moment that, you know, sort of shaped what was to come for the next two-plus years now. Came back, started working in January and it was really hard for many months working about 15 hours every day non-stop, no weekends, no evenings. Really being part of that early, since the very early stage of vaccine distribution, COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the state and prevention work. And having the weight of knowing that the Latino population was disproportionately impacted by COVID, and knowing that farmworkers were impacted, that meat-processing plant workers were impacted, just frontline workers who for the most part were Latino, were impacted and trying to do all I could to be part of that response. So it was a lot.
DV: What had happened with your dad, did you have that in your mind also when you went through that work?
YGR: Yes, yes and I was trying, you know, had a lot of--. I did seek therapy that didn't work. Didn't work, the therapist that I found was not a good fit and I was like, I'm wasting my time and I didn't have time to look for another therapist, but I had friends and people that were there for me. I know that it's hard, when you have a friend that is going through that you sometimes don't know how to act, you don't know what to say, you don't know how to support. But I did have people that were there for me and talked to me, you know, said: why are you doing this? Are you doing this for your dad? Also, don't feel like you have to sacrifice or like--. Not sacrifice yourself, but put yourself in a place where it's also painful because it's a reminder, right? And so I thought it through, and I know that part of me was trying to prevent the suffering of other families, and I do all I can to be part of that response because I know it was real. A lot of people were like, COVID is not real. And I was like, COVID is real. COVID is the reason why my dad is no longer here. And I think for me it was a part of giving back and trying to alleviate the situation as much as possible, or contribute to or control the pandemic, or prevent the spread. But also because I think this is my life's work. I never think about, in my path, in my career, it's never been about a position and a title, it's been about the work. What about this role will speak to me and will make a difference to the community that I care about? And that is sort of what drives me. And that's what really drove me to this job, looking at the job description and the possibilities, knowing that it was going to be really, really hard, knowing that I was going to end up working within an institution that was being held accountable by the advocacy groups that I was part of in previous roles. So it was a lot of--. It was really hard emotionally to navigate that because now I'm part of the system, right? And so being that bridge builder but also at times taking it all, and trying to help with solutions. But at the end of the day, now I'm the face or I became the face during those moments of what was not right, or what could be better and needed to be better with the same people that I was colleagues, you know, for a long time in the movement. So that was a hard shift and trying to--. I knew that I am here to improve the strategies, the initiatives, to make sure that we have a lens of the community, to look at policies and interventions and ways that we can be better. In that moment, it was specific to COVID-19, but also kind of showing people, feeling that I had to show people that I'm still me and I'm still here for the right reasons, even though I'm not part of the outside advocacy. So that was shift, it was the first time that I found myself in that sort of dynamic scenario. And it's been a really rewarding experience. It's been hard. It's been an adjustment, learning how government works. And it's also, for me, I'm really grateful to have been part of that team that was part of COVID-19 response at the state level because I saw that everybody was working nonstop and giving their all. And they had been there since the beginning, like the prior year when I was at the county level. So, the county-level work was hard physically because we were doing the food distribution, mentally, emotionally, but it was not the level of pressure at the state that I came to in 2021, and that I had to kind of, to do that work. And I think the other thing that has been rewarding there is to try to shape my job because it was the first time that this position was created, so there was not before anybody in this role. So try to establish myself and show people that I'm about collaboration, I'm about improving the work together. It is a system, it's huge. There's different things that could be better and trying to focus on what can we actually accomplish in the time that we have. And also I've gotten to work with students who are getting their Master’s of Social Work so now I get to, by this point I've had three students, supervised three students, that are becoming social workers who are Latina, who are bicultural with different life experiences, who have been in North Carolina, either were born here, grew up here, have been here for some time. And so that feels to me that is a part--. I've identified that that is a part that is important to me. Even if it's middle school, which is our ( ) age, high school, youth, just making sure that we're still working on that pipeline. Because this work is hard, and we need more people. I don't know why I'm getting emotional.
DV: It's okay.
YGR: I think it's--. What feels heavy a lot of times is that one person cannot change everything and many people are that one person in their space. And it's not fair to them, to the community, to the people. That we need more representation and I think that's what this pandemic really--. I hope that it's the lesson learned for everyone around that we can't wait for a global pandemic to realize that we're not representing the communities that we serve, that we don't have that representation for many systematic reasons, but also it's not the fault of people. From the education system to immigration system, to different systems at play that are not letting people move on to opportunities and be in those spaces. And from policies and practices that come into play, you know, who is being hired, who's given a chance, who's given a scholarship, looking at population, like do we have enough people at the table to be part of the solutions, to serve, so that people feel comfortable. I think that is the work ahead of ourselves. Right now, as we're coming out of this pandemic and everything is kind of going back to normal: not losing sight of what we learned, what was hard, and what we need to continue to implement that was done during COVID in, some shape or form, and continue to make it better. So I think that's what's on my mind a lot these days. Because I tell people, I did feel the pressure of people saying, oh you're the Latina doing all this work, but I'm like, I don't speak for all the Latino population. The Latino population is not monolithic. It's very diverse in so many ways. And I bring perspectives, I bring information, I bring research, I inform. And also, it should be more than one person. All throughout organizations, it should be that way, that people are either aware, knowledgeable, or they are representing the demographics that North Carolina is now. Because it's not like when I first went to high school, that I was the only Latina, you know, in my classroom. Now looking at Alamance County and seeing different schools that have sometimes even 40% Latino, and I could not dream of that when I was growing up. That was something that I didn't experience, right? So we need to make sure that we are setting those infrastructures in place to support the population, especially because--. I mean, I think North Carolina has grew a lot over the last 20 years in terms of demographics in the Latino population and our Latino population right now is still relatively young, but we're going to age and those systems need to be in place to be able to support the community. And so, this pandemic could have been worse in terms of death rates if we had been an older population. And we're not done confronting health disparities, chronic illnesses and everything that's to come.
DV: So that's what's on your mind for now in your current role?
YGR: Yes.
DV: So, considering all of these experiences, Yazmin, what would you say were the main factors that helped you along the way, that shaped the leadership that you have exhibited and continue to exhibit in your role?
YGR: I would say, I don't know. This is a hard one because I think there's definitely people, there's things that I've mentioned, like the people that have been part of my support system. The opportunities that I got that I know that not many people in my time, that share similar experiences, had. I think that, I don't know the word in English, sometimes this one goes away, but like, soy necia. I get into an idea, like I get like--. I think about this is what I want to do, and I just go for it. No matter if people are telling me, you're crazy, that's not doable, why, that's too much this, too much that, I just focus and go and do it. And in a way, I think it can be bad in different ways, you know. But in this case, just setting my mind to something has helped me, even when things were hard. And really having that support system: being family, being friends, being my husband, who believe in me and continue to encourage me and push me to do what I need to do, has been important. And we all have, you know, ups and downs, like there's definitely times and days where it's hard and I think about the why, right? I think about how I started, where I am, where were the possibilities. Knowing that the possibilities are endless, and we just have to keep pushing and that's something that I tell other young people. You never know, you can't just give up because you never know the opportunities that will come later and that's what happened for me. I went to school, to college not knowing that DACA was going to be a thing. And then I got DACA and then I pushed to try to go to grad school not knowing that I was actually going to be able to finish. And I never thought I would be able to become a citizen so you never know the path but you only do, you can only do what's in your control and that's what sort of keeps pushing me. I'm not able to fix everything but what's in my reach, I'll try to do. And it's the people that I've had, the motivation, the sacrifices of my family like my grandparents. For many, many years, my grandparents were in my mind a lot because I know sort of the challenges that they faced, the humble beginnings that they had, how they did all they could for their children. Now, with everything that I've gone through, my dad is on my mind a lot because I know how hard he worked, how much he supported me, how much he cared. His own way he showed us that he loved us. He was not very--.
DV: Affectionate.
YGR: Affectionate, but he showed us in his own ways, and he worked really hard. He was well respected in his job. Dedicated. For him, his job was like life, which sometimes can be bad, and I try to walk myself back when I am getting to that sort of mindset. There's more to life than just work. There’re other things. But I think for me, my job is also sort of my way of being a productive member of society and giving back and making--. Doing my best to make things a little better if even if it's in a small way. That's what sort of drives me. People that I love that I look up to or that were an important part of my life, and of course my mother, who is, who has been an amazing force for me. Yeah, just like thinking about people who have been there for me and what I can do for others. I think that's sort of what has helped me along the way. And I do want to believe that there's a God that has looked out for me because I would not be here in many ways. Just being an immigrant, you know, going through different experiences, something could have happened to me at different parts of my life to derail me from the path. Or to not even be alive, you know. Different kinds of ways. So, I am definitely grateful for that. And what motivates me a lot too, is that I'm not the only one. This is my story and is unique. But there's many stories like mine, and now we're getting to see more and more and more of that. And that really motivates me because during the time that I was sort of growing up and going to college and stuff like that, people would not talk about their experience or they would protect it, which it's so understandable. But now we have more and more people talking about it, bringing awareness, and pushing and advocating, and we're still in the same spot. DACA has been challenged. You know, new people, people who are coming of age cannot apply for DACA even if they qualify. There are no new applications that are being received. So we're not in a better place, even if many, many years have passed. Out of state tuition is still, you know, an issue. Access to driver's license for people is still an issue, immigration reform. So we are not where we need to be, but there's more people coming in and being part of that fight, and that is very motivating.
DV: Speaking of motivation and to conclude our interview, and you've already mentioned a little bit about future leaders, but thinking of all of your experiences, what advice would you give future Latino leaders so that perhaps you're not the only one in the space?
YGR: I think I would highlight unity and common goals. Like I mentioned, the Latino population, Latinx Hispanic population is very diverse in many ways. Immigration experience or, you know, maybe growing up here, generationally, too. We're so diverse. And I think what I would sort of highlight for leaders is the importance of working together and the importance of supporting each other and also the understanding that leadership looks different. And we need all kinds of leadership, and we need all kinds of strategies and advocacy, because I really see this as an ecosystem where different things are happening, and they build on each other and they help each other. And as the leadership grows and as the movement continues to, sort of, expand, I think as a community we got to work together and respect each other and make space for different voices. And I'm thinking very specific about the younger sort of age groups, that we all were young at one point, and we all thought that we could change the world at one point. And we need those mindsets because it is tiring. This journey is tiring. Someone texted me: the struggle is forever, after something happened and now it's like, yes, it's so real, the struggle is forever. We have to take care of each other. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to respect the different ways that people go about strategizing and, you know, fighting maybe within the system, maybe outside of the system, maybe in different ways, but we're not the enemy. Each other, we're not the enemy. We're just trying to move, work alone, and so I think it's important for us to keep that in mind and bring others along into the different spaces. If you have the opportunity to support other people, what better way than to, you know, take advantage of that? And also, if you have been in the space for a long time, hear from other voices and hear about what they're saying and make room in the space that you are to, like, have those people sit at the table. Because I feel that's something definitely that I have seen a lot in our state in terms of dynamics that happen, and that is not really doing us any good. It's actually taking away from the work that should be done. And just to not give up. I mean, I feel everyone's experience and everyone's journey is valid. We need to just sort of embrace each other. That is sort of what I feel I learned at Guilford when I was in the Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. We came together and we were all different, Latinos with different experiences from different walks of life, different countries, and just reassuring: yes, you are here, and you matter, and you are Latino no matter what. Who can, like, nobody can question that. No matter if you speak Spanish or not, no matter if you know how to salsa or not. There is no checklist of this is who you are as a Latino, and this is what makes you a leader. We all have different types of ways that we identify ourselves, different ways that we connect to our culture, different ways that we bring leadership to spaces. And I think because sometimes being the only one, or one of the only ones, that imposter syndrome can come, no matter how long you've been in the work, it’s really helpful when you have that support system and that little group or that person that understands you and supports you. And you can be that to someone else. And I think sharing our experiences and sharing the struggles can also help because you never know who can identify with you and who will hear that and make an impact. Just like my one friend [laughter] who I have followed all throughout. We're actually neighbors right now. We live really around the corner.
DV: Wow.
YGR: But one, one person--. I learned this recently. I spoke at a women's march when Women's March was a thing. I forgot what year, but I spoke at a women's march and there was someone in the audience that what I said resonated with her. Also undocumented, with similar experiences, trying to figure out how to make it to higher education. I was at grad school at the time. And recently she attended a conference and talked to someone else I know. And the question was, what was a time or who was someone that inspired you or something? And she talked about me, and she said, I went to these Women's March, and I heard this speaker that shared different things that I connected with, and that resonated with me. And my friend knew that I spoke to that, in that march, and so she was like, was this her? [Laughter]. And, and, you know, it's like, what?! That was years ago. And I was so scared to speak up and I was so scared to share my story. No matter how open I have been it's always, you know, nerve wracking in front of hundreds of people. And knowing that I said something that this young person was impacted by, and now she is incredible. She is an incredible advocate, doing a lot of advocacies and lobbying at the state level for immigrant rights. I'm inspired by her. But it's just funny to see how we have different points, and you never know when you say something, that person might be needing to hear those words. And she connected with that. So I wanted to cry when that was like, what? She, you know, Women's March--. And she's doing this incredible work and something I said inspired her to keep going. So I think that would be my one last sort of advice to others. You never know who you're impacting, so make sure that you're sharing your experiences with others.
DV: Well, thank you very much for sharing your journey and your story with us today. And your wisdom. Thank you very much.
YGR: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 April 21
Date of Transcription: 2023 July 25. Revisions: 2023 31 August
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: I'm Daniel Velasquez. Today is April 21st, 2023. I'm here today with Yazmin García Rico, who is Director of Latinx and Hispanic Policy and Strategy at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Yazmin, thank you so much for sitting with me today for your oral history.
Yazmin García Rico: Thank you so much for having me.
DV: Okay, Yazmin, let's get started with some basic information. Could you tell me about your personal background? Where were you born and raised and any early life experiences that you would like to share?
YGR: Yeah, so a little bit about myself. I was born in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico, which is, Veracruz is in the Gulf Coast, and I was there for the first few years of my life. Some of the experiences that are the most memorable are really the times that I spent with my grandparents who were very crucial in my upbringing. I really enjoyed spending time in their house, eating the food that my grandma used to make, and I am just really grateful for the time that I had with them. They both passed away when I was in the US, so I didn't get a chance to see them in the last couple years of their lives or last few years of their lives. So, it's something that I really cherish a lot. And I also remember a lot the train, for some reason, because the train was a very, sort of, central part of my life. My dad used to work for the railroad company of Mexico and so we used to travel in the train to see family. I could hear the train from my house, from my grandparents’ house, and so I think for me that reminds me even here now as an adult every time I hear the train I think of home, I think of my dad and really what I think he wanted us to learn from him which is work ethic and dedication to, you know, to whatever you're passionate about. So, Mexico, when I think of, you know, childhood, I think of Mexico. I think about my culture and in a completely different life in a way because everyone around me looked like me. And I think that really shaped me in a way that may be different for other people that don't have that same experience.
DV: Thank you. What brought you to the United States, and to North Carolina, specifically?
YGR: So, I think definitely it was to seek a better life, to have a little bit more stability financially and more opportunities in terms of an education. I remember thinking about maybe one day I'll grow up and I'll be able to work for the government, which was crazy to think about as a child. So, when it actually happened was it like, oh, you know, I did think that I probably was around 13, 12 when I had that idea. One of the ideas crossed my mind, I think I was like--. I watched a lot of movies and American shows and, I don't know what I watched at that moment but I remember thinking about growing up and doing a job that served in government, in that capacity. So that's the initial reason why I ended up in the United States, not really knowing the complexity and the, you know, challenges and how life would be. I only had movies as a, you know, baseline of what the United States was.
DV: Tell us about your education and any other formative experiences here in North Carolina. I know that you've held many internships and have been involved in various volunteer positions. And you probably have gained some leadership experience along the way, so tell us about all that.
YGR: Yeah, so this is for me a long journey. [Laughter]
DV: Okay.
YGR: For me, being able to get an education really has been a path that has taken a long time. I got to the US when I was about 13 years old and I started eighth grade. So the first couple years were really trying to get a sense of the school, the language, the culture. I had no idea what Thanksgiving was, Halloween, just different things that are the normal here that I didn't have awareness of. So I had to learn a lot about just the culture in the South too, if you add that layer. So, education was something that I was always interested in. I don't think it was ever a question for me if I was going to go to college. At that point I just didn't know how, but I knew I wanted to go to college. And so going through high school I think that was really when I developed a little bit more in my understanding of English and I still tried to grasp a sense of what everyone around me already knew and that I was trying to, you know, catch up with. I only knew about one school, one college, and that's because a friend of mine in high school who was three years older, I was a freshman he was a senior, he was also from Veracruz. He took the same classes that I was taking. He took French. He had the same math teachers, and he went to college. He was also undocumented at the time, so I just thought of like, okay, if he can do it and he has pretty much the same path, I can do it too. And so, I only applied to one college, which was Guilford College. And I applied there because my friend was there. He gave me a tour himself. He took me around. And, you know, thinking back, it's crazy because that was a time where not everyone had a computer. Everything was done, you had to print your application, you had to mail it, you had to call and see if they received it. You know, it was back in the day and so applying just to one college was really hard for me. It was you just felt this is an extensive, you know, sort of process getting those letters of recommendation, putting everything together to submit it to the school. And I was really grateful to have--there were two, three teachers in high school that were very supportive. My math teacher, I remember she encouraged me to take more challenging classes, like statistics. And if it wasn't for people like her that challenged me to take college prep classes and continue to push myself, I don't know that I would have had that support system that gave me the letters of recommendation and that sort of re-assured that I could do it, that I was capable. My English teacher, Mr. Ringwalt, he also went to Guilford, so he was knowledgeable with the college. He gave me that letter of recommendation. And so that was definitely--. Those years are really fun to think about because I would not--. I'm a shy person overall, but not knowing the language well can add a little pressure in terms of being nervous to speak. And so, I remember in the classroom I would never raise my hand to speak up, but I knew all the answers because I was studying really hard at home. And so, I remember one of my teachers from world history, he started telling everyone in the class that I got a hundred, it was like a hundred questions. And it was one of the final tests and I got them all right and he was telling everybody, how come just me who doesn't speak ever in class and who's still learning English, has every question right and a lot of you know the language and you still don't get it? So that was like, okay, thank you. But also, that you don't have to, you know, showcase me in front of everyone. So, I think he was fun.
DV: He was proud.
YGR: He was proud. He was highlighting, how dare you not do well. [Laughter]. And Yazmin, you know, who you know--. Everyone knew I was still learning English. I was not comfortable speaking up. The classes where I did the best were, like math--. Because I feel when I came to the U.S. my math, my level of knowledge in math was more advanced than everyone else, so for two, three years I was just, you know, going with the flow. I was not learning something new. I knew all the concepts and I knew how to do it because back in Mexico there were no calculators. Here you were given a calculator, literally was in the desk. And so I just knew how to do everything without relying, you know, on a device
DV: Wow.
YGR: So those were the classes where I--. Strategically I think it was helpful because I had friends who were Latino who, they were not good at math, but they spoke English. And so, I would be like, let me show you and help you but you help me in other classes so that's how I navigated eighth and ninth grade, I think. Just kind of exchanging the skill sets because for a lot of eighth grade--. I don't know how I passed ninth grade because I honestly didn't know anything but math. Somehow I ended up in high school and that's where I really dedicated a lot of time to watching movies and trying to learn English and really pushing myself to understand even if I wasn't able to speak fluently. So high school was definitely fun. I mean, challenges, you know, that age, that time, it's hard, bullying and stuff like that, but I feel like for me I was really focused on just trying to understand and trying to learn and trying to do well. And I think it was around, probably eleventh grade when I started to be more conscious of the barriers that I was going to be confronted with. Because I knew I wanted to go to college, I didn't know that it was going to be hard in terms of my immigration status being one of those barriers. That's when I started to hear a lot about out-of-state tuition for public universities for people who didn't have documents, and also not being able to obtain my driver's license. I went to the driver's ed class and by the end when I got my certificate is when that changed in North Carolina.
DV: Oh wow.
YGR: So, I was not able to get my driver's ed even though I went to the course just because by the time I finished is when things shifted.
DV: The rules changed.
YGR: And then there were other, sort of, institutions of higher education that were switching their policies of who could come to school. And maybe you could register but if someone else wanted to be in the class you would be kicked out and you would still have to pay out-of-state tuition or you would just not be welcome. So it was a lot of just--. It was hard. It was just hard to kind of think about where would I go. And so, meeting my friend who went to Guilford sort of opened up that one opportunity for me to think about, you know, he did it, I'm going to do it too. And somehow I made it to Guilford College. There was a program there called Bonner Scholars Program that provided scholarship support for low-income students that were interested in doing service, community service and service learning.
DV: What was the name of the program?
YGR: Bonner Scholars Program. And it's a national program, but not every school has it. That program at Guilford at the time was a four-year program where you started as a freshman and took a class and did service hours during the semester, did internship experiences during the summer, and all as a part of a cohort with your class, but also connecting to other Bonners from other classes. And I think for me, thinking back, I mean I've been aware of this for a long time that I was definitely one of--. A fortunate student that got that opportunity because not many students like myself at the time and even still now were able to have that opportunity. I think it was a combination of knowing certain people, like the program, that I got admitted to the school, my grades I guess, but also my dad helped me a lot because he was in Mexico, and he would support me financially as much as he could to be able to pay tuition.
DV: Wow.
YGR: So, the difference was that if I was to go to a public institution, I would have paid out-of-state tuition that can be like two, three times as much as the regular tuition. In Guilford College, being a private school, you get charged the same. You might not get as much help, but at least it's not more money than what you know already that you're going to get charged. And with the scholarships, we were able to piece it together. And Guilford was definitely, again, one of those shaping experiences for me because since I got to the school, I had a group of people that came along that I know had shared values in a way or shared goals of giving back to the community. And it was really cool because it was people from all over the world, from all over the United States but also all over the world. And getting to see how we're different, but we have very similar experiences, was really nice. I remember one of the trips we took which was our first-year experience summer trip, and we went to a Native American reservation for a couple weeks. And so, at that point I was undocumented, so I didn't have a driver's license. I didn't have anything but my Mexican passport and so I called my dad, and I told him that there's this trip that falls in my birthday and that I wanted to go and that, you know, there were risks because I would be flying. And he told me do you want to go, and I said yes. He's like, well, do it. So, I went on that trip pretty nervous because, I mean, I had a little fear of what could happen but thankfully everything went well. And I spent two weeks in that reservation. Some of my peers, I had peers from like Kenya and peers from different parts of Middle Eastern just like Europe and then U.S. So it was really neat to be in that space and get to know even more, like a diverse group. And I remember they asked us if we wanted to stay at a cabin or in one of the teepees. And a lot of us being international, what you would consider an international student or not an American student, we were like, we're not sleeping in the teepee. It's like, we've been there, you know, we've been already in conditions that may not be the most desirable, so we're like, no.
DV: We want to be comfortable.
YGR: Yes, we want to be comfortable. And so that was really funny to see that you just share experiences or just thinking with other peers that were trying to be more comfortable, not suffer more than we need to.
DV: What was the destination?
YGR: That was Montana.
DV: Okay.
YGR: So we were in Montana in a Native American reservation. We arrived to Billings and then drove out and everyone there in that reservation was really nice to me and to another Mexican student because we look alike. When I got to the reservation I was like, oh, is this--. It looked like people could be, you know, I could have been in Mexico because we look alike. And so, I definitely saw that treatment in a better way towards us and we got to cook for them pozole, also tacos, tacos dorados with buffalo meat. It was an interesting mix and just a really cool experience, and all that to say that, that program really shaped me because it kind of got us out of our comfort zone, got us to learn a lot about other cultures and about ways of connecting because we're people and finding those commonalities. That week when we were there, we didn't know that Obama was going to be at the reservation.
DV: Oh wow
YGR: This was when he was running for his campaign, the first time. And there were no phones, no clocks, nothing. We were like no technology, no TV. We were disconnected in the reservation, and we were told one morning after breakfast, get ready, we're going to go to this event. So, we got ready and left and it was Obama who was visiting the reservation and that was really neat. One of those really cool experiences. And then get to see him, you know, actually become president--. But going back to Bonner Scholars Program and Guilford College, I was highly involved in different activities that related to the Latino community, more specifically Latino youth or Latino students. I ran an after-school tutoring program called Latino Impact, and we went to McLeansville to a middle school and did tutoring of students. So I would have volunteers come with me and we helped with their homework. It was sixth graders for the most part, sixth, seventh, eighth graders. And then once a year, I helped to co-found a conference for Latino students called Soy Un Lider. So my fall semester, my first fall semester at Guilford, we co-founded a conference with a friend that went to high school with me. He was a senior, I was a freshman, and so he had this idea and sort of brought me on board to help co-found this one-day conference. And then he graduated, and so I felt I needed to keep it going. And we brought--.We started by bringing 150 to 200 students. And then it just grew from there every fall. And they had the experience of visiting the college, eating in the cafeteria, going to workshops, and the whole point was sharing with them information, resources that would help them to get to college, and hopefully not struggle as much as we did in not knowing what was even available or what options we had, and that was very geared towards undocumented and first-generation Latino students. And those experiences I feel like, it really gave me the ability to think through what is in our reach to push for change, what resources we have, and make the most with what you have. Because we were just, you know, college students. We would visit high schools and just talk to the administration and be like, we want to invite students. So little by little, we grew those relationships. We got school systems to provide their bus, the transportation for students to get to the conference. It was on a Saturday. We got funding from the school to pay for the breakfast and to give them gear, so it was just really cool to kind of give back in that sense. Even if it was one day, even if it was, you know, just a tiny piece of information. It was nice to see that hopefully they will hear something today that will have an impact in them. And I think for me the most favorite memory of that conference every year was coming into the cafeteria when they were eating lunch and just to see how many Latinos were in that space. And to see other students from campus walking in and just being like, who are these people? This is not the norm, right? A lot of us were one student who identifies Latino in the classroom; and so to be able to have that many people on campus and to see themselves there, but also to see other people acknowledge their presence, those are the moments that I live for in a way.
DV: So, you started it with your friend freshman year and then you continued it, until?
YGR: I continued every year until I graduated and it's still happening.
DV: Wow.
YGR: Like everything that, you know, they have up and downs in terms of leadership and support from school with administration change. And so that results in more resources or less resources that go into the conference, but it's still happening.
DV: That’s great.
YGR: And that just, you know, sort of uplifts my spirit because I know that at that moment we were focused on the Latino students. There are other students who also need that same support, like international students, refugees, asylees. And Greensboro has a large population of--. A really diverse population. So they also broadened a little bit the confidence to make sure that they were doing outreach to those students as well. So it is still happening, and it is one of those things that keeps me really close with the school, knowing that even after 10 plus years, it is still a need and there's still people who are willing to do that work. And other couple things that Guilford was, at that moment, the Latino club on campus was Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. And, you know, there's different ways that people identify themselves, so I use Latino a lot, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic. At that moment in time, from 2007 to 2011, Hispanic was the word that most people used. So, the club was Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. And we did a lot of activities throughout the year, celebrated Farm Work Awareness Week, celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. I also was seen as an international student to Guilford because of my application. So I also did a little bit of the international club. So, I don't know, it felt like it was a small campus and had a lot of resources. And it gave me the ability to do different things and connect with different groups of students and bring them all together in a way. And so that was inspiring for me to see that, okay, people follow me. For some reason, people volunteer to help me. And it's what we need, right? We need groups of people who are excited about something. And for me, that was really energizing. And that conference, the Soy Un Lider Conference, is like I'm a leader. And sometimes, a lot of times, even students, even adults, we doubt ourselves of our abilities to do something. And I think for me, that learning lesson there was like, you might be the one leading or pushing but you need a group of people because one person cannot do it alone. And in leadership also looks different in a way. I might be a quiet leader right, but you can still do things in front of people, behind the scenes. So that's something that I really learned at that moment, and I try to remind myself because sometimes it's still hard. You know, imposter syndrome comes back, and you try to question, am I in the right place? Do I belong? Can I do this? So just thinking about that younger Yazmin who was able to do something, and people believed. And it had an impact. It helps me to move through. And you asked about internships.
DV: Right.
YGR: I did two internships that I recall more clearly. My first internship was at Student Action with Farmworkers and that was, again, an internship that my friend did. So, I was like he did it I'm going to go and do it. And he was--.
DV: The same friend?
YGR: Same friend
DV: Wow
YGR: Same friend. And so, he told me about the internship. As a Bonner Scholar, we were supposed to do an internship. And so, I worked in a clinic of Piedmont Health Services in Prospect Hill as a farm worker, outreach worker, doing outreach to farm worker camps. And so, we visited farms or like camps, we call it camps, which is the housing where farm workers live. It might be a trailer; it might be a big building that looks like a warehouse. And it can vary from like 3, 4, 5, 10 farm workers to like 150 or more farm workers. A lot of them come from Mexico and through the H-2A visa , and work in the fields for a time frame and go back home. And so, we would bring to them information around health, health education, we would take their blood pressure and talk to them about diabetes. And just trying to provide information and resources to them, connect them to the clinic if they needed an appointment, if they needed medicine. And that really, that internship is something that I feel really shaped me again because even if I grew up in Alamance County, I had no idea that just 40, 20, 30 minutes away there are farms and there's farm workers. And that a lot of them are actually from my home country and that looked like they could have been my dad, my grandpa, my granddad, or one of my siblings, or someone I know. And just to see the disparity in terms of access to healthcare, resources, and a lot of injustices that may happen because of their job. The different power dynamics that come into play. And that really got me into the sort of farm worker justice movement here
DV: It galvanized you.
YGR: Yes. In North Carolina.
DV: So this internship is happening while you're in college?
YGR: Summer yeah, a whole summer. So, during college I was doing the tutoring, I was doing the club on campus, and I was doing also the conference once a year. During the summer we had an internship, and it was--. This first one was a Student Action with Farmworkers, and this summer internship is called Into the Fields. And so it brings students from North Carolina and farmworker students from other parts of the country like Idaho, California, Texas, where there's other farm worker populations that at that time were bigger, and that--. Either it could be children of farm workers or even children that worked as farm workers at some point. So it was a really cool space because a lot of--. To be part of the internship, you had to speak Spanish. And so even those that were not Latino, like they spoke Spanish and liked the culture, and it was like a cohort, you know. Sort of a program where there's retreats, there's trainings, there is just different types of activities that help you feel more comfortable with who you are. And I think one of the things for me, too, is I didn't have a problem with being who I am because that's who I am. I grew up in Mexico, so I feel very grounded on my language and my culture, but I know other people who grow up here sometimes have a challenge because it's like, at home it's one culture and outside it's another culture so you're trying to grapple with who you are and what's okay because of the pressure. So I really got to see other students who were at the beginning a little shy to speak Spanish, or a little shy to say where they were coming from, or a little shy to dance, you know, bachata salsa whatever and then by the end they were this is who I am and like--.
DV: Embracing it.
YGR: Yeah, embracing their culture. So I loved being part of that experience and to also learn it's okay to be who I am in terms of the context of being an immigrant and having you know English as my second language, having an accent, like those things I think that those were the things that I got from the experience as well. And that having this bicultural, bilingual experience and a skill set also can contribute in different ways in the workplace, because at the end of the day we were increasing capacity for organizations that were doing this outreach. And this was at the time where there were no smartphones, so we would do outreach based on a map. We would pull a big map and then try to find the street where the camp was and then drive around the country and then try to figure out where this house is. And there would be notes like, you know, look at the tree in this intersection. A lot of farmworker housing is not like a regular housing that you can see from the road. It might be a dirt road that you have to go. And then, you know, it's kind of hidden from communities. So it's really crazy to think now that we just put something on the GPS, and it tells us, sometimes even shows you a picture of what it looks like, but back in the day, it was really pairing up with one more student, intern, or the supervisor and driving with them and figure out where the housing was. So I learned a lot and got to network a lot through that internship. I feel that led me to my second internship the following summer, which was at American Friends Service Committee, AFSC, which is a Quaker organization. And at the time it was based in Greensboro. And the director at the time of the immigrant rights program, she was also SAFista. And we call SAFista anyone who has done any SAF program, any Student Action with Farmworkers program. So she was a SAFista from back in the day, leading this program in immigrant rights and I applied for an internship there and got to learn more about the immigrant rights space like the advocacy happening at the time in general, advocacy for issues that we still face today like immigration reform, humane immigration reform, driver's license, tuition equity, all those issues that are still present. And I got to learn and be in the space and support those efforts during that summer. And that person, that director, really became one of the people, too, that became part of my support system. And I think that is what I'm really grateful for; that all throughout my journey I have found those people. Like I mentioned in high school, teachers, in my internships and in the different spaces that I was part of finding people that are going to be there for you no matter, you know, how you move in life through other spaces. She's been one of those people that has been job references for me, you know, one of those people that I call and try to ask at different points for her thoughts and feedback and that got to know me more during that time of my life. So those are the main internships that I think really took me in terms of helping me to develop my resume per se. So, by the time that I graduated, I had a lot of things. Like, I was, not just--.
DV: You were just busy.
YGR: I was busy, not just participating, but I was leading on campus and also participating in the internships. And I think that I'm grateful for that. I don't regret it. But looking back, I know that I was overcommitted. And I guess the weight that I was carrying, it was like, if I don't do it, who will do it because there were not a lot of Latino students on campus at the time. It was only a few of us. It was like three Mexican students, different classes, you know, Puerto Ricans, a couple. Some people that were adopted from Latin America and were trying to connect with their, you know, culture of the country where they were born, but there were not a lot of Latino students, so it just felt like I was trying to do it all.
DV: You felt like it was your responsibility, then?
YGR: Yes, yes, because I knew, and I was very aware that a lot of students that went to high school with me didn't make it to college. And it wasn't because they didn't want to, it was because it was not easy, or it was because they were discouraged very early on because they were told there is not going to be a way for you to do it even if you have documents. That's what really is really crazy, and I know it's still happening. If your family hasn't gone through higher ed, and if you're a person of color, if you're Latino, if you're a child of immigrants, a lot of times this system and people around it still kind of, don't see that in you or don't encourage that in you. Or even worse, like discourage you and tell you that's not an option. I know, I went to my counselor in high school, and they didn't know how to help me. There's no supports in many places still, or not enough for students. So, I definitely felt like I wanted to give back and that's why Soy Un Lider Conference focused on Alamance County, Guilford County, and Forsyth because it was sort of my hometown and surrounding counties where the conference took place. And that really sort of pushed me to do so much, which I think helped me in my professional sort of career path. But my senior year was really stressful because I was trying to graduate, fulfill my requirements. I was a business--. I was a French and business, sort of French major. Business was supposed to be my second major, but I ended up having to graduate. I think I ended up graduating with two minors in business and one more thing I don't even remember, oh my gosh. I had completed three minors, but they don't let you graduate with three minors. I had major in French and three minors in business related but I had to pick two, so I think it was business and business law. And the reason was, I was short one class to finish my major in business. But at that point I was like, I'm done, I don't need to, I didn't have the money, I didn't have the energy to come back and finish one more class to complete that business double, to have a double major. So, I was like, I'll just graduate. And I think it was just, I was so over committed and tired because I was also, towards the end, I tried to find ways to work to earn a little money so that I could still sort of be okay, because every year tuition goes up. And so, by the time I started I think it was like 10K a semester, no, 15K a semester. By the time I finished, it was way higher than that. So it was a lot of, sort of, pressure, and I was just ready to graduate. When I graduated I was still undocumented, so that year was hard, 2011 to 2012, because I had a degree and it was sort of--. I found myself in a place where a lot of people had sort of questioned, before, what are you going to do when you graduate and you still don't have documents to work. I heard that a lot during my time in college and that was hard because it's like you want to be motivated, you want to keep pushing, you want to show that you're doing the most with the opportunity, but that’s a real question that I tried to ignore because I didn't want to lose sight of my goal which was to graduate. And it was hard to kind of keep going that year just trying to figure out what am I going to do, and I knew that maybe I needed to go back to Mexico if I couldn't work here. And that's why I was going for business and French in college, because I wanted something that could maybe help me if I had to go back to my home country or end up going to a different country. I couldn't graduate with anthropology or sociology because my family would have been like what are you going to do with that, you know. What do you do with that degree in another country like Mexico. So, it was 2012, the summer of 2012 when President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and that was the light that I was waiting for. That was the moment that I was preparing for. And so, I didn't doubt enrolling into the program as soon as it was an option. I remember I heard about it, I was so excited, started putting all my documents together, thinking through what they would be asking for. And as soon as the day came to be able to apply and submit an application, I was one of those first ones that I know of in my circle of friends. And I know a lot of people were fearful because, I mean, you know we don't trust the government a lot of times for various reasons, and so people were really fearful of coming forward. And then you know not knowing what really could happen once you did that. But I just felt like what am I going to lose, I don't have anything to loose. And so I applied, and I was going through that process, waiting to hear back, going to do my biometrics, my fingerprints and all that. And then I saw this job that opened up at the Student Action with Farmworkers, which was the first internship, the first organization that I interned for. And so, I was like, I'm going to apply. And so, I applied, and the position was National Organizer. And so I was going through the application process and waiting to hear back about DACA. And I went to two or three interviews, and I got a call on a Friday saying that I got the job and I was so happy. And I wanted to say yes but I still didn't have my work permit, so I asked for a couple days to think about it but I know I didn't have anything to think about. I wanted a job. I just wasn't ready.
DV: Were you giving yourself time to get those permits, maybe?
YGR: Yeah. And so, in that call I was like, oh yes, can I think about it and get back to you next week? And that weekend I got my work permit. It just felt like it was meant to be and everything lined up. So I got my work permit, I started working that December at Student Action with Farmworkers leading up to 2013. And that really opened up the doors for me in so many ways. Having DACA, being able to use--. Because a lot of jobs they don't ask you--. I mean they say preference in a degree on this, right? But they're looking at the education level, like bachelor's degree, master's degree, or whatever. And so, I had the degree, I had the experience, and I wanted to be able to do something, get a job that I was passionate about. And so DACA opened up that for me. And this organization means a lot to me because it was the first organization that opened the doors to give me an internship knowing my situation. Because I've always been pretty open about, you know, my situation and who I am, so it meant a lot for me that that was my first job. And I was there for about three, four years working in different roles as a national organizer, coordinating National Farmworker Awareness Week, doing a lot of the alumni engagement. Later became director of the youth program, so working with youth, farmworker youth, and really networking and connecting and supporting a lot of that farmworker advocacy movement in the state to improve the working and living conditions of the population. And during that time, it was towards my last year and a half working there, that I realized that I wanted to go back to school. And it was a combination of, started looking at people around me. Well, I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I didn't know for what. Because at that point, I only knew my one friend. [Laughter]. Going back to my one friend that had gone to Guilford from my high school, he went and did his MBA. And so, I knew that there was Master’s in business administration, but I was like, ah, I knew I did business in college, but that's not where my heart is. And so that was not what I wanted to do. I didn't know many people personally, you know friends, close friends or family that had a Master’s, but I started looking at everyone around me and trying to figure out what their degree was. People that I looked up to in the work. This was before LinkedIn. You couldn't just you know figure out what people's journey was. I started meeting with people for coffee. I ended up meeting with 15 or more social workers. And they were all doing different work, in farmworker-related, immigrant rights-related, just different type of work. And I was like, I want to be a social worker, because they're all doing work that I would love to be able to do, positions that I would love to have. And that's one of the reasons why I chose social work. And the other one is because I was working with the farmworker youth, and it was really working with them, their families, their siblings, their networks, because they would connect. They would know that there was a need, and they would refer people to me to try to find support and resources for them or just hear them out. And a lot of those concerns and just things that people were going through were really heavy and I didn't know how to deal with that. I couldn't go home and not think about it, or I couldn't get frustrated that there was nothing else that could be done to help them and so I knew that social work would give me a little bit more of that training on to figure out how you even help, and how do you respond, what's your role. How to push systems and how to continue to advocate for people in different ways, and that's when I ended up going to the school social work at UNC. That was a whole different journey. A whole different journey because I had been out of school for years. I still, I was DACAmented, as they say, and still had to pay out-of-state tuition if I wanted to go back to school. And it felt selfish to want to go back to school when there were a lot of people still that hadn't had the opportunity to even go to a community college or a college or university for a four-year degree, and I wanted more. So that kind of, I think I put those ideas on myself but it was just hard to kind of want more. And it was my support system, it was people around me that encouraged me to not give up and to find a way. And I met--. I had someone on Facebook that I thought it was the Facebook of this person that worked in the same building as me, and I did a lot of presentations and supported a class that happened for university students. So my support was really around farmworker information, presentations, and farmworker education for those students. So I had this person on Facebook, I thought it was this professor, but it really was that he shared that Facebook page with his wife. So it was the kids' Facebook page, and they both used it. They shared pictures of their children. So I posted something that like--. He knew that I wanted to go to school. I posted that I was trying to go to school, trying to find resources, scholarships and all that. And he connected me with his wife and said: I think you really want to talk to my wife, you should meet. She's also a social worker. And she wants to help you. And I didn't know that this whole time she had been--. She knew who I was because of Facebook, and so I met with her a weekend in this office, in her office, and we came up with a plan on how I was going to be able to go to grad school.
DV: Wow.
YGR: Like, who I needed to reach out to at the school, how I was going to try to pull in enough funding. And I walked away from her office with this big sheet of paper with everything on it and I really went on that path. I ended up having to fundraise for my education because there were not many scholarships for students like me. The ones that were available I applied out of the school, and I didn't get those. Very competitive national scholarships. And people like her and others connected me with people at the School of Social Work. Everyone at the School of Social Work knew that I was coming, who I was. There had seen emails about me, people advocating for me to be thought of for a scholarship support. It could be a little embarrassing. [Laughter]. You know, because people were like, this is just me and this is everything she's done, and she would be amazing, and these are the challenges that she has. So I think for me the most difficult part was to try to fundraise. And the moments that really were like--. That brought me a lot of joy. And just what surprised me a lot is people that didn't know me that supported me. Like people in my network spoke highly of me to their network and I got checks from people that I had never met. And some people didn't want me--. They wanted to be anonymous, they didn't need me to contact them and thank them and I was like I want to thank you, I want to know who you are. And people from my community, people from the community where I grew up also supported that.
DV: In Mexico?
YGR: Here.
DV: Oh, here.
YGR: Here in Alamance County. And so, to me it meant people believe in me, people are cheering for me, supporting me. And so I just went all in and fundraised for my whole grad school cost, and went into grad school trying to be the best student ever. Like read everything and do everything. I got to be an RA all throughout both years and the summer and learn from different professors. It was really one of those, again, life-changing experiences, because I never thought I would be able to be there. Even with DACA, even with a driver's license and a social security number, it's still a place that is not that accessible to DACAmented and undocumented students. So it felt surreal. And also hard because you're one of a few Latino students. There was, not that I knew of, any other student that was in the same situation that I was. And it's an institution at the end of the day, so there's things that could be better. We're always, as students, we're always challenging the system. We're always questioning, especially at the School of Social Work where in the code of ethics it's like social justice is one of those things that, you know, we care about. So it was interesting because I was sort of part of the advocacy but also working for professors and being an RA for the assistant dean, and you know. [Laughter]. Pushing here, but also this is my research assistantship and this is how I'm able to be in school. Because I was working for the school so that they could help me with my tuition, with part of the tuition, at least not pay out-of-state tuition, but pay it sort of the mid-level point through the funding that the research assistantship came with. So it was an incredible experience and I was able to do a couple internships there at the Hispanic Family Center through Catholic Charities in Raleigh. And then my final internship was an internship that I found on my own. It wasn't one listed. The list of internships, there was nothing that really spoke to me. And so I went to try to find an organization that had a social worker that could supervise me and that had the work that I wanted to do. And so I reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union who had two social workers. I knew one of them and I ended up being an intern there. And that's when DACA was rescinded. So it was when the Trump administration was trying to get rid of DACA and it was very fearful because DACA is what had opened the doors for me, it was the way that I could work for the school and finish grad school. And so I was in the middle trying to keep organizations informed, like support on that end, trying to support the advocacy efforts and be part of that work again, now as a grad student. Very nerve-wracking too because I felt like, I don't know, I just--. You just put ideas on yourself. I was--. The expectations are high on how I'm supposed to, you know, do the work because now I'm in grad school. I just felt it was I have to do my best and even better than, you know, two years ago because I'm a grad student and I put a lot of pressure on myself at that time. And I was able graduate from the School of Social Work and land on my first job. I applied for different things that felt sort of comparable, like going back to the farmworker space. I tried to get into philanthropy which didn't work at the time. I was seen as very young, not a lot of experience on that sort of area. And then I ended up being sort of recruited or encouraged to apply for a position at the hospital in town. And it was working under the supervision of the person that was really crucial in helping me come up with a plan on how I was going to get to grad school. That woman that I mentioned that brought me to her office, that I knew her husband, and so also social worker. And I ended up applying for jobs. I got a job in farmworker health and I declined that job and ended up coming to work for the hospital. And I actually, I don't know, it's full circle in a way because I got to work in the community where I grew up, got to learn, got to meet more people. And understand the dynamics that happen in the county between non-profits, hospital, health department, things that work, things that could be better, contributing in the ways that I could to make spaces more welcoming of Latinos. Or try to bring a little bit more awareness of why you might not be seeing Latinos and how you could improve in your outreach. And having the supervisor I had was an amazing experience because she was a leader that tried to uplift and to give you the tools you needed to do what needed to be done. And it was a little crazy when she said that she wasn't in the office much because she was covering a broader region and that she was going to give me her office. And I was like, what?! The office where I first met her to come up with a plan on how I was going to get to grad school. That's what it meant to me. I was like, the office with three windows, I'm getting that office? So that just felt like, oh my god, full circle. I can't believe that two years ago, two and a half years ago, I was sitting in this office not knowing that I was going to be able to go to grad school and not knowing that I was going to be able to, you know, move on in my career thanks to having a master's degree.
DV: Wow.
YGR: And that work in the hospital was really rewarding, was really hard, too, because it was coming--. It was putting me out of my comfort zone not being in the immigrant rights space, farmworker advocacy space where everyone is aware of the community needs or trying to serve or have that shared goal. It was more of just different people, right, with different jobs, serving the broader community, very mainstream in a way, where there were little to no Latinos in the spaces where I was moving. And so that was hard to navigate, but also rewarding to see little by little sort of the impact of just my presence or a comment or a question or my--. Or giving input. We were able to do a lot of programming to grow the programming for the Latino population in Alamance County, connect people to resources that were available for free or little cost like mammogram, you know, just information on pre-diabetes, like connecting people to different resources. And that's when the pandemic hit. And that's when we all shut down in terms of showing up to the office. And my supervisor being very supportive allowed me to do the work that I thought was needed, which was to support with basic needs to the community because people were staying home, losing their jobs or not being able to work, like not having food. It was just really like a chaos. And so I worked closely with the Dream Center in Burlington. Past Lisa had this idea of doing a food giveaway and trying to find meals and give it out to the community. And it was literally her family, my husband and I, and one more couple on the first day. And they bought food, they found funding, and I came up with ways to improve our system. I supported that day. We had cars coming through one end of the building going all around and we had a tent we were giving out the food it was very, like, the first day was a mess. It was good but it was like we were just trying to improve, and we served, I don't know if the first day we served like 120 families. I don't know, a crazy number of just cars that came by and we just gave them food and you know trying to have PPE on us and protect ourselves and protect others but give food. And that just grew and grew and grew and every week we were giving more and more food. So many people came along to help after that first day, we had nonprofits showing up, Elon University leadership, people from the city of Burlington, the mayor was out there, former mayor was there giving out food. And just different people came and helped and it just grew from giving this full menu that people can choose from American and Latino food and diapers and fruit and getting donations and giving out masks and giving out, you know, what we could. And it was definitely like--. Thursday was the day where even people that didn't know what was going on they would see the lines of cars and would come and get in line. They were like we don't know what's happening, but everybody's coming so we want to come and see. And it had a huge impact on nonprofits and organizations who had heard about Latinos, who had heard about the Dream Center, but really didn't come close yet, so they got to see the community and that was impactful too because a lot of times people may ask where are the Latinos, right? They're not coming, and we're here, we're part of the community. They're just busy working jobs that sometimes are not visible and they're keeping to themselves because it's what's comfortable and it's what feels safe. And the Dream Center became that sort of place that a lot of people start to recognize the habit trust in the community that was in the, in the part of town where we needed resources the most. And so, it was really neat to be able to give back during those times that were really difficult. That was before testing. Then testing came around and we coordinated, I helped to coordinate in the county different places for testing. We were going to the places in the community where we could see the higher rates or where we wouldn't, we didn't see rates because we also thought people were not being tested there. In rural parts of the county, different parts of the county, and it was free testing for anyone that wanted it in a drive-thru sort of way in collaboration with the health department. And so I was in that time when I got a call that my dad was feeling, was ill, was not doing well in Mexico, and had to go back to Mexico. And he had gotten COVID, it was July, and he didn't make it. So that was really hard because I was here, you know in the response and trying to provide what I could to the community and then my dad was home, not feeling well, not telling us for some days because, my dad. And I got to Mexico and by the time I got there he was at a hospital, and I was not able to go in. I was not able to see him. And that just was so hard for my family and for myself. And a lot to kind of deal with and process in that sort of very scary way of you not being able to be there for your loved one, you not being able to even do the proper traditional way of a funeral. Or doing the things that we usually would do for the people we love. And so that 2020 was definitely a rough year for me and then coming back to--. Having to come back and go back to work and still processing that for a long time. And my husband was running for office, too, at that time, so it was a lot to kind of grieve for my dad, be strong for family, and support my husband as he was running his first campaign for office. And that fall is when, I was supposed to become a citizen in March, but it happened that the pandemic got here and everything got shut down, so it got pushed to October, and I was able to become a citizen in October. And that was sort of, one of the first sort of big painful moments because it was one of the first few life milestones that I wasn't able to call my dad and tell him. And I remember that being really hard just because it's a moment that I should be happy but it was, you know--. When he, when someone you love is no longer a part of your life, it's really hard to kind of figure out the thing that I would do is not something that I can do anymore. But I guess the little happiness or the little sort of moment that brought comfort was knowing that, I feel like I know that he's with me, you know, in different ways now and that he would be happy for me. And also, that same day, because of the pandemic, it was very weird citizenship ceremony where it was three of us in this huge room and nobody else could come into the building. They asked the questions. They did my interview, my final interview, and then right away put us in this room for the oath. So I did everything in one day instead of doing two parts as usually the process would be, and then I got out of there and drove directly to early voting. It was the last day of early voting, and so I registered to vote during early voting before it closed, and I voted for my husband. And I was like, I cannot believe that this is happening and then drive straight to the library to request my passport because I was like, there's no going back, they can't take this away from me. I'm going to do everything I need to do--.
DV: Yeah, you made it.
YGR: To get this, you know, to get to this point. So it was a full day of, you know, just--. I feel like I was running, before anybody changed their mind, to do what I needed to do. So 2020 was definitely bittersweet in many ways, for many of us, but definitely very high highs and very low lows. And then that fall I got a call from a friend that said, do you want to do the work that you're doing at the county level but at the state? And I was like, no, I got enough with my county. There's plenty of work to do here and I'm doing all I can. And I was like, still doing the work with the hospital, canvassing. Well we were starting to do lid drops, not canvassing, that fall, and just juggling everything and grieving. And it was probably a month later that I saw the job description for the job that I have now and I fell in love with it because it was the focus on the Latino community, it was really working at a systems level. It felt that every part of my journey was leading me to this job, from a personal, to a professional, to an educational experience. And so, I put my name in the hat. I applied, went through three interviews and was waiting to hear back and left to Mexico to see family. It was probably between November and December. I think it was like November, December.
DV: Still 2020?
YGR: In 2020. November December of 2020. I applied around September, October and then it was November, December, I was in Mexico riding a taxi with my husband. An old taxi, it was an old car, you could hear the engine, one of those cars. And so, I got a call from who would be my supervisor and I was in this car and the engine you could hear the eeeeh, and I was like this is embarrassing but I have to talk to her. So my husband try to tell the taxi driver to pull to the side because literally the sound was horrible and so he pulled over. And then she gave me the job offer and she said that, you know, congratulations you got the job. Gave me a little bit of information and said that I could review the documents that were coming to my email and then get back to them. And so that moment is very memorable because I was in Mexico, you know, the place where I was born, the city where I was born. And then getting to--. I'm getting to hear that I got a job working in the government in this place that I went to for better life and better opportunities, in a taxi with this horrible noise. And so that was really the moment that, you know, sort of shaped what was to come for the next two-plus years now. Came back, started working in January and it was really hard for many months working about 15 hours every day non-stop, no weekends, no evenings. Really being part of that early, since the very early stage of vaccine distribution, COVID-19 vaccine distribution in the state and prevention work. And having the weight of knowing that the Latino population was disproportionately impacted by COVID, and knowing that farmworkers were impacted, that meat-processing plant workers were impacted, just frontline workers who for the most part were Latino, were impacted and trying to do all I could to be part of that response. So it was a lot.
DV: What had happened with your dad, did you have that in your mind also when you went through that work?
YGR: Yes, yes and I was trying, you know, had a lot of--. I did seek therapy that didn't work. Didn't work, the therapist that I found was not a good fit and I was like, I'm wasting my time and I didn't have time to look for another therapist, but I had friends and people that were there for me. I know that it's hard, when you have a friend that is going through that you sometimes don't know how to act, you don't know what to say, you don't know how to support. But I did have people that were there for me and talked to me, you know, said: why are you doing this? Are you doing this for your dad? Also, don't feel like you have to sacrifice or like--. Not sacrifice yourself, but put yourself in a place where it's also painful because it's a reminder, right? And so I thought it through, and I know that part of me was trying to prevent the suffering of other families, and I do all I can to be part of that response because I know it was real. A lot of people were like, COVID is not real. And I was like, COVID is real. COVID is the reason why my dad is no longer here. And I think for me it was a part of giving back and trying to alleviate the situation as much as possible, or contribute to or control the pandemic, or prevent the spread. But also because I think this is my life's work. I never think about, in my path, in my career, it's never been about a position and a title, it's been about the work. What about this role will speak to me and will make a difference to the community that I care about? And that is sort of what drives me. And that's what really drove me to this job, looking at the job description and the possibilities, knowing that it was going to be really, really hard, knowing that I was going to end up working within an institution that was being held accountable by the advocacy groups that I was part of in previous roles. So it was a lot of--. It was really hard emotionally to navigate that because now I'm part of the system, right? And so being that bridge builder but also at times taking it all, and trying to help with solutions. But at the end of the day, now I'm the face or I became the face during those moments of what was not right, or what could be better and needed to be better with the same people that I was colleagues, you know, for a long time in the movement. So that was a hard shift and trying to--. I knew that I am here to improve the strategies, the initiatives, to make sure that we have a lens of the community, to look at policies and interventions and ways that we can be better. In that moment, it was specific to COVID-19, but also kind of showing people, feeling that I had to show people that I'm still me and I'm still here for the right reasons, even though I'm not part of the outside advocacy. So that was shift, it was the first time that I found myself in that sort of dynamic scenario. And it's been a really rewarding experience. It's been hard. It's been an adjustment, learning how government works. And it's also, for me, I'm really grateful to have been part of that team that was part of COVID-19 response at the state level because I saw that everybody was working nonstop and giving their all. And they had been there since the beginning, like the prior year when I was at the county level. So, the county-level work was hard physically because we were doing the food distribution, mentally, emotionally, but it was not the level of pressure at the state that I came to in 2021, and that I had to kind of, to do that work. And I think the other thing that has been rewarding there is to try to shape my job because it was the first time that this position was created, so there was not before anybody in this role. So try to establish myself and show people that I'm about collaboration, I'm about improving the work together. It is a system, it's huge. There's different things that could be better and trying to focus on what can we actually accomplish in the time that we have. And also I've gotten to work with students who are getting their Master’s of Social Work so now I get to, by this point I've had three students, supervised three students, that are becoming social workers who are Latina, who are bicultural with different life experiences, who have been in North Carolina, either were born here, grew up here, have been here for some time. And so that feels to me that is a part--. I've identified that that is a part that is important to me. Even if it's middle school, which is our ( ) age, high school, youth, just making sure that we're still working on that pipeline. Because this work is hard, and we need more people. I don't know why I'm getting emotional.
DV: It's okay.
YGR: I think it's--. What feels heavy a lot of times is that one person cannot change everything and many people are that one person in their space. And it's not fair to them, to the community, to the people. That we need more representation and I think that's what this pandemic really--. I hope that it's the lesson learned for everyone around that we can't wait for a global pandemic to realize that we're not representing the communities that we serve, that we don't have that representation for many systematic reasons, but also it's not the fault of people. From the education system to immigration system, to different systems at play that are not letting people move on to opportunities and be in those spaces. And from policies and practices that come into play, you know, who is being hired, who's given a chance, who's given a scholarship, looking at population, like do we have enough people at the table to be part of the solutions, to serve, so that people feel comfortable. I think that is the work ahead of ourselves. Right now, as we're coming out of this pandemic and everything is kind of going back to normal: not losing sight of what we learned, what was hard, and what we need to continue to implement that was done during COVID in, some shape or form, and continue to make it better. So I think that's what's on my mind a lot these days. Because I tell people, I did feel the pressure of people saying, oh you're the Latina doing all this work, but I'm like, I don't speak for all the Latino population. The Latino population is not monolithic. It's very diverse in so many ways. And I bring perspectives, I bring information, I bring research, I inform. And also, it should be more than one person. All throughout organizations, it should be that way, that people are either aware, knowledgeable, or they are representing the demographics that North Carolina is now. Because it's not like when I first went to high school, that I was the only Latina, you know, in my classroom. Now looking at Alamance County and seeing different schools that have sometimes even 40% Latino, and I could not dream of that when I was growing up. That was something that I didn't experience, right? So we need to make sure that we are setting those infrastructures in place to support the population, especially because--. I mean, I think North Carolina has grew a lot over the last 20 years in terms of demographics in the Latino population and our Latino population right now is still relatively young, but we're going to age and those systems need to be in place to be able to support the community. And so, this pandemic could have been worse in terms of death rates if we had been an older population. And we're not done confronting health disparities, chronic illnesses and everything that's to come.
DV: So that's what's on your mind for now in your current role?
YGR: Yes.
DV: So, considering all of these experiences, Yazmin, what would you say were the main factors that helped you along the way, that shaped the leadership that you have exhibited and continue to exhibit in your role?
YGR: I would say, I don't know. This is a hard one because I think there's definitely people, there's things that I've mentioned, like the people that have been part of my support system. The opportunities that I got that I know that not many people in my time, that share similar experiences, had. I think that, I don't know the word in English, sometimes this one goes away, but like, soy necia. I get into an idea, like I get like--. I think about this is what I want to do, and I just go for it. No matter if people are telling me, you're crazy, that's not doable, why, that's too much this, too much that, I just focus and go and do it. And in a way, I think it can be bad in different ways, you know. But in this case, just setting my mind to something has helped me, even when things were hard. And really having that support system: being family, being friends, being my husband, who believe in me and continue to encourage me and push me to do what I need to do, has been important. And we all have, you know, ups and downs, like there's definitely times and days where it's hard and I think about the why, right? I think about how I started, where I am, where were the possibilities. Knowing that the possibilities are endless, and we just have to keep pushing and that's something that I tell other young people. You never know, you can't just give up because you never know the opportunities that will come later and that's what happened for me. I went to school, to college not knowing that DACA was going to be a thing. And then I got DACA and then I pushed to try to go to grad school not knowing that I was actually going to be able to finish. And I never thought I would be able to become a citizen so you never know the path but you only do, you can only do what's in your control and that's what sort of keeps pushing me. I'm not able to fix everything but what's in my reach, I'll try to do. And it's the people that I've had, the motivation, the sacrifices of my family like my grandparents. For many, many years, my grandparents were in my mind a lot because I know sort of the challenges that they faced, the humble beginnings that they had, how they did all they could for their children. Now, with everything that I've gone through, my dad is on my mind a lot because I know how hard he worked, how much he supported me, how much he cared. His own way he showed us that he loved us. He was not very--.
DV: Affectionate.
YGR: Affectionate, but he showed us in his own ways, and he worked really hard. He was well respected in his job. Dedicated. For him, his job was like life, which sometimes can be bad, and I try to walk myself back when I am getting to that sort of mindset. There's more to life than just work. There’re other things. But I think for me, my job is also sort of my way of being a productive member of society and giving back and making--. Doing my best to make things a little better if even if it's in a small way. That's what sort of drives me. People that I love that I look up to or that were an important part of my life, and of course my mother, who is, who has been an amazing force for me. Yeah, just like thinking about people who have been there for me and what I can do for others. I think that's sort of what has helped me along the way. And I do want to believe that there's a God that has looked out for me because I would not be here in many ways. Just being an immigrant, you know, going through different experiences, something could have happened to me at different parts of my life to derail me from the path. Or to not even be alive, you know. Different kinds of ways. So, I am definitely grateful for that. And what motivates me a lot too, is that I'm not the only one. This is my story and is unique. But there's many stories like mine, and now we're getting to see more and more and more of that. And that really motivates me because during the time that I was sort of growing up and going to college and stuff like that, people would not talk about their experience or they would protect it, which it's so understandable. But now we have more and more people talking about it, bringing awareness, and pushing and advocating, and we're still in the same spot. DACA has been challenged. You know, new people, people who are coming of age cannot apply for DACA even if they qualify. There are no new applications that are being received. So we're not in a better place, even if many, many years have passed. Out of state tuition is still, you know, an issue. Access to driver's license for people is still an issue, immigration reform. So we are not where we need to be, but there's more people coming in and being part of that fight, and that is very motivating.
DV: Speaking of motivation and to conclude our interview, and you've already mentioned a little bit about future leaders, but thinking of all of your experiences, what advice would you give future Latino leaders so that perhaps you're not the only one in the space?
YGR: I think I would highlight unity and common goals. Like I mentioned, the Latino population, Latinx Hispanic population is very diverse in many ways. Immigration experience or, you know, maybe growing up here, generationally, too. We're so diverse. And I think what I would sort of highlight for leaders is the importance of working together and the importance of supporting each other and also the understanding that leadership looks different. And we need all kinds of leadership, and we need all kinds of strategies and advocacy, because I really see this as an ecosystem where different things are happening, and they build on each other and they help each other. And as the leadership grows and as the movement continues to, sort of, expand, I think as a community we got to work together and respect each other and make space for different voices. And I'm thinking very specific about the younger sort of age groups, that we all were young at one point, and we all thought that we could change the world at one point. And we need those mindsets because it is tiring. This journey is tiring. Someone texted me: the struggle is forever, after something happened and now it's like, yes, it's so real, the struggle is forever. We have to take care of each other. We have to take care of ourselves. We have to respect the different ways that people go about strategizing and, you know, fighting maybe within the system, maybe outside of the system, maybe in different ways, but we're not the enemy. Each other, we're not the enemy. We're just trying to move, work alone, and so I think it's important for us to keep that in mind and bring others along into the different spaces. If you have the opportunity to support other people, what better way than to, you know, take advantage of that? And also, if you have been in the space for a long time, hear from other voices and hear about what they're saying and make room in the space that you are to, like, have those people sit at the table. Because I feel that's something definitely that I have seen a lot in our state in terms of dynamics that happen, and that is not really doing us any good. It's actually taking away from the work that should be done. And just to not give up. I mean, I feel everyone's experience and everyone's journey is valid. We need to just sort of embrace each other. That is sort of what I feel I learned at Guilford when I was in the Hispanos Unidos de Guilford. We came together and we were all different, Latinos with different experiences from different walks of life, different countries, and just reassuring: yes, you are here, and you matter, and you are Latino no matter what. Who can, like, nobody can question that. No matter if you speak Spanish or not, no matter if you know how to salsa or not. There is no checklist of this is who you are as a Latino, and this is what makes you a leader. We all have different types of ways that we identify ourselves, different ways that we connect to our culture, different ways that we bring leadership to spaces. And I think because sometimes being the only one, or one of the only ones, that imposter syndrome can come, no matter how long you've been in the work, it’s really helpful when you have that support system and that little group or that person that understands you and supports you. And you can be that to someone else. And I think sharing our experiences and sharing the struggles can also help because you never know who can identify with you and who will hear that and make an impact. Just like my one friend [laughter] who I have followed all throughout. We're actually neighbors right now. We live really around the corner.
DV: Wow.
YGR: But one, one person--. I learned this recently. I spoke at a women's march when Women's March was a thing. I forgot what year, but I spoke at a women's march and there was someone in the audience that what I said resonated with her. Also undocumented, with similar experiences, trying to figure out how to make it to higher education. I was at grad school at the time. And recently she attended a conference and talked to someone else I know. And the question was, what was a time or who was someone that inspired you or something? And she talked about me, and she said, I went to these Women's March, and I heard this speaker that shared different things that I connected with, and that resonated with me. And my friend knew that I spoke to that, in that march, and so she was like, was this her? [Laughter]. And, and, you know, it's like, what?! That was years ago. And I was so scared to speak up and I was so scared to share my story. No matter how open I have been it's always, you know, nerve wracking in front of hundreds of people. And knowing that I said something that this young person was impacted by, and now she is incredible. She is an incredible advocate, doing a lot of advocacies and lobbying at the state level for immigrant rights. I'm inspired by her. But it's just funny to see how we have different points, and you never know when you say something, that person might be needing to hear those words. And she connected with that. So I wanted to cry when that was like, what? She, you know, Women's March--. And she's doing this incredible work and something I said inspired her to keep going. So I think that would be my one last sort of advice to others. You never know who you're impacting, so make sure that you're sharing your experiences with others.
DV: Well, thank you very much for sharing your journey and your story with us today. And your wisdom. Thank you very much.
YGR: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 April 21
Date of Transcription: 2023 July 25. Revisions: 2023 31 August
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1011 -- García Rico, Yazmin.
Description
An account of the resource
Yazmin García Rico is Director of Latinx and Hispanic Policy and Strategy at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS). She recounts her activism during her tenure in college, helping Latinx youth navigate college enrollment and her outreach efforts to connect farmworker communities with healthcare and other resources. Thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, Yazmin was able to continue helping farmworkers after college in various positions, and also earn a Master’s degree in social work at UNC-Chapel Hill. Yazmin expresses deep regret at her father’s passing from COVID-19 at a time before vaccines or treatments were available. She subsequently joined NC DHHS in her current role to coordinate vaccine distributions and address disparities in the pandemic’s impact on the state’s Latinx population. Yazmin’s journey is marked both by her own determination and the determination of others in her network to help open doors for her. In that vein, Yazmin emphasizes the need for support systems that can help uplift Latinx youth and address underrepresentation across state leadership.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-04-21
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29349">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1011_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/bfec35b216b000cd7d52a31e724f64fa.mp3
bc6b9c7e8251a976625c52bd328744db
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/f8a2af3012fa07d594b73fc86d54762b.pdf
5fa6ddb2a2a7eb07b101af321d8a67b8
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1010
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-05-31
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Martí, Norma.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Health services administrators
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1953
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Mayagüez -- Puerto Rico
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Raleigh -- Wake County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-67.13953399658203 18.20108413696289),1953,1;POINT(-78.64305877685547 35.77839279174805),1955,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Velásquez, Daniel.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
At a young age, Norma Martí migrated with her family from Puerto Rico to a diverse, working-class neighborhood in northwestern Indiana, part of metropolitan Chicago. She shares her formative experiences there, what enabled her to attain a college education, and her encounters with discrimination in her first role as an educator. She subsequently worked for the Census Bureau in Illinois and the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, enhancing both organizations’ reach of Latino communities. In the late 1990s, Norma decided to focus on advocacy and outreach as Development Director for El Pueblo, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh. By the mid-2000s, in a new role as Minority Outreach Specialist for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS), Norma leveraged the connections she had built with various Latino organizations to expand Medicaid and children’s health insurance in Latino communities across the state. In 2020, Norma was called back from retirement to NC DHHS to help coordinate the agency’s COVID-19 response in the Latinx population. She has continued that work through her current role as Latinx Community Co-Lead for COVID Response for North Carolina’s Community Engagement Alliance (NC CEAL). She concludes by calling for unity and perseverance in Latino communities, and sharing words of wisdom for future leaders, which will include her grandchildren.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Norma Martí by Daniel Velásquez, 31 May 2023, R-1010, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29346
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Community and social services and programs; Education; Healthcare; Racism and discrimination
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Administradores de servicios de salud
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
A una edad temprana, Norma Martí emigró con su familia desde Puerto Rico a un barrio de gran diversidad y de clase obrera en el noroeste de Indiana, a las afueras de Chicago. Allí comparte sus experiencias formativas, lo que le permitió alcanzar una educación universitaria, y sus encuentros con la discriminación en su primer papel como educadora. Posteriormente trabajó para la Oficina del Censo en Illinois y para el Research Triangle Institute (RTI, por sus siglas en ingles) en Carolina del Norte, mejorando el alcance de ambas organizaciones a las comunidades Latinas. A finales de los años 90, Norma decidió dedicarse a la promoción y la divulgación como Directora de Desarrollo de El Pueblo, una organización sin ánimo de lucro con sede en Raleigh. Ya a mediados de los 2000, en un nuevo rol como Especialista en Alcance a Minorías para el Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos de Carolina del Norte (NC DHHS, por sus siglas en ingles), Norma se apoyó en las conexiones que había establecido con varias organizaciones Latinas para expandir Medicaid y el seguro de salud infantil en comunidades Latinas de todo el estado. En 2020, Norma regresó de su jubilación a NC DHHS para ayudar a coordinar la respuesta de la agencia al COVID-19 en la población Latina. Ha continuado ese trabajo a través de su papel actual como Co-Líder de la Comunidad Latinx para la Respuesta al COVID de la Alianza de Participación Comunitaria de Carolina del Norte (NC CEAL, por sus siglas en ingles). Concluye pidiendo unidad y la perseverancia en las comunidades Latinas, y comparte consejos para futuros líderes, entre los que estarán sus nietos.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Norma Martí por Daniel Velásquez, 31 May 2023, R-1010, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Cuidado de la salud; Educación; Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios; Racismo y discriminación
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velazquez: Okay, so today is the 31st of May of 2023. I am Daniel Velásquez. I am here with Norma Marti, who is currently the NC CEAL Latinx Community Co-Lead for COVID Response. And we are conducting this interview via Zoom. Norma, thank you so much for sitting down with me and sharing your story.
Norma Martí: Thank you, Daniel, for giving me this opportunity to take out some cobwebs from the mind.
DV: Okay, Norma, could you tell me about your personal background, where you were born, raised, and any early family experiences that you'd like to share?
NM: Yeah, sure. So, I was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, basically about six months after the island got their Estado Libre Asociado designation, which to me is a glorified colony. But my dad had already been in Indiana, northwest Indiana, working in steel mills because there was not a lot of work. He came from a farm family and the farms weren't farming, and the land was being bought up by U.S. military, whatever. And so, he left and went to work in the steel mill. Mom was there with him, my two older sisters, and then got pregnant with me in the early fifties. And so, she just--. Because we're citizens and it's easy for us to cross the border—and again, we're only citizens by an act of Congress—she went back to Aguadilla, which is where my grandfather and her siblings lived. And that's where we stayed. So, when people ask me, I forget, I was born in Mayaguez, I always say I'm from Aguadilla because that's where the family, the abuelos were. And then she didn't come back to the States for three or more years, because Papi finally stood his ground and said: we need to be together, we’re a family. And so she came, never happy to come back to the States. So that's my early memories of why I'm here as opposed to there.
DV: Okay. So, your dad came first, and he went where?
NM: He was in Indiana. He went--. The story for Papi is that my dad was tall. And so, he was hired because the steel mills at the time would put an announcement, and like, day laborers today, all of them would just show up in the parking lot. And I don't know how they would select. But dad was tall. And all the other Latinos and people in the parking lot were short. So, they called on him. And he got a job at Standard Forge Steel Mill for, gosh, 25 years. And then they shut down and then he worked for Inland Steel. But again, it was a good paying job, right.
DV: Okay, and at what age did you finally come over with your mom?
NM: It was about when I was about three, three or four. I started kindergarten here in Indiana. So, again, dad was just a laborer, but he had--. It was good income, steady income, good benefits. His benefits actually paid for my mother's elder care when she needed to be cared for in her old age. So, East Chicago is a suburb, if you would, of Chicago. It's in Indiana but most of our media market was Chicago, so we knew everything about Chicago politics and life and nothing about Indiana and Indiana politics and life. It was a steel mill town. Everybody was blue collar pretty much. All our mothers spoke some language other than English, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian, Croatian, and the Blacks even had an accent when they spoke, the moms did, because they came up from the south, right. So, the teachers were the only ones that spoke standard English. So yeah, and each group had their own benevolent society and or church. Like the whites went to one Catholic church, the Mexicans went to one Catholic church. And so, it was just an interesting--. When I look back, it was an interesting, segregated, but yet still integrated. I don't know if that makes sense. So, things like my dad and his colleagues started the Brotherhood Social Club. It was a Puerto Rican thing. Friday night bingo, Saturday night bailes with orquesta from Chicago, the big names from Chicago. And Sundays, anything; potlucks, whatever, just to be together, these fifty to a hundred families, all from somewhere in Puerto Rico. We actually organized the first Puerto Rican Estado Libre Asociado Day on July 25th. My kids were little at the time, so it was in the mid ’80s, 1980s. Because we had to keep up with La Unión Benéfica Mexicana, which had the biggest parade in town for their Independence Day in September. So it was that kind of ethnic--. It was a friendly rivalry. We went to the parade. We had our own float in the Mexican parade. They had one in ours. So it was just never feeling foreign at all because of that environment until I went off to college. And that's a story unto itself. Again, my parents were happy having us graduate from high school. That for them--. They had a third-grade education, so, for them to--. For us to finish high school was success. But I had a high school counselor who really mentored me. I was really blessed. Marty Quinn, may he rest in peace. And so, he had me visiting all the colleges in Illinois and Indiana; we didn't have any money to send me to school. But I went to Dominican College up in Wisconsin, which is where his daughter actually was attending. And he was able to get a scholarship for me.
DV: Wow.
NM: So that was pretty amazing that I was, again, I call these folks angels in my life. They just, they're there, they see a spark or something in me and they guide me to what I should be doing. But Wisconsin was five hours away from East Chicago and I had never been away from my family. And so, I was homesick, very homesick. And so, I transferred then my second—sophomore year—to Purdue in West Lafayette. No scholarship. Papi paid the whole thing. I worked summers in the steel mills to help with the tuition, which at that time was two hundred dollars a semester, but that was a lot of money in the 1970s, alright? And my parents never owned a house. I call my education their investment. So, anyway, on that, I got a BA in secondary education and a minor in Spanish, of course. I remember applying to eighty-seven, and I remember eighty-seven schools to be a teacher.
DV: Did you have any experiences within college that you want to share about before you move on to teaching?
NM: College. We tried to organize a Latino group. Again, those of us that grew up in East Chicago in that area that went to Purdue, tried to get together. We just weren't strong--. There weren't enough of us. But the Blacks got a Black student union, and they gave us a room that we could then go meet in to just plan and organize and celebrate our own things. I was on the Dean's List. I graduated with honors in my BA. Yeah, it was--. Dr. Gonzalez, I guess I've mentioned her to you before. She was married to Dr. Gonzalez, who was Puerto Rican. She was white, but she became, again, one of those angels in my life that I'll tell you a little bit more about her later on as I talk about my professional development. But again, having those, the Gonzalezes there made it possible. I got an F on my first English paper. I had never gotten anything but A’s in high school. How the hell did I get an F on my first college education? I did not at Dominican, but somehow at Purdue I did. And she coached me and instructed me, gave me little hints about what I was doing or not doing correctly. And I ended up, like I said, on the Dean's List graduating with honors by the time I got it.
DV: Did you always have teaching as a plan? That was what you wanted to do?
NM: Yeah, I mean, again, I come from a generation where you were either a teacher or maybe a nurse. There weren't a whole lot of secretaries there weren't a whole lot of ladder-climbing days back then. And I wanted to be a teacher but, I mean a doctor, but when I saw my dad changing my sister's bandages after a surgery I completely freaked out. He had to come and get me and neglected my sister who needed to have her bandages put back on. So, I realized then at a very young age that I probably couldn't stand being a doctor. And I love teaching. I've always enjoyed teaching regardless of the subject. I enjoy sharing and learning with my students. So yeah.
DV: Okay, so tell us about your teaching career.
NM: Okay, so my teaching career, again, I sent out eighty-seven applications all around Illinois, Indiana, and I even went to Wisconsin. I had one interview, one interview, a telephone interview at that, and I was not going to take the job. My dad said: well why, it's the only one you've had, it's here in Indiana. I said, dad, but it's way over there in Fort Wayne and the darn principal called me--. He said: we've never had a foreigner in our school before.
DV: Wow.
NM: And so, and now looking back, there weren't any Blacks in that school either, any Black students or teachers. So, I really was a foreigner in many ways. So, my dad insisted that I needed to take that job and teach that man a lesson. And then this is where the Dr. Gonzalez story--. I was ready to quit after my first semester. I was like, this--. He was just so--. Those little micro-aggressive comments that he would make every single day. I hated them. And he would even say them in front of my students, which I totally resented. And so, I just remember dad, I mean I was telling my dad. And he said: if you don't want to go, come back home, you're fine. And I was talking again, Dr. Gonzalez continued mentoring us as we moved on into our careers. And she said, no, no, let me come. She was an English teacher. So, she said let me come, let me do a lesson in your class. And when I told the racist principal that I was having this person from Purdue University come and teach me class. He was like, Purdue in Lafayette? I go, yes, yes. He says, oh, that's wonderful. Well after that I was like--. He stopped the aggressions and I ended up staying there another year and got a new principal who was wonderful, was what a principal should be. He would sit in my Spanish classes and to do my teacher evaluation one time. And I didn't even know he was in my class. I used to, this is again, old school, we had to go into a lab with headphones and listen to Spanish tape conversations, right. And so, I would play lotería with my students at the end with the vocabulary of the week, right. And this kid says, bing--. You know, lotería, lotería! and I look and go, who's that kid in that? I don't have a kid in that seat. Well, it turned out it was the principal. [Laughter]. He was in there evaluating my performance that day. And he came back at the end of the class, and he says: Ms. Martí, that was, I think I've learned more Spanish in these 45 minutes than I had in all my undergraduate classes in Spanish in college. And I said, well, thank you. That's great. So it was, it was kind of a day-and-night. The first year I wanted to just sink into a hole and, I mean, I was totally depressed because this man was just so negative on anything. I can't even begin to tell you the words he would use but this really demeaning of me, of me as a--. Oh, yeah, she's that woman, she speaks another language, I just--. You hired me to teach Spanish, people, you know? I’m sorry. And so, and then having this gentleman who was an amazing educator and encouraged all of us to be the best teachers we could be. So that was my first year of teaching. I didn't leave teaching because of that. Again, I left because I was still--. By this time I'm twenty, what, four or five? I was still homesick. I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a little town called Churubusco, named after the Mexican Hollywood, right, go figure, the Spanish-American War. So, it was like three hours away from--. It's like saying Asheville to Raleigh, it's just too far to go every weekend. And so, I went back home to go to graduate school. I never did finish graduate school, but at least I moved from teaching to social work, if you would, public health at that point. And worked at the Roberto Clemente Neighborhood Center in East Chicago, Indiana, where we offered programs for the Latino community in that particular area, mostly Mexican American, even though the center was named Roberto Clemente, it was just because the Puerto Ricans had more political clout than the Mexicans at that point, although they'd been there longer than we had as a population. Loved it. We had senior citizens, a Black senior citizen group, a Latina senior citizen group. We had teams for the kids. We opened a daycare for the moms to bring their kids. It was just a wonderful, again, not a teaching experience, but a completely different way of growing and learning what social programs could do to enhance the neighborhood. So that was my first foray into what I would call social work-slash-public health in Indiana. And then I came out this way. Well, no--.
DV: How long were you at the center?
NM: At the Roberto Clemente Center? Gosh, it’s been so many years. It was three or four years. Then I went to work in the--. I had a woman from the, it must have been the 19-, pre-1980 census come to talk to our community about the importance of the census. And she offered me a job. Ta-da! I'm perfectly happy right where I'm at. And she's like, oh, you're just what we're looking for, we need. And I think the position was called Community Services Specialist or something like that. And you could work in our Chicago office, but you'd be working Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, it's our regional office, you're just what I want. And I’m thinking, I'm not looking for a job, but thank you, if I think of anybody, I'll let you know. The woman kept calling me, Mary Grady, gosh, I hadn't thought of her in years.
DV: Wow.
NM: Mary Grady, and she kept calling me, and I finally thought, well, what the hell, let me just try it. I don't know what that means. And I loved my work at the Census Bureau in Chicago’s Regional Office. I was there for a good ten or more years, yeah. Ninety eighty censuses, and I think the beginning of the ninety censuses. So, yeah. Did a lot of traveling in those three states, worked with indigenous populations up in Wisconsin and a lot of African American and Latinos in Chicago City metro area, and then of course the folks in Indiana. My one story on that one, now that I'm thinking about stories, was being in Indianapolis talking to the Chamber of Commerce about the census, of course, right. I was, at that particular point in time, I was the regional director of the northern half of Indiana for the 1980 census, I want to say, 1980. It could have been the ninety. It was one of those two. And they were just talking away about how they couldn't hardly wait for that area to fall apart so they could buy up that land by the lake and just start building up some condos and blah, blah, blah, blah. And once we get rid of all those people, and I’m sitting there listening to this, right. This is where I live. This is northern Indiana. And I just sat there, and I thought, I don't believe that they're just--. They didn't even see me. I was in the room. I was there to speak to them. They still didn't even see me. And they continued with their little racist comments about getting rid of all these people of color and getting them out so they could build their condos on the beach. Well, last time I went to northwest Indiana, it's been a while, there are no condos at the beach, but they surely did get rid of all the minorities. By default, the jobs left. And so, again, we go where the jobs are, which is how I then got to North Carolina. After the census, I was offered a job with RTI International. How did I? The census was--. Wanted me to move to D.C. or something, I can't even remember now, it was Charlotte, D.C., and I thought, there are no Latinos there. I don't want to go there. I don't want to go to D.C. My family is here, kids. So, I decided I would do something else. I went back to teaching at a high school, my old high school. And then I got a part-time job because that's what we all do, Latinos. We work two, three, four jobs. And I was still married, but it was just--. The marriage was falling apart, and I could feel it. I got a fellowship for the University of Chicago to work in public health, and I accepted it, but then I got pregnant, and it just became very difficult to finish that curriculum. And so, I got an offer from a friend to work as a supervisor for interviews that were being done by RTI in Chicago. And I did that. And at the end of that cycle, he asked, wouldn't you like to come work at RTI in North Carolina? And I'm like, North Carolina? Let me look that up in the map. [Laughter]. And that's how I--. That’s how, what kind of work? It was--.
DV: What kind of interviews, before you even came to North Carolina, were they doing?
NM: They were interviewing for positions in their survey center here. RTI at the time had four or five different centers, each one focused on--. One was on education, one was on health, one was on international aid. I can't remember the others, but those are the three that I worked on when I was there. So, the boss came and interviewed me. He was doing interviews in Chicago for recruiting staff here in North Carolina, and they offered me a job. And I thought I was--. Like I said, I went back to teaching. I was worried about the kids and health insurance, right. They were growing. My son was ten years old. I'd gotten divorced at that point. And the little one was three, four. And I thought, gosh, health insurance. And then I looked up the area. And I thought, Raleigh--. I didn't like Charlotte, go figure. But Raleigh had the universities, and I kept thinking: well, when they grow up, they can commute and they’d still get a great education if I’m in Raleigh, right. So, let’s do it. I took the job. The only job that's ever moved me, literally paid for my move. I mean, the van, the big moving truck.
DV: Wow.
NM: People that came and packed my house. I was like, all of them. Like I was on cloud nine. And, and the big salary of what, $33,000 a year back in the day in 1991, July first. They actually paid me as of July first, although I didn't start until July fifteenth. They put us up in a hotel until the apartment became available. I mean, it was really, it was a really great blessing. Again, just a fluke that someone that I had worked with at the census was now working at RTI, and they recommended. And so, again, those connections that you make are so important in your life, and you don't always know who it is that's going to open up that door for you.
DV: Okay, I was going to ask you who it was. It was someone you knew from the census days?
NM: Yeah, somebody that worked with us at the census in Chicago took a job at RTI. Gosh, I can't, Brian, I can't remember his last name. Isn’t that terrible? Brian something. Oh my God, it'll come to me at some point. I didn't write him down. There's a lot of--. You don't get to my age and the place that I am now in my—I call it my fulfillment of my career—again, unless people have opened doors for you, unless people recognize something in you that you don't even recognize in yourself. So, I came to work in the Center for Education Research, did lots of national studies across the country. The post-secondary student aid study was the biggest one. Went everywhere, Dallas, and anywhere there were Latinos, Dallas, L.A., Phoenix, Chicago, Puerto Rico even, to do these, to do the training. And again, back in the day, we’re talking paper-and-pencil interviewing. There were no online surveys like there are today, no websites, that kind of thing. So, I had to train the interviewers. And the two things that happened at RTI was I made them realize that instruments are, if you validate an instrument in English to make the data trustworthy, reliable, then you've got to do the same thing with the Spanish. And you've got to have it translated by a professional, not by a graduate student at UNC. Because when you're feeling blue, it's not te sientes azul. It just isn't. And so, I finally got them to recognize that they needed to have a review team, and that they also needed to have a protocol in place for hiring what were called bilingual interviewers. Again, just because you speak or can read a language doesn't mean you really speak it well, right. And so today I can honestly say that they actually have a group, a professional group at RTI that reviews all their translations and trains all of their interviewers, or people that are on those different surveys. But back in the day, 1981, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 [Laughter], it was Norma. And a lot of wonderful people in those areas. But again, I lived in North Carolina, but I didn't live here because I was always on the road. My mom, mommy was here. My dad had passed away, so mommy was here helping me raise the kids, watching them. Again, church members, the whole village helping me raise these two beautiful adults that I have today. So, yeah, I decided at that point that I needed to--. My son was graduating from high school, going on to college. He went to NC State, sorry--. He did. [Laughter]. Both my kids. So El Pueblo was advertising for a development director. I had to look up what development director was, and I thought, oh, I think I could do that. So, I interviewed with, at that time, Andrea Bassan was Executive Director, and Melanie Chernoff was Assistant. They interviewed me, again, saw something in me that I probably didn't see in myself, and they said: sure, come on, join us. And so, I took a half a salary cut in pay to go work at El Pueblo, which is not something I recommend to anybody. I'm sorry, you know. Now in my old age, I kind of miss that income I would have had at RTI. But notwithstanding, I didn’t gain money, but I gained me. Fiesta del Pueblo was the only fiesta with Lat--. At that time in the whole state. And so, we got the music, the comida. My daughter and I wouldn't miss a fiesta del pueblo before I got hired by them. And so, when I got hired, I made a commitment to take a certification course at Duke so that I could learn what a development director was supposed to do. And so, I'm happy to say that I kept the budget intact those two years that I was there, came pretty close to a million, if not more, of donations. And again, I just couldn't make my life work on the salary that a nonprofit paid at that time in my life. And so, my son was in college. I didn't realize that I was helping him pay for that. And so, it was hard. And so, I--. Again, a friend said, hey, look, there's this job at the state and it's got your name on it. It's you. And I'm like, okay, I'm not really looking for a job. I quit at El Pueblo—no, I was really looking for a job. I quit El Pueblo after the last fiesta of that year, 2005, 6, and I just need to chill.
DV: Actually, tell us more about El Pueblo. What kind of work was, does El Pueblo, or did El Pueblo do at the time?
NM: At the time, El Pueblo, like I said, we were like the only Latino advocate group out there, or at least visibly. So we did a lot of advocacies in terms of--. I remember, again, talking with state legislators, department chairmen on license, trying to get the license to be valid proof of residency regardless of your status. We did the Fiesta del Pueblo, which was the biggest thing, and we did a youth photo that I really miss. I don't see that anymore anywhere, but we used to do a youth photo and did it in Greensboro one year, we did it in Raleigh, I want to say Charlotte. But again, bringing young people in to have speakers and have them interact with each other and to grow. We had a lot of grants that we put together to work on things like literacy. We had a Smart Start grant that hired, who is now my best friend, Margarita Cassini, to go to the community, to trailers, to apartment complexes to talk about literacy and the importance of reading to children. We had a Susan G. Komen grant. My dear, dear, dear Colombian friend, Maria Eugenia Cerron, who passed away from cancer a couple years ago was our leader in that effort. So, again, we had a really, it was just a familia. I didn't have my familia here, and I hadn't had it while I was at RTI because I was all over the darn place. But here, that, I mean, I'm still, Melanie is still--. Melanie baked me a cake for my seventieth birthday. So, I mean, these are still people that I call family. And yeah, so that was what El Pueblo did for me. That was my richness. That was my, that's what I banked my retirement on. All those connections that I made those two or three years. And then I built on that when I got hired at the state. Again, my friend Carolyn Sexton hired me to work at Department—then the Division of Public Health, which is part of NC DHHS, working as a minority outreach specialist, a title that was just made up. There was no coordinator, there was no staff, it was just me. And we were trying to promote the state's children's health insurance program. At the time it had just been legislated by the Clinton Administration, and so we needed to get the word out to get--. I think the first year they only had like forty thousand slots, and they completely filled up.
DV: What year was this now?
NM: Early, mid-2000s; 5, 6, 7. And that range is when I started at the state. And again, with legislation and lobbying, both from organizations like NC Child, El Pueblo, and since we found lots of different groups started cropping up then across the state. AMEXCAN, I mean, just a whole bunch of Latino-led folks whose voices were now being listened to en masse at the state, at the general assembly. Those numbers grew and to the point where I think we had almost a hundred thousand children enrolled in our health check, it’s what we called it back then. I don't know what they're calling it now. But we were like 95% enrolled eligible children in the state when I left in 2019. So, I think, again, nothing I did--. But I had built this wonderful familia with El Pueblo and people that came to our Fiesta and then again, all these organizations that started developing, that across the state with, again, leadership from rural as well as urban areas in the state. Latin American Coalition in Charlotte. I mean, just True Bridge on the west end. I mean, all these wonderful organizations that supported the work that we were trying to do of getting families enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. And then what I thought is my most successful point in that career, in my life, is when I went to an event at the Hmong, that the Hmong community had in Morganton--. In Hickory. And when I walked in I felt like I had walked into the Brotherhood Social Club, except that they spoke Hmong and not Spanish. And so, it was just like stepping back in time, realizing that they were doing just what my family, my parents, and that whole cohort had done for us, trying to make the community recognize that they're there, that they deserve services, that they are good people. They're just great. The men were all in their little suits and we're all talking, and they brought up the mayor and they brought up the county commissioner. And I said, gosh, I'm like I'm at the Brotherhood Social Club, but they're speaking Hmong. It's so amazing. And the women were over in the table making all of their wonderful dishes. And I just, I felt I had finally been successful because not only was I getting to my people, as I call them, mi gente, regardless of their nationality, but I was also reaching these other communities that also needed to be included. So when the refugee community honored me by saying that I was one of their--. One of them, I felt successful. Not just because I felt I owed it to my community to do what I was doing, but to include them and to make them feel welcomed and entitled, was really wonderful. So, yeah.
DV: That’s wonderful.
NM: Yeah. I retired.
DV: How long did you work for the state before you retired?
NM: Twelve years only. I just--. It was time. Age was the factor. I could collect Social Security, which was--. And I figured, I wasn't making a whole lot of money, but I wasn't making--. I mean, comparable to what I was making as a state employee. And so, I thought I could live on this. And again, I've never been very good at financial, very good at financial strategies for my life, but I'm happy. It doesn't matter. I'm happy. And so, I stopped in 2019. I took my grandson to D.C., my granddaughter to Wilmington. I went to Sedona, and then I went to Cuba to do one of my last mission trips that I've done, I've done Nicaragua, Guatemala, and I got to do Cuba just before COVID.
DV: Mission trips, what do you mean?
NM: Well, most of them were church related. Or in the case of Cuba, it's a Witness for Peace/solidarity, which was created by my dear friend, Gail Phares, back in the mid-80s when the Iran-Contra reality was happening in Latin America. And again, we’re so tied to the migration to the U.S., and the push and pull at the border, we don't see that all of that has to do with our policies in D.C. I mean, I'm a, like I said, I'm a citizen by an act of Congress, not because I or my people voted to be citizens, right. So, the mission trips are usually church groups or non-profits that will take a group of folks in the U.S. to a country to get to see how people live. And to understand the policies of America, the U.S., and how those policies affect the people living in these neighboring countries, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. And so, Nicaragua, I went, I can't remember what year all of this. Guatemala was my first one, I went twice. And my son actually went on a mission trip his senior year in high school, and it makes you see--. Mission trips for me made me realize that we are really just all one. We’re all one, whatever your belief system is, if you believe in a God or don't believe, we're all--. When I went to Guatemala, I felt like I had gone back to Puerto Rico and my grandmother's stories of how my grandmother lived in this little hut with a dirt floor, and they would throw water on it to pat it down. That's what I was living in when I went to Guatemala fifty years later. And I'm like, we're all the same. We've had different histories maybe, different ways of getting to where we are. But--. pero somos uno. Somos uno en Dios, en el universo. We have that. There's a little DNA that just trickles through every person on the planet. We may look different. Our accents may be different. Our histories may be different. But basically, what we want is the same thing. It's happiness. What's that, what's the constitutional thing, the pursuit of happiness? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Well, they got that right. I mean that really is what every human being wants: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so mission trips let me see that. And Cuba was, again—my last name is Martí—so it was just awesome to drive into--. Fly into Martí International Airport. [Laughter]. I claim him as an uncle, but he was on that island and my family was from the other island. At some point the Martís from Europe were the same, and then they came through the Caribbean and settled in different islands. I always say he looks like my dad, when my dad was young, José Martí does. But anyway--. And just the struggle of the people of Cuba, and the struggle they're still living today, simply because we can't get over something that happened sixty years ago. It's just like, I don't know. I mean, people are starving and dying because of an ideology. That just doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't seem moral to me. I mean, we do it here, too, right? We have families who are hungry and starving that shouldn't have to be. But when you see it on an island, at the level--. And the spirit of the Cuban people is just amazing. And of all of the people, the Guatemalans, the Nicaraguans. Yeah, so I love that experience that my faith has brought into my, in my world. It complements the work that I do here, because, again, I've established good working relationships with the Guatemalan community, Nicaraguan, and Cuban. Sometimes we butt heads, but they're still my brothers and sisters. And so, it helps me do the work here as well.
This just reminds me that a couple of--. Last year, the NC Justice Center awarded me the Lifetime Defender of Justice Award. And when they called me, I thought, did you get the right number? I haven't done anything to defend justice. And so, it was like: yeah, Norma, you’ve been nominated and the board agreed that you should get this. And I'm like, I don't understand. And so, when I was telling all my friends, I said I don't understand why I got this award. And they're like, what do you mean you don't understand? And so, they started telling me, look, you've done this and this and this. And I'm like, yeah, but those were, I mean, they were my jobs, they were my faith. That was what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn't doing anything that I wasn't supposed to be doing. That we're not all supposed to be doing, right? And then they reminded me that not everybody does do everything that I do. And I said: oh, okay. Well then, okay, let's go! And so, I got three tables worth of friends to pay an outrageous amount of money to get a chicken dinner [Laughter], but to support the Justice Center and to receive the award with me, because it wasn't for me, it was for us as a community and as people that have struggled. So, I had some of my community health workers there. I had folks from DPH , and from different churches, and from Duke, and from UNC. I mean, again, everybody that's been a part of my world was invited to come and three tables worth of people showed up. So, I was pretty excited. That meant more to me than the award. [Laughter]. That did, yeah.
DV: Did you do the mission work for a long time, or is that something that you were doing after retirement?
NM: No, no, that's a thing I did while I was working.
DV: Okay.
NM: Yeah. 19--. 1999, 2000, 2001, I went to Guatemala.
DV: Oh, wow.
NM: 2017, I think, I went to Nicaragua. Oh, and then we went to Puerto Rico after the hurricane, as part of--. My own people needed help. And so, we went to Puerto Rico to help rebuild some homes of folks on the island. And then Cuba in 2019. It was the first one after retirement. The other ones were all done while I was working. Again, my job doesn't stop with the paycheck. It extends into the rest of the day and the world. I don't know, that's just how I've seen my life. It's all of it. It's what you do on Saturdays and Sundays. And, yeah, it's all of it.
DV: And I know that you didn't stay fully retired for long. [Laughter].
NM: Some would say I haven't retired. Yeah. Well, COVID came, and with COVID came a call from NC DHHS, one of my colleagues that I'd worked with had just been made Deputy Director, Ben Money. And Ben called me and said: we need you to help us. And I go, well, what's going on? I mean, I knew that--. I knew what was going on. I was, but what is it? He says: Norma, we have 75% of patients at Duke today that are Latino. And there's--. We're only 9% of the population. And I go, my God, what are you guys doing? How are you telling people? And he says, well, that's why I'm calling you. I want you to come on board and help us. And so I thought it was a volunteer thing because, again, I don't think of money as I should, but I don't. He says no, we want you to come back, we know you're retired so maybe part-time. I go, oh, okay, you're going to pay me. Yeah, sure, I'll do it. And so, but they paid me. But what I did was, that money, I gave it to people who were not working and who were, who needed groceries and whatever. Because I figured it wasn't supposed to be for me, it was supposed to be to help the community. So, I did. I mean, I helped me, too. I went to the beach, probably more than I've ever gone to the beach in North Carolina, for my sanity. But it was really great working with Dr. Cohen and her team of deputy directors. They stepped up. We would tell Dr. Cohen that the community had a concern in whatever, Durham, Hickory, whatever, at 8 o'clock at night, and that woman would be on a Zoom call with us to answer every single question, and she followed up with every single complaint that was given by the community. The first week that I came on board, she told us at the end of this week, I want you to give away a half a million dollars so that we can get organizations to start giving the message out. So, we did. We gave five organizations $100,000. And I told them, help us get the word out, help us create the right messages, help us to do this work, and I am so proud of that work that they did. I didn't do--. I didn't create any of that. They did it all, and we curved it. I mean, we got it. We got the place where the Latino population, by the time I left, a year later—was only supposed to be for six months, it turned out to be a year—the numbers were at least, by the time we had a vaccination available, the numbers of Latinos who had vaccinated was higher than any of the other groups in the state. And so, for that, I am eternally grateful, eternally grateful. And again, as with everything, you don't do a job and walk away. You let the institution know where their holes are. And there was holes that you had to call somebody in from retirement to help you reach out to a community? Why don't you have a position in the department, hello, that already has the pulse of the community and can tell you what needs to be told and can reach out immediately. I mean, like we did within a week. But again, I wasn't part of the department at that point. I was brought in. And so, yeah, so they listened and we, they're listening. And we have some really great people at NCDHHS today. You need more, but we have some really good folks there.
DV: Thanks for sharing all of that, Norma. Considering all of these experiences, what would you say were some of the challenges and barriers that you faced in your journey? How have you addressed them?
NM: I think the challenge is understanding what you're walking into. And again, if you don't have the skill set because of your education, then go find that skill set. Take a course. Get a certificate. Always, always, always speak up when something is a deficit. Don't take it on as another task to do on top of what you were hired to do. And I think that's the hardest thing to do. It’s like, can you take a look at this translation? You know, there are professionals that do that. I'll take a look at this today, but I think you need to--. I can give you some names and numbers and contacts for you to get a professional person to be looking at this translation. And so, it's those challenges, it's doing what you're charged to do and not more. Again, I never got paid more for being bilingual. I know I never was at the top of the payroll scale. And yet there were many times I was doing two jobs, one in English and one in Spanish. So yeah, that I think is the biggest thing. Prepare yourself, educate yourself, and don't let people use you. Stand up for what you know is your space and not just feel like: I've got to hold on to this job, so I've got to do what they're telling me. I've been blessed that every job I've had I've loved. But that doesn't mean each one of them didn't offer challenges. Like I said, the racism will slap you in the face. You take the slap, but then you just move forward and find a way to educate that person that slapped you so that they don't do it again, or at least not to your face. So, I don't know. Does that make sense?
DV: Yeah, yeah, it does. Thank you. Turning that around, instead of thinking of challenges; you've spoken of angels that helped you along the way. Besides the angels, what are some of the main factors that you can pinpoint that you think have helped you? It could be something abstract, like a way of thinking, or tangible, specific people like you mentioned.
NM: Yeah, I've mentioned all the, I think I've mentioned all the people, if not, forgive me. Those of you who know me who helped me, if I didn't mention you. It's been a long trajectory. So, I think it's we are not--. Again, I'm talking my generation of Latina women. We were not taught that we could do anything other than maybe be a mother, maybe be a wife. I mean, those were the expected roles. And I love my children. I love being an abuelita. I mean, that's like my favorite job today. But that is not all who we are. We are, we have a passion inside of us. And whatever that passion is, find a way to express it. Don't let anybody block you from--. I mean we have limitations. Obviously, I would have loved to finish my master's and always wanted a doctorate, so never did all that, but I never let that stop me from seeking opportunities that were presented to me and saying: well I don't know, maybe I could do that. I could do that. And I did do that. And I did do that not by myself, but again, by educating myself and seeking partners that had the resources or the skill sets that maybe I didn't have. Finding partners is probably the most important thing in terms of barriers because you're not going to knock it down by yourself. Hundreds of people have tried that for centuries. And I look at the African-American experience in North Carolina, and as--. What, three hundred, four hundred, five, four hundred years if my math is right, four hundred-plus years of constant, constant, constant, constant, constant, constant, constant drilling down on a people. To me, it's--. They're my heroes. The fact that they survived all of that negativity and God-awfulness that was imposed on them. And it's the same thing with our people. We've had some pretty nasty shit thrown at us in the decades of the United States of America. But we have to--. We're here and we're not going anywhere. This is our country. This is our home. This is where my grandchildren will make a difference in the world. From here, they will make a difference in the world. And so, be proud of that heritage, but don't let anybody diminish it. And teach them, as much as learn from them, teach them. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty abstract.
DV: Thank you.
NM: But I can't put it into like go do A, B, C. Whatever that teaching opportunity is for you, whether it's a certificate, whether it's a couple of classes. I mean, my latest thing is meditation. My goal in life now for the next however many years I'm allowed to breathe on this planet is to ask my Latina women, my daughters and my nieces and my nephews, and boys too, the nephews and the sons, to take a deep breath. And to find that inner peace that is there and whatever you want to call it; God, energy, spirit, whatever you want to call it, there is this force within all of us that's just really divine. And if you let it come out, people may see it. You may not see it, but other people will see it. And so, give yourself that time to just pause, reflect, and then go do something. It's not just say it, do it.
DV: So this is what you've been up to lately, meditation?
NM: Yeah. Well, my NC CEAL work is winding down. I had a wonderful review with Wake Forest University that's doing, for the first time ever, a Spanish language intervention called Pain Trainer for people with major pain or terminal pain that medication doesn't always resolve, it’s an eight-module intervention on finding that place of tranquility and calmness within you and not focusing on the pain. It's a wonderful medical intervention, right. You're talking about meditation as a tool in the world of health. And so, they've translated into Spanish. It's been wonderful being on that team at Wake Forest. Again, they had it professionally translated, but then they brought together this group of folks, me and ten other people across the state from different nationalities to look at it, to make sure that language spoke to all of our nationalities and that the people on the computer screen look like us. So, yeah, that's been a wonder. It's finished, but it's a wonderful project. Stay tuned and look for it. Again, it'll be online. It'll be free. I've done some work with Duke along the same lines in terms of meditation and training. I'm finishing a certificate with the Chopra Center on Meditation. Deepak Chopra is probably one of the most renowned U.S. medical doctors has addressed the value of meditation as a health equalizer. Again, it brings down all the bad things and brings up all the good things. So, blood pressure, heart, chronic disease, all those measures will lessen if you spend some time meditating. And so, my goal is, in the next four or five years, is to have that Casa de la Abuelita, where I can teach meditation to my girls. To all the women and men, Latinos. I am going to be a little segregationist about it. I really want to focus on the Latino population and teaching us to breathe, to see that inner beauty that's in all of us and that strength that we have inherited from our ancestors. Yeah, that's what I hope I can do in the next decade or so.
DV: That's awesome. Norma, I think we skipped your work with NC CEAL. Can you tell us a bit about how that's been going on?
NM: Sure, that's been the last two years, and it's been wonderful work. Year one, we were still kind of the tail-end, middle-end. Vaccination was going.
56:30 DV: First--. So you were working for the state and then you left that. They were hiring other folks to take over. So, was it immediately after that you started working for NC CEAL?
NM: Actually, I took the NC CEAL job thinking that I would be done with the state job in December. So I started in January of 2021.
DV: Oh, okay.
NM: But then they didn't hire the persons, the people, and so the state asked me to stay for a few more months, and so I was kind of double, double. But this isn't a job, it's not like nine to five, it's really just a, it's an honorarium that we get from UNC School of Medicine, Center for Community Partnerships and Health, I think is what CCPH stands for. So, I was able to do that. And those first few months was really just recruiting a team to work with us to help create materials that were still needed in our Latino community. And so, again, because of the work that I've done in the state, my dear friend Dr. Krista Perreira called me and says: come and join us on NC CEAL. I'd like you to be--. She's the academic co-lead, the community co-lead for the Latino, Latinx Community Response team. And so, what we did in year one was we brought together ten young--. And I told her, Krista, we need young people. She says, what? I said anybody under forty? Because, again, we want to build up the leadership of the Latino community. It's okay to get the executive directors of all of these organizations, but they're busy. Let's get some of the people that work with them, but that need to maybe get some leadership and connect with each other as leaders, young leaders in the state. And so, we got ten folks together. They're a wonderful team. I would name them all out, but I'll forget one of them. I should have brought my list of them, but I don't want to forget any of them. But again, from north, south, east, and west of North Carolina, all of them working either community colleges or nonprofit organization. Again, we covered every nationality we could of the Latino world. And we, what's missing in the messaging for COVID. And so, everything was like, it's just too complicated. I mean, it's too many words, too much, people just want bullets. And so we ran across a colleague at Arizona State University, Dr. Gilbert Lopez, who had begun a series of cómicas, animated cómicas, with the gentleman that did Coco, the movie [Laughter].
DV: Wow.
NM: Did some of the animations of the original ones. And so, he needed additional funding to create some more of these animations. And so, as a team, we agreed that we could use our money for that to happen. So, and we gave them the themes. We gave them five themes. One was the importance of masking, the importance of vaccination of young people, because it was just beginning to give it to little--. The five-to-eleven-year-olds. Mental health as a result of the isolation. The chip myth that they're putting a chip in us because they're going to go out to get us. And, oh gosh, I can't remember what the fourth one was, the fifth one, but we created these wonderful--. We? The animation team that Arizona had contracted created them. We as a team made sure that the words were the words we wanted to have. So, we have these wonderful, rich characters: Tio Rigo, Doctora Susana, Mama Lucha, the Abuelita. It's just, it was, they're just beautiful characters that represent, I mean, they tend to be a little Tex-Mex. But even as a Puerto Rican, I felt like I could relate to anyone, I could relate to the Abuelita, she is me. And so, I thought, okay, this is great. So, we created the animations. And then on a fluke, again, you just ask. Sometimes you're afraid to ask. I asked the animation company. I said these are great, but we don't always have connectivity in our rural parts. I said, well, how much more would it cost us if you printed them into like little cómicas? And he's like, we'll just throw that in. We'll send you the file. That's no big deal. It didn't cost us anything except the printing, which again, we had to pay for printing. And then we ended up one day at El Centro Hispano, like four of us, boxing them so that we could ship them to all the other, the other rest of the team. And then we realized we didn't have money to ship them. And so, I took some and, and Prudencia took some, and Hilda took some, and we all took some, and on our way home or whenever we were in that part of the state, we dropped off boxes to our colleagues so that they would have their cómicas to pass out at festivals, at vaccination events, at anything they were doing COVID-related. Those were a big hit, so much so that La Conexión, the Conexión USA newspaper here in North Carolina, took them and for every week in, I want to say, end of November-December 2021, they published a full page of the Comica with a QR code. Is that what they're called? That if you clicked on it, it would take you to their website and then you could see the animation of the Comica, right. Same thing, but one is visually and sound and the other one you have to know how to read, right? So, it was amazing the volume of hits that we got on those animations. So that was our success story for year one. And then for year two, the funding was different, and we ended up just having an African American Latino group, so it was only three or four Latinos, three or four African Americans. It was a little harder to get to what was still missing of the messaging of COVID at that point. We're in 2022, vaccines have been out. The boosters are out. So, we focused on little kids, right, because the rate of vaccination of little kids is so low. And we all agreed that we would create a multi-ethnic, multi-racial coloring book with a lot of the same kid characters that were in our original series. So, we still have the Doctora Susana, and this time she's talking to the kids that were in the series before, in the other five cómicas. And yeah, yeah, disclaimer that I did use the names of my children [laughter] on the cómicas because I could give parental consent without a problem, right? [Laughter]. So, I used their first names at least so that you have a Bianca and a Saul character. And they just, they did this really great coloring, the verbal part of it, the team came up with, right. And we got it approved by the doctors to make sure we were saying the protocol that was correct for masking and getting your vaccinations and stuff. And then we got a local artist, a Latino artist, to do the illustration. Rafael Osuba, who is a Raleighite, I think he lives in Raleigh, did the animation out of his company. He and another animator did the whole thing. So, it's all, again, created locally by a local group of Latinos and African Americans. The words came out of them, and then the animation came out of the local Latino artists. So that's our latest claim to fame. And then we did, as part of year two, a series of trainings on the importance of mental health, because, again, the team felt that that was the one thing that we could still do a lot with in terms of COVID, is to let people know that this isolation and survival, if you survived infection changed you and changed your family. And you need, and you may need help, and you may need to talk about it. So, we sent--. We had sixty slots for community health workers to do a twelve-hour training, so we did it in three four-hour sessions. En Español, one, and then two in English. And we trained--. Of the sixty slots, again, they had to come to all three sessions, and we paid them, of course, to do this because we don't--. That's their time, and either they're missing work or they could use the money, as we all can, right. So, they were paid to take the training. So, these promotoras de salud took the training and we have, I think, about forty-some that took all three sessions out of the 60. And so, they now have this wonderful toolkit of how to talk to people about approaching their mental health and the resource, like where to go to get a professional, a practitioner. So, hopefully, if we get funded for year three, we're going to take that up a notch and continue working with the community health workers.
DV: That’s wonderful.
NM: Again, challenges, universities are a bureaucracy, just like the state is a bureaucracy. Things don't happen quickly. You don't get paid on the day, on the calendar. It's whenever it gets processed by all of the different departments and somebody signs it and says it's okay. But eventually people do get their money, and eventually we do get a product and we can share it with the community. So, it's the consistency and the hitting--. Knocking on that door, knocking, knocking, knocking, knocking, until somebody opens it and does what they need to do with it. Because these are our dollars, these are federal dollars we pay into the federal pocket, all of us, whether we're documented or not documented, we all pay into the federal coffers. And so, these projects should involve and recompense the people participating appropriately. And we made sure that, as part of the NC CEAL effort, every time we use community members they were being paid for their time. Not a lot, but they were getting paid, which is important. Yeah, so that's kind of like my--. When I'm not meditating, I'm working on NC CEAL stuff.
DV: You keep busy.
NM: I keep busy. And I have grandchildren. I have a one-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a ten-year-old, soon to be eleven. So, they also keep me busy. And I'm blessed. I'm rich. I am the richest woman in Raleigh.
DV: [Laughter]. That's great. Your story is very inspiring. And as you know, we are doing a series on Latino leaders, and this is why I'm talking to you. So, I wanted to ask you what leadership means to you. How would you define that? If you think about your experiences, what do you think leadership means to you?
NM: To me, it's collaboration. It's looking for a door, a window, someone to show you that door or for you to show them that door that needs, that has a need behind it. It means doing the work but also asking for help. I think leadership is you, the you in unity, okay? Not only with what you see around you; helping to lift everyone that crosses your path, not just yourself. And you fail if you're just doing it for you, whatever that may be, but if you're doing it because you see all these other people that need to be lifted, that need to walk through that door with you. That to me is, again, the leadership is you, all of you, in unity with what you see around you. Again, lifting everyone that crosses your path, not just yourself.
DV: You had mentioned to me once, well, before, during our pre-interview, that you were proud of having opened doors for others behind you. Well, that's wonderful.
NM: Yeah, that's my claim to fame. Yeah, I hope I've done that for my children as well as for the folks who are not my children. But again, just reflecting, we need to stand tall. We need to be proud of who you are. And I don't know that I always was in my twenties and thirties, and maybe until I came to North Carolina in my forties. I think that's when I started to realize that there was all this potential, there's all these things out there. Like I realized that I should have had a Master's in Public Health because I love what public health does, right? My mom and dad did a lot by coming to the states. They sacrificed; all of our ancestors paved the way for us. So, I see it as my job, your job, all of our jobs to pave the way for that next generation of Latino leaders. Stay tall, be proud of who you are, the hard work that all of your family has done. I mean you may not see it as doing it for you, but they've given up a lot of their lives for you to have the life that you have. So, take all of that and don't let it go to waste. Pave the way not only for yourself—make yourself better at every step—but also bring other people along with you as you're moving along that timeline.
DV: Thank you so much Norma for sharing your story with us.
NM: Thank you for letting me, it's been such fun sharing and remembering what I can. [Laughter]. Of this long and wonderful life of Norma Martí. Gracias, Daniel, gracias.
DV: No, gracias a ti, Norma.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 May 31
Date of Transcription: 2023 August 28 / Revisions: 2023 September 22
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velazquez: Okay, so today is the 31st of May of 2023. I am Daniel Velásquez. I am here with Norma Marti, who is currently the NC CEAL Latinx Community Co-Lead for COVID Response. And we are conducting this interview via Zoom. Norma, thank you so much for sitting down with me and sharing your story.
Norma Martí: Thank you, Daniel, for giving me this opportunity to take out some cobwebs from the mind.
DV: Okay, Norma, could you tell me about your personal background, where you were born, raised, and any early family experiences that you'd like to share?
NM: Yeah, sure. So, I was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, basically about six months after the island got their Estado Libre Asociado designation, which to me is a glorified colony. But my dad had already been in Indiana, northwest Indiana, working in steel mills because there was not a lot of work. He came from a farm family and the farms weren't farming, and the land was being bought up by U.S. military, whatever. And so, he left and went to work in the steel mill. Mom was there with him, my two older sisters, and then got pregnant with me in the early fifties. And so, she just--. Because we're citizens and it's easy for us to cross the border—and again, we're only citizens by an act of Congress—she went back to Aguadilla, which is where my grandfather and her siblings lived. And that's where we stayed. So, when people ask me, I forget, I was born in Mayaguez, I always say I'm from Aguadilla because that's where the family, the abuelos were. And then she didn't come back to the States for three or more years, because Papi finally stood his ground and said: we need to be together, we’re a family. And so she came, never happy to come back to the States. So that's my early memories of why I'm here as opposed to there.
DV: Okay. So, your dad came first, and he went where?
NM: He was in Indiana. He went--. The story for Papi is that my dad was tall. And so, he was hired because the steel mills at the time would put an announcement, and like, day laborers today, all of them would just show up in the parking lot. And I don't know how they would select. But dad was tall. And all the other Latinos and people in the parking lot were short. So, they called on him. And he got a job at Standard Forge Steel Mill for, gosh, 25 years. And then they shut down and then he worked for Inland Steel. But again, it was a good paying job, right.
DV: Okay, and at what age did you finally come over with your mom?
NM: It was about when I was about three, three or four. I started kindergarten here in Indiana. So, again, dad was just a laborer, but he had--. It was good income, steady income, good benefits. His benefits actually paid for my mother's elder care when she needed to be cared for in her old age. So, East Chicago is a suburb, if you would, of Chicago. It's in Indiana but most of our media market was Chicago, so we knew everything about Chicago politics and life and nothing about Indiana and Indiana politics and life. It was a steel mill town. Everybody was blue collar pretty much. All our mothers spoke some language other than English, Polish, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian, Croatian, and the Blacks even had an accent when they spoke, the moms did, because they came up from the south, right. So, the teachers were the only ones that spoke standard English. So yeah, and each group had their own benevolent society and or church. Like the whites went to one Catholic church, the Mexicans went to one Catholic church. And so, it was just an interesting--. When I look back, it was an interesting, segregated, but yet still integrated. I don't know if that makes sense. So, things like my dad and his colleagues started the Brotherhood Social Club. It was a Puerto Rican thing. Friday night bingo, Saturday night bailes with orquesta from Chicago, the big names from Chicago. And Sundays, anything; potlucks, whatever, just to be together, these fifty to a hundred families, all from somewhere in Puerto Rico. We actually organized the first Puerto Rican Estado Libre Asociado Day on July 25th. My kids were little at the time, so it was in the mid ’80s, 1980s. Because we had to keep up with La Unión Benéfica Mexicana, which had the biggest parade in town for their Independence Day in September. So it was that kind of ethnic--. It was a friendly rivalry. We went to the parade. We had our own float in the Mexican parade. They had one in ours. So it was just never feeling foreign at all because of that environment until I went off to college. And that's a story unto itself. Again, my parents were happy having us graduate from high school. That for them--. They had a third-grade education, so, for them to--. For us to finish high school was success. But I had a high school counselor who really mentored me. I was really blessed. Marty Quinn, may he rest in peace. And so, he had me visiting all the colleges in Illinois and Indiana; we didn't have any money to send me to school. But I went to Dominican College up in Wisconsin, which is where his daughter actually was attending. And he was able to get a scholarship for me.
DV: Wow.
NM: So that was pretty amazing that I was, again, I call these folks angels in my life. They just, they're there, they see a spark or something in me and they guide me to what I should be doing. But Wisconsin was five hours away from East Chicago and I had never been away from my family. And so, I was homesick, very homesick. And so, I transferred then my second—sophomore year—to Purdue in West Lafayette. No scholarship. Papi paid the whole thing. I worked summers in the steel mills to help with the tuition, which at that time was two hundred dollars a semester, but that was a lot of money in the 1970s, alright? And my parents never owned a house. I call my education their investment. So, anyway, on that, I got a BA in secondary education and a minor in Spanish, of course. I remember applying to eighty-seven, and I remember eighty-seven schools to be a teacher.
DV: Did you have any experiences within college that you want to share about before you move on to teaching?
NM: College. We tried to organize a Latino group. Again, those of us that grew up in East Chicago in that area that went to Purdue, tried to get together. We just weren't strong--. There weren't enough of us. But the Blacks got a Black student union, and they gave us a room that we could then go meet in to just plan and organize and celebrate our own things. I was on the Dean's List. I graduated with honors in my BA. Yeah, it was--. Dr. Gonzalez, I guess I've mentioned her to you before. She was married to Dr. Gonzalez, who was Puerto Rican. She was white, but she became, again, one of those angels in my life that I'll tell you a little bit more about her later on as I talk about my professional development. But again, having those, the Gonzalezes there made it possible. I got an F on my first English paper. I had never gotten anything but A’s in high school. How the hell did I get an F on my first college education? I did not at Dominican, but somehow at Purdue I did. And she coached me and instructed me, gave me little hints about what I was doing or not doing correctly. And I ended up, like I said, on the Dean's List graduating with honors by the time I got it.
DV: Did you always have teaching as a plan? That was what you wanted to do?
NM: Yeah, I mean, again, I come from a generation where you were either a teacher or maybe a nurse. There weren't a whole lot of secretaries there weren't a whole lot of ladder-climbing days back then. And I wanted to be a teacher but, I mean a doctor, but when I saw my dad changing my sister's bandages after a surgery I completely freaked out. He had to come and get me and neglected my sister who needed to have her bandages put back on. So, I realized then at a very young age that I probably couldn't stand being a doctor. And I love teaching. I've always enjoyed teaching regardless of the subject. I enjoy sharing and learning with my students. So yeah.
DV: Okay, so tell us about your teaching career.
NM: Okay, so my teaching career, again, I sent out eighty-seven applications all around Illinois, Indiana, and I even went to Wisconsin. I had one interview, one interview, a telephone interview at that, and I was not going to take the job. My dad said: well why, it's the only one you've had, it's here in Indiana. I said, dad, but it's way over there in Fort Wayne and the darn principal called me--. He said: we've never had a foreigner in our school before.
DV: Wow.
NM: And so, and now looking back, there weren't any Blacks in that school either, any Black students or teachers. So, I really was a foreigner in many ways. So, my dad insisted that I needed to take that job and teach that man a lesson. And then this is where the Dr. Gonzalez story--. I was ready to quit after my first semester. I was like, this--. He was just so--. Those little micro-aggressive comments that he would make every single day. I hated them. And he would even say them in front of my students, which I totally resented. And so, I just remember dad, I mean I was telling my dad. And he said: if you don't want to go, come back home, you're fine. And I was talking again, Dr. Gonzalez continued mentoring us as we moved on into our careers. And she said, no, no, let me come. She was an English teacher. So, she said let me come, let me do a lesson in your class. And when I told the racist principal that I was having this person from Purdue University come and teach me class. He was like, Purdue in Lafayette? I go, yes, yes. He says, oh, that's wonderful. Well after that I was like--. He stopped the aggressions and I ended up staying there another year and got a new principal who was wonderful, was what a principal should be. He would sit in my Spanish classes and to do my teacher evaluation one time. And I didn't even know he was in my class. I used to, this is again, old school, we had to go into a lab with headphones and listen to Spanish tape conversations, right. And so, I would play lotería with my students at the end with the vocabulary of the week, right. And this kid says, bing--. You know, lotería, lotería! and I look and go, who's that kid in that? I don't have a kid in that seat. Well, it turned out it was the principal. [Laughter]. He was in there evaluating my performance that day. And he came back at the end of the class, and he says: Ms. Martí, that was, I think I've learned more Spanish in these 45 minutes than I had in all my undergraduate classes in Spanish in college. And I said, well, thank you. That's great. So it was, it was kind of a day-and-night. The first year I wanted to just sink into a hole and, I mean, I was totally depressed because this man was just so negative on anything. I can't even begin to tell you the words he would use but this really demeaning of me, of me as a--. Oh, yeah, she's that woman, she speaks another language, I just--. You hired me to teach Spanish, people, you know? I’m sorry. And so, and then having this gentleman who was an amazing educator and encouraged all of us to be the best teachers we could be. So that was my first year of teaching. I didn't leave teaching because of that. Again, I left because I was still--. By this time I'm twenty, what, four or five? I was still homesick. I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a little town called Churubusco, named after the Mexican Hollywood, right, go figure, the Spanish-American War. So, it was like three hours away from--. It's like saying Asheville to Raleigh, it's just too far to go every weekend. And so, I went back home to go to graduate school. I never did finish graduate school, but at least I moved from teaching to social work, if you would, public health at that point. And worked at the Roberto Clemente Neighborhood Center in East Chicago, Indiana, where we offered programs for the Latino community in that particular area, mostly Mexican American, even though the center was named Roberto Clemente, it was just because the Puerto Ricans had more political clout than the Mexicans at that point, although they'd been there longer than we had as a population. Loved it. We had senior citizens, a Black senior citizen group, a Latina senior citizen group. We had teams for the kids. We opened a daycare for the moms to bring their kids. It was just a wonderful, again, not a teaching experience, but a completely different way of growing and learning what social programs could do to enhance the neighborhood. So that was my first foray into what I would call social work-slash-public health in Indiana. And then I came out this way. Well, no--.
DV: How long were you at the center?
NM: At the Roberto Clemente Center? Gosh, it’s been so many years. It was three or four years. Then I went to work in the--. I had a woman from the, it must have been the 19-, pre-1980 census come to talk to our community about the importance of the census. And she offered me a job. Ta-da! I'm perfectly happy right where I'm at. And she's like, oh, you're just what we're looking for, we need. And I think the position was called Community Services Specialist or something like that. And you could work in our Chicago office, but you'd be working Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, it's our regional office, you're just what I want. And I’m thinking, I'm not looking for a job, but thank you, if I think of anybody, I'll let you know. The woman kept calling me, Mary Grady, gosh, I hadn't thought of her in years.
DV: Wow.
NM: Mary Grady, and she kept calling me, and I finally thought, well, what the hell, let me just try it. I don't know what that means. And I loved my work at the Census Bureau in Chicago’s Regional Office. I was there for a good ten or more years, yeah. Ninety eighty censuses, and I think the beginning of the ninety censuses. So, yeah. Did a lot of traveling in those three states, worked with indigenous populations up in Wisconsin and a lot of African American and Latinos in Chicago City metro area, and then of course the folks in Indiana. My one story on that one, now that I'm thinking about stories, was being in Indianapolis talking to the Chamber of Commerce about the census, of course, right. I was, at that particular point in time, I was the regional director of the northern half of Indiana for the 1980 census, I want to say, 1980. It could have been the ninety. It was one of those two. And they were just talking away about how they couldn't hardly wait for that area to fall apart so they could buy up that land by the lake and just start building up some condos and blah, blah, blah, blah. And once we get rid of all those people, and I’m sitting there listening to this, right. This is where I live. This is northern Indiana. And I just sat there, and I thought, I don't believe that they're just--. They didn't even see me. I was in the room. I was there to speak to them. They still didn't even see me. And they continued with their little racist comments about getting rid of all these people of color and getting them out so they could build their condos on the beach. Well, last time I went to northwest Indiana, it's been a while, there are no condos at the beach, but they surely did get rid of all the minorities. By default, the jobs left. And so, again, we go where the jobs are, which is how I then got to North Carolina. After the census, I was offered a job with RTI International. How did I? The census was--. Wanted me to move to D.C. or something, I can't even remember now, it was Charlotte, D.C., and I thought, there are no Latinos there. I don't want to go there. I don't want to go to D.C. My family is here, kids. So, I decided I would do something else. I went back to teaching at a high school, my old high school. And then I got a part-time job because that's what we all do, Latinos. We work two, three, four jobs. And I was still married, but it was just--. The marriage was falling apart, and I could feel it. I got a fellowship for the University of Chicago to work in public health, and I accepted it, but then I got pregnant, and it just became very difficult to finish that curriculum. And so, I got an offer from a friend to work as a supervisor for interviews that were being done by RTI in Chicago. And I did that. And at the end of that cycle, he asked, wouldn't you like to come work at RTI in North Carolina? And I'm like, North Carolina? Let me look that up in the map. [Laughter]. And that's how I--. That’s how, what kind of work? It was--.
DV: What kind of interviews, before you even came to North Carolina, were they doing?
NM: They were interviewing for positions in their survey center here. RTI at the time had four or five different centers, each one focused on--. One was on education, one was on health, one was on international aid. I can't remember the others, but those are the three that I worked on when I was there. So, the boss came and interviewed me. He was doing interviews in Chicago for recruiting staff here in North Carolina, and they offered me a job. And I thought I was--. Like I said, I went back to teaching. I was worried about the kids and health insurance, right. They were growing. My son was ten years old. I'd gotten divorced at that point. And the little one was three, four. And I thought, gosh, health insurance. And then I looked up the area. And I thought, Raleigh--. I didn't like Charlotte, go figure. But Raleigh had the universities, and I kept thinking: well, when they grow up, they can commute and they’d still get a great education if I’m in Raleigh, right. So, let’s do it. I took the job. The only job that's ever moved me, literally paid for my move. I mean, the van, the big moving truck.
DV: Wow.
NM: People that came and packed my house. I was like, all of them. Like I was on cloud nine. And, and the big salary of what, $33,000 a year back in the day in 1991, July first. They actually paid me as of July first, although I didn't start until July fifteenth. They put us up in a hotel until the apartment became available. I mean, it was really, it was a really great blessing. Again, just a fluke that someone that I had worked with at the census was now working at RTI, and they recommended. And so, again, those connections that you make are so important in your life, and you don't always know who it is that's going to open up that door for you.
DV: Okay, I was going to ask you who it was. It was someone you knew from the census days?
NM: Yeah, somebody that worked with us at the census in Chicago took a job at RTI. Gosh, I can't, Brian, I can't remember his last name. Isn’t that terrible? Brian something. Oh my God, it'll come to me at some point. I didn't write him down. There's a lot of--. You don't get to my age and the place that I am now in my—I call it my fulfillment of my career—again, unless people have opened doors for you, unless people recognize something in you that you don't even recognize in yourself. So, I came to work in the Center for Education Research, did lots of national studies across the country. The post-secondary student aid study was the biggest one. Went everywhere, Dallas, and anywhere there were Latinos, Dallas, L.A., Phoenix, Chicago, Puerto Rico even, to do these, to do the training. And again, back in the day, we’re talking paper-and-pencil interviewing. There were no online surveys like there are today, no websites, that kind of thing. So, I had to train the interviewers. And the two things that happened at RTI was I made them realize that instruments are, if you validate an instrument in English to make the data trustworthy, reliable, then you've got to do the same thing with the Spanish. And you've got to have it translated by a professional, not by a graduate student at UNC. Because when you're feeling blue, it's not te sientes azul. It just isn't. And so, I finally got them to recognize that they needed to have a review team, and that they also needed to have a protocol in place for hiring what were called bilingual interviewers. Again, just because you speak or can read a language doesn't mean you really speak it well, right. And so today I can honestly say that they actually have a group, a professional group at RTI that reviews all their translations and trains all of their interviewers, or people that are on those different surveys. But back in the day, 1981, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 [Laughter], it was Norma. And a lot of wonderful people in those areas. But again, I lived in North Carolina, but I didn't live here because I was always on the road. My mom, mommy was here. My dad had passed away, so mommy was here helping me raise the kids, watching them. Again, church members, the whole village helping me raise these two beautiful adults that I have today. So, yeah, I decided at that point that I needed to--. My son was graduating from high school, going on to college. He went to NC State, sorry--. He did. [Laughter]. Both my kids. So El Pueblo was advertising for a development director. I had to look up what development director was, and I thought, oh, I think I could do that. So, I interviewed with, at that time, Andrea Bassan was Executive Director, and Melanie Chernoff was Assistant. They interviewed me, again, saw something in me that I probably didn't see in myself, and they said: sure, come on, join us. And so, I took a half a salary cut in pay to go work at El Pueblo, which is not something I recommend to anybody. I'm sorry, you know. Now in my old age, I kind of miss that income I would have had at RTI. But notwithstanding, I didn’t gain money, but I gained me. Fiesta del Pueblo was the only fiesta with Lat--. At that time in the whole state. And so, we got the music, the comida. My daughter and I wouldn't miss a fiesta del pueblo before I got hired by them. And so, when I got hired, I made a commitment to take a certification course at Duke so that I could learn what a development director was supposed to do. And so, I'm happy to say that I kept the budget intact those two years that I was there, came pretty close to a million, if not more, of donations. And again, I just couldn't make my life work on the salary that a nonprofit paid at that time in my life. And so, my son was in college. I didn't realize that I was helping him pay for that. And so, it was hard. And so, I--. Again, a friend said, hey, look, there's this job at the state and it's got your name on it. It's you. And I'm like, okay, I'm not really looking for a job. I quit at El Pueblo—no, I was really looking for a job. I quit El Pueblo after the last fiesta of that year, 2005, 6, and I just need to chill.
DV: Actually, tell us more about El Pueblo. What kind of work was, does El Pueblo, or did El Pueblo do at the time?
NM: At the time, El Pueblo, like I said, we were like the only Latino advocate group out there, or at least visibly. So we did a lot of advocacies in terms of--. I remember, again, talking with state legislators, department chairmen on license, trying to get the license to be valid proof of residency regardless of your status. We did the Fiesta del Pueblo, which was the biggest thing, and we did a youth photo that I really miss. I don't see that anymore anywhere, but we used to do a youth photo and did it in Greensboro one year, we did it in Raleigh, I want to say Charlotte. But again, bringing young people in to have speakers and have them interact with each other and to grow. We had a lot of grants that we put together to work on things like literacy. We had a Smart Start grant that hired, who is now my best friend, Margarita Cassini, to go to the community, to trailers, to apartment complexes to talk about literacy and the importance of reading to children. We had a Susan G. Komen grant. My dear, dear, dear Colombian friend, Maria Eugenia Cerron, who passed away from cancer a couple years ago was our leader in that effort. So, again, we had a really, it was just a familia. I didn't have my familia here, and I hadn't had it while I was at RTI because I was all over the darn place. But here, that, I mean, I'm still, Melanie is still--. Melanie baked me a cake for my seventieth birthday. So, I mean, these are still people that I call family. And yeah, so that was what El Pueblo did for me. That was my richness. That was my, that's what I banked my retirement on. All those connections that I made those two or three years. And then I built on that when I got hired at the state. Again, my friend Carolyn Sexton hired me to work at Department—then the Division of Public Health, which is part of NC DHHS, working as a minority outreach specialist, a title that was just made up. There was no coordinator, there was no staff, it was just me. And we were trying to promote the state's children's health insurance program. At the time it had just been legislated by the Clinton Administration, and so we needed to get the word out to get--. I think the first year they only had like forty thousand slots, and they completely filled up.
DV: What year was this now?
NM: Early, mid-2000s; 5, 6, 7. And that range is when I started at the state. And again, with legislation and lobbying, both from organizations like NC Child, El Pueblo, and since we found lots of different groups started cropping up then across the state. AMEXCAN, I mean, just a whole bunch of Latino-led folks whose voices were now being listened to en masse at the state, at the general assembly. Those numbers grew and to the point where I think we had almost a hundred thousand children enrolled in our health check, it’s what we called it back then. I don't know what they're calling it now. But we were like 95% enrolled eligible children in the state when I left in 2019. So, I think, again, nothing I did--. But I had built this wonderful familia with El Pueblo and people that came to our Fiesta and then again, all these organizations that started developing, that across the state with, again, leadership from rural as well as urban areas in the state. Latin American Coalition in Charlotte. I mean, just True Bridge on the west end. I mean, all these wonderful organizations that supported the work that we were trying to do of getting families enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. And then what I thought is my most successful point in that career, in my life, is when I went to an event at the Hmong, that the Hmong community had in Morganton--. In Hickory. And when I walked in I felt like I had walked into the Brotherhood Social Club, except that they spoke Hmong and not Spanish. And so, it was just like stepping back in time, realizing that they were doing just what my family, my parents, and that whole cohort had done for us, trying to make the community recognize that they're there, that they deserve services, that they are good people. They're just great. The men were all in their little suits and we're all talking, and they brought up the mayor and they brought up the county commissioner. And I said, gosh, I'm like I'm at the Brotherhood Social Club, but they're speaking Hmong. It's so amazing. And the women were over in the table making all of their wonderful dishes. And I just, I felt I had finally been successful because not only was I getting to my people, as I call them, mi gente, regardless of their nationality, but I was also reaching these other communities that also needed to be included. So when the refugee community honored me by saying that I was one of their--. One of them, I felt successful. Not just because I felt I owed it to my community to do what I was doing, but to include them and to make them feel welcomed and entitled, was really wonderful. So, yeah.
DV: That’s wonderful.
NM: Yeah. I retired.
DV: How long did you work for the state before you retired?
NM: Twelve years only. I just--. It was time. Age was the factor. I could collect Social Security, which was--. And I figured, I wasn't making a whole lot of money, but I wasn't making--. I mean, comparable to what I was making as a state employee. And so, I thought I could live on this. And again, I've never been very good at financial, very good at financial strategies for my life, but I'm happy. It doesn't matter. I'm happy. And so, I stopped in 2019. I took my grandson to D.C., my granddaughter to Wilmington. I went to Sedona, and then I went to Cuba to do one of my last mission trips that I've done, I've done Nicaragua, Guatemala, and I got to do Cuba just before COVID.
DV: Mission trips, what do you mean?
NM: Well, most of them were church related. Or in the case of Cuba, it's a Witness for Peace/solidarity, which was created by my dear friend, Gail Phares, back in the mid-80s when the Iran-Contra reality was happening in Latin America. And again, we’re so tied to the migration to the U.S., and the push and pull at the border, we don't see that all of that has to do with our policies in D.C. I mean, I'm a, like I said, I'm a citizen by an act of Congress, not because I or my people voted to be citizens, right. So, the mission trips are usually church groups or non-profits that will take a group of folks in the U.S. to a country to get to see how people live. And to understand the policies of America, the U.S., and how those policies affect the people living in these neighboring countries, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. And so, Nicaragua, I went, I can't remember what year all of this. Guatemala was my first one, I went twice. And my son actually went on a mission trip his senior year in high school, and it makes you see--. Mission trips for me made me realize that we are really just all one. We’re all one, whatever your belief system is, if you believe in a God or don't believe, we're all--. When I went to Guatemala, I felt like I had gone back to Puerto Rico and my grandmother's stories of how my grandmother lived in this little hut with a dirt floor, and they would throw water on it to pat it down. That's what I was living in when I went to Guatemala fifty years later. And I'm like, we're all the same. We've had different histories maybe, different ways of getting to where we are. But--. pero somos uno. Somos uno en Dios, en el universo. We have that. There's a little DNA that just trickles through every person on the planet. We may look different. Our accents may be different. Our histories may be different. But basically, what we want is the same thing. It's happiness. What's that, what's the constitutional thing, the pursuit of happiness? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Well, they got that right. I mean that really is what every human being wants: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so mission trips let me see that. And Cuba was, again—my last name is Martí—so it was just awesome to drive into--. Fly into Martí International Airport. [Laughter]. I claim him as an uncle, but he was on that island and my family was from the other island. At some point the Martís from Europe were the same, and then they came through the Caribbean and settled in different islands. I always say he looks like my dad, when my dad was young, José Martí does. But anyway--. And just the struggle of the people of Cuba, and the struggle they're still living today, simply because we can't get over something that happened sixty years ago. It's just like, I don't know. I mean, people are starving and dying because of an ideology. That just doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't seem moral to me. I mean, we do it here, too, right? We have families who are hungry and starving that shouldn't have to be. But when you see it on an island, at the level--. And the spirit of the Cuban people is just amazing. And of all of the people, the Guatemalans, the Nicaraguans. Yeah, so I love that experience that my faith has brought into my, in my world. It complements the work that I do here, because, again, I've established good working relationships with the Guatemalan community, Nicaraguan, and Cuban. Sometimes we butt heads, but they're still my brothers and sisters. And so, it helps me do the work here as well.
This just reminds me that a couple of--. Last year, the NC Justice Center awarded me the Lifetime Defender of Justice Award. And when they called me, I thought, did you get the right number? I haven't done anything to defend justice. And so, it was like: yeah, Norma, you’ve been nominated and the board agreed that you should get this. And I'm like, I don't understand. And so, when I was telling all my friends, I said I don't understand why I got this award. And they're like, what do you mean you don't understand? And so, they started telling me, look, you've done this and this and this. And I'm like, yeah, but those were, I mean, they were my jobs, they were my faith. That was what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn't doing anything that I wasn't supposed to be doing. That we're not all supposed to be doing, right? And then they reminded me that not everybody does do everything that I do. And I said: oh, okay. Well then, okay, let's go! And so, I got three tables worth of friends to pay an outrageous amount of money to get a chicken dinner [Laughter], but to support the Justice Center and to receive the award with me, because it wasn't for me, it was for us as a community and as people that have struggled. So, I had some of my community health workers there. I had folks from DPH , and from different churches, and from Duke, and from UNC. I mean, again, everybody that's been a part of my world was invited to come and three tables worth of people showed up. So, I was pretty excited. That meant more to me than the award. [Laughter]. That did, yeah.
DV: Did you do the mission work for a long time, or is that something that you were doing after retirement?
NM: No, no, that's a thing I did while I was working.
DV: Okay.
NM: Yeah. 19--. 1999, 2000, 2001, I went to Guatemala.
DV: Oh, wow.
NM: 2017, I think, I went to Nicaragua. Oh, and then we went to Puerto Rico after the hurricane, as part of--. My own people needed help. And so, we went to Puerto Rico to help rebuild some homes of folks on the island. And then Cuba in 2019. It was the first one after retirement. The other ones were all done while I was working. Again, my job doesn't stop with the paycheck. It extends into the rest of the day and the world. I don't know, that's just how I've seen my life. It's all of it. It's what you do on Saturdays and Sundays. And, yeah, it's all of it.
DV: And I know that you didn't stay fully retired for long. [Laughter].
NM: Some would say I haven't retired. Yeah. Well, COVID came, and with COVID came a call from NC DHHS, one of my colleagues that I'd worked with had just been made Deputy Director, Ben Money. And Ben called me and said: we need you to help us. And I go, well, what's going on? I mean, I knew that--. I knew what was going on. I was, but what is it? He says: Norma, we have 75% of patients at Duke today that are Latino. And there's--. We're only 9% of the population. And I go, my God, what are you guys doing? How are you telling people? And he says, well, that's why I'm calling you. I want you to come on board and help us. And so I thought it was a volunteer thing because, again, I don't think of money as I should, but I don't. He says no, we want you to come back, we know you're retired so maybe part-time. I go, oh, okay, you're going to pay me. Yeah, sure, I'll do it. And so, but they paid me. But what I did was, that money, I gave it to people who were not working and who were, who needed groceries and whatever. Because I figured it wasn't supposed to be for me, it was supposed to be to help the community. So, I did. I mean, I helped me, too. I went to the beach, probably more than I've ever gone to the beach in North Carolina, for my sanity. But it was really great working with Dr. Cohen and her team of deputy directors. They stepped up. We would tell Dr. Cohen that the community had a concern in whatever, Durham, Hickory, whatever, at 8 o'clock at night, and that woman would be on a Zoom call with us to answer every single question, and she followed up with every single complaint that was given by the community. The first week that I came on board, she told us at the end of this week, I want you to give away a half a million dollars so that we can get organizations to start giving the message out. So, we did. We gave five organizations $100,000. And I told them, help us get the word out, help us create the right messages, help us to do this work, and I am so proud of that work that they did. I didn't do--. I didn't create any of that. They did it all, and we curved it. I mean, we got it. We got the place where the Latino population, by the time I left, a year later—was only supposed to be for six months, it turned out to be a year—the numbers were at least, by the time we had a vaccination available, the numbers of Latinos who had vaccinated was higher than any of the other groups in the state. And so, for that, I am eternally grateful, eternally grateful. And again, as with everything, you don't do a job and walk away. You let the institution know where their holes are. And there was holes that you had to call somebody in from retirement to help you reach out to a community? Why don't you have a position in the department, hello, that already has the pulse of the community and can tell you what needs to be told and can reach out immediately. I mean, like we did within a week. But again, I wasn't part of the department at that point. I was brought in. And so, yeah, so they listened and we, they're listening. And we have some really great people at NCDHHS today. You need more, but we have some really good folks there.
DV: Thanks for sharing all of that, Norma. Considering all of these experiences, what would you say were some of the challenges and barriers that you faced in your journey? How have you addressed them?
NM: I think the challenge is understanding what you're walking into. And again, if you don't have the skill set because of your education, then go find that skill set. Take a course. Get a certificate. Always, always, always speak up when something is a deficit. Don't take it on as another task to do on top of what you were hired to do. And I think that's the hardest thing to do. It’s like, can you take a look at this translation? You know, there are professionals that do that. I'll take a look at this today, but I think you need to--. I can give you some names and numbers and contacts for you to get a professional person to be looking at this translation. And so, it's those challenges, it's doing what you're charged to do and not more. Again, I never got paid more for being bilingual. I know I never was at the top of the payroll scale. And yet there were many times I was doing two jobs, one in English and one in Spanish. So yeah, that I think is the biggest thing. Prepare yourself, educate yourself, and don't let people use you. Stand up for what you know is your space and not just feel like: I've got to hold on to this job, so I've got to do what they're telling me. I've been blessed that every job I've had I've loved. But that doesn't mean each one of them didn't offer challenges. Like I said, the racism will slap you in the face. You take the slap, but then you just move forward and find a way to educate that person that slapped you so that they don't do it again, or at least not to your face. So, I don't know. Does that make sense?
DV: Yeah, yeah, it does. Thank you. Turning that around, instead of thinking of challenges; you've spoken of angels that helped you along the way. Besides the angels, what are some of the main factors that you can pinpoint that you think have helped you? It could be something abstract, like a way of thinking, or tangible, specific people like you mentioned.
NM: Yeah, I've mentioned all the, I think I've mentioned all the people, if not, forgive me. Those of you who know me who helped me, if I didn't mention you. It's been a long trajectory. So, I think it's we are not--. Again, I'm talking my generation of Latina women. We were not taught that we could do anything other than maybe be a mother, maybe be a wife. I mean, those were the expected roles. And I love my children. I love being an abuelita. I mean, that's like my favorite job today. But that is not all who we are. We are, we have a passion inside of us. And whatever that passion is, find a way to express it. Don't let anybody block you from--. I mean we have limitations. Obviously, I would have loved to finish my master's and always wanted a doctorate, so never did all that, but I never let that stop me from seeking opportunities that were presented to me and saying: well I don't know, maybe I could do that. I could do that. And I did do that. And I did do that not by myself, but again, by educating myself and seeking partners that had the resources or the skill sets that maybe I didn't have. Finding partners is probably the most important thing in terms of barriers because you're not going to knock it down by yourself. Hundreds of people have tried that for centuries. And I look at the African-American experience in North Carolina, and as--. What, three hundred, four hundred, five, four hundred years if my math is right, four hundred-plus years of constant, constant, constant, constant, constant, constant, constant drilling down on a people. To me, it's--. They're my heroes. The fact that they survived all of that negativity and God-awfulness that was imposed on them. And it's the same thing with our people. We've had some pretty nasty shit thrown at us in the decades of the United States of America. But we have to--. We're here and we're not going anywhere. This is our country. This is our home. This is where my grandchildren will make a difference in the world. From here, they will make a difference in the world. And so, be proud of that heritage, but don't let anybody diminish it. And teach them, as much as learn from them, teach them. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty abstract.
DV: Thank you.
NM: But I can't put it into like go do A, B, C. Whatever that teaching opportunity is for you, whether it's a certificate, whether it's a couple of classes. I mean, my latest thing is meditation. My goal in life now for the next however many years I'm allowed to breathe on this planet is to ask my Latina women, my daughters and my nieces and my nephews, and boys too, the nephews and the sons, to take a deep breath. And to find that inner peace that is there and whatever you want to call it; God, energy, spirit, whatever you want to call it, there is this force within all of us that's just really divine. And if you let it come out, people may see it. You may not see it, but other people will see it. And so, give yourself that time to just pause, reflect, and then go do something. It's not just say it, do it.
DV: So this is what you've been up to lately, meditation?
NM: Yeah. Well, my NC CEAL work is winding down. I had a wonderful review with Wake Forest University that's doing, for the first time ever, a Spanish language intervention called Pain Trainer for people with major pain or terminal pain that medication doesn't always resolve, it’s an eight-module intervention on finding that place of tranquility and calmness within you and not focusing on the pain. It's a wonderful medical intervention, right. You're talking about meditation as a tool in the world of health. And so, they've translated into Spanish. It's been wonderful being on that team at Wake Forest. Again, they had it professionally translated, but then they brought together this group of folks, me and ten other people across the state from different nationalities to look at it, to make sure that language spoke to all of our nationalities and that the people on the computer screen look like us. So, yeah, that's been a wonder. It's finished, but it's a wonderful project. Stay tuned and look for it. Again, it'll be online. It'll be free. I've done some work with Duke along the same lines in terms of meditation and training. I'm finishing a certificate with the Chopra Center on Meditation. Deepak Chopra is probably one of the most renowned U.S. medical doctors has addressed the value of meditation as a health equalizer. Again, it brings down all the bad things and brings up all the good things. So, blood pressure, heart, chronic disease, all those measures will lessen if you spend some time meditating. And so, my goal is, in the next four or five years, is to have that Casa de la Abuelita, where I can teach meditation to my girls. To all the women and men, Latinos. I am going to be a little segregationist about it. I really want to focus on the Latino population and teaching us to breathe, to see that inner beauty that's in all of us and that strength that we have inherited from our ancestors. Yeah, that's what I hope I can do in the next decade or so.
DV: That's awesome. Norma, I think we skipped your work with NC CEAL. Can you tell us a bit about how that's been going on?
NM: Sure, that's been the last two years, and it's been wonderful work. Year one, we were still kind of the tail-end, middle-end. Vaccination was going.
56:30 DV: First--. So you were working for the state and then you left that. They were hiring other folks to take over. So, was it immediately after that you started working for NC CEAL?
NM: Actually, I took the NC CEAL job thinking that I would be done with the state job in December. So I started in January of 2021.
DV: Oh, okay.
NM: But then they didn't hire the persons, the people, and so the state asked me to stay for a few more months, and so I was kind of double, double. But this isn't a job, it's not like nine to five, it's really just a, it's an honorarium that we get from UNC School of Medicine, Center for Community Partnerships and Health, I think is what CCPH stands for. So, I was able to do that. And those first few months was really just recruiting a team to work with us to help create materials that were still needed in our Latino community. And so, again, because of the work that I've done in the state, my dear friend Dr. Krista Perreira called me and says: come and join us on NC CEAL. I'd like you to be--. She's the academic co-lead, the community co-lead for the Latino, Latinx Community Response team. And so, what we did in year one was we brought together ten young--. And I told her, Krista, we need young people. She says, what? I said anybody under forty? Because, again, we want to build up the leadership of the Latino community. It's okay to get the executive directors of all of these organizations, but they're busy. Let's get some of the people that work with them, but that need to maybe get some leadership and connect with each other as leaders, young leaders in the state. And so, we got ten folks together. They're a wonderful team. I would name them all out, but I'll forget one of them. I should have brought my list of them, but I don't want to forget any of them. But again, from north, south, east, and west of North Carolina, all of them working either community colleges or nonprofit organization. Again, we covered every nationality we could of the Latino world. And we, what's missing in the messaging for COVID. And so, everything was like, it's just too complicated. I mean, it's too many words, too much, people just want bullets. And so we ran across a colleague at Arizona State University, Dr. Gilbert Lopez, who had begun a series of cómicas, animated cómicas, with the gentleman that did Coco, the movie [Laughter].
DV: Wow.
NM: Did some of the animations of the original ones. And so, he needed additional funding to create some more of these animations. And so, as a team, we agreed that we could use our money for that to happen. So, and we gave them the themes. We gave them five themes. One was the importance of masking, the importance of vaccination of young people, because it was just beginning to give it to little--. The five-to-eleven-year-olds. Mental health as a result of the isolation. The chip myth that they're putting a chip in us because they're going to go out to get us. And, oh gosh, I can't remember what the fourth one was, the fifth one, but we created these wonderful--. We? The animation team that Arizona had contracted created them. We as a team made sure that the words were the words we wanted to have. So, we have these wonderful, rich characters: Tio Rigo, Doctora Susana, Mama Lucha, the Abuelita. It's just, it was, they're just beautiful characters that represent, I mean, they tend to be a little Tex-Mex. But even as a Puerto Rican, I felt like I could relate to anyone, I could relate to the Abuelita, she is me. And so, I thought, okay, this is great. So, we created the animations. And then on a fluke, again, you just ask. Sometimes you're afraid to ask. I asked the animation company. I said these are great, but we don't always have connectivity in our rural parts. I said, well, how much more would it cost us if you printed them into like little cómicas? And he's like, we'll just throw that in. We'll send you the file. That's no big deal. It didn't cost us anything except the printing, which again, we had to pay for printing. And then we ended up one day at El Centro Hispano, like four of us, boxing them so that we could ship them to all the other, the other rest of the team. And then we realized we didn't have money to ship them. And so, I took some and, and Prudencia took some, and Hilda took some, and we all took some, and on our way home or whenever we were in that part of the state, we dropped off boxes to our colleagues so that they would have their cómicas to pass out at festivals, at vaccination events, at anything they were doing COVID-related. Those were a big hit, so much so that La Conexión, the Conexión USA newspaper here in North Carolina, took them and for every week in, I want to say, end of November-December 2021, they published a full page of the Comica with a QR code. Is that what they're called? That if you clicked on it, it would take you to their website and then you could see the animation of the Comica, right. Same thing, but one is visually and sound and the other one you have to know how to read, right? So, it was amazing the volume of hits that we got on those animations. So that was our success story for year one. And then for year two, the funding was different, and we ended up just having an African American Latino group, so it was only three or four Latinos, three or four African Americans. It was a little harder to get to what was still missing of the messaging of COVID at that point. We're in 2022, vaccines have been out. The boosters are out. So, we focused on little kids, right, because the rate of vaccination of little kids is so low. And we all agreed that we would create a multi-ethnic, multi-racial coloring book with a lot of the same kid characters that were in our original series. So, we still have the Doctora Susana, and this time she's talking to the kids that were in the series before, in the other five cómicas. And yeah, yeah, disclaimer that I did use the names of my children [laughter] on the cómicas because I could give parental consent without a problem, right? [Laughter]. So, I used their first names at least so that you have a Bianca and a Saul character. And they just, they did this really great coloring, the verbal part of it, the team came up with, right. And we got it approved by the doctors to make sure we were saying the protocol that was correct for masking and getting your vaccinations and stuff. And then we got a local artist, a Latino artist, to do the illustration. Rafael Osuba, who is a Raleighite, I think he lives in Raleigh, did the animation out of his company. He and another animator did the whole thing. So, it's all, again, created locally by a local group of Latinos and African Americans. The words came out of them, and then the animation came out of the local Latino artists. So that's our latest claim to fame. And then we did, as part of year two, a series of trainings on the importance of mental health, because, again, the team felt that that was the one thing that we could still do a lot with in terms of COVID, is to let people know that this isolation and survival, if you survived infection changed you and changed your family. And you need, and you may need help, and you may need to talk about it. So, we sent--. We had sixty slots for community health workers to do a twelve-hour training, so we did it in three four-hour sessions. En Español, one, and then two in English. And we trained--. Of the sixty slots, again, they had to come to all three sessions, and we paid them, of course, to do this because we don't--. That's their time, and either they're missing work or they could use the money, as we all can, right. So, they were paid to take the training. So, these promotoras de salud took the training and we have, I think, about forty-some that took all three sessions out of the 60. And so, they now have this wonderful toolkit of how to talk to people about approaching their mental health and the resource, like where to go to get a professional, a practitioner. So, hopefully, if we get funded for year three, we're going to take that up a notch and continue working with the community health workers.
DV: That’s wonderful.
NM: Again, challenges, universities are a bureaucracy, just like the state is a bureaucracy. Things don't happen quickly. You don't get paid on the day, on the calendar. It's whenever it gets processed by all of the different departments and somebody signs it and says it's okay. But eventually people do get their money, and eventually we do get a product and we can share it with the community. So, it's the consistency and the hitting--. Knocking on that door, knocking, knocking, knocking, knocking, until somebody opens it and does what they need to do with it. Because these are our dollars, these are federal dollars we pay into the federal pocket, all of us, whether we're documented or not documented, we all pay into the federal coffers. And so, these projects should involve and recompense the people participating appropriately. And we made sure that, as part of the NC CEAL effort, every time we use community members they were being paid for their time. Not a lot, but they were getting paid, which is important. Yeah, so that's kind of like my--. When I'm not meditating, I'm working on NC CEAL stuff.
DV: You keep busy.
NM: I keep busy. And I have grandchildren. I have a one-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a ten-year-old, soon to be eleven. So, they also keep me busy. And I'm blessed. I'm rich. I am the richest woman in Raleigh.
DV: [Laughter]. That's great. Your story is very inspiring. And as you know, we are doing a series on Latino leaders, and this is why I'm talking to you. So, I wanted to ask you what leadership means to you. How would you define that? If you think about your experiences, what do you think leadership means to you?
NM: To me, it's collaboration. It's looking for a door, a window, someone to show you that door or for you to show them that door that needs, that has a need behind it. It means doing the work but also asking for help. I think leadership is you, the you in unity, okay? Not only with what you see around you; helping to lift everyone that crosses your path, not just yourself. And you fail if you're just doing it for you, whatever that may be, but if you're doing it because you see all these other people that need to be lifted, that need to walk through that door with you. That to me is, again, the leadership is you, all of you, in unity with what you see around you. Again, lifting everyone that crosses your path, not just yourself.
DV: You had mentioned to me once, well, before, during our pre-interview, that you were proud of having opened doors for others behind you. Well, that's wonderful.
NM: Yeah, that's my claim to fame. Yeah, I hope I've done that for my children as well as for the folks who are not my children. But again, just reflecting, we need to stand tall. We need to be proud of who you are. And I don't know that I always was in my twenties and thirties, and maybe until I came to North Carolina in my forties. I think that's when I started to realize that there was all this potential, there's all these things out there. Like I realized that I should have had a Master's in Public Health because I love what public health does, right? My mom and dad did a lot by coming to the states. They sacrificed; all of our ancestors paved the way for us. So, I see it as my job, your job, all of our jobs to pave the way for that next generation of Latino leaders. Stay tall, be proud of who you are, the hard work that all of your family has done. I mean you may not see it as doing it for you, but they've given up a lot of their lives for you to have the life that you have. So, take all of that and don't let it go to waste. Pave the way not only for yourself—make yourself better at every step—but also bring other people along with you as you're moving along that timeline.
DV: Thank you so much Norma for sharing your story with us.
NM: Thank you for letting me, it's been such fun sharing and remembering what I can. [Laughter]. Of this long and wonderful life of Norma Martí. Gracias, Daniel, gracias.
DV: No, gracias a ti, Norma.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 May 31
Date of Transcription: 2023 August 28 / Revisions: 2023 September 22
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1010 -- Martí, Norma.
Description
An account of the resource
At a young age, Norma Martí migrated with her family from Puerto Rico to a diverse, working-class neighborhood in northwestern Indiana, part of metropolitan Chicago. She shares her formative experiences there, what enabled her to attain a college education, and her encounters with discrimination in her first role as an educator. She subsequently worked for the Census Bureau in Illinois and the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in North Carolina, enhancing both organizations’ reach of Latino communities. In the late 1990s, Norma decided to focus on advocacy and outreach as Development Director for El Pueblo, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh. By the mid-2000s, in a new role as Minority Outreach Specialist for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS), Norma leveraged the connections she had built with various Latino organizations to expand Medicaid and children’s health insurance in Latino communities across the state. In 2020, Norma was called back from retirement to NC DHHS to help coordinate the agency’s COVID-19 response in the Latinx population. She has continued that work through her current role as Latinx Community Co-Lead for COVID Response for North Carolina’s Community Engagement Alliance (NC CEAL). She concludes by calling for unity and perseverance in Latino communities, and sharing words of wisdom for future leaders, which will include her grandchildren.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-05-31
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29346">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1010_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/f89a388ba7f21edd7ab09b287a9a71ea.mp3
2afbf8e01b8fa873bea769416b85d944
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/60c473a9b2d7b3ca4bdeeb65b7569816.pdf
7d14ddcfbc9597cfab8de3d9626a5ac1
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1007
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2022-11-18
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Benítez, Hannia.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Directors, NGOs and institutes
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1992
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Guatemala
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Sanford -- Lee County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-90.345759 15.5855545),1992,1;POINT(-79.1749267578125 35.490474700927734),1997,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Velásquez, Daniel.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Born in Guatemala but raised in Siler City, North Carolina, Hannia Benítez currently serves her local communities as Deputy Director at El Vínculo Hispano/The Hispanic Liaison’s office in Lee County and as Chair of Siler City’s Immigrant Community Advisory Committee (ICAC). Hannia shares her foundational experiences, including the need to be her family’s interpreter during her childhood and her engagement in several clubs throughout High School. A few years later, the advent of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program helped her during a difficult time in her personal life by opening opportunities for employment and education. While working in the housing sector, Hannia joined the Board of Directors of El Vínculo Hispano, eventually serving as board chair and later transitioning to staff as deputy director of El Vínculo’s first satellite office in Lee County. Lastly, she shares her experience during her first year serving in ICAC, which she explains has been a time for asking questions and learning the workings of local government in order to position their efforts in the coming years. Throughout, Hannia shares advice for future leaders by describing her sense of responsibility for the people and communities that she serves while showing grace and kindness in the face of adversity.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Hannia Benítez by Daniel Velásquez, 18 November 2022, R-1007, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29337
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Community and social services and programs; DREAMers and DACA; Family; Leadership; Social networks
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Directores de ONG e institutos
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Nacida en Guatemala pero criada en Siler City, Carolina del Norte, Hannia Benítez sirve actualmente a sus comunidades locales como Subdirectora en la oficina del Condado Lee de El Vínculo Hispano/The Hispanic Liaison, y como Presidenta del Comité Asesor de la Comunidad Inmigrante (ICAC, por sus siglas in inglés) de Siler City. Hannia comparte sus experiencias fundacionales, incluyendo la necesidad de ser la intérprete de su familia durante la infancia y su participación y liderazgo en varios clubes a lo largo de la escuela secundaria. Unos años más tarde, la llegada del programa federal de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA, por sus siglas en inglés) la ayudó durante un momento difícil de su vida personal, ya que le abrió oportunidades de empleo y educación. Mientras trabajaba en el sector de vivienda, Hannia se unió a la Junta Directiva de El Vínculo Hispano, eventualmente sirviendo como presidenta de la junta. Luego se unió al personal como subdirectora de la primera oficina satélite de El Vínculo en el Condado Lee. Por último, comparte su experiencia durante su primer año de servicio en ICAC, que explica ha sido un tiempo para hacer preguntas y aprender el funcionamiento del gobierno local con el fin de posicionar sus esfuerzos en los próximos años. En todo momento, Hannia comparte consejos para futuros líderes describiendo su sentido de responsabilidad hacia las personas y las comunidades a las que sirve, y mostrando a la vez gracia y amabilidad ante la adversidad.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Hannia Benítez por Daniel Velásquez, 18 November 2022, R-1007, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios; Movimiento de jóvenes 'Soñadores' y Acción Diferida; Liderazgo; Familia; Redes sociales
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: Hannia Benítez is Deputy Director at El Vínculo Hispano, the Hispanic Liaison, and Chair of ICAC, the Immigrant Community Advisory Council at Siler City. I'm Daniel Velásquez. I am interviewing you today for your oral history. Thank you for being with me today. It is November 18, 2022.
Hannia Benítez: Thank you for having me, Daniel.
DV: Hannia, let's get started by talking about your early life, your background, and set the context for us.
HB: Okay, so my name is Hannia Benítez. I was born in Guatemala, but I came to the United States at an early age. I grew up in Chatham County, North Carolina. I am the oldest daughter de mi mami and the oldest granddaughter out of more than twenty grandchildren. I identify as Hispanic Latina. I am currently deputy director for the Hispanic Liaison.
DV: Awesome. Great.
HB: And I am a mother of three beautiful children. I have a twelve-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a two-year-old. Married for ten years. And we also have a little fur baby, Milo. [Laughter].
DV: Great, so you were born in Guatemala. How long have you lived in United States then?
HB: It’s been over 25 years. I was born in ’92. I came to the United States when I was about four or five years old, but our first thought was Los Angeles, where my grandmother was living, and she currently lives there. And then a few years, within one or two years, then we moved here to North Carolina to join the rest of mis tíos, my mother’s youngest brothers and sisters that actually lived in Siler City, so that is where I grew up in.
DV: Maybe just tell me a little bit more about growing up here in North Carolina, in Siler City.
HB: Well, how do I describe it? Well, I guess when we--. I guess just from the beginning, so just to give you context my mother was a single mother with two daughters. My other sister, that is two years younger than I. She used to be a, what would you call it, like a pre-school teacher in Guatemala, so coming to the area she would, when we first got here, she would try to teach us, well mostly me, the basics of el abecedario, the alphabet, the numbers. Everything, she would do it in Spanish because she tells me, te lo voy a enseñar en español and allá en la escuela lo aprendes en inglés, so I’m going to teach it to you in Spanish, and you need to learn it in English in school. And I did just that. Whenever she came here, she worked for--. She started working several odd jobs, but then stayed at the chicken plant at that time. She worked there for several years. The biggest priorities, the biggest important things that she would say, edúquense, you know, educate yourself, learn a lot. And so, our biggest focus was on that, just learning as much as we could, learning the language, learning so many different topics. In school, being the oldest, I often found myself being like the interpreter or the translator for my mom, and then it translated with other family members. And because they would have this expression, like, para eso vas a la escuela. That's why you're going to school. So, you need to know what it is. And sometimes it would start with school messages that were sent home, and they were only in English. And she's like, ¿Qué dice? What did that say? And so, I would tell her mom, they're talking about this, this, this, this and that and trying to get her to understand what they were trying to say and what they wanted her to do. And then that then translated to the other aspects of our lives where I started having to understand how other systems work to be able to explain it to my mom, but at the same time there's still always that passion in school I loved. I'm not going to say reading, no I love reading, it was writing that I just struggled with it because there were so many thoughts in my mind, I was like I don’t know how to put it bien. Yeah, I always loved it. We were in the traditional ESL program. When I say traditional, it would be they pull all of us that are native Spanish speakers. They pull us out of the class. They teach us some English, and they put us back in. Unfortunately, I saw many other students that that was not helpful for. But, you know, I can say I was a little bit more fortunate that although my mom didn't speak English, but she had the basic foundations in Spanish that she just kept on trying at home. And then I also tried to learn everything. I was like, okay, I got to learn about, you know. So, I was in the ESL program for several years. Then I graduated out of it, I think, maybe second or third grade. And it transitioned into the AIG program, the Academic and Intellectually Gifted. And there was a group of other students that we grew up with that were also part of the ESL program that were in that as well. So, it was just a lot of that focus on education and trying to learn. And so, that was just elementary school. Like I said, being the oldest, I was always a para arriba para abajo with a single mom. The father figures that stepped in were obviously mis tíos, and so, I would love to be with them outside. You would not see Hannia in the traditional role of being in the kitchen. My mom would always be like, Hannia, come and learn how to cook. And I would look from a distance, and I'm like, okay, I know the basics. I know how to do eggs. And then I would, I'm like, ma, I have homework. Tengo mucha tarea. And so, I would go back into the room, go do my homework. And when I finished that, then I would be outside. You would see Hannia, there was a storage next to the trailer, and you would see Hannia on top of the roof and jumping from the roof and playing with my male cousins and yeah, just doing the non-traditional female roles. And it was a little bit different with my younger sister because she loved to cook. She loved learning all the traditional dishes that was going on in the kitchen. So yeah, that's what you would see. Hannia would be out there throwing rocks. We would just be using our imagination outside and just wandering around with my cousins. And then there was the school, so my focus was school, family, school, family. It continued all through middle school as well, and then high school the same way, very much inclined to education. Middle school is when I started learning a little bit more about clubs, like Beta Club, and obviously in part because of the academics. But in high school is when we started seeing more different types of clubs because middle school it was the academics, but then other areas that I started desarrollando my leadership was in the communities of faith, when I was 12. Which was something we didn't grow up with. My mom never talked about religion, none of that. Like, we never knew about churches. It was until about--. I was 11 or 12, that one of my uncles got married, and his wife was going to church. It was funny, because they would always take me, I was their mini chaperone when they were dating. So everywhere they were going, they would take me. And so, one of the places that they started taking me was at a Community of Faith in Asheboro, about 30 minutes from Siler City. And so, I remember the first day I went to that congregation, I saw youth about my age that were playing music. At that time, I was also in band in school, playing the trumpet, the quietest musical instrument around.
DV: Sure. [Laughter].
HB: And I remember seeing a kid about my age. I was 11, and he was 13. And he was up there. And he was playing the instrument. It sounded so cool. Other kids my age was playing piano. I was like, oh my gosh. I want a space. I want to be here and see other things. And so, within that space, I quickly asked the leaders they call them I think ushers in English but at the church they would call them diáconos or servidores and I was like I want to help. Put me wherever, and they were like okay we'll do that. And Hannia was up there sweeping in church, and every service they would have Hannia in childcare in the back and in sala-cuna or the nursery. And so, I would be out there and I would love engaging and they would talk about, okay you know Sunday school, teach this to the children, learn about this. So I was doing that but then also learning some of the other things that the church leadership were doing and I loved seeing that, and I loved starting getting engaged into it at an early age. It was the church treasurer, and they were like, do you know how to write properly? Do you know how to do this? And I was like, yes, I love it, I love it. You see, Hannia in that context very much engaged. So that started middle school age. And then high school, it continued. But then in high school, that's where other clubs were available. That was like FBLA, Future Business Leaders of America. There was obviously Beta Club. I was briefly in HOSA, Health Occupational Students, something like that. It was very brief. But then the other one that really stood out for me, it was called AIM Club, Action, Inspiration, Motivation. And so, at that time, there were, everybody, I guess, unofficially called it the Hispanic club, because it was mostly Hispanics and mostly immigrant students. The first year I was there, I was excited. I was seeing everybody. Everybody engaged and that looked like me, because in the other clubs, I was the only Hispanic. And because I joined that group, there were other Hispanic kids that were coming in. But in this one it was all of us Hispanics. And so, I went in there, I think it was year two that I went in there, or year three, I don't remember, but then I became president for that club. And then at the same time becoming president for FBLA and learning more about the leadership, learning more about the roles, how do meetings run, with FBLA, everything about business and things like that. And so, and that's where I met, his name was Donald Byrne, and then he comes into my life a couple years later. But after high school, I got pregnant at an early age. I was 17, so it was my last year of high school. And how would I say it? Thankfully, all my other friends that were part of, by that time it was called SLI, Scholars Latino Initiative with UNC, for the most part, they were also the same students that were with me in the ESL program, in elementary school AIG program. They were also in there, several of them DACAmented and things like that, which is another group that we were in in high school. Thankfully by high school, those who were in there and fulfilled certain requirements, although they were undocumented, where able to go to the university. And so that's where my pause kind of ended. At the high school level, thankfully, I was able to graduate, but by that time I became a mother. Unfortunately, not only within family but with other folks I would get a lot of comments like, okay, this is the end of your life. This is it. This is over for you. And I remember trying to, I was like, okay, maybe I can't go to university, maybe I can go to a local community college. And I applied, and I got rejected. I got a letter that said because I didn't have a social security number and I was like, pero porque no? So, I was like, okay, so what do I do now, like--. And so at that time me ajunté con el padre de mi hijo. So, I got together with my son's dad. We were together for a brief couple of years. There were a couple of years of I would say just pause. A little bit of darkness throughout those years, but then I got married. Couple years, I got married in 2012, two years after I graduated. I met my now husband. And I'm not gonna say it was a fairytale love story because there were a couple of hardships in the beginning as well. But within, let's say year one, year two of our marriage, that's where they passed the deferred action. So at that point, I was able to go back to school. If I wanted to I could go to work. I could pursue so many other things, and so, by that year was I had just had my daughter, my second child. And so not only the need for a household, taking care of our household expenses, but then also an opportunity for me to get out of the house. I started going back to work. I loved to work. I was trying to learn not only the basics, but other things and it was easy for me to keep on picking up. It was a little bit hard in the beginning because a lot of folks se desesperaban like employers that they would get a little bit frustrated because I was also learning the gap.
DV: And this was around 2014?
HB: 2014, ’13 yeah. And there were a good several jobs that dismissed me in the beginning. I was like, man, but I want to, I want to learn, I'm trying to learn this, things like that. A lot of: you're not compatible, or we're cutting back positions and roles, and we’re like, okay. At that time, that's when I decided to go back to school, and I went to CCCC, Central Carolina Community College. That would have been around, that would have been around 2016, I believe, where I went to get my nursing aid certificate. After that I started, I moved back to Siler City and I was working at night at a nursing home, and coincidentally, I--. how would I describe it to you? So, it's a dead-end street where I used to live. On the sides of that street there were the apartments and that the end of the street was a nursing home. So, I lived in those apartments and the nursing home was there. So, at night I was working there. And during the day, obviously, my kids were at school one of them, the other one was still small, but family was helping me with her. And I would notice that in that apartment complex, the maintenance man was almost unofficially in charge. And so, but there were some tenant issues that were going on. And one day the owner actually was there. No, his name was Tom Smith. The day that I met Tom Smith was when we were urgently trying to find a place. We, being my younger sister and I, and we were trying to find a place on our own because we couldn't be at my mom's house. It was too crowded. And we were desperately trying to apply. And we were calling. And we're like, we're really interested. We really want to get in there. And then, I don't know why, but the owner went to the unit that we were at. He's like, I wanted to see what was this commotion about two sisters so urgently trying to get an apartment. Like what's the big deal? But he just, I guess he didn't realize that it was a big step for us. It was not a luxury apartment. The homes are--. They’re still there, those apartments are still there, but they're one of the oldest apartment complexes in Siler City. And so, he went there, and because of my observation of how the process went when you move into an apartment, when he went in there, and I guess he just, I don't know what he expected out of two Hispanic young ladies coming into an apartment on their own. And I was like, okay, I'm ready for the movement inspection, and I need you to fix this, this, this, and that. And hey, I was pointing things out in the apartment. And he's like, how do you know that? And I'm like, oh, we did this whenever I moved in somewhere else and he's like, oh okay. He's like where are you working at now? I told him I was working over there. And I remember just blurting out like well whenever you need help just reach out to me, and he did literally within that week. He's like, what about I give you a contract out. And that's when I started into the housing.
DV: Okay.
HB: And I was Liaison Services. And so, I essentially--.
DV: You clearly impressed him. [Laughter].
HB: Something happened, but I was very loud and there was another person that had been there with the team that did not like me. And every chance she got she let him know, let the owner know, and copy him in there like she's not listening, she's not learning, and I'm wasting my time with her. And because she was tasked with training me with the technical things. And there were some things that I still, it hadn't clicked yet, but I was trying. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm sure. And then my husband-- like I would read her emails and I would be crying. And my husband would be like, why don't you just quit? I'm like, no, it's because I'm not going to learn. This is free training on housing and things like that. He's like, oh my gosh. So, I was climbing my way through that, but I was trying to learn everything that had to do with housing, not only with the process, with people moving in, the inspections, working with con--. Vendors, things like that, so just taking advantage of that. I eventually transitioned from working in the nursing home to housing. I had to go because I was in a dementia unit and a lot of my patients there were passing away, and it was just a very hard thing for me.
DV: Oh, yeah.
HB: So as much as I loved it, I was like, I can't, but I then transitioned into housing. And that's where I was learning more about it and being very vocal, and I would talk to the owner and be like hey, you know, we started learning about how to do the inspections and then prioritizing. And I would be working with him, and I would be like, hey, Tom, you need to fix this. You need to fix that. And then because a lot of the people that live there, they're like, why do you care? I'm like, because this is housing, like, you can't have a hole in your roof. You can’t have your door falling apart and things like that. And I understood the business part of it, because looking at the numbers, there was no money coming in because the homes were averaging between $300 to $500 a month. $500 for a three bedroom but, you know, not a lot of repairs have been done for several years. So, I started pushing to do a couple of repairs in the time that we were in there. A couple of--. About a year or so later, that's when I reached out to Cardinal Chase, which was my second place in housing. I don't recall what was the incident, but I remember going to the office and talking to the manager there. I was talking to her because I was looking for a different apartment for somebody. And I explained to her, I'm actually with Brookwood Farms--. Brookwood Apartments, and this so-and-so needs this. And she's like, how do you know about housing? I'm like, oh, this is what I'm doing here. And then she's like, okay, well, I'm leaving. So, do you want this job? [Laughter]. So, I was like, are you serious? And she's like, yeah. She told me where to submit my résumé. And I was like, okay, this is crazy. I’m going to do it, so I did it. And then by Monday of the next week, they were like, interview. I was on the job within like two, three weeks.
DV: Wow.
HB: And it continued my role with management, learning more about that, a lot of training in that program. But throughout these roles, I was also very intentional about advocating for the people we were serving. And it's something that I've carried desde pequeña. And then I felt that responsibility and my role in them and really letting the owners know, hey, it's much more than your money, much more than the rents. And within that second role, since it was low income housing, I would try to figure out ways with the tenants there about moving in. During their stay, trying to come up with payment plans, because there were so many people that were like I don't have a full amount of money. I'm like, it's okay let's breathe and I would joke around with them I'm like I'm not going kick you out unless you kick yourself out. And they're like oh my gosh, thank you. I'm like no, really, don't thank me. This is the least that I can do because this is your home. This is not just something that I can just up and say, screw y'all, go ahead and leave. So, it was around that time I was with Cardinal Chase. In comes Don Byrne. Around that time frame, Donald Byrne who was one of the teachers from Jordan Matthews at AIM Club, that was almost like a supervisor during their club meetings, that he reached out. And he's like, hey, you know, can I ask you to join me on a meeting one day with the Hispanic Liaison? And I was like, okay, I've heard of the Liaison because my mom always uses their services. And sure, let me go to a meeting. He's like, it’s a board meeting. And they're looking for directors. And he had reached out to another former classmate as well. And within meeting one, they were like, do you, would you want to be crazy enough to join us? And I'm like, of course, thank you. So, I joined the Board of Directors. At that time, it would have been 2016, with the Hispanic Liaison. And I think by the next year, that's when I became Board Chair with the Liaison.
DV: Did you continue your other job in housing during this time?
HB: Yeah, it was during that time, because I didn't join the Liaison officially as a staff member until 2021. So, during that time, 2017, the Liaison--. 2015, 2016, there was a brief year where the Liaison closed. And so, I came in when they reopened. And so, the ’17, the organization was kicking back up and I would hear the reports from Ilana, from Janet, about all the work that they were doing, and I was like, just very impressed. Not only about the work they were doing but their passion for it, with work in our community, the issues that they were addressing. And so coincidentally around that same time, that's where Hispanic leaders from Sanford reached out to us in Siler City about opening up, well discussing opening up a different organization in this area, or a satellite office for the Hispanic Liaison because there's no organization.
DV: Here in Sanford?
HB: In Sanford, yeah. There was in 2000--. I don't know what, in the early 2000s, there was a Hispanic Task Force here in Lee County, but it dissolved within a few years. So, after that, there was nothing in this area. And a lot of Lee County residents were going to Siler City to get, ask for help.
DV: Like what kind of help? What does the Liaison do, or what do you do with the Liaison?
HB: So, there's different aspects of the kind of work that we do because we work with our community, but we also work with local nonprofits, government agencies, law enforcement agencies. So, with our community, we like to say we're the Google of our community. Todo. We do literally everything. Let's say for a community member comes in and asks for assistance. Generally, they might come for, where can I find assistance for X, Y, Z? And so, if we are aware of a resource, we let them know and we get them connected to the resources, or if the resources are not available, we become that resource. But it can be anywhere between housing issues, education, it can be anywhere between mental health, health as well. We also talk about documents, helping community members obtain important documents for themselves, for their children, for their family. That could be either US documents or foreign documents. We do a lot of interpretation. If, let's say, a community member comes to us and says, hey, look, I've tried to reach out to this agency. Pero no me entienden. Like, they don't understand what I'm trying to say. And so, we hear their story and then we essentially translate it to something that XYZ system can understand.
DV: I see.
HB: And so, we help a lot with financial aid assistance with the hospitals. In the peak of the pandemic, we did a lot of emergency assistance for rentals, utilities, hospital assistance as well. We had a solid-- currently have also a solidarity fund that were, that's for mixed status families or no status families where the primary income earner was impacted, the family was impacted financially and so many community members were not, you know, not eligible or there was a disruption with them getting some financial assistance during the pandemic time period. And so, it was a way to help our community as well, but those are just some minor examples. We also have a free immigration clinic, so a community member can reach out to us. We try to get them connected with a free initial consultation with an immigration attorney. We also get them connected if, depending on their case, try to give them information, for example, like the Battered Immigrant Project with NC Legal Aid, for several asylum seekers, getting them information about the immigrant refugee project. So many different projects that our community members don't know are available. But then the biggest thing is education and helping our community members go and understand the process. US systems that they might not understand or they might need a little bit more guidance because the ultimate goal is for our community members to feel empowered and that they have a space with a Hispanic Liaison that they can feel at home, but then they also could feel heard and that we're advocating for them and regardless of the field, so we don't limit ourselves to just one field.
DV: What an amazing resource for the community to have.
HB: Yes, and we work, that's with the community, and then also we work, like I said, with other non-profits, government agencies, businesses as well, so they can also--. How do I say? We give them guidance and suggestions, recommendations as to, hey, this is how you can better serve our community, or you need to consider this other perspective to try to break down barriers, miscommunication, misinformation. A lot of misconceptions of, oh, that's a cultural thing, actually, it's not. For example, oh, it's a cultural thing that Hispanics live all together in one house. And I'm like, actually, no. There's so many other factors that's out of a necessity that they are having to be together. And breaking down those kinds of examples. Or why is it that the child is interpreting? No, we don't. And because--. We faced that with my mother. I can't talk to you. You're a little kid. And there might not have been interpretation services available for my mom. Or even now, within systems that, let's say, she's going to a medical appointment or she's going to get some services, the interpreter might be there, and the provider is there or whoever is providing the service but it's the interpreter looking at my mom and the provider not once do they look at my mom at any point. And I was like, okay, so--.
DV: Are they here for me?
HB: Yeah, and not only that but then my mom starts, for example, like she starts talking to an interpreter and the interpreter was like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. Or actually, ask the provider. And then they're just kind of like, mm, no sé si le pregunto.
DV: There’s tension.
HB: Yeah, and sometimes, even at those points of contact, systems are improving. Not saying anything, but there's certain points in the process that need to be addressed and need to be improved. And so, we bring in those recommendations with agencies and say, hey, this can work better. Ultimately with a goal of positively impacting our community and that they feel empowered and comfortable at the point of service. Many times, I get agency leaders that say, well it's not that we're not trying, I'm like, no sweetie, it's not about that. It's also the impression that somebody gets when they're interacting with either staff or leadership. You may feel the same way if you go somewhere else and people are disconnected with you when you're getting a service. Thankfully you are able to speak the language and you can say, hey, what's up with that? You know, hey, what's going on with this? But many of times it's not even the language barriers. It's a lot about the relationships, the trust that's within providers. I always talk about the example of my mother and my children. Although they're in a dual language program, they understand Spanish and they're trying their best to speak Spanish, but there are times that they, each of them are speaking their own language, but they still understand each other because they've got that connection, they have that relationship. And my mom knows my child's intention, my child knows my mom's intention as to what we're trying to get to. And it's all about the relationship, versus it's, oh, here you go, and that's it.
DV: Can you pick out certain things in your background that you think helped to prepare you, that were part of your journey and led you to this pathway to leadership that you are in now? You mentioned for instance, translating for your mother and that is still something you do today in this role, you translate for other people, navigate systems, things like that.
HB: One of the biggest things--. And I constantly have to remind myself, because if you look at other places they think, oh, leadership is with the degree, or if you have something behind your name, or you--. I would say the non-conventional ways that leadership is portrayed. But leadership, from what I have seen, is you are getting yourself down and dirty with your community. You're there on the ground. And what you're doing is you're eventually translating to people that don't know what's going on and letting them know this is what’s happening, and this is what needs to go next. And this is what needs to go next. And sometimes I mention within people, if I, when I say deputy director, in my head I was like, maybe that's just for other people to understand where I am. But eventually, I'm just another person in the community. I'm just another--. I'm just like you and I. Which is funny, because my mom would always tell me, eres una directora. You've got to look like one. You got to act like one. I'm like, wait, what? What do you mean, ma? And she's like, no, you got to look like a directora. Almost like if I have to be in a suit and in a tie or I don't know, heels or like a businessperson that we would see at FBLA, you know, the Future Business Leaders of America. That's the image that they portray. A leader is this and you know, and you know that they’re here.
DV: They look the part traditionally.
HB: Yes. And that their presence can be felt every time they're in the room and like they're the highlight of everything and I'm like, I don't like that. And I do remember, I'm like, okay, I'm learning, that's what I need to be. And it's funny because sometimes people come around like, okay, who's the one in charge? [Laughter]. And I'm like, actually, that's me. But it's understanding that it's a role, a responsibility. It's not about the title, it just says that the title means you have more responsibilities. The responsibilities for the people that you're with, that you're working with, that you're trying to make an impact, to change. That's where I would have truly embraced it. Coming back within leadership, like I said. After, when was it, 2013, 2015, it's been the non-conventional leaders. I would always have some classmates say, within that group that graduated, there was one classmate that said, you're smart, but you don't--. Ah, what was it? He's like, you're a nerd, but you don't act like a nerd. He meant in the most positive way, he's like, you're so smart, but you don't act like a traditional person. And he was just like, I don't get it. I just don't get it. But like I said, just coming back, obviously it took several years for me to embrace that. That it's not what is portrayed out there. It's about, como dicen, okay you face the challenges, okay there's moments of, dang, like did I do it right? Am I doing this right? Dang, you question yourself like, maybe someone better could be here or, man, it's stressing me out with working with these people because, you know, I consider that I don't come at an aggressive stance when I'm working with new people, but then there's some people that are just, wow. You question yourself like, why are you here, respectfully? Like you're in this role that you have a big responsibility on making an impact on people and you close yourselves to it. And we were joking around with a colleague and my husband, actually yesterday. You know what, I realized I've got a list of people that don't like me. And he's like yeah, I realized that too. And he's like but I guess we just need to know that we're not going to be liked by everybody and that's okay. And it's about picking ourselves back up and realize okay, what haven't I figured out yet? Or what is it that I need to know more? Because obviously we're humans. And self-doubt comes and you know, hesitancy comes. But it's like, okay, these are legitimate questions, regardless of whether people look at you or talk down on you. I mentioned when they--. Just your presence around them, they make you feel like why is this idiot here? Because you see that, and growing up I would always, you know, everybody's working together, and it's been a learning curve. Learning curve that some people just don't want to work with you and it's okay. And it's okay and you know, you got to step back and look at the big picture of what you're trying to do.
DV: You face the challenge.
HB: Yeah and just like with everything there's a huge learning curve, and it's about having patience with yourself and it's harder than just, how would I say it, it's hard but at the same time it's important, it's valuable. Because you go through that moment and then you're looking at all the different points and then--. I always call it the dots are connecting in my brain. And understanding, okay this is different routes I need to take, these are different responses I need to do to whatever these challenges or opportunities are, and then you keep on going. And then you can do whatever you got to do. Si vas a limpiar, limpia. If you got to go and do something else, self-care, you do it, and then you get back up. You get back up and keep on trying. It's about not giving up in that part. I would say if there's, whoever's listening, if you are in that role, it's a matter of showing grace and kindness to other people because we're all just really trying, trying to make a difference, trying to make a change. Not only for ourselves, I always--. Obviously now I'm a mother, and I always think about the change for my children, the generations to come, my neighbors, my community. It's so cliche, I love it. How they say, I cannot change the world, but I can change my world. And my world is my family, my friends, my community.
DV: Well, speaking of your community, you were in all of these clubs in high school, then you were working in housing, then you became Deputy Director here at El Vínculo, the Hispanic Liaison. But more recently you were also Chair of ICAC, the Immigrant Community Advisory Council in Siler City. How did that come about?
HB: So, with ICAC, the Hispanic liaison had been involved with the Building Integrated Communities project with UNC in collaboration with Town of Siler City. That was around 2017 when it started. Out of that, there was an action plan, essentially telling the town of Siler City, here are some recommendations of how you can integrate immigrant communities into Siler City. Within the action plan, there's some Siler City action items, and then there's some other outside agencies that are involved in it, so it's just like a collective work. So, obviously the pandemic hit and there was a couple of pauses for one or two years and then in 2021, last year, Building Integrated Communities and El Vínculo Hispano approached the town of Siler City with a resolution to build an advisory board or committee to the town of Siler City to help guide them through this action plan, to give them recommendations with the ultimate goal of really pushing the action items among other responsibilities. So, when they made out the call for members of that committee, I submitted my letter of interest. To be part of this committee, you have to be an immigrant yourself, a child of an immigrant, a grandchild of an immigrant, having a close connection to Siler City. Either you live, or you work there or have a very specific interest with Siler City. That was pretty much the biggest responsibility, the biggest requirements really, and of course submitting the letter of interest for it. And so, I applied, and I became part of the inaugural group. There were seven of us and within our first meeting, that's where the group elected me to be their board chair. And so, within this first year, it's been a lot about learning. Learning about our role and truly understanding it on what does it mean to be in an advisory capacity? What are the regulations? But then also understanding and asking, well, why are those regulations in place? And so that we can fulfill our role to the best of our abilities. Within that group, there are wonderful professionals. There's an immigration attorney, there is a local law office manager. There is someone that is in marketing, someone that's a business owner veteran, someone that's in the school system. So, these are all professionals within our community involved in this group with different expertise and different insights to share a portion of our immigrant perspective in our community. And that's where we are today. Like I said, I'm chair over that advisory committee.
DV: Great. In your pathway to these leadership positions, do you have any challenges that you can pick out that you would want to share? Or maybe other lessons that you've learned along the way that you would want to share?
HB: Okay, well definitely there's going to be a lot of barriers that may come into play. It could be anywhere between access to education or maybe, especially if you never had that role model, which is very hard, or a mentor. But don't be afraid and ask. That was one of the things that they would always say: es que la Hannia habla mucho, she talks so much. And she will go and talk to anybody and it's not that I'm--. I might not seem like it, but I'm actually pretty shy. [Laughter]. I still like, okay, let me ask this, I need to understand this, because um so you'll find barriers either because you might not have the tools but that doesn't mean that you can't have the tools. Or you might know the resources yet. And so you'll find that. And what does that mean? That means approach people in leadership. And ask those questions. And keep on asking them until you understand. If they get annoyed, let them get annoyed. But no, you're going to keep on asking the questions, because it's important that you understand it because ultimately what's gonna happen is you will also be the advocate for the next person that comes in and share that, pass that information along, that knowledge along. And just like with anything, there's always that learning curve with anything new that you start. They say anything new with a business, anything new in education. I think that a pattern, a trend, that I've seen within the first three years of you doing anything, it's a lot about learning. Have grace with yourself while you're learning. If you can push through that, year one is a lot about, okay, here I am, I'm on the ground, and you're running. [Laughter]. Year two is your evaluation year. Okay, what happened year one? Because year one, you're going in there, you're going passionately. And year two, you're evaluating what's the processes? How did it work? How did it flow? What were the barriers that you found? What were some of the trends that you noticed? What were some of the activities that you saw for yourself, with your community, while you were doing whatever work that you were doing, and then just take a moment to step back and be like, okay, now what's going to be my response to it? What can I do next? And some of those you might not have an answer to, and that's totally fine. And then you keep on. Right now, and I can say that because we're going on to year two with the Immigrant Advisory Committee, going onto year two with our Lee County office, year two with my little one. He's that child that we fooled ourselves into thinking oh he's going be the same as the other two and we've got this and we're experienced parents and we're learning. But you keep on, you keep on and caring for yourself, you know yourself. Surround yourself with people that do care about you and people that will encourage you and people that will, maybe they might not have that answer for you, but that they're your safe space. You know to keep on keeping on.
DV: Speaking of keeping on, what do you envision for the roles that you're in right now in the future? Things you might want to accomplish, things you'd like to see your community have access to or accomplish. What do you see the future looking like, or what would you hope for the future?
HB: Well, within my role with the organization, still a lot of learning. Learning anything from A to Z. I love what I do. Growing up that was my goal. I always envisioned myself wanting to lead an organization, lead an organization, manage an organization that had the social aspect, and I am in this role. And I never thought that I would be, especially in the dark three years of my life. I was like, I am never going to accomplish that. Keep on learning that, being the best that I can for this role in this organization that I am in. With the community, giving the very best of my abilities to my community. I also see my community rising and being empowered by all the work that we do, being inspired, inspiring each other, and showcasing all the beautiful things that we have, especially in our culture and anything to do with the food, definitely, the music, the arts, the professionals that we have, the brilliant minds that might not be in traditional roles but darn, they are good at what they do. Highlighting that but then also collaborating with other communities. There is so much beauty, even when people might not think it. My son does not think it, my twelve-year-old. He is like, man this small town in boring, but there are so many beautiful members in our community. Being together, working together. There’s always going to be the hustle but there is also going to be life and enjoying. Unfortunately, vulnerable communities, communities of color--. In what we say, okay Hannia we have got to be realistic, and yeah, we are being realistic because there are different barriers that one would say would prevent our community to live that. That is when we say, okay we are going to strive for life and joy and everything that we deserve, but we are also going to hustle and raise our voices and say this is not correct. We are going to be working together collectively to make change, to make movement, make noise regardless of whoever gets frustrated, and sometimes we have to move quietly and that is totally fine. Seeing that grow in our community, and then for myself at the end of it all, I think I told you but, quiero un ranchito, I want a little casita. [Laughter]. Just like out in the country, with at most two acres, pues tan poco quiero exagerar. I just want a place that is not too big. Just enough for myself and for at least two other guests when they need to go there. My kids swear up and down that as soon as they get old, they are going to get their own places. I want that for them, but I know, especially because I would see it growing up my mother was an unofficial matriarch of our family in Siler City so our aunts and uncles would go there, pay their respects. Then they would leave and go do their things. More of like, hey big sister I am here I love you. Alright you are good? Yeah, and then you are done. Just a place that our family can go. I envision a patio that has enough gathering spaces for everybody to be out there, having their own hamaca, having a place for the kids to go and play. I want to see all the young and the old together. I want the younger ones to hear the stories of the old folks because they have some crazy stories let me tell you. [Laughter]. Learning from their experience and just a space. A space where they can be family. I will give a hand into gardening maybe. Not really, maybe just the basic plant because I don’t want to kill the plants. I’ve thought about a couple animalitos de granja, and a lot of plants, I like plants. You will just find me there.
DV: Okay, Hannia. Hannia, thank you very much for sharing your story with me.
HB: Thank you, Daniel.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcriber: Sofia Godoy and Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2022 November 18
Date of Transcription: 2023 July 17 / Revisions: 2023 October 9
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: Hannia Benítez is Deputy Director at El Vínculo Hispano, the Hispanic Liaison, and Chair of ICAC, the Immigrant Community Advisory Council at Siler City. I'm Daniel Velásquez. I am interviewing you today for your oral history. Thank you for being with me today. It is November 18, 2022.
Hannia Benítez: Thank you for having me, Daniel.
DV: Hannia, let's get started by talking about your early life, your background, and set the context for us.
HB: Okay, so my name is Hannia Benítez. I was born in Guatemala, but I came to the United States at an early age. I grew up in Chatham County, North Carolina. I am the oldest daughter de mi mami and the oldest granddaughter out of more than twenty grandchildren. I identify as Hispanic Latina. I am currently deputy director for the Hispanic Liaison.
DV: Awesome. Great.
HB: And I am a mother of three beautiful children. I have a twelve-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a two-year-old. Married for ten years. And we also have a little fur baby, Milo. [Laughter].
DV: Great, so you were born in Guatemala. How long have you lived in United States then?
HB: It’s been over 25 years. I was born in ’92. I came to the United States when I was about four or five years old, but our first thought was Los Angeles, where my grandmother was living, and she currently lives there. And then a few years, within one or two years, then we moved here to North Carolina to join the rest of mis tíos, my mother’s youngest brothers and sisters that actually lived in Siler City, so that is where I grew up in.
DV: Maybe just tell me a little bit more about growing up here in North Carolina, in Siler City.
HB: Well, how do I describe it? Well, I guess when we--. I guess just from the beginning, so just to give you context my mother was a single mother with two daughters. My other sister, that is two years younger than I. She used to be a, what would you call it, like a pre-school teacher in Guatemala, so coming to the area she would, when we first got here, she would try to teach us, well mostly me, the basics of el abecedario, the alphabet, the numbers. Everything, she would do it in Spanish because she tells me, te lo voy a enseñar en español and allá en la escuela lo aprendes en inglés, so I’m going to teach it to you in Spanish, and you need to learn it in English in school. And I did just that. Whenever she came here, she worked for--. She started working several odd jobs, but then stayed at the chicken plant at that time. She worked there for several years. The biggest priorities, the biggest important things that she would say, edúquense, you know, educate yourself, learn a lot. And so, our biggest focus was on that, just learning as much as we could, learning the language, learning so many different topics. In school, being the oldest, I often found myself being like the interpreter or the translator for my mom, and then it translated with other family members. And because they would have this expression, like, para eso vas a la escuela. That's why you're going to school. So, you need to know what it is. And sometimes it would start with school messages that were sent home, and they were only in English. And she's like, ¿Qué dice? What did that say? And so, I would tell her mom, they're talking about this, this, this, this and that and trying to get her to understand what they were trying to say and what they wanted her to do. And then that then translated to the other aspects of our lives where I started having to understand how other systems work to be able to explain it to my mom, but at the same time there's still always that passion in school I loved. I'm not going to say reading, no I love reading, it was writing that I just struggled with it because there were so many thoughts in my mind, I was like I don’t know how to put it bien. Yeah, I always loved it. We were in the traditional ESL program. When I say traditional, it would be they pull all of us that are native Spanish speakers. They pull us out of the class. They teach us some English, and they put us back in. Unfortunately, I saw many other students that that was not helpful for. But, you know, I can say I was a little bit more fortunate that although my mom didn't speak English, but she had the basic foundations in Spanish that she just kept on trying at home. And then I also tried to learn everything. I was like, okay, I got to learn about, you know. So, I was in the ESL program for several years. Then I graduated out of it, I think, maybe second or third grade. And it transitioned into the AIG program, the Academic and Intellectually Gifted. And there was a group of other students that we grew up with that were also part of the ESL program that were in that as well. So, it was just a lot of that focus on education and trying to learn. And so, that was just elementary school. Like I said, being the oldest, I was always a para arriba para abajo with a single mom. The father figures that stepped in were obviously mis tíos, and so, I would love to be with them outside. You would not see Hannia in the traditional role of being in the kitchen. My mom would always be like, Hannia, come and learn how to cook. And I would look from a distance, and I'm like, okay, I know the basics. I know how to do eggs. And then I would, I'm like, ma, I have homework. Tengo mucha tarea. And so, I would go back into the room, go do my homework. And when I finished that, then I would be outside. You would see Hannia, there was a storage next to the trailer, and you would see Hannia on top of the roof and jumping from the roof and playing with my male cousins and yeah, just doing the non-traditional female roles. And it was a little bit different with my younger sister because she loved to cook. She loved learning all the traditional dishes that was going on in the kitchen. So yeah, that's what you would see. Hannia would be out there throwing rocks. We would just be using our imagination outside and just wandering around with my cousins. And then there was the school, so my focus was school, family, school, family. It continued all through middle school as well, and then high school the same way, very much inclined to education. Middle school is when I started learning a little bit more about clubs, like Beta Club, and obviously in part because of the academics. But in high school is when we started seeing more different types of clubs because middle school it was the academics, but then other areas that I started desarrollando my leadership was in the communities of faith, when I was 12. Which was something we didn't grow up with. My mom never talked about religion, none of that. Like, we never knew about churches. It was until about--. I was 11 or 12, that one of my uncles got married, and his wife was going to church. It was funny, because they would always take me, I was their mini chaperone when they were dating. So everywhere they were going, they would take me. And so, one of the places that they started taking me was at a Community of Faith in Asheboro, about 30 minutes from Siler City. And so, I remember the first day I went to that congregation, I saw youth about my age that were playing music. At that time, I was also in band in school, playing the trumpet, the quietest musical instrument around.
DV: Sure. [Laughter].
HB: And I remember seeing a kid about my age. I was 11, and he was 13. And he was up there. And he was playing the instrument. It sounded so cool. Other kids my age was playing piano. I was like, oh my gosh. I want a space. I want to be here and see other things. And so, within that space, I quickly asked the leaders they call them I think ushers in English but at the church they would call them diáconos or servidores and I was like I want to help. Put me wherever, and they were like okay we'll do that. And Hannia was up there sweeping in church, and every service they would have Hannia in childcare in the back and in sala-cuna or the nursery. And so, I would be out there and I would love engaging and they would talk about, okay you know Sunday school, teach this to the children, learn about this. So I was doing that but then also learning some of the other things that the church leadership were doing and I loved seeing that, and I loved starting getting engaged into it at an early age. It was the church treasurer, and they were like, do you know how to write properly? Do you know how to do this? And I was like, yes, I love it, I love it. You see, Hannia in that context very much engaged. So that started middle school age. And then high school, it continued. But then in high school, that's where other clubs were available. That was like FBLA, Future Business Leaders of America. There was obviously Beta Club. I was briefly in HOSA, Health Occupational Students, something like that. It was very brief. But then the other one that really stood out for me, it was called AIM Club, Action, Inspiration, Motivation. And so, at that time, there were, everybody, I guess, unofficially called it the Hispanic club, because it was mostly Hispanics and mostly immigrant students. The first year I was there, I was excited. I was seeing everybody. Everybody engaged and that looked like me, because in the other clubs, I was the only Hispanic. And because I joined that group, there were other Hispanic kids that were coming in. But in this one it was all of us Hispanics. And so, I went in there, I think it was year two that I went in there, or year three, I don't remember, but then I became president for that club. And then at the same time becoming president for FBLA and learning more about the leadership, learning more about the roles, how do meetings run, with FBLA, everything about business and things like that. And so, and that's where I met, his name was Donald Byrne, and then he comes into my life a couple years later. But after high school, I got pregnant at an early age. I was 17, so it was my last year of high school. And how would I say it? Thankfully, all my other friends that were part of, by that time it was called SLI, Scholars Latino Initiative with UNC, for the most part, they were also the same students that were with me in the ESL program, in elementary school AIG program. They were also in there, several of them DACAmented and things like that, which is another group that we were in in high school. Thankfully by high school, those who were in there and fulfilled certain requirements, although they were undocumented, where able to go to the university. And so that's where my pause kind of ended. At the high school level, thankfully, I was able to graduate, but by that time I became a mother. Unfortunately, not only within family but with other folks I would get a lot of comments like, okay, this is the end of your life. This is it. This is over for you. And I remember trying to, I was like, okay, maybe I can't go to university, maybe I can go to a local community college. And I applied, and I got rejected. I got a letter that said because I didn't have a social security number and I was like, pero porque no? So, I was like, okay, so what do I do now, like--. And so at that time me ajunté con el padre de mi hijo. So, I got together with my son's dad. We were together for a brief couple of years. There were a couple of years of I would say just pause. A little bit of darkness throughout those years, but then I got married. Couple years, I got married in 2012, two years after I graduated. I met my now husband. And I'm not gonna say it was a fairytale love story because there were a couple of hardships in the beginning as well. But within, let's say year one, year two of our marriage, that's where they passed the deferred action. So at that point, I was able to go back to school. If I wanted to I could go to work. I could pursue so many other things, and so, by that year was I had just had my daughter, my second child. And so not only the need for a household, taking care of our household expenses, but then also an opportunity for me to get out of the house. I started going back to work. I loved to work. I was trying to learn not only the basics, but other things and it was easy for me to keep on picking up. It was a little bit hard in the beginning because a lot of folks se desesperaban like employers that they would get a little bit frustrated because I was also learning the gap.
DV: And this was around 2014?
HB: 2014, ’13 yeah. And there were a good several jobs that dismissed me in the beginning. I was like, man, but I want to, I want to learn, I'm trying to learn this, things like that. A lot of: you're not compatible, or we're cutting back positions and roles, and we’re like, okay. At that time, that's when I decided to go back to school, and I went to CCCC, Central Carolina Community College. That would have been around, that would have been around 2016, I believe, where I went to get my nursing aid certificate. After that I started, I moved back to Siler City and I was working at night at a nursing home, and coincidentally, I--. how would I describe it to you? So, it's a dead-end street where I used to live. On the sides of that street there were the apartments and that the end of the street was a nursing home. So, I lived in those apartments and the nursing home was there. So, at night I was working there. And during the day, obviously, my kids were at school one of them, the other one was still small, but family was helping me with her. And I would notice that in that apartment complex, the maintenance man was almost unofficially in charge. And so, but there were some tenant issues that were going on. And one day the owner actually was there. No, his name was Tom Smith. The day that I met Tom Smith was when we were urgently trying to find a place. We, being my younger sister and I, and we were trying to find a place on our own because we couldn't be at my mom's house. It was too crowded. And we were desperately trying to apply. And we were calling. And we're like, we're really interested. We really want to get in there. And then, I don't know why, but the owner went to the unit that we were at. He's like, I wanted to see what was this commotion about two sisters so urgently trying to get an apartment. Like what's the big deal? But he just, I guess he didn't realize that it was a big step for us. It was not a luxury apartment. The homes are--. They’re still there, those apartments are still there, but they're one of the oldest apartment complexes in Siler City. And so, he went there, and because of my observation of how the process went when you move into an apartment, when he went in there, and I guess he just, I don't know what he expected out of two Hispanic young ladies coming into an apartment on their own. And I was like, okay, I'm ready for the movement inspection, and I need you to fix this, this, this, and that. And hey, I was pointing things out in the apartment. And he's like, how do you know that? And I'm like, oh, we did this whenever I moved in somewhere else and he's like, oh okay. He's like where are you working at now? I told him I was working over there. And I remember just blurting out like well whenever you need help just reach out to me, and he did literally within that week. He's like, what about I give you a contract out. And that's when I started into the housing.
DV: Okay.
HB: And I was Liaison Services. And so, I essentially--.
DV: You clearly impressed him. [Laughter].
HB: Something happened, but I was very loud and there was another person that had been there with the team that did not like me. And every chance she got she let him know, let the owner know, and copy him in there like she's not listening, she's not learning, and I'm wasting my time with her. And because she was tasked with training me with the technical things. And there were some things that I still, it hadn't clicked yet, but I was trying. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm sure. And then my husband-- like I would read her emails and I would be crying. And my husband would be like, why don't you just quit? I'm like, no, it's because I'm not going to learn. This is free training on housing and things like that. He's like, oh my gosh. So, I was climbing my way through that, but I was trying to learn everything that had to do with housing, not only with the process, with people moving in, the inspections, working with con--. Vendors, things like that, so just taking advantage of that. I eventually transitioned from working in the nursing home to housing. I had to go because I was in a dementia unit and a lot of my patients there were passing away, and it was just a very hard thing for me.
DV: Oh, yeah.
HB: So as much as I loved it, I was like, I can't, but I then transitioned into housing. And that's where I was learning more about it and being very vocal, and I would talk to the owner and be like hey, you know, we started learning about how to do the inspections and then prioritizing. And I would be working with him, and I would be like, hey, Tom, you need to fix this. You need to fix that. And then because a lot of the people that live there, they're like, why do you care? I'm like, because this is housing, like, you can't have a hole in your roof. You can’t have your door falling apart and things like that. And I understood the business part of it, because looking at the numbers, there was no money coming in because the homes were averaging between $300 to $500 a month. $500 for a three bedroom but, you know, not a lot of repairs have been done for several years. So, I started pushing to do a couple of repairs in the time that we were in there. A couple of--. About a year or so later, that's when I reached out to Cardinal Chase, which was my second place in housing. I don't recall what was the incident, but I remember going to the office and talking to the manager there. I was talking to her because I was looking for a different apartment for somebody. And I explained to her, I'm actually with Brookwood Farms--. Brookwood Apartments, and this so-and-so needs this. And she's like, how do you know about housing? I'm like, oh, this is what I'm doing here. And then she's like, okay, well, I'm leaving. So, do you want this job? [Laughter]. So, I was like, are you serious? And she's like, yeah. She told me where to submit my résumé. And I was like, okay, this is crazy. I’m going to do it, so I did it. And then by Monday of the next week, they were like, interview. I was on the job within like two, three weeks.
DV: Wow.
HB: And it continued my role with management, learning more about that, a lot of training in that program. But throughout these roles, I was also very intentional about advocating for the people we were serving. And it's something that I've carried desde pequeña. And then I felt that responsibility and my role in them and really letting the owners know, hey, it's much more than your money, much more than the rents. And within that second role, since it was low income housing, I would try to figure out ways with the tenants there about moving in. During their stay, trying to come up with payment plans, because there were so many people that were like I don't have a full amount of money. I'm like, it's okay let's breathe and I would joke around with them I'm like I'm not going kick you out unless you kick yourself out. And they're like oh my gosh, thank you. I'm like no, really, don't thank me. This is the least that I can do because this is your home. This is not just something that I can just up and say, screw y'all, go ahead and leave. So, it was around that time I was with Cardinal Chase. In comes Don Byrne. Around that time frame, Donald Byrne who was one of the teachers from Jordan Matthews at AIM Club, that was almost like a supervisor during their club meetings, that he reached out. And he's like, hey, you know, can I ask you to join me on a meeting one day with the Hispanic Liaison? And I was like, okay, I've heard of the Liaison because my mom always uses their services. And sure, let me go to a meeting. He's like, it’s a board meeting. And they're looking for directors. And he had reached out to another former classmate as well. And within meeting one, they were like, do you, would you want to be crazy enough to join us? And I'm like, of course, thank you. So, I joined the Board of Directors. At that time, it would have been 2016, with the Hispanic Liaison. And I think by the next year, that's when I became Board Chair with the Liaison.
DV: Did you continue your other job in housing during this time?
HB: Yeah, it was during that time, because I didn't join the Liaison officially as a staff member until 2021. So, during that time, 2017, the Liaison--. 2015, 2016, there was a brief year where the Liaison closed. And so, I came in when they reopened. And so, the ’17, the organization was kicking back up and I would hear the reports from Ilana, from Janet, about all the work that they were doing, and I was like, just very impressed. Not only about the work they were doing but their passion for it, with work in our community, the issues that they were addressing. And so coincidentally around that same time, that's where Hispanic leaders from Sanford reached out to us in Siler City about opening up, well discussing opening up a different organization in this area, or a satellite office for the Hispanic Liaison because there's no organization.
DV: Here in Sanford?
HB: In Sanford, yeah. There was in 2000--. I don't know what, in the early 2000s, there was a Hispanic Task Force here in Lee County, but it dissolved within a few years. So, after that, there was nothing in this area. And a lot of Lee County residents were going to Siler City to get, ask for help.
DV: Like what kind of help? What does the Liaison do, or what do you do with the Liaison?
HB: So, there's different aspects of the kind of work that we do because we work with our community, but we also work with local nonprofits, government agencies, law enforcement agencies. So, with our community, we like to say we're the Google of our community. Todo. We do literally everything. Let's say for a community member comes in and asks for assistance. Generally, they might come for, where can I find assistance for X, Y, Z? And so, if we are aware of a resource, we let them know and we get them connected to the resources, or if the resources are not available, we become that resource. But it can be anywhere between housing issues, education, it can be anywhere between mental health, health as well. We also talk about documents, helping community members obtain important documents for themselves, for their children, for their family. That could be either US documents or foreign documents. We do a lot of interpretation. If, let's say, a community member comes to us and says, hey, look, I've tried to reach out to this agency. Pero no me entienden. Like, they don't understand what I'm trying to say. And so, we hear their story and then we essentially translate it to something that XYZ system can understand.
DV: I see.
HB: And so, we help a lot with financial aid assistance with the hospitals. In the peak of the pandemic, we did a lot of emergency assistance for rentals, utilities, hospital assistance as well. We had a solid-- currently have also a solidarity fund that were, that's for mixed status families or no status families where the primary income earner was impacted, the family was impacted financially and so many community members were not, you know, not eligible or there was a disruption with them getting some financial assistance during the pandemic time period. And so, it was a way to help our community as well, but those are just some minor examples. We also have a free immigration clinic, so a community member can reach out to us. We try to get them connected with a free initial consultation with an immigration attorney. We also get them connected if, depending on their case, try to give them information, for example, like the Battered Immigrant Project with NC Legal Aid, for several asylum seekers, getting them information about the immigrant refugee project. So many different projects that our community members don't know are available. But then the biggest thing is education and helping our community members go and understand the process. US systems that they might not understand or they might need a little bit more guidance because the ultimate goal is for our community members to feel empowered and that they have a space with a Hispanic Liaison that they can feel at home, but then they also could feel heard and that we're advocating for them and regardless of the field, so we don't limit ourselves to just one field.
DV: What an amazing resource for the community to have.
HB: Yes, and we work, that's with the community, and then also we work, like I said, with other non-profits, government agencies, businesses as well, so they can also--. How do I say? We give them guidance and suggestions, recommendations as to, hey, this is how you can better serve our community, or you need to consider this other perspective to try to break down barriers, miscommunication, misinformation. A lot of misconceptions of, oh, that's a cultural thing, actually, it's not. For example, oh, it's a cultural thing that Hispanics live all together in one house. And I'm like, actually, no. There's so many other factors that's out of a necessity that they are having to be together. And breaking down those kinds of examples. Or why is it that the child is interpreting? No, we don't. And because--. We faced that with my mother. I can't talk to you. You're a little kid. And there might not have been interpretation services available for my mom. Or even now, within systems that, let's say, she's going to a medical appointment or she's going to get some services, the interpreter might be there, and the provider is there or whoever is providing the service but it's the interpreter looking at my mom and the provider not once do they look at my mom at any point. And I was like, okay, so--.
DV: Are they here for me?
HB: Yeah, and not only that but then my mom starts, for example, like she starts talking to an interpreter and the interpreter was like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. Or actually, ask the provider. And then they're just kind of like, mm, no sé si le pregunto.
DV: There’s tension.
HB: Yeah, and sometimes, even at those points of contact, systems are improving. Not saying anything, but there's certain points in the process that need to be addressed and need to be improved. And so, we bring in those recommendations with agencies and say, hey, this can work better. Ultimately with a goal of positively impacting our community and that they feel empowered and comfortable at the point of service. Many times, I get agency leaders that say, well it's not that we're not trying, I'm like, no sweetie, it's not about that. It's also the impression that somebody gets when they're interacting with either staff or leadership. You may feel the same way if you go somewhere else and people are disconnected with you when you're getting a service. Thankfully you are able to speak the language and you can say, hey, what's up with that? You know, hey, what's going on with this? But many of times it's not even the language barriers. It's a lot about the relationships, the trust that's within providers. I always talk about the example of my mother and my children. Although they're in a dual language program, they understand Spanish and they're trying their best to speak Spanish, but there are times that they, each of them are speaking their own language, but they still understand each other because they've got that connection, they have that relationship. And my mom knows my child's intention, my child knows my mom's intention as to what we're trying to get to. And it's all about the relationship, versus it's, oh, here you go, and that's it.
DV: Can you pick out certain things in your background that you think helped to prepare you, that were part of your journey and led you to this pathway to leadership that you are in now? You mentioned for instance, translating for your mother and that is still something you do today in this role, you translate for other people, navigate systems, things like that.
HB: One of the biggest things--. And I constantly have to remind myself, because if you look at other places they think, oh, leadership is with the degree, or if you have something behind your name, or you--. I would say the non-conventional ways that leadership is portrayed. But leadership, from what I have seen, is you are getting yourself down and dirty with your community. You're there on the ground. And what you're doing is you're eventually translating to people that don't know what's going on and letting them know this is what’s happening, and this is what needs to go next. And this is what needs to go next. And sometimes I mention within people, if I, when I say deputy director, in my head I was like, maybe that's just for other people to understand where I am. But eventually, I'm just another person in the community. I'm just another--. I'm just like you and I. Which is funny, because my mom would always tell me, eres una directora. You've got to look like one. You got to act like one. I'm like, wait, what? What do you mean, ma? And she's like, no, you got to look like a directora. Almost like if I have to be in a suit and in a tie or I don't know, heels or like a businessperson that we would see at FBLA, you know, the Future Business Leaders of America. That's the image that they portray. A leader is this and you know, and you know that they’re here.
DV: They look the part traditionally.
HB: Yes. And that their presence can be felt every time they're in the room and like they're the highlight of everything and I'm like, I don't like that. And I do remember, I'm like, okay, I'm learning, that's what I need to be. And it's funny because sometimes people come around like, okay, who's the one in charge? [Laughter]. And I'm like, actually, that's me. But it's understanding that it's a role, a responsibility. It's not about the title, it just says that the title means you have more responsibilities. The responsibilities for the people that you're with, that you're working with, that you're trying to make an impact, to change. That's where I would have truly embraced it. Coming back within leadership, like I said. After, when was it, 2013, 2015, it's been the non-conventional leaders. I would always have some classmates say, within that group that graduated, there was one classmate that said, you're smart, but you don't--. Ah, what was it? He's like, you're a nerd, but you don't act like a nerd. He meant in the most positive way, he's like, you're so smart, but you don't act like a traditional person. And he was just like, I don't get it. I just don't get it. But like I said, just coming back, obviously it took several years for me to embrace that. That it's not what is portrayed out there. It's about, como dicen, okay you face the challenges, okay there's moments of, dang, like did I do it right? Am I doing this right? Dang, you question yourself like, maybe someone better could be here or, man, it's stressing me out with working with these people because, you know, I consider that I don't come at an aggressive stance when I'm working with new people, but then there's some people that are just, wow. You question yourself like, why are you here, respectfully? Like you're in this role that you have a big responsibility on making an impact on people and you close yourselves to it. And we were joking around with a colleague and my husband, actually yesterday. You know what, I realized I've got a list of people that don't like me. And he's like yeah, I realized that too. And he's like but I guess we just need to know that we're not going to be liked by everybody and that's okay. And it's about picking ourselves back up and realize okay, what haven't I figured out yet? Or what is it that I need to know more? Because obviously we're humans. And self-doubt comes and you know, hesitancy comes. But it's like, okay, these are legitimate questions, regardless of whether people look at you or talk down on you. I mentioned when they--. Just your presence around them, they make you feel like why is this idiot here? Because you see that, and growing up I would always, you know, everybody's working together, and it's been a learning curve. Learning curve that some people just don't want to work with you and it's okay. And it's okay and you know, you got to step back and look at the big picture of what you're trying to do.
DV: You face the challenge.
HB: Yeah and just like with everything there's a huge learning curve, and it's about having patience with yourself and it's harder than just, how would I say it, it's hard but at the same time it's important, it's valuable. Because you go through that moment and then you're looking at all the different points and then--. I always call it the dots are connecting in my brain. And understanding, okay this is different routes I need to take, these are different responses I need to do to whatever these challenges or opportunities are, and then you keep on going. And then you can do whatever you got to do. Si vas a limpiar, limpia. If you got to go and do something else, self-care, you do it, and then you get back up. You get back up and keep on trying. It's about not giving up in that part. I would say if there's, whoever's listening, if you are in that role, it's a matter of showing grace and kindness to other people because we're all just really trying, trying to make a difference, trying to make a change. Not only for ourselves, I always--. Obviously now I'm a mother, and I always think about the change for my children, the generations to come, my neighbors, my community. It's so cliche, I love it. How they say, I cannot change the world, but I can change my world. And my world is my family, my friends, my community.
DV: Well, speaking of your community, you were in all of these clubs in high school, then you were working in housing, then you became Deputy Director here at El Vínculo, the Hispanic Liaison. But more recently you were also Chair of ICAC, the Immigrant Community Advisory Council in Siler City. How did that come about?
HB: So, with ICAC, the Hispanic liaison had been involved with the Building Integrated Communities project with UNC in collaboration with Town of Siler City. That was around 2017 when it started. Out of that, there was an action plan, essentially telling the town of Siler City, here are some recommendations of how you can integrate immigrant communities into Siler City. Within the action plan, there's some Siler City action items, and then there's some other outside agencies that are involved in it, so it's just like a collective work. So, obviously the pandemic hit and there was a couple of pauses for one or two years and then in 2021, last year, Building Integrated Communities and El Vínculo Hispano approached the town of Siler City with a resolution to build an advisory board or committee to the town of Siler City to help guide them through this action plan, to give them recommendations with the ultimate goal of really pushing the action items among other responsibilities. So, when they made out the call for members of that committee, I submitted my letter of interest. To be part of this committee, you have to be an immigrant yourself, a child of an immigrant, a grandchild of an immigrant, having a close connection to Siler City. Either you live, or you work there or have a very specific interest with Siler City. That was pretty much the biggest responsibility, the biggest requirements really, and of course submitting the letter of interest for it. And so, I applied, and I became part of the inaugural group. There were seven of us and within our first meeting, that's where the group elected me to be their board chair. And so, within this first year, it's been a lot about learning. Learning about our role and truly understanding it on what does it mean to be in an advisory capacity? What are the regulations? But then also understanding and asking, well, why are those regulations in place? And so that we can fulfill our role to the best of our abilities. Within that group, there are wonderful professionals. There's an immigration attorney, there is a local law office manager. There is someone that is in marketing, someone that's a business owner veteran, someone that's in the school system. So, these are all professionals within our community involved in this group with different expertise and different insights to share a portion of our immigrant perspective in our community. And that's where we are today. Like I said, I'm chair over that advisory committee.
DV: Great. In your pathway to these leadership positions, do you have any challenges that you can pick out that you would want to share? Or maybe other lessons that you've learned along the way that you would want to share?
HB: Okay, well definitely there's going to be a lot of barriers that may come into play. It could be anywhere between access to education or maybe, especially if you never had that role model, which is very hard, or a mentor. But don't be afraid and ask. That was one of the things that they would always say: es que la Hannia habla mucho, she talks so much. And she will go and talk to anybody and it's not that I'm--. I might not seem like it, but I'm actually pretty shy. [Laughter]. I still like, okay, let me ask this, I need to understand this, because um so you'll find barriers either because you might not have the tools but that doesn't mean that you can't have the tools. Or you might know the resources yet. And so you'll find that. And what does that mean? That means approach people in leadership. And ask those questions. And keep on asking them until you understand. If they get annoyed, let them get annoyed. But no, you're going to keep on asking the questions, because it's important that you understand it because ultimately what's gonna happen is you will also be the advocate for the next person that comes in and share that, pass that information along, that knowledge along. And just like with anything, there's always that learning curve with anything new that you start. They say anything new with a business, anything new in education. I think that a pattern, a trend, that I've seen within the first three years of you doing anything, it's a lot about learning. Have grace with yourself while you're learning. If you can push through that, year one is a lot about, okay, here I am, I'm on the ground, and you're running. [Laughter]. Year two is your evaluation year. Okay, what happened year one? Because year one, you're going in there, you're going passionately. And year two, you're evaluating what's the processes? How did it work? How did it flow? What were the barriers that you found? What were some of the trends that you noticed? What were some of the activities that you saw for yourself, with your community, while you were doing whatever work that you were doing, and then just take a moment to step back and be like, okay, now what's going to be my response to it? What can I do next? And some of those you might not have an answer to, and that's totally fine. And then you keep on. Right now, and I can say that because we're going on to year two with the Immigrant Advisory Committee, going onto year two with our Lee County office, year two with my little one. He's that child that we fooled ourselves into thinking oh he's going be the same as the other two and we've got this and we're experienced parents and we're learning. But you keep on, you keep on and caring for yourself, you know yourself. Surround yourself with people that do care about you and people that will encourage you and people that will, maybe they might not have that answer for you, but that they're your safe space. You know to keep on keeping on.
DV: Speaking of keeping on, what do you envision for the roles that you're in right now in the future? Things you might want to accomplish, things you'd like to see your community have access to or accomplish. What do you see the future looking like, or what would you hope for the future?
HB: Well, within my role with the organization, still a lot of learning. Learning anything from A to Z. I love what I do. Growing up that was my goal. I always envisioned myself wanting to lead an organization, lead an organization, manage an organization that had the social aspect, and I am in this role. And I never thought that I would be, especially in the dark three years of my life. I was like, I am never going to accomplish that. Keep on learning that, being the best that I can for this role in this organization that I am in. With the community, giving the very best of my abilities to my community. I also see my community rising and being empowered by all the work that we do, being inspired, inspiring each other, and showcasing all the beautiful things that we have, especially in our culture and anything to do with the food, definitely, the music, the arts, the professionals that we have, the brilliant minds that might not be in traditional roles but darn, they are good at what they do. Highlighting that but then also collaborating with other communities. There is so much beauty, even when people might not think it. My son does not think it, my twelve-year-old. He is like, man this small town in boring, but there are so many beautiful members in our community. Being together, working together. There’s always going to be the hustle but there is also going to be life and enjoying. Unfortunately, vulnerable communities, communities of color--. In what we say, okay Hannia we have got to be realistic, and yeah, we are being realistic because there are different barriers that one would say would prevent our community to live that. That is when we say, okay we are going to strive for life and joy and everything that we deserve, but we are also going to hustle and raise our voices and say this is not correct. We are going to be working together collectively to make change, to make movement, make noise regardless of whoever gets frustrated, and sometimes we have to move quietly and that is totally fine. Seeing that grow in our community, and then for myself at the end of it all, I think I told you but, quiero un ranchito, I want a little casita. [Laughter]. Just like out in the country, with at most two acres, pues tan poco quiero exagerar. I just want a place that is not too big. Just enough for myself and for at least two other guests when they need to go there. My kids swear up and down that as soon as they get old, they are going to get their own places. I want that for them, but I know, especially because I would see it growing up my mother was an unofficial matriarch of our family in Siler City so our aunts and uncles would go there, pay their respects. Then they would leave and go do their things. More of like, hey big sister I am here I love you. Alright you are good? Yeah, and then you are done. Just a place that our family can go. I envision a patio that has enough gathering spaces for everybody to be out there, having their own hamaca, having a place for the kids to go and play. I want to see all the young and the old together. I want the younger ones to hear the stories of the old folks because they have some crazy stories let me tell you. [Laughter]. Learning from their experience and just a space. A space where they can be family. I will give a hand into gardening maybe. Not really, maybe just the basic plant because I don’t want to kill the plants. I’ve thought about a couple animalitos de granja, and a lot of plants, I like plants. You will just find me there.
DV: Okay, Hannia. Hannia, thank you very much for sharing your story with me.
HB: Thank you, Daniel.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Transcriber: Sofia Godoy and Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2022 November 18
Date of Transcription: 2023 July 17 / Revisions: 2023 October 9
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1007 -- Benítez, Hannia.
Description
An account of the resource
Born in Guatemala but raised in Siler City, North Carolina, Hannia Benítez currently serves her local communities as Deputy Director at El Vínculo Hispano/The Hispanic Liaison’s office in Lee County and as Chair of Siler City’s Immigrant Community Advisory Committee (ICAC). Hannia shares her foundational experiences, including the need to be her family’s interpreter during her childhood and her engagement in several clubs throughout High School. A few years later, the advent of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program helped her during a difficult time in her personal life by opening opportunities for employment and education. While working in the housing sector, Hannia joined the Board of Directors of El Vínculo Hispano, eventually serving as board chair and later transitioning to staff as deputy director of El Vínculo’s first satellite office in Lee County. Lastly, she shares her experience during her first year serving in ICAC, which she explains has been a time for asking questions and learning the workings of local government in order to position their efforts in the coming years. Throughout, Hannia shares advice for future leaders by describing her sense of responsibility for the people and communities that she serves while showing grace and kindness in the face of adversity.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-11-18
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29337">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Language
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R1007_Audio.mp3
Format
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R1007_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/d395d036a45a759c0e9338acd1f4191b.mp3
dc0608b25e33571d2d68ac411402343c
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/7e604f1b7402155c58506cb5329fa4d8.pdf
2393416d34ad440c1d39fe2da19c4e16
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1005
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2021-07-19
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Thomas, Gayle.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Health Service Workers
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1959
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Tandala -- Ubangi -- Democratic Republic of Congo
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Carrboro -- Orange County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
N/A
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Therber, Sophie.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
This oral history interview was conducted by Sophie Therber with interviewee Gayle Thomas via Zoom on July 19, 2021. The main focus of this interview is Gayle’s involvement with the Farmworker Health Program and her experience helping farmworkers mitigate the COVID pandemic and extreme weather. Gayle has known from a young age that she wanted to “help poor people,” in her words, and found an opportunity to help Spanish-speaking populations in North Carolina. She shares her personal journey of getting involved in farmworker health, as well as the challenges of including farmworkers in responses to COVID and extreme weather. She emphasizes the importance of the outreach workers who bridge the gap between medical providers and members of the farmworker community. She discusses unique challenges that farmworkers in North Carolina face, such as lack of access to transportation, crowded working conditions, and agricultural exceptionalism promoting a culture of exploitation in their work.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Gayle Thomas by Sophie Therber, 19 July 2021, R-1005, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29331
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Agricultural workers; Health; Climate Change; Community and social services and programs
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Trabajadores de servicios de salud
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Esta entrevista fue realizada por Sophie Therber con la entrevistada Gayle Thomas vía Zoom el 19 de julio de 2021. El tema principal de la entrevista fue la participación de Gayle en el Programa de Salud del Trabajador Agrícola y su experiencia ayudando a los trabajadores agrícolas a mitigar la pandemia del COVID y el clima extremo. Ella comparte su camino personal de participar en la salud de los trabajadores agrícolas, y también las dificultades de incluir a los trabajadores agrícolas en las respuestas del estado al COVID y el clima extremo. Gayle enfatiza el significado de los trabajadores de alcance quienes cierran la brecha entre los proveedores de salud y los miembros de la comunidad de trabajadores agrícolas. Ella habla sobre los desafíos particulares que los trabajadores agrícolas enfrentan en Carolina del Norte, tal como la falta de acceso al transporte, las condiciones laborales atestadas, y la excepcionalidad agrícola que promueve una cultura de explotación de su trabajo.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Gayle Thomas por Sophie Therber, 19 July 2021, R-1005, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Trabajadores agrícolas; Salud; cambio climático; Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Sophie Therber [00:00:01] My name is Sophie Therber, and I'm interviewing Gayle Thomas, today is July 19, 2021, and it is currently 4:09 PM. Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed, Gayle, I've been really looking forward to this. So, thank you so much.
Gayle Thomas [00:00:17] You're welcome.
Sophie Therber [00:00:19] Just to start, where are you from and can you tell me a little bit about that area?
Gayle Thomas [00:00:25] Yeah, I was born actually in Congo, which is a country in Africa, but I didn't live there very long. I left when I was about two. My parents were working there as missionary teachers, training Congolese teachers. I grew up in California where I got all my medical training. And then I came to North Carolina right after finishing residency, primarily because my husband got a position on faculty at UNC in the School of Public Health.
Sophie Therber [00:00:59] How long have you been in North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:01:02] Since 1989, so a long time.
Sophie Therber [00:01:06] What was that like to be moving around from Congo to California to North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:01:11] Well, I don't remember the move from Congo because I was only two, but growing up in California was great. Moving to North Carolina was a little bit scary. There's certain, you know, I would say, prejudices about southern states in California, but I was very pleasantly surprised when I moved to Chapel Hill. It had a lot of things that I enjoyed and profited from. I really found that I love the...The seasons are more marked here in North Carolina than they are in California. And I really enjoyed that change in weather and the weather drama. Now that California is in the middle of a big drought and on fire every year, I'm grateful not to be breathing that smoke. So, I love California. I love visiting it. But North Carolina has a lot of the same features: mountains, beaches, beautiful woods. And I feel very fortunate to live in North Carolina.
Sophie Therber [00:02:28] Does your family still live in California?
Gayle Thomas [00:02:31] No. I have some cousins there still, but my parents moved to be with us in Chapel Hill. My mother-in-law moved. My brothers have moved to other states. So, no, I don't have any close family in California anymore.
Sophie Therber [00:02:50] And so you moved to North Carolina, and you were in Chapel Hill. And then what influenced your decision to start working with the Farm Workers Project and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services?
Gayle Thomas [00:03:02] Well, I went to medical school because I wanted to take care of poor people. And originally, I was going to be taking care of poor people in Africa. I wanted to go back to Africa, and I married the person I thought wanted to go back to Africa, too. He had worked in Congo for two years as a nutritionist prior to us really beginning our relationship. And that was one reason why we got acquainted, because we had that in common. But then following residency, we decided we needed a few years in the States and he got this job in North Carolina. We weren't planning to stay, but once we came and then we started a family and then it became clear that our family needed to be sort of rooted in one place and not being bounced around the world. So, we decided to stay in North Carolina. I was entertaining the idea of being an academic physician but decided after one year in the Department of Family Medicine that although I really loved that what I loved more was taking care of poor people. So I took a job at the...It was called OCCHS, but it's a federally qualified community health center now called Piedmont Health Services. So I took a job and both Carrboro and Prospect Hill County Health Center and I began to get Spanish-speaking patients. So, I had studied Spanish in California, realizing that I would need that in medicine in California, and I did need that in med school and residency. And then when I came to North Carolina, I thought, "well, I'm not going to speak Spanish to North Carolina in 1989." But that was just as the influx of Spanish speakers began. And I had a receptionist who is bilingual and then I was barely able to speak medical Spanish and I just kind of became this magnet for Spanish speaking patients for the region. And I realized, "wow, I don't have to leave the country to do medicine in cross-cultural medicine, which was kind of what I really wanted to do. But I really need to get better in Spanish." So my husband and I took our two little kids to Guatemala for a month of immersion, which really, really helped with my Spanish. So, I worked at the Community Health Center for 23 years and really enjoyed the opportunity to be a part of my patients lives. Many of them were very recent immigrants and not farmworkers so much. After I did that for 23 years and my kids were grown, I was like, "I need a new challenge. What about that faculty position that they offered me 23 years ago? I wonder if that's still available." So, I was so fortunate that family medicine was willing to give me a job there. And as part of that job they said we need somebody to be the medical director of the farmworker health program. And I thought, "well, that's a good way for me to continue to practice cross-cultural medicine and to use my Spanish." And I had actually interacted with farmworkers in California to a limited extent and also at the prospect. So, I'm like, "yeah, that sounds great." So, eight years ago, I left the Community Health Center and joined the faculty at UNC and then was subcontracted to the state to be the medical director for the farmworker health program. And I think that's been really, really wonderful because I not only get to continue to care for Latino patients, but I also get to bring learners with me. So, med students and residents and. I developed more of an understanding of the occupational hazards of agricultural medicine so that I can teach people about that. So, it's been a really good transition for me and I've enjoyed it very, very much.
Sophie Therber [00:07:29] That's really incredible. Wow. I'm kind of interested in what you were saying about how what you really wanted to do was just kind of take care of poor people. And your original thought might have been that you were going to do that in Africa. But then over time, I like what you said about having Red Cross culture, having cross cultural experiences right here in North Carolina. That's really interesting. So when you you said that you were not expecting to have a lot of Latino immigrants when you started in about 1989, were you witnessing, like, just changing demographics or were you just kind of surprised about how many Latino immigrants there were? What was that like?
Gayle Thomas [00:08:08] No, it was definitely changing demographics. And there were tensions in our clinic. Well, when you're working at a federally qualified community health center and you're providing care to uninsured and underinsured people, you always have more patients than you can handle. At one point, we had a waiting list of 800 patients wanting to become members at our clinic. Well, it doesn't make sense to keep infecting new patients if you can't take care of them. So, like, if it's six weeks until my next available appointment, then I'm not available. So we were trying to limit our patient panel so that we could actually provide good care. But that meant we weren't able to take everybody who wanted to be our patients. And so the people who are traditionally our patients, the low-income Black and White members of our community, appropriately, were resentful about being kind of pushed out by these new Spanish speaking patients that were coming in greater and greater numbers. So while I was really excited to provide medicine, medical care in Spanish and to improve my Spanish, I also saw with, you know, with some sadness how that pushed other people out and limited their access to care just because there isn't enough there's never enough care in our country for poor and uninsured patients. And the North Carolina legislature's decision to limit Medicaid has only made that worse.
Sophie Therber [00:09:47] So when you said earlier that you were kind of a magnet for Spanish speaking patients, do you think that that was because you were one of the only people who spoke Spanish? Or do you think that there was something else that drew the kind of connected you with that community?
Gayle Thomas [00:09:59] Well, I'd like to think that I was able to express my interest in them and my concern for them and that they appreciated that. But I think also I was the only Spanish speaking provider, and I didn't speak very good Spanish at the beginning. So, they were very patient with me. They taught me a lot. After I got to go to Guatemala for that month of immersion, I did a lot better and my Spanish just continued to improve. But really, it was my patients that taught me a lot about the language, but also about their own cultural beliefs, health care beliefs.
Sophie Therber [00:10:44] And how would you say that your job has changed since you started that kind of work, versus the way that it is today or even the way that it was in recent years before the pandemic?
Gayle Thomas [00:10:56] I'll say...Rephrase that question again, I'm not sure what you're asking.
Sophie Therber [00:10:59] I'm just wondering, I mean, over time, how has just the nature of your work I mean, you were talking about how there have been changing demographics, but what are some other ways that just what you've done with Family Medicine or with the Department of Health and Human Services, just other places? How has that changed over the past since nineteen eighty nine when you started working?
Gayle Thomas [00:11:17] Hmm. There's so many changes that it's hard to hard to say. But when I started at the Community Health Center, I think the copay for somebody who was on the sliding scale fee and went all the way down with ten dollars that copay. Now it's 25 dollars. I certainly had a greater diversity of patients in terms of Black, white, and Latino. I would say now it's almost all Latino, or [it was] when I left, although we also were getting some new immigrants like Karen refugees. So, yeah, a big influx of Karen refugees who we all tried to get kind of up to speed with. Not that we can learn the language that quickly, but understand that population and what some of their unique health beliefs and health care needs were when I changed to the faculty, my life changed dramatically from just being a doctor in a clinic for low income people to being a teacher and needing to learn to give lectures and needing to learn to supervise learners and teach residents and medical students. I had been doing some of that at the center, but doing it much more full time. And then my job at the North Carolina community and the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program is very administrative. And so there's a lot of policies and procedures and official site visits and medical continuous quality improvement things that I need to do that I didn't do at the county health center. So it's been a big learning curve the last eight years, but I've really enjoyed it.
Sophie Therber [00:13:05] I'm interested in what you were saying earlier about how North Carolina health policy, like increasing the copay and decreasing access to Medicare, really impacted the places where you were working. So I'm kind of wondering, how do you see kind of the relationship between the on-the-ground community centers like family health or other places that you worked and these more broad just state legislation? What is that relationship like when these different...these changes come from the state level down to where you are working?
Gayle Thomas [00:13:37] Well, it's actually Medicaid that they limited access to.
Sophie Therber Oh, excuse me.
Gayle Thomas [00:13:42] So when Obama enrolled, or, tried to make Medicaid more available to more people, there were certain states that decided not to take that federal funding to increase access to Medicaid. So, what's really frustrating is that I would have patients who-- they go to the marketplace to try to enroll in subsidized health care from the government. And they're told you don't make enough money to get subsidies from the federal government, which is completely not intuitive. It's like the poorer you are, the more you should get subsidized. But the way this was set up is that people at that income level were supposed to get Medicaid. Well, there is no Medicaid for them, so they just fund this huge chasm between Medicaid and federally subsidized health care. So, it is very painful. It's very painful as a doctor to tell people, yeah, there's nothing for you. You're just going to have to get what care you can at our overly populated community health center, and if you need specialty care, we will try to help you apply to UNC’s Charity Care program. So that's one of the reasons, I think, that I was able to feel good about taking care of my uninsured patients, is that when I needed somebody, a specialist for one of my patients, more often than not, I was able to get it at UNC. So as a primary care provider, I can't do everything for everybody. I can't operate on their brain tumor. I can't do their dialysis. I need my specialty colleagues. And most of the time at UNC, I was able to get them access to the care that they needed, not all with, also, a very imperfect and over-subscribed program. So, when you have patients who can't get the care they need, it's very painful as a provider to watch that.
Sophie Therber [00:15:55] And that's something I could imagine would be kind of compounded by people who might be new to the United States and not necessarily have the proper documentation for insurance or access to these federal programs. Was that something that you experienced, just kind of that whole chasm, as you were saying, being made even more complicated by that?
Gayle Thomas [00:16:15] Definitely. Definitely. We...We took care of a lot of patients who were undocumented and did not have access, would not have had access to Medicaid even if the state legislature had decided to expand access and, fortunately, UNC Charity Care did not make themselves unavailable. They kind of took the reverse. So right now, to apply for Charity Care at UNC, you can't have a legal visa. So, if you have a visa to come to the United States, as about 20,000 of our farmworkers do, they're here on an agricultural guest worker visa. They tend to come in March and April and go back in November every year. Well, if they need dialysis or if they need surgery, they do not qualify for Charity Care because their visa implies that they will be here and take care of themselves and not burden our country. So now I kind of have the reverse problem of it's better to be undocumented if you need specialty care at UNC.
Sophie Therber [00:17:30] That's really interesting that it's just these different levels with having less access to some things, given having some levels of documentation. I'd like to switch gears for a second and just ask you about, have you experienced any natural disasters when you've had any of these positions, particularly with working with farmworkers or any kind of immigrants to North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:17:54] Yeah, in the eight years that I've been the medical director, we've had a number of hurricanes that have impacted farmworkers. And we had farmworkers at one point call 911 because their camp, they live in work camps in large groups, and their work camp was being flooded and 911 was preparing a white-water rescue for them. But then, the owner of the farm called 911 and said, "they're fine, you don't need to go." And the 911 operators listen to the owner instead of listening to the farmworkers who probably, because of language, weren't able to advocate for themselves as well as they would have liked. So, they start calling our Spanish-speaking outreach workers. And finally, the outreach workers were able to get someone to go rescue them. But, yeah, there's all kinds of difficulties when farmworkers, first of all, if they're out of work, even if their camp is not being flooded, that they just can't work, they don't work, they don't get paid; they don't get paid, they can't eat, they don't have their own transportation. They're reliant on their employer for transportation. They have access to some public service announcements through Spanish radio and Spanish media. But if they lose power, then their cell phones are going to die and they're not going to have access to those announcements and that very important public service information that helps us all kind of navigate when we're in the middle of a disaster.
Sophie Therber [00:19:36] Yeah, that's really heartbreaking that they weren't able to get the help that they needed. I mean, I'm glad that they were able to call your Spanish speaking hotline for that kind of thing. But that's just really heartbreaking that it happened that way. So how do you your role changed when there are these natural disasters, when you're working with people who are affected by those natural disasters? How does your role and your day-to-day work change? How is it impacted by that?
Gayle Thomas [00:20:02] Well, I mean, COVID impacted all of us in health care in huge, huge ways. I've never experienced anything like I've experienced this last year and a half with COVID; my life just got turned upside down. Our program, which previously was really just caring for about ten thousand farmworkers across the state, was tapped by the state DHHS, understandably, to step up and try to care for all the farmworkers in the state, all 100,000 of them. And without prior experience, I mean, none of us had ever been in a pandemic before. Farmworkers did not do well in this pandemic because they live in large work camps. So, when one person got COVID, they all got COVID. We had camps where 90 percent of people tested positive for COVID. Fortunately, not all of them got seriously ill, but some of them did and some of them died. They go to and from work in a school bus. And so, they're all being transported together. So, the whole idea of staying home and limiting your contact with other people is just not possible for farmworkers. So that was incredibly frustrating to try to respond to COVID when there just aren't other alternatives for living and transportation. So, masks, hand sanitizer, all that's good, but it's not adequate. And then the hardest thing was...when a group of people are exposed to COVID, the ideal thing is everybody goes into quarantine separately. But you can't do that when you've got a bunch of people living together. And so, yeah, you separate the people who are sick, who have come in from the people who aren't who are just exposed. But then the next person comes down with COVID in the exposed group, and then the next person, and then the next person. And you just keep re-exposing people. And the infection just rolls through the camp and it's so frustrating to feel so helpless in trying to respond to COVID in these situations. This year is different. We have vaccines and we are seeing smaller outbreaks. We have had a farmworker already died this year and we have several in the hospital. But it's not on the scale of last year, so we're vaccinating just as fast as we can, [00:22:48] as soon as we can, when people get here from other states or from Mexico. Some farmworkers will move to North Carolina, from Florida, where they've worked in the winter, and now they're going to work here and other...and some of them may have gotten vaccinated in Florida, others not. But then a lot of them are still coming up from Mexico on these guest worker visas. So, trying to find them and vaccinate them as soon as we can is our approach this year. So, it feels better, feels like we actually have a tool that works. But a 40-hour bus ride from Mexico, when you're sitting next to somebody who's asymptomatically or early asymptomatically infected with COVID, you're going to get it. And the vaccine we get you when you arrive is not going to be soon enough. So, we're still seeing people with COVID, but it's not spreading this fast in the camps because more people are vaccinated.
Sophie Therber [00:23:48] Yeah, I think so much has changed, I mean, just thinking back to the early days of the pandemic, so in February, March 2020 versus now when we do have access to the vaccines, how kind of if you had to identify a few of the biggest problems, I mean, there's a lot, right? You were talking about crowded transportation, not being able to isolate separately, and things like that. So how have the challenges changed from the early days of the pandemic, before we kind of had an understanding of what was going, on versus the kind of middle of things, not necessarily the middle, but later on when things were kind of getting worse, and now when we do have access to vaccines? How have the different challenges evolved in that time?
Gayle Thomas [00:24:34] I think the earliest challenge was, of course, knowledge we didn't know. Could you get this from surfaces? How close did you have to be to somebody to get it for how long? You know, who was going to get really sick and who is going to be asymptomatically infected? And how many people were asymptomatically infected? You mean, we just didn't know that. And so that made it a whole lot scarier. And the lack of PPE…My program relies heavily on outreach workers. As a physician, I am not as important as the outreach workers. So the outreach workers are people who often are bilingual, bicultural, come from the community and are the bridge between the patient and me, the medical provider. If I just sit in my clinic, I'll never see farmworkers because they can't get to me without an outreach worker. So, our outreach workers are our unsung heroes who go out to the camps to get to know the workers who earn their trust and provide them in non-COVID times with transportation, financial assistance, food assistance and go rescue them when they get stuck in a flooded work camp and 911 won't come. So, they are like, amazing. But at the beginning we didn't have PPE for them. You know, the PPE was, appropriately, going first to the people who are working in the COVID hot zones: the people in the ICUs, people in the ERS who were exposed to known COVID patients. And so, our outreach workers were stuck at home trying to take care of farmworkers over the phone and obviously not feeling comfortable transporting them. And so that was really, really hard this year. Now that outreach workers have the opportunity to be vaccinated, there's plenty of masks to go around, we have a better understanding that surfaces are not as important in transmitting the infection. Now, the outreach workers can actually go out to the camps and see the guys and bring them food. And last year, all they could do basically were porch drops, which they did. But now they can actually interact with the guys. And when everybody's masked, they can put them in a vehicle and take them to appointments and things like that. So, I think the stress now is, first of all, everybody's tired, we're all exhausted. Everybody has been working at, I don't know, one hundred and fifty percent capacity for the last year and a half. And we've been vaccinating as fast as we can. And there's still guys that want vaccines that haven't had access to them. So, I think that stress now, it's just that everybody's tired. And farmworkers, one of the reasons there are marginalized population is they don't get paid time off from work. So, if you want to take care of farmworkers, you have to do it after work hours. Well, they work from sunup to sundown, so that means you're working late at night. So our outreach workers will often go out to the camps starting around seven, 8:00 in the evening. They're there till 10:00, 11:00 when the farmworkers have to go to bed because they have to get up again at four thirty five in the morning. And as a provider, that's when they take me out is late in the evenings. And one other time that farmworkers are available for vaccinations are maybe Saturday afternoon, evening and Sundays. So that's the stress now is how do you find vaccine providers who are willing to go late evenings and weekends? That's not when medical providers tend to want to work. We want our weekends off, too, but that's the only time farmworkers are available, so getting the vaccine to them at times when they're available is the challenge right now. I think the other challenge that we've been having all along is getting testing to them became very clear early on that a test that takes eight days to come back, that means nothing when you're living with 50 guys. I mean, after eight days, everybody is already infected. Now, we have tests that turn around a little bit faster. So, PCR tests that can turn around in 24 to 48 hours, that's better. It's still not good enough. And now we have rapid antigen tests that can come back in 15 minutes. But they're not 100% sensitive or 100% specific, meaning that you can have false positives and false negatives. So, getting testing out to people in rural areas, in labor camps at the end of gravel roads is hard. One of the things that we're trying to do right now is to buy these at-home test kits and to give them to the farmworkers so that they can test if and when they feel like they need it, because their access to testing is so, so poor. And given that we are seeing some breakthrough infections, people who are fully vaccinated that are getting infected, I don't think testing is over. We need vaccines, but we also need testing. That's one of our challenges right now, is getting these at home test kits to farmworkers so they can test if they get symptoms.
Sophie Therber [00:30:13] And can you walk me through...How are you distributing those at home test kits to the farmers? I mean, you were saying it's difficult -- rural North Carolina gravel roads -- but for you or the outreach workers or whoever is doing that, how does that work? How do you end up being able to do that?
Gayle Thomas [00:30:30] Well, it's the outreach workers. So, you know, my program has gotten some funds from the federal government for testing and COVID response. And so we're using those funds to buy these at home test kits and we're giving them to the outreach workers. And we're saying, here, take this with you. When you go to the camp to visit the workers, talk to them about how important it is. Obviously, we have lots of masks, too, now. So, we send out masks and hand sanitizers and, now, these test kits. And let me help you get your vaccine, but even after you get your vaccine, let me help you with this test kit if you want it. So, the outreach workers are taking them. We also are encountering workers in Wal-Mart parking lots. For the last, I guess, four or five months, we've been going to the Wal-Mart parking lot at Rocky Mount and having a health fair there where farmworkers go on Sundays to buy their groceries. We're trying to put ourselves where they are. And also we've gone to some Mexican tiendas or little shops where they tend to go on the weekends as well and handing out those test kits and that PPE and health information and stuff like that there.
Sophie Therber [00:31:46] It's so interesting because there's so much nuance in the way that the COVID response has gone. I mean, especially just because of this time frame of just not really knowing what was going on, and then being overwhelmed, and now having different challenges with distribution of vaccines and testing, like you were saying. And I'm wondering, how does the way that you and your coworkers responded to the -- ah, excuse me -- are continuing to respond to the COVID pandemic, compare to ways that you've responded to extreme weather or flooding or other natural disaster events in the past?
Gayle Thomas [00:32:21] I think that because this has gone on for so long and it's been so universal, it's not just those five counties that are flooded over there, it's all of North Carolina, it's all of the United States, it's all of the world. One thing that's happened, fortunately, this time is that we have been able to make alliances and collaborations with people that we didn't before. And those have been really, really important. So we've been able to collaborate with more of our colleagues within DHHS. We've been able to collaborate with colleagues in the agricultural extension program, in Department of Commerce, in Migrant Head Start and migrant education. So some of these programs that we always knew about each other. Right. But we didn't know each other individually and we didn't try to work together. That has made a huge difference. So, for example, early in the pandemic, we wanted to send masks to farmworkers and we were able to do that with state purchase masks and we were able to deliver thousands of them to the ag extension workers. So every one of the hundred counties in North Carolina have ag extension workers who are focused mostly, mainly on the growers, not on the farmworkers. And so, they have been kind of in a parallel universe to us. And all of a sudden we were able to ask them to help deliver these masks to the farms, which [00:34:08] was huge, was huge. We just don't have as many outreach workers as we need. We don't have outreach workers in all counties, but we did have ag extension agents in all counties. And then in terms of trying to organize the vaccine distribution, we're able to use the AG extension agents again and form some committees of the outreach workers, the ag extension agent and then the vaccine providers. So, the clinics, the health departments, people who are providing the vaccine and trying to help them work together in a collaborative way to meet the needs in their county, because they're the ones that know where the groups of farmworkers are. And then the ag extension agent is able to call the grower because they know the grower and then they're able to help that grower link to a vaccine provider. So that been different and that's been really, really rewarding and very successful.
Sophie Therber [00:35:06] So, do a lot of these partnerships kind of happen on a county-to county-basis? You're working with people who now have more specific contacts about different counties in North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:35:24] Well, they didn't know each other until we introduced them. OK, so this was a sort of a strategy that the team that I work with came up with. Specifically, the state epidemiologist that was assigned to work with us, came up with this idea of forming these local committees. And so, we got these name and numbers and email addresses and we called these people and got them together and held meetings still are holding meetings to try to help them collaborate. So, these were partnerships that were conceived of on the state level and are being enacted on the local county level.
Sophie Therber [00:36:08] Okay, so what is the relationship between the state level planning and the county level plan planning for these kinds of partnerships?
Gayle Thomas [00:36:17] Well, the state level planning came up with the idea of forming these local vaccine teams by county and then pulled the teams together. And now the teams are taking it themselves and many of them are meeting weekly or every other week to talk about, okay, this grower is getting these workers this week who can provide vaccines. Have you called them? Have you talked to them? Has the outreach worker been out there to talk to the workers to make sure their questions have been answered? Has the ag extension agent called the grower to make sure they understand what's going on? So that's kind of how it works.
Sophie Therber [00:37:00] There are a lot of just a lot of different levels of things to consider, because there are so many issues that have come about because of the pandemic and so many specific steps to solve those issues. Like you were saying, like people cold calling people and talking about just what needs to be done. So, can you tell me a little bit more about how you how can you prioritize when there are so many different what needs to be things that need to be done because of the pandemic? How do you decide what to reach out to other people about?
Gayle Thomas [00:37:31] That's a hard call. I mean. You know, it's very overwhelming and there were certainly many times in the past year and a half when my colleagues and I because I'm not alone, I work with a wonderful team of colleagues in Raleigh in the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program. And when we would just feel overwhelmed and I would just have we just have to say, let's just do the next thing. Let's just do the next right thing. We can't do everything, but we're just going to do the next right thing. So, I mean, we tried to prioritize based on what we knew about the disease and what would be most effective and also what we hear from our outreach workers. So, unlike some state organizations, that might be a little detached from what's going on in the ground. We met with our outreach workers every week during the worst part of the pandemic to hear from them. What's going on in your site? What do you need? What you hear? What are the farmworkers saying to you? So, I think listening to the people that we were trying to serve also is very, very important in terms of how you prioritize what you're going to do next.
Sophie Therber [00:38:47] And do you think that in the future, after I mean, the hope is that the pandemic will eventually subside, and we can kind of be moving back to what we used to consider normal and everything. Do you think that any of the practices that you've adopted now because of the pandemic you and your coworkers have adopted now, do you think you'll keep any of those or do you think that that's just kind of a shorter term solution to just a specific issue with the pandemic?
Gayle Thomas [00:39:14] No, we really would like to see these local teams maybe coalesce into regional teams and to continue to bridge this gap between the grower and the farmworker by using these regional teams to do disaster preparedness. So we recognize that these teams have formed in response to the disaster, but we would like to see them continue and be earthquake preparedness teams so that when the next --or, hurricane more likely, preparedness teams -- I'm sorry, back to California where we had earthquakes all the time. Here, we don't have them very often! But, you know, so when the next big hurricane happens and then is expected and flooding is expected, then these teams will already know each other and be able to work more effectively together to get farmworkers to safety, to get farmworkers the food and water they need when they can't drink the water or they don't have electricity or they don't have works, they don't have food, all those kinds of things.
Sophie Therber [00:40:26] So I think it's really interesting.... the importance of collaboration and I mean, you were saying that that's something that you just kind of started because of the pandemic. There was a need to coordinate responses. And that need is definitely going to continue because of the future disasters that will be faced. So can you tell me anything else about how your day-to-day or things that you're doing have changed because of the presence of these other actors, these people who are collaborating? Like, for instance, are you finding yourself kind of taking on more work to coordinate between people? Or do you feel like you've noticed new issues because the new things might be coming to your attention because there are new actors in your job now? What do you think?
Gayle Thomas [00:41:12] Oh, I definitely think there's more work. Yeah, there's always more work. I am not doing all the work myself. Obviously I have this wonderful team that I work with and our collaborators. But, yeah, it takes time to to bring these teams together and to keep them going and to check in with them and to make sure that things aren't just sort of petering out because this was all added stuff. This is all stuff on top of what people are already doing. Right. And they're exhausted and tired, too. And then our vaccinators, you know, they're running around the middle of the night vaccinating people in fields. You know, that gets tiring, too, because then they have to back in their clinic the next day seeing patients and doing their normal stuff. So, this is all on top of what people are already doing. So, it's always more work, I think. You know, I spend my life on Zoom a lot of times right now because we're doing all these local team meetings on Zoom, my wonderful teammates in Raleigh. We're not working in the Office of Rural Health together anymore. We're all meeting on Zoom. So, "Zoom fatigue," or "Teams fatigue" since we have to use Teams, is very real and we're all very, very tired. But the other thing that's opened up is how, how much you can do [dog barks] in a telemedicine call -- Hold on, let me get my dog.
Sophie Therber No worries.
[Brief pause as Gayle lets out her dog]
Gayle Thomas [00:42:55] We developed, for the first time, telemedicine; so, we had we have mobile clinics that we take out to the labor camps and we do primary care. And early in the pandemic, we suspended those because of the lack of PPE and stuff. But now we're back doing those. But we are continuing to do telemedicine. A lot of our workers do have smart phones. They often don't have the Internet. That's one thing we've been trying to get them in the pandemic is to get more Internet to the labor camp. And then then we can talk on the phone and and we can refill their blood pressure medicine and refill their diabetes medicine and do a certain amount of health care on the phone, which is really, really useful for people who are in rural areas. So I hope that's another thing that we're able to continue once the pandemic is over, because I think that's meeting a need that is going to continue.
Sophie Therber [00:44:01] What support do you think that would be most helpful for you to be addressing farmworker health throughout the pandemic and with natural disasters? I know in an ideal world we wouldn't even have those in the first place. But just ideally, if if there were more resources available to you and your coworkers and the farmworker health program, what supports would be helpful?
Gayle Thomas [00:44:24] I think the most important thing we need is more outreach workers. So, as I said before, not every county in every county in North Carolina has farmworkers. Some have many more than some have many less. But not every county has outreach workers. And as I said before, you know, a health care provider like myself without an average worker, we're just not going to be effective in terms of reaching farmworkers. So, I right now, most outreach workers are paid for by federal funds that come through a person. And so that's on a federal level. So I think expanding the number of outreach workers would be the most important thing.
Sophie Therber [00:45:10] And what with expanding our outreach workers, are those....How do you recruit outreach workers or people? Do they come from the state or are they just people who live locally? I mean, where do these people come from?
Gayle Thomas [00:45:24] That's a really good question. No, they come locally. That's their connection to the community. That gives them their super magic powers, because people they look like them. They talk like them. They maybe already are known by them. And so they have entrance into a community where I, a white lady with the Spanish that's spoken with an American accent, I might not. So... But if I go with them to a community, then all of a sudden I have credibility that I wouldn't have had otherwise because the outreach worker has done that. [00:46:08]So they come -- North Carolina is part of their response to the pandemic as a whole, really stood up a big community health care community health worker program, which and that's basically outreach workers for people other than farm. So, in my program, we call them outreach workers. These are people who are not they're not licensed as a nurse or a doctor, but they have this knowledge of the community, and they are this bridge of care. North Carolina started up a big community health worker program to reach other marginalized communities besides farmworkers. And a lot of them did the contact tracing and testing that we saw earlier in the pandemic. That has become less important now because more people are vaccinated, but as cases take back up, might become more important again. And so, we have been finding those community health workers that are bilingual, English, Spanish, and trying to sort of enfold them and recruit them to the farmworker health program. So, yeah, we find them in the community.
Sophie Therber [00:47:30] Throughout, the numbers of these outreach workers, how did that change during the pandemic? I mean, I know that we heard so much just about shortages of health care workers and things like that. Do you feel that you had kind of a sustainable amount of outreach workers, or do you feel like there was room for improvement there?
Gayle Thomas [00:47:51] Well, we've never had enough, so that didn't change. But I was really pleased that we were able to support our outreach workers and keep them in their position. It's a burnout position. They are on the front lines there. They are talking to people who don't have enough food, who don't have access to health care, who are working in dangerous occupations, who are dying of COVID. It's a burnout position. And so, they need a lot of support, both technical support, medical support, but also emotional support. And I feel like we were able to hire a COVID response team and that team was able to then, as I said before, meet weekly with outreach workers just to kind of keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on the ground, how are things changing, but also how are you doing and what can we do to help and support you? So we were able to maintain our workforce and in and increase it with some of the federal emergency funds that we got. We were able to hire some more outreach workers. So never enough. Never enough, but increased that net staff some.
Sophie Therber [00:49:14] Great. Well, thank you so much. I'd just like to add, is there anything else you would like to add or anything else that you'd like just to talk about before I stop the recording?
Gayle Thomas [00:49:23] Well, I just would love people to know that farmworkers are currently exempt from many workplace protections that most of the rest of us have. And that was written into law back in the 1920s when a lot of workplace reforms were made and it was written into law that they were exempt from overtime pay, that they were exempt from disability and lots of different things, because at that time the southern states did not want those workplace rights to be extended to their sharecroppers who were formerly enslaved African-Americans. And so they made sure that those things were exempted. So, it's called agricultural exceptionalism. And it basically sets up a very oppressive and dangerous workplace for farmworkers. And most of us have no idea that that's going on. No idea that child labor is fine on the farm. You can't work at McDonald's, but you can go work in a very dangerous place on the farm and die of heat exhaustion or heat stroke. And that workplace exceptionalism has to stop that. That exploitation has to stop.
Sophie Therber [00:50:49] Wow, did you say the 1920s? Yeah, wow, that's amazing. I mean, that's just that's been around for so long and I mean, wow, I didn't realize that it had been not updated in that much time. That's really...I'm really...thank you so much for sharing that because that's definitely important to know about and that's something that...wow.
Gayle Thomas [00:51:10] And that's one of the reasons they're so vulnerable to COVID, is that they don't have any of these protections that the rest of us take for granted. And I was going to say we're able to get away with it right now because our workforce is primarily undocumented or documented immigrants and they don't feel most of them, they don't feel empowered to speak up and protest.
Sophie Therber [00:51:40] And when you are working with your addressing COVID or you're addressing other disasters in these workplaces that are just, like you said, very dangerous and based off of exploitation, what kind of challenges do you run into that are kind of unique to that kind of workplace and that kind of situation?
Gayle Thomas [00:51:59] Well, for one, we get chased off by growers where they're providing free health care to their workers late at night and they object and they feel like they should be able to control access to their workers and that only people that they allow to come see their workers should be able to come see their workers. So that's one thing that we experience. We experience growers who are like, "no, I don't I don't want my workers to be vaccinated. I don't believe that the vaccine is needed. They're fine." Or, "I don't think my workers need to be rescued from floodwaters." So we just the...And not all growers are like that. Some are very, very concerned about their workers. But the ones that are like that, it's very discouraging. And they often, because of the way the laws are written, they are able to get away with that.
Sophie Therber [00:53:00] That's really interesting and upsetting that the growers have so much kind of control over the well-being of the people that are working there, and that's I mean, really unfortunate that that's an issue that you are running into and your work and other people who are doing similar work. All right, well, thank you so much for your time. I just, I would like to ask again if there's anything you'd like to add.
Gayle Thomas [00:53:23] No, no, that's okay.
Sophie Therber [00:53:26] Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording but thank you so much.
End of interview. [00:53:32]
Es: Transcripción
Sophie Therber [00:00:01] My name is Sophie Therber, and I'm interviewing Gayle Thomas, today is July 19, 2021, and it is currently 4:09 PM. Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed, Gayle, I've been really looking forward to this. So, thank you so much.
Gayle Thomas [00:00:17] You're welcome.
Sophie Therber [00:00:19] Just to start, where are you from and can you tell me a little bit about that area?
Gayle Thomas [00:00:25] Yeah, I was born actually in Congo, which is a country in Africa, but I didn't live there very long. I left when I was about two. My parents were working there as missionary teachers, training Congolese teachers. I grew up in California where I got all my medical training. And then I came to North Carolina right after finishing residency, primarily because my husband got a position on faculty at UNC in the School of Public Health.
Sophie Therber [00:00:59] How long have you been in North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:01:02] Since 1989, so a long time.
Sophie Therber [00:01:06] What was that like to be moving around from Congo to California to North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:01:11] Well, I don't remember the move from Congo because I was only two, but growing up in California was great. Moving to North Carolina was a little bit scary. There's certain, you know, I would say, prejudices about southern states in California, but I was very pleasantly surprised when I moved to Chapel Hill. It had a lot of things that I enjoyed and profited from. I really found that I love the...The seasons are more marked here in North Carolina than they are in California. And I really enjoyed that change in weather and the weather drama. Now that California is in the middle of a big drought and on fire every year, I'm grateful not to be breathing that smoke. So, I love California. I love visiting it. But North Carolina has a lot of the same features: mountains, beaches, beautiful woods. And I feel very fortunate to live in North Carolina.
Sophie Therber [00:02:28] Does your family still live in California?
Gayle Thomas [00:02:31] No. I have some cousins there still, but my parents moved to be with us in Chapel Hill. My mother-in-law moved. My brothers have moved to other states. So, no, I don't have any close family in California anymore.
Sophie Therber [00:02:50] And so you moved to North Carolina, and you were in Chapel Hill. And then what influenced your decision to start working with the Farm Workers Project and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services?
Gayle Thomas [00:03:02] Well, I went to medical school because I wanted to take care of poor people. And originally, I was going to be taking care of poor people in Africa. I wanted to go back to Africa, and I married the person I thought wanted to go back to Africa, too. He had worked in Congo for two years as a nutritionist prior to us really beginning our relationship. And that was one reason why we got acquainted, because we had that in common. But then following residency, we decided we needed a few years in the States and he got this job in North Carolina. We weren't planning to stay, but once we came and then we started a family and then it became clear that our family needed to be sort of rooted in one place and not being bounced around the world. So, we decided to stay in North Carolina. I was entertaining the idea of being an academic physician but decided after one year in the Department of Family Medicine that although I really loved that what I loved more was taking care of poor people. So I took a job at the...It was called OCCHS, but it's a federally qualified community health center now called Piedmont Health Services. So I took a job and both Carrboro and Prospect Hill County Health Center and I began to get Spanish-speaking patients. So, I had studied Spanish in California, realizing that I would need that in medicine in California, and I did need that in med school and residency. And then when I came to North Carolina, I thought, "well, I'm not going to speak Spanish to North Carolina in 1989." But that was just as the influx of Spanish speakers began. And I had a receptionist who is bilingual and then I was barely able to speak medical Spanish and I just kind of became this magnet for Spanish speaking patients for the region. And I realized, "wow, I don't have to leave the country to do medicine in cross-cultural medicine, which was kind of what I really wanted to do. But I really need to get better in Spanish." So my husband and I took our two little kids to Guatemala for a month of immersion, which really, really helped with my Spanish. So, I worked at the Community Health Center for 23 years and really enjoyed the opportunity to be a part of my patients lives. Many of them were very recent immigrants and not farmworkers so much. After I did that for 23 years and my kids were grown, I was like, "I need a new challenge. What about that faculty position that they offered me 23 years ago? I wonder if that's still available." So, I was so fortunate that family medicine was willing to give me a job there. And as part of that job they said we need somebody to be the medical director of the farmworker health program. And I thought, "well, that's a good way for me to continue to practice cross-cultural medicine and to use my Spanish." And I had actually interacted with farmworkers in California to a limited extent and also at the prospect. So, I'm like, "yeah, that sounds great." So, eight years ago, I left the Community Health Center and joined the faculty at UNC and then was subcontracted to the state to be the medical director for the farmworker health program. And I think that's been really, really wonderful because I not only get to continue to care for Latino patients, but I also get to bring learners with me. So, med students and residents and. I developed more of an understanding of the occupational hazards of agricultural medicine so that I can teach people about that. So, it's been a really good transition for me and I've enjoyed it very, very much.
Sophie Therber [00:07:29] That's really incredible. Wow. I'm kind of interested in what you were saying about how what you really wanted to do was just kind of take care of poor people. And your original thought might have been that you were going to do that in Africa. But then over time, I like what you said about having Red Cross culture, having cross cultural experiences right here in North Carolina. That's really interesting. So when you you said that you were not expecting to have a lot of Latino immigrants when you started in about 1989, were you witnessing, like, just changing demographics or were you just kind of surprised about how many Latino immigrants there were? What was that like?
Gayle Thomas [00:08:08] No, it was definitely changing demographics. And there were tensions in our clinic. Well, when you're working at a federally qualified community health center and you're providing care to uninsured and underinsured people, you always have more patients than you can handle. At one point, we had a waiting list of 800 patients wanting to become members at our clinic. Well, it doesn't make sense to keep infecting new patients if you can't take care of them. So, like, if it's six weeks until my next available appointment, then I'm not available. So we were trying to limit our patient panel so that we could actually provide good care. But that meant we weren't able to take everybody who wanted to be our patients. And so the people who are traditionally our patients, the low-income Black and White members of our community, appropriately, were resentful about being kind of pushed out by these new Spanish speaking patients that were coming in greater and greater numbers. So while I was really excited to provide medicine, medical care in Spanish and to improve my Spanish, I also saw with, you know, with some sadness how that pushed other people out and limited their access to care just because there isn't enough there's never enough care in our country for poor and uninsured patients. And the North Carolina legislature's decision to limit Medicaid has only made that worse.
Sophie Therber [00:09:47] So when you said earlier that you were kind of a magnet for Spanish speaking patients, do you think that that was because you were one of the only people who spoke Spanish? Or do you think that there was something else that drew the kind of connected you with that community?
Gayle Thomas [00:09:59] Well, I'd like to think that I was able to express my interest in them and my concern for them and that they appreciated that. But I think also I was the only Spanish speaking provider, and I didn't speak very good Spanish at the beginning. So, they were very patient with me. They taught me a lot. After I got to go to Guatemala for that month of immersion, I did a lot better and my Spanish just continued to improve. But really, it was my patients that taught me a lot about the language, but also about their own cultural beliefs, health care beliefs.
Sophie Therber [00:10:44] And how would you say that your job has changed since you started that kind of work, versus the way that it is today or even the way that it was in recent years before the pandemic?
Gayle Thomas [00:10:56] I'll say...Rephrase that question again, I'm not sure what you're asking.
Sophie Therber [00:10:59] I'm just wondering, I mean, over time, how has just the nature of your work I mean, you were talking about how there have been changing demographics, but what are some other ways that just what you've done with Family Medicine or with the Department of Health and Human Services, just other places? How has that changed over the past since nineteen eighty nine when you started working?
Gayle Thomas [00:11:17] Hmm. There's so many changes that it's hard to hard to say. But when I started at the Community Health Center, I think the copay for somebody who was on the sliding scale fee and went all the way down with ten dollars that copay. Now it's 25 dollars. I certainly had a greater diversity of patients in terms of Black, white, and Latino. I would say now it's almost all Latino, or [it was] when I left, although we also were getting some new immigrants like Karen refugees. So, yeah, a big influx of Karen refugees who we all tried to get kind of up to speed with. Not that we can learn the language that quickly, but understand that population and what some of their unique health beliefs and health care needs were when I changed to the faculty, my life changed dramatically from just being a doctor in a clinic for low income people to being a teacher and needing to learn to give lectures and needing to learn to supervise learners and teach residents and medical students. I had been doing some of that at the center, but doing it much more full time. And then my job at the North Carolina community and the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program is very administrative. And so there's a lot of policies and procedures and official site visits and medical continuous quality improvement things that I need to do that I didn't do at the county health center. So it's been a big learning curve the last eight years, but I've really enjoyed it.
Sophie Therber [00:13:05] I'm interested in what you were saying earlier about how North Carolina health policy, like increasing the copay and decreasing access to Medicare, really impacted the places where you were working. So I'm kind of wondering, how do you see kind of the relationship between the on-the-ground community centers like family health or other places that you worked and these more broad just state legislation? What is that relationship like when these different...these changes come from the state level down to where you are working?
Gayle Thomas [00:13:37] Well, it's actually Medicaid that they limited access to.
Sophie Therber Oh, excuse me.
Gayle Thomas [00:13:42] So when Obama enrolled, or, tried to make Medicaid more available to more people, there were certain states that decided not to take that federal funding to increase access to Medicaid. So, what's really frustrating is that I would have patients who-- they go to the marketplace to try to enroll in subsidized health care from the government. And they're told you don't make enough money to get subsidies from the federal government, which is completely not intuitive. It's like the poorer you are, the more you should get subsidized. But the way this was set up is that people at that income level were supposed to get Medicaid. Well, there is no Medicaid for them, so they just fund this huge chasm between Medicaid and federally subsidized health care. So, it is very painful. It's very painful as a doctor to tell people, yeah, there's nothing for you. You're just going to have to get what care you can at our overly populated community health center, and if you need specialty care, we will try to help you apply to UNC’s Charity Care program. So that's one of the reasons, I think, that I was able to feel good about taking care of my uninsured patients, is that when I needed somebody, a specialist for one of my patients, more often than not, I was able to get it at UNC. So as a primary care provider, I can't do everything for everybody. I can't operate on their brain tumor. I can't do their dialysis. I need my specialty colleagues. And most of the time at UNC, I was able to get them access to the care that they needed, not all with, also, a very imperfect and over-subscribed program. So, when you have patients who can't get the care they need, it's very painful as a provider to watch that.
Sophie Therber [00:15:55] And that's something I could imagine would be kind of compounded by people who might be new to the United States and not necessarily have the proper documentation for insurance or access to these federal programs. Was that something that you experienced, just kind of that whole chasm, as you were saying, being made even more complicated by that?
Gayle Thomas [00:16:15] Definitely. Definitely. We...We took care of a lot of patients who were undocumented and did not have access, would not have had access to Medicaid even if the state legislature had decided to expand access and, fortunately, UNC Charity Care did not make themselves unavailable. They kind of took the reverse. So right now, to apply for Charity Care at UNC, you can't have a legal visa. So, if you have a visa to come to the United States, as about 20,000 of our farmworkers do, they're here on an agricultural guest worker visa. They tend to come in March and April and go back in November every year. Well, if they need dialysis or if they need surgery, they do not qualify for Charity Care because their visa implies that they will be here and take care of themselves and not burden our country. So now I kind of have the reverse problem of it's better to be undocumented if you need specialty care at UNC.
Sophie Therber [00:17:30] That's really interesting that it's just these different levels with having less access to some things, given having some levels of documentation. I'd like to switch gears for a second and just ask you about, have you experienced any natural disasters when you've had any of these positions, particularly with working with farmworkers or any kind of immigrants to North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:17:54] Yeah, in the eight years that I've been the medical director, we've had a number of hurricanes that have impacted farmworkers. And we had farmworkers at one point call 911 because their camp, they live in work camps in large groups, and their work camp was being flooded and 911 was preparing a white-water rescue for them. But then, the owner of the farm called 911 and said, "they're fine, you don't need to go." And the 911 operators listen to the owner instead of listening to the farmworkers who probably, because of language, weren't able to advocate for themselves as well as they would have liked. So, they start calling our Spanish-speaking outreach workers. And finally, the outreach workers were able to get someone to go rescue them. But, yeah, there's all kinds of difficulties when farmworkers, first of all, if they're out of work, even if their camp is not being flooded, that they just can't work, they don't work, they don't get paid; they don't get paid, they can't eat, they don't have their own transportation. They're reliant on their employer for transportation. They have access to some public service announcements through Spanish radio and Spanish media. But if they lose power, then their cell phones are going to die and they're not going to have access to those announcements and that very important public service information that helps us all kind of navigate when we're in the middle of a disaster.
Sophie Therber [00:19:36] Yeah, that's really heartbreaking that they weren't able to get the help that they needed. I mean, I'm glad that they were able to call your Spanish speaking hotline for that kind of thing. But that's just really heartbreaking that it happened that way. So how do you your role changed when there are these natural disasters, when you're working with people who are affected by those natural disasters? How does your role and your day-to-day work change? How is it impacted by that?
Gayle Thomas [00:20:02] Well, I mean, COVID impacted all of us in health care in huge, huge ways. I've never experienced anything like I've experienced this last year and a half with COVID; my life just got turned upside down. Our program, which previously was really just caring for about ten thousand farmworkers across the state, was tapped by the state DHHS, understandably, to step up and try to care for all the farmworkers in the state, all 100,000 of them. And without prior experience, I mean, none of us had ever been in a pandemic before. Farmworkers did not do well in this pandemic because they live in large work camps. So, when one person got COVID, they all got COVID. We had camps where 90 percent of people tested positive for COVID. Fortunately, not all of them got seriously ill, but some of them did and some of them died. They go to and from work in a school bus. And so, they're all being transported together. So, the whole idea of staying home and limiting your contact with other people is just not possible for farmworkers. So that was incredibly frustrating to try to respond to COVID when there just aren't other alternatives for living and transportation. So, masks, hand sanitizer, all that's good, but it's not adequate. And then the hardest thing was...when a group of people are exposed to COVID, the ideal thing is everybody goes into quarantine separately. But you can't do that when you've got a bunch of people living together. And so, yeah, you separate the people who are sick, who have come in from the people who aren't who are just exposed. But then the next person comes down with COVID in the exposed group, and then the next person, and then the next person. And you just keep re-exposing people. And the infection just rolls through the camp and it's so frustrating to feel so helpless in trying to respond to COVID in these situations. This year is different. We have vaccines and we are seeing smaller outbreaks. We have had a farmworker already died this year and we have several in the hospital. But it's not on the scale of last year, so we're vaccinating just as fast as we can, [00:22:48] as soon as we can, when people get here from other states or from Mexico. Some farmworkers will move to North Carolina, from Florida, where they've worked in the winter, and now they're going to work here and other...and some of them may have gotten vaccinated in Florida, others not. But then a lot of them are still coming up from Mexico on these guest worker visas. So, trying to find them and vaccinate them as soon as we can is our approach this year. So, it feels better, feels like we actually have a tool that works. But a 40-hour bus ride from Mexico, when you're sitting next to somebody who's asymptomatically or early asymptomatically infected with COVID, you're going to get it. And the vaccine we get you when you arrive is not going to be soon enough. So, we're still seeing people with COVID, but it's not spreading this fast in the camps because more people are vaccinated.
Sophie Therber [00:23:48] Yeah, I think so much has changed, I mean, just thinking back to the early days of the pandemic, so in February, March 2020 versus now when we do have access to the vaccines, how kind of if you had to identify a few of the biggest problems, I mean, there's a lot, right? You were talking about crowded transportation, not being able to isolate separately, and things like that. So how have the challenges changed from the early days of the pandemic, before we kind of had an understanding of what was going, on versus the kind of middle of things, not necessarily the middle, but later on when things were kind of getting worse, and now when we do have access to vaccines? How have the different challenges evolved in that time?
Gayle Thomas [00:24:34] I think the earliest challenge was, of course, knowledge we didn't know. Could you get this from surfaces? How close did you have to be to somebody to get it for how long? You know, who was going to get really sick and who is going to be asymptomatically infected? And how many people were asymptomatically infected? You mean, we just didn't know that. And so that made it a whole lot scarier. And the lack of PPE…My program relies heavily on outreach workers. As a physician, I am not as important as the outreach workers. So the outreach workers are people who often are bilingual, bicultural, come from the community and are the bridge between the patient and me, the medical provider. If I just sit in my clinic, I'll never see farmworkers because they can't get to me without an outreach worker. So, our outreach workers are our unsung heroes who go out to the camps to get to know the workers who earn their trust and provide them in non-COVID times with transportation, financial assistance, food assistance and go rescue them when they get stuck in a flooded work camp and 911 won't come. So, they are like, amazing. But at the beginning we didn't have PPE for them. You know, the PPE was, appropriately, going first to the people who are working in the COVID hot zones: the people in the ICUs, people in the ERS who were exposed to known COVID patients. And so, our outreach workers were stuck at home trying to take care of farmworkers over the phone and obviously not feeling comfortable transporting them. And so that was really, really hard this year. Now that outreach workers have the opportunity to be vaccinated, there's plenty of masks to go around, we have a better understanding that surfaces are not as important in transmitting the infection. Now, the outreach workers can actually go out to the camps and see the guys and bring them food. And last year, all they could do basically were porch drops, which they did. But now they can actually interact with the guys. And when everybody's masked, they can put them in a vehicle and take them to appointments and things like that. So, I think the stress now is, first of all, everybody's tired, we're all exhausted. Everybody has been working at, I don't know, one hundred and fifty percent capacity for the last year and a half. And we've been vaccinating as fast as we can. And there's still guys that want vaccines that haven't had access to them. So, I think that stress now, it's just that everybody's tired. And farmworkers, one of the reasons there are marginalized population is they don't get paid time off from work. So, if you want to take care of farmworkers, you have to do it after work hours. Well, they work from sunup to sundown, so that means you're working late at night. So our outreach workers will often go out to the camps starting around seven, 8:00 in the evening. They're there till 10:00, 11:00 when the farmworkers have to go to bed because they have to get up again at four thirty five in the morning. And as a provider, that's when they take me out is late in the evenings. And one other time that farmworkers are available for vaccinations are maybe Saturday afternoon, evening and Sundays. So that's the stress now is how do you find vaccine providers who are willing to go late evenings and weekends? That's not when medical providers tend to want to work. We want our weekends off, too, but that's the only time farmworkers are available, so getting the vaccine to them at times when they're available is the challenge right now. I think the other challenge that we've been having all along is getting testing to them became very clear early on that a test that takes eight days to come back, that means nothing when you're living with 50 guys. I mean, after eight days, everybody is already infected. Now, we have tests that turn around a little bit faster. So, PCR tests that can turn around in 24 to 48 hours, that's better. It's still not good enough. And now we have rapid antigen tests that can come back in 15 minutes. But they're not 100% sensitive or 100% specific, meaning that you can have false positives and false negatives. So, getting testing out to people in rural areas, in labor camps at the end of gravel roads is hard. One of the things that we're trying to do right now is to buy these at-home test kits and to give them to the farmworkers so that they can test if and when they feel like they need it, because their access to testing is so, so poor. And given that we are seeing some breakthrough infections, people who are fully vaccinated that are getting infected, I don't think testing is over. We need vaccines, but we also need testing. That's one of our challenges right now, is getting these at home test kits to farmworkers so they can test if they get symptoms.
Sophie Therber [00:30:13] And can you walk me through...How are you distributing those at home test kits to the farmers? I mean, you were saying it's difficult -- rural North Carolina gravel roads -- but for you or the outreach workers or whoever is doing that, how does that work? How do you end up being able to do that?
Gayle Thomas [00:30:30] Well, it's the outreach workers. So, you know, my program has gotten some funds from the federal government for testing and COVID response. And so we're using those funds to buy these at home test kits and we're giving them to the outreach workers. And we're saying, here, take this with you. When you go to the camp to visit the workers, talk to them about how important it is. Obviously, we have lots of masks, too, now. So, we send out masks and hand sanitizers and, now, these test kits. And let me help you get your vaccine, but even after you get your vaccine, let me help you with this test kit if you want it. So, the outreach workers are taking them. We also are encountering workers in Wal-Mart parking lots. For the last, I guess, four or five months, we've been going to the Wal-Mart parking lot at Rocky Mount and having a health fair there where farmworkers go on Sundays to buy their groceries. We're trying to put ourselves where they are. And also we've gone to some Mexican tiendas or little shops where they tend to go on the weekends as well and handing out those test kits and that PPE and health information and stuff like that there.
Sophie Therber [00:31:46] It's so interesting because there's so much nuance in the way that the COVID response has gone. I mean, especially just because of this time frame of just not really knowing what was going on, and then being overwhelmed, and now having different challenges with distribution of vaccines and testing, like you were saying. And I'm wondering, how does the way that you and your coworkers responded to the -- ah, excuse me -- are continuing to respond to the COVID pandemic, compare to ways that you've responded to extreme weather or flooding or other natural disaster events in the past?
Gayle Thomas [00:32:21] I think that because this has gone on for so long and it's been so universal, it's not just those five counties that are flooded over there, it's all of North Carolina, it's all of the United States, it's all of the world. One thing that's happened, fortunately, this time is that we have been able to make alliances and collaborations with people that we didn't before. And those have been really, really important. So we've been able to collaborate with more of our colleagues within DHHS. We've been able to collaborate with colleagues in the agricultural extension program, in Department of Commerce, in Migrant Head Start and migrant education. So some of these programs that we always knew about each other. Right. But we didn't know each other individually and we didn't try to work together. That has made a huge difference. So, for example, early in the pandemic, we wanted to send masks to farmworkers and we were able to do that with state purchase masks and we were able to deliver thousands of them to the ag extension workers. So every one of the hundred counties in North Carolina have ag extension workers who are focused mostly, mainly on the growers, not on the farmworkers. And so, they have been kind of in a parallel universe to us. And all of a sudden we were able to ask them to help deliver these masks to the farms, which [00:34:08] was huge, was huge. We just don't have as many outreach workers as we need. We don't have outreach workers in all counties, but we did have ag extension agents in all counties. And then in terms of trying to organize the vaccine distribution, we're able to use the AG extension agents again and form some committees of the outreach workers, the ag extension agent and then the vaccine providers. So, the clinics, the health departments, people who are providing the vaccine and trying to help them work together in a collaborative way to meet the needs in their county, because they're the ones that know where the groups of farmworkers are. And then the ag extension agent is able to call the grower because they know the grower and then they're able to help that grower link to a vaccine provider. So that been different and that's been really, really rewarding and very successful.
Sophie Therber [00:35:06] So, do a lot of these partnerships kind of happen on a county-to county-basis? You're working with people who now have more specific contacts about different counties in North Carolina?
Gayle Thomas [00:35:24] Well, they didn't know each other until we introduced them. OK, so this was a sort of a strategy that the team that I work with came up with. Specifically, the state epidemiologist that was assigned to work with us, came up with this idea of forming these local committees. And so, we got these name and numbers and email addresses and we called these people and got them together and held meetings still are holding meetings to try to help them collaborate. So, these were partnerships that were conceived of on the state level and are being enacted on the local county level.
Sophie Therber [00:36:08] Okay, so what is the relationship between the state level planning and the county level plan planning for these kinds of partnerships?
Gayle Thomas [00:36:17] Well, the state level planning came up with the idea of forming these local vaccine teams by county and then pulled the teams together. And now the teams are taking it themselves and many of them are meeting weekly or every other week to talk about, okay, this grower is getting these workers this week who can provide vaccines. Have you called them? Have you talked to them? Has the outreach worker been out there to talk to the workers to make sure their questions have been answered? Has the ag extension agent called the grower to make sure they understand what's going on? So that's kind of how it works.
Sophie Therber [00:37:00] There are a lot of just a lot of different levels of things to consider, because there are so many issues that have come about because of the pandemic and so many specific steps to solve those issues. Like you were saying, like people cold calling people and talking about just what needs to be done. So, can you tell me a little bit more about how you how can you prioritize when there are so many different what needs to be things that need to be done because of the pandemic? How do you decide what to reach out to other people about?
Gayle Thomas [00:37:31] That's a hard call. I mean. You know, it's very overwhelming and there were certainly many times in the past year and a half when my colleagues and I because I'm not alone, I work with a wonderful team of colleagues in Raleigh in the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program. And when we would just feel overwhelmed and I would just have we just have to say, let's just do the next thing. Let's just do the next right thing. We can't do everything, but we're just going to do the next right thing. So, I mean, we tried to prioritize based on what we knew about the disease and what would be most effective and also what we hear from our outreach workers. So, unlike some state organizations, that might be a little detached from what's going on in the ground. We met with our outreach workers every week during the worst part of the pandemic to hear from them. What's going on in your site? What do you need? What you hear? What are the farmworkers saying to you? So, I think listening to the people that we were trying to serve also is very, very important in terms of how you prioritize what you're going to do next.
Sophie Therber [00:38:47] And do you think that in the future, after I mean, the hope is that the pandemic will eventually subside, and we can kind of be moving back to what we used to consider normal and everything. Do you think that any of the practices that you've adopted now because of the pandemic you and your coworkers have adopted now, do you think you'll keep any of those or do you think that that's just kind of a shorter term solution to just a specific issue with the pandemic?
Gayle Thomas [00:39:14] No, we really would like to see these local teams maybe coalesce into regional teams and to continue to bridge this gap between the grower and the farmworker by using these regional teams to do disaster preparedness. So we recognize that these teams have formed in response to the disaster, but we would like to see them continue and be earthquake preparedness teams so that when the next --or, hurricane more likely, preparedness teams -- I'm sorry, back to California where we had earthquakes all the time. Here, we don't have them very often! But, you know, so when the next big hurricane happens and then is expected and flooding is expected, then these teams will already know each other and be able to work more effectively together to get farmworkers to safety, to get farmworkers the food and water they need when they can't drink the water or they don't have electricity or they don't have works, they don't have food, all those kinds of things.
Sophie Therber [00:40:26] So I think it's really interesting.... the importance of collaboration and I mean, you were saying that that's something that you just kind of started because of the pandemic. There was a need to coordinate responses. And that need is definitely going to continue because of the future disasters that will be faced. So can you tell me anything else about how your day-to-day or things that you're doing have changed because of the presence of these other actors, these people who are collaborating? Like, for instance, are you finding yourself kind of taking on more work to coordinate between people? Or do you feel like you've noticed new issues because the new things might be coming to your attention because there are new actors in your job now? What do you think?
Gayle Thomas [00:41:12] Oh, I definitely think there's more work. Yeah, there's always more work. I am not doing all the work myself. Obviously I have this wonderful team that I work with and our collaborators. But, yeah, it takes time to to bring these teams together and to keep them going and to check in with them and to make sure that things aren't just sort of petering out because this was all added stuff. This is all stuff on top of what people are already doing. Right. And they're exhausted and tired, too. And then our vaccinators, you know, they're running around the middle of the night vaccinating people in fields. You know, that gets tiring, too, because then they have to back in their clinic the next day seeing patients and doing their normal stuff. So, this is all on top of what people are already doing. So, it's always more work, I think. You know, I spend my life on Zoom a lot of times right now because we're doing all these local team meetings on Zoom, my wonderful teammates in Raleigh. We're not working in the Office of Rural Health together anymore. We're all meeting on Zoom. So, "Zoom fatigue," or "Teams fatigue" since we have to use Teams, is very real and we're all very, very tired. But the other thing that's opened up is how, how much you can do [dog barks] in a telemedicine call -- Hold on, let me get my dog.
Sophie Therber No worries.
[Brief pause as Gayle lets out her dog]
Gayle Thomas [00:42:55] We developed, for the first time, telemedicine; so, we had we have mobile clinics that we take out to the labor camps and we do primary care. And early in the pandemic, we suspended those because of the lack of PPE and stuff. But now we're back doing those. But we are continuing to do telemedicine. A lot of our workers do have smart phones. They often don't have the Internet. That's one thing we've been trying to get them in the pandemic is to get more Internet to the labor camp. And then then we can talk on the phone and and we can refill their blood pressure medicine and refill their diabetes medicine and do a certain amount of health care on the phone, which is really, really useful for people who are in rural areas. So I hope that's another thing that we're able to continue once the pandemic is over, because I think that's meeting a need that is going to continue.
Sophie Therber [00:44:01] What support do you think that would be most helpful for you to be addressing farmworker health throughout the pandemic and with natural disasters? I know in an ideal world we wouldn't even have those in the first place. But just ideally, if if there were more resources available to you and your coworkers and the farmworker health program, what supports would be helpful?
Gayle Thomas [00:44:24] I think the most important thing we need is more outreach workers. So, as I said before, not every county in every county in North Carolina has farmworkers. Some have many more than some have many less. But not every county has outreach workers. And as I said before, you know, a health care provider like myself without an average worker, we're just not going to be effective in terms of reaching farmworkers. So, I right now, most outreach workers are paid for by federal funds that come through a person. And so that's on a federal level. So I think expanding the number of outreach workers would be the most important thing.
Sophie Therber [00:45:10] And what with expanding our outreach workers, are those....How do you recruit outreach workers or people? Do they come from the state or are they just people who live locally? I mean, where do these people come from?
Gayle Thomas [00:45:24] That's a really good question. No, they come locally. That's their connection to the community. That gives them their super magic powers, because people they look like them. They talk like them. They maybe already are known by them. And so they have entrance into a community where I, a white lady with the Spanish that's spoken with an American accent, I might not. So... But if I go with them to a community, then all of a sudden I have credibility that I wouldn't have had otherwise because the outreach worker has done that. [00:46:08]So they come -- North Carolina is part of their response to the pandemic as a whole, really stood up a big community health care community health worker program, which and that's basically outreach workers for people other than farm. So, in my program, we call them outreach workers. These are people who are not they're not licensed as a nurse or a doctor, but they have this knowledge of the community, and they are this bridge of care. North Carolina started up a big community health worker program to reach other marginalized communities besides farmworkers. And a lot of them did the contact tracing and testing that we saw earlier in the pandemic. That has become less important now because more people are vaccinated, but as cases take back up, might become more important again. And so, we have been finding those community health workers that are bilingual, English, Spanish, and trying to sort of enfold them and recruit them to the farmworker health program. So, yeah, we find them in the community.
Sophie Therber [00:47:30] Throughout, the numbers of these outreach workers, how did that change during the pandemic? I mean, I know that we heard so much just about shortages of health care workers and things like that. Do you feel that you had kind of a sustainable amount of outreach workers, or do you feel like there was room for improvement there?
Gayle Thomas [00:47:51] Well, we've never had enough, so that didn't change. But I was really pleased that we were able to support our outreach workers and keep them in their position. It's a burnout position. They are on the front lines there. They are talking to people who don't have enough food, who don't have access to health care, who are working in dangerous occupations, who are dying of COVID. It's a burnout position. And so, they need a lot of support, both technical support, medical support, but also emotional support. And I feel like we were able to hire a COVID response team and that team was able to then, as I said before, meet weekly with outreach workers just to kind of keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on the ground, how are things changing, but also how are you doing and what can we do to help and support you? So we were able to maintain our workforce and in and increase it with some of the federal emergency funds that we got. We were able to hire some more outreach workers. So never enough. Never enough, but increased that net staff some.
Sophie Therber [00:49:14] Great. Well, thank you so much. I'd just like to add, is there anything else you would like to add or anything else that you'd like just to talk about before I stop the recording?
Gayle Thomas [00:49:23] Well, I just would love people to know that farmworkers are currently exempt from many workplace protections that most of the rest of us have. And that was written into law back in the 1920s when a lot of workplace reforms were made and it was written into law that they were exempt from overtime pay, that they were exempt from disability and lots of different things, because at that time the southern states did not want those workplace rights to be extended to their sharecroppers who were formerly enslaved African-Americans. And so they made sure that those things were exempted. So, it's called agricultural exceptionalism. And it basically sets up a very oppressive and dangerous workplace for farmworkers. And most of us have no idea that that's going on. No idea that child labor is fine on the farm. You can't work at McDonald's, but you can go work in a very dangerous place on the farm and die of heat exhaustion or heat stroke. And that workplace exceptionalism has to stop that. That exploitation has to stop.
Sophie Therber [00:50:49] Wow, did you say the 1920s? Yeah, wow, that's amazing. I mean, that's just that's been around for so long and I mean, wow, I didn't realize that it had been not updated in that much time. That's really...I'm really...thank you so much for sharing that because that's definitely important to know about and that's something that...wow.
Gayle Thomas [00:51:10] And that's one of the reasons they're so vulnerable to COVID, is that they don't have any of these protections that the rest of us take for granted. And I was going to say we're able to get away with it right now because our workforce is primarily undocumented or documented immigrants and they don't feel most of them, they don't feel empowered to speak up and protest.
Sophie Therber [00:51:40] And when you are working with your addressing COVID or you're addressing other disasters in these workplaces that are just, like you said, very dangerous and based off of exploitation, what kind of challenges do you run into that are kind of unique to that kind of workplace and that kind of situation?
Gayle Thomas [00:51:59] Well, for one, we get chased off by growers where they're providing free health care to their workers late at night and they object and they feel like they should be able to control access to their workers and that only people that they allow to come see their workers should be able to come see their workers. So that's one thing that we experience. We experience growers who are like, "no, I don't I don't want my workers to be vaccinated. I don't believe that the vaccine is needed. They're fine." Or, "I don't think my workers need to be rescued from floodwaters." So we just the...And not all growers are like that. Some are very, very concerned about their workers. But the ones that are like that, it's very discouraging. And they often, because of the way the laws are written, they are able to get away with that.
Sophie Therber [00:53:00] That's really interesting and upsetting that the growers have so much kind of control over the well-being of the people that are working there, and that's I mean, really unfortunate that that's an issue that you are running into and your work and other people who are doing similar work. All right, well, thank you so much for your time. I just, I would like to ask again if there's anything you'd like to add.
Gayle Thomas [00:53:23] No, no, that's okay.
Sophie Therber [00:53:26] Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording but thank you so much.
End of interview. [00:53:32]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
R-1005 -- Thomas, Gayle.
Description
An account of the resource
This oral history interview was conducted by Sophie Therber with interviewee Gayle Thomas via Zoom on July 19, 2021. The main focus of this interview is Gayle’s involvement with the Farmworker Health Program and her experience helping farmworkers mitigate the COVID pandemic and extreme weather. Gayle has known from a young age that she wanted to “help poor people,” in her words, and found an opportunity to help Spanish-speaking populations in North Carolina. She shares her personal journey of getting involved in farmworker health, as well as the challenges of including farmworkers in responses to COVID and extreme weather. She emphasizes the importance of the outreach workers who bridge the gap between medical providers and members of the farmworker community. She discusses unique challenges that farmworkers in North Carolina face, such as lack of access to transportation, crowded working conditions, and agricultural exceptionalism promoting a culture of exploitation in their work.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-07-19
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29331">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1005_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/44674ef4d0a68c0151b30559779b37c2.mp3
bcafe01570802bcc016ff69f429450d1
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/bc20b14e62aeb6fee4962ebdf2b3ba3e.pdf
74920634ff316b93ee6570731203c0d7
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1015
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-03-31
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Luna, Martin.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Real estate agents
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1962
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Male
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
La Barca -- Jalisco -- México
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Asheville -- Buncombe County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
POINT(-102.50327 20.3572079),1962,1;POINT(-82.546957 35.691935),1985,2
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Luna, Sophia.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
North Carolina resident Martin Luna recounts his experience moving to the United States from Jalisco, Mexico in 1985 as a recently-graduated food engineering student. Luna arrived to work at the Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina over the summer as an international student worker. Throughout the interview he describes the importance of several interpersonal relationships that shaped his work experience and that created the opportunity for him to attempt to pursue graduate school at Clemson University. He references the language barrier as a recurring challenge in his U.S. education. He also describes the role mental health had in his experiences in the U.S. Luna reflects on his experiences in both Mexico and the U.S.’s education systems, and closes the interview describing the kinds of challenges current Latin American immigrant students face within education systems and how they compare to the ones he experienced.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Martin Luna by Sophia Luna, 31 March 2023, R-1015, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29328
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Higher Education; Language and communication; Migratory experience; Separation and reunification; Receiving communities
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Inmobiliarios
Es: Género de entrevistado
Hombre
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Residente de Carolina del Norte Martin Luna relata su experiencia cuando se mudo a los Estados unidos desde Jalisco, México, en 1985. Era un estudiante de ingeniería de alimentos recién graduado. Luna llegó con el propósito de trabajar en el Blue Ridge Assembly en Black Mountain, Carolina del Norte durante el verano como un estudiante trabajador internacional. A lo largo de la entrevista él describe la importancia de muchas relaciones interpersonales que formaron su experiencia y crearon la oportunidad de intentar asistir a la escuela de posgrado en Clemson University. Resalta la barrera del idioma como un tema recurrente durante su educación estadounidense. También describe el papel que la salud mental tuvo en su experiencia en los Estados Unidos. Luna refleja su experiencia educativa tanto en México como en los Estados Unidos, y termina la entrevista con una descripción de los retos que estudiantes inmigrantes de Latinoamérica hoy en día enfrentan dentro de sistemas educativos y como aquellos se comparan a los que él experimentó.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Martin Luna por Sophia Luna, 31 March 2023, R-1015, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Comunidades receptoras; Educación superior; Lenguaje y comunicación; Experiencia migratoria; Separación y reunificación
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00]
[START OF RECORDING]
Sophia Luna [00:00:04]: Okay. It's 9:26 in the morning on March thirty first--March 31, 2023, and I am on a Zoom call joined by Martin Luna in his home in Asheville, North Carolina. So, can you describe--.
Martin Luna: Hey.
SL: A little bit about where you're from and what your life was like there?
ML [00:00:26]: Well, I was born in La Barca, which is a little town in Jalisco, close to Guadalajara. But, but I, growing up in Mexico, I kind of grew up in different cities because my dad worked for a bank and he was promoted, or he was tired of working in a place, so he used to move around. So, I lived in a lot of different cities, you know, in Sonora, in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla, Querétaro, Toluca. So all those towns, some of them big towns, big cities, other ones, small--well, they were all cities--made me appreciate my countryside, and also learn to, to move around. So I was very close to my family because we were like, I have three brothers, four brothers and one sister. So we did a lot of things together growing up. So I was, you know, very family oriented, very, you know, driven, you know. [00:01:51] And I was one of the first ones to go to a private middle school and high school and then private college. My other siblings, they just went to state college. So it made a difference, you know, for me. It was very academic oriented, so I was striving to do my best in elementary school, middle school, high school. My parents never pressed me to study. They never pressed us to, you know, they just kind of coached us to do our best. But they never pressed us as far as academically. So it was more like my inner side motivation to always, you know, do what I can and do my best and learn as much as I could.
SL: Yeah. So where were you living when you started those private schools that you mentioned in Mexico?
ML [00:02:51]: We moved from Guadalajara to Mexico City, so I had to drive, I had to travel on the bus by myself. I was, I don't know, I was, I was probably you know, I was coming out of elementary school. So my mom took me to a bus and then I had to travel all the way to Mexico City because my dad was already working in the bank in Mexico City. And I remember when I got to the bus station, I was like, I started walking, following the people, and it was like a sea of people that I didn't know, and being so petite, you know, so I was petite. I was, I was one of the first one or the second one. Out of sixty people I was the shortest one. Anyway, I was very intimidated by that. But then finally I saw a smiling face and I recognized my dad, and I was like, “Oh, [Laugher] thank God he's there.” But yeah, so and I remember going to that middle school, you know, there's of course there's no school buses in Mexico. So I had to take public transportation, and mom raising four children back then, it was, always to do everything on my own and walk, you know, a couple of blocks and take the public bus. And sometimes it was so crowded [laughs].
SL: Yeah.
ML: That I had to, I had to just grab--. [Audio briefly cuts out due to internet connectivity issues]. Until people move up and then I could, you know, crawl up to the to the safer area. Never, never a seat because there’s always crowded. [laughs]
SL: And so when you when you started at that different school, like did you notice did you notice that it was different from the public school that you had gone to before or that your siblings were going to at the time or?
ML [00:04:46]: Of course. Of course, yeah. So, it was like night and day. You know, we only had one teacher for the whole elementary school for the [inaudible]. And there was kind of a very, you know, unformal informal but here it was very structured. Have like five or six classes every day. And all of them, you know, always pushing for doing our best. And also in this particular school it was just men. So we were just men just children. You know, middle schoolers. There was no female students. And it was run by an organization that was, you know, Catholic. Hermanos Maristas. So Maurice Brotherhood. So it was very prestigious and very difficult to get in because a lot of people wanted to study there, because of the formation, you know, academic formation.
SL: Yeah. So then how did it come about between you and your parents or your family that you decided to go to that prestigious school? Did you decide or was it--.
ML: I lost you. [laughs].
SL: Your parents, or you made the decision--.
ML: I lost you. I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything repeat that question, please?
SL: Oh, so when you when you mentioned that you were the only one of your siblings to go to this private school. So was that your decision or was that a decision that your parents sought out for you?
ML: Okay. I only heard my decision or my parents' decision. We having bad communication right now, so I only heard that. So, no, it was kind of. [00:06:47] My mom was kind of looking around, where should I go? And of course, he had relatives that they were in that organization, you know, in that brotherhood. So she kind of reached out to them to see if I could get in. But actually it was more academically their decision. That it was better. And of course, it was going to be, there was a cost, there was a tuition, of course. So they decided it was better for my education.
SL: Okay. And so then that was middle and high school. And so then moving, fast forwarding a bit, can you describe what your experience was like after high school and choosing to pursue higher education, whether that be in Mexico or whether when you decided to or if you decided to move to the United States?
ML: Okay. So in that particular school I met a lot of people, made friends and so forth. Some of them had the opportunity to travel to the United States. So the culture back then, for me, it was like I like a lot of American music and, you know, see TV programming and so forth; Of course dubbed in Spanish. But I was also taking English classes, you know, since middle school. I think it was more high school. In high school, I started taking English classes. So that opened up a little bit more of a desire to come to the United States in high school and actually I had a friend that was able to travel and do an exchange student. And then when he came back, he was like us, you know, really, really talking really. It was a great experience for him. So that kind of put the seed of me trying to do that. And I tried to. My dad, my dad at some point sent me to the border because he had an uncle, and I because I had really good grades that was my reward. He couldn't send me to; He didn’t know anybody to send me, you know, to the United States, but he knew somebody at the border. So I ended up going to a, you know, summer course of English, but it was in the Mexican side. So it made a big difference because you knew that you were like learning the structure, the grammar. But we were not practicing it because we were in Mexico. [laughs]. So it was an experience. It was really hot. So I was at right at the border of Matamoros. [00:09:39] But anyway, my transition to college was very interesting because I wanted to move to. I never liked Mexico City. I mean, I was safe and, you know, adapted, but I didn't like the fact that there was very little sun, very dark, a lot of traffic, some sort of crime. Anyway, because we traveled so many places there were other cities that were beautiful and that felt really good. So my dad got another job in Puebla and he was moving the whole family to Puebla. Two of my brothers were already in college, so they couldn't move. So they, they, they were going to stay in Mexico City. I wanted to move to Guadalajara, but my parents said no. Because they couldn't afford to split the family in three ways. So I had to follow suit. But there was like five or six universities in Puebla. And I chose the best and the most expensive one.
SL: [Laughter].
ML: And that kind of my parents, they did the effort to send me to the Universidad de las Americas Puebla, which is between Puebla and Cholula, and it's a very prestigious university. It's actually back then was the only one, or one of the few ones recognized by the Southern Association of the Board of Colleges in the United States. So that was a major thing back then. But anyway, I was not thinking about moving to the United States at all. I was just going over there to learn and I chose an engineering degree, which was a field that very few people; It was kind of a new career. It was food engineering. Like chemical engineering specializing in food. And I excelled there. I was one of the few students that finished the course. We started like thirty, thirty-seven students. And in Mexico to study to get a degree in college it's always five years.
SL: Right.
ML: Not four. So, so, so it was five years. And back then out of thirty-seven students from my generation, there were three that we finished. And also there were like three others that we catch [caught] up that they were behind. So we were like six or seven. I graduated in 1985.
SL: Okay.
ML: And at that time I also took English courses and I met all American people that were studying over there. So I had some connections, you know, with people from the United States. Of course, I was immersed in the city, so I had to take two buses to go to the college, you know, from where I live to go to the center of the city and then take another bus to go to Cholula. And anyway, I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends. And I was actually, like, my fourth year, I got into-- I was the president of my career in food engineering. And in that I met some people, some presidents of other areas. You know, there was like, I don't know, like sixteen different fields, careers. So we used to get together and do things, you know, to promote the university or for the good of everybody. [00:13:26] And I met a guy who told me about this excellent program that he went to and basically that it was in Black Mountain, North Carolina. And that basically if you were accepted they will give you a visa, a work study visa, and give you room and board and you could work there during the summer time. And so that was that became a dream for me to go once he told me about it.
SL: Yeah.
ML: That kind of started changing my life a little bit [laughs].
SL: Right. So, can you describe a little bit the process of what applying for this program in Black Mountain was like and how long that took, or just your general, like, experience applying for that program?
ML: Well, it was kind of difficult to get in because when he told me about it and I applied, he told me like in in April. In April, something like that, that's when I learned about this. So I applied immediately. And of course they sent me a letter saying they rejected me because they said it's already, you know, we already have the staff. You know, the American people plan ahead. So it was not like, hey, you can come now [laughs].
SL: Right [laughs].
ML: Last minute, last minute. But back then, I didn't know. I didn't know. I just started the process and I was intimidated because I had to fill out the form in English and I didn't know who to ask. So I did it on my own. My parents never speak English, so, um, and I didn't. I was kind of a solo person. I never asked for advice or I didn't know who to ask, you know, basically. But anyway, I was rejected. And then what I did is I went ahead and reapplied in November and I sent you know, they asked me for three reference letters. So I got my letters, I got everything. And then I got accepted. And then I got the letter. It was one of my happiest moments in my life because I knew that it was going to be something that I really wanted to try not knowing how it was going to be. But I just wanted to try, and to have that experience of being in another country.
ML: My parents, you know, tried to send me. But it was very expensive, really. So, this was like a big accomplishment for me. And that happened right after I graduated from college, you know. My dad did a big celebration. We got a lot of family gathering to celebrate my accomplishment. And then a few days later, I had to take a bus and come to the United States. Since I have like certain deadline to arrive, I was supposed to take a bus right after my graduation. But it was the party and we had so many family at home that one of my uncles said: “Well, don't worry about going on bus. I'll fly you in.”
SL: Oh, okay.
ML: So he was hoping to fly me all the way to here. But when he started checking on the prices and everything, he realized how expensive it was.
SL: [Laughter]
ML: To fly from Puebla or from Mexico City to Asheville. He went ahead and just flew me to Matamoros.
SL: Okay.
ML: And then from there I took the bus, which was fine. It was fine with me because I was going to do the whole, whole tour in a bus. I already had my ticket anyway. And back then it was like for fifty dollars, you could buy a ticket and you could go anywhere in the United States for, for, you know, seven days. You could travel all over the place with fifty dollars during seven days.
SL: Interesting. Okay. Can you remember what it was like when you first arrived or what your first impressions were of Black Mountain, and just what your general experience was, I guess in the first weeks and months of you living there and what you were doing in the program, too.
ML: [00:17:35] Sure. Well, I got really welcomed. I was very welcomed. They, you know, they sent somebody to pick me up in a band. Well, arriving, of course, traveling in a bus, I was like looking at a lot of terrains and a lot of time to think about different things. But I remember, you know, from seeing different sceneries. And then once we started getting to Hendersonville, I started seeing a lot of green and a lot of green. Never seen so much green during the summertime. You know, like everywhere. So I was very, very impressed with the beauty of the mountains and the beauty of the forest. So when this guy picked me up, took me over there, I was kind of late because I kind of took a detour. I got like two days late. I didn't got to the orientation. I got there like two days after because I took a detour to go to Orlando and meet some family member and then came back. I was just because I have that advantage of the--. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: You could travel right for free.
SL: Right. [laughs]
ML: Well, as long as wherever you want to go. I went to Orlando, but I didn't visit anything. I was just. It was just wasting time, really, because I didn't do anything [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: But anyway. I was really welcome. Everybody was friendly. Everybody was very, you know, young. Most of the people were younger than me, but they were very, very friendly. Because most of the staff was college. So they were in college, or some of them they were in Master’s, but we were kind of similar age. And the center was very organized. And, you know, to make the experience even better. And some of the jobs were kind of tedious. They rotate every three weeks. So every three weeks you change. Two or three weeks, you change to a different department. So making it fun. And of course, every time you--[Audio briefly cuts out due to internet connectivity issues].
SL: You were mentioning how at the place you worked, they changed every three weeks to keep things interesting for the people working there.
ML: Yes. Yes, and so I felt very welcome. This YMCA is one of the largest facilities in the southern area, the southern region. It is owned by ten different states around North Carolina. It’s a conference center. So they bring people or different groups through the week or for the weekend to have a conference. So some of them were small, like two hundred people, other ones were like fifteen hundred people. So we were about maybe, let’s see, I’m trying to remember. We were twenty men and maybe thirty or forty women plus the management people. And we were, you know, in different places on the campus. It’s a huge campus. So every week we had to change everything.
SL: Right.
ML: At the conference they were coming to learn a lot of different things so we had to set the whole campus to their needs. And then, so they’ve been doing this since 1908. You know the center was founded back then. So through the years it's been very well organized, there's a lot of brotherhood, there's a lot of history and it's very well organized. So when I came I was very impressed that everything was so organized and we had fun and also played and made it very interesting. So, through the whole two and a half month experience every weekend we had themed parties. New year’s, Christmas in July, international night, a talent show, different things--Hawaiian party--different activities that kept us engaged and kept us having fun, and made the work kind of easy.
SL: Yeah.
ML: And there were always opportunities. So I took one opportunity myself and I noticed that the people that work less were the lifeguards [laughs].
SL: [Laughter].
ML: So I find out how I can become a lifeguard [laughs].
SL: [Laughter].
ML: So I took the class, and I got my certificate of lifeguard. So I was able to work, you know, and that was the most fun thing to do because you just clean, give a little bit of maintenance to the pool, and just sit down and see people and enjoy the sun [laughs].
SL: [Laughs]. Right.
ML: And get paid without having to clean or having to do a lot of work [laughs].
SL: That's funny. So being, you mentioned that you moved, you started this program right after finishing college and your engineering degree. So when you were living in Black Mountain and in North Carolina were you aware of any, you know, educational opportunities that interested you? Or were you wanting to continue your education in the United States? What was your sense of the educational sphere of North Carolina?
ML [00:23:47]: Well, for me, back then my priority was to feel fluent in the language. And I knew that my English was very very limited. I remember when I put in my application that I speak 80 percent of English. I knew 80 percent. But I realized I didn’t know. I mean I knew the grammar and the structure but I didn’t know how to speak. You know. So to me that was kind of an obstacle, a big obstacle. So I did want to learn the language. My first--I knew that the program was going to finish so I tried to figure out how to stay more. And I knew that the assembly was the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly, so the assembly was hiring people to stay a little bit longer. And I wanted to stay. And I expressed my interest of staying, but they already hired other people that they had in mind. So I didn’t, I was not accepted. But when I talked to one of the executes about my desire to stay he kind of hooked me up with another executive from another town and said “Hey, this guy wants to stay as an exchange student.” You know, so he offered me, the gentleman offered me an opportunity to live in his home so I could continue with this experience and continue with learning the language. So I lived like two months with them in their home. And then when my visa expired I had to go back to Mexico.
SL: Right.
ML: And that was something that I had to do it on my own again. Nobody told me “Hey, you can stay.” I said “Well my visa will expire at the end of October, so I have to go back to my family.” And I did. So when I went back to Mexico, in my mind, I was like “Oh, that was a great experience, I feel better about the language, but I want to work on my field.” So I went to the town that I wanted to live, which was Guadalajara, and started looking for all the industries to find work and just start interviewing by myself. Talking to people saying “Hey, I just graduated from the university, I can help you.” I started offering my services. Because most people, they didn't know what food engineering could do in their industry. Remember I kind of went to like six or sevent interviews that I introduced myself to see if they were hiring and that I was available.
SL: Right. Right. So, did anything--.
ML: And then--.
SL: Go ahead.
ML: And then what happened was I went back to my parents to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s, and when I was back in Puebla, because I spent maybe a month exploring job opportunities in Mexico. A month, a month and a half and I was staying with relatives. Then I went to Puebla to see my parents, finally. [00:27:14] When I was there I got a phone call that changed my whole life. Because one of the executives called me and said “Hey, Martin, we really enjoyed your work ethic and we really would like for you to come back next year, would you like to do that?” And since I had a wonderful experience I said “Yes, of course!” So that phone call, without consulting anybody, I was like “Wow! That's great! I can go back!” Changed my whole life because then I was not pursue--I got distracted and was not pursuing my professional career. I kind of put that on the side and said “Well, I just need to work part time, you know, in another area or do something while I wait until I go back to United States.”
SL: Okay.
ML: So that’s what I did. I got a temporary job at the beach and I was using my English as I was working in a Japanese restaurant [laughs]. In a Japanese restaurant I was hired there. And I worked there for a while but it was hard to be on my own, to be honest. I was not used to being on my own, living by myself and making decisions by myself because we were always in a group. So YMCA was great because I had a brotherhood, a family, and I didn't have to worry about cleaning, cooking, or basic things. You know, so it was learning. But when I was in this beach, I was staying with some people first, but then, you know, they didn’t treat you as nice as the United States [laughs].
SL: Right.
ML: So it was a lot of decisions of: “How I'm going to get to my job? Where am I going to be living? Where am I going to stay?” And the accommodations they gave me were not the greatest ones. But anyway, I didn’t last too long there. When I got tired and just flew to Mexico City and went back to my parents and just waited until my opportunity to go back to the United States came.
SL: Right. And so what was your second experience like in the United States, and what did you do after the Blue Ridge Assembly?
ML: Sure. So it was even better, started meeting people again and then said “Well, I would like to stay here longer. How can I stay longer?” And it was three choices I had: One was, a friend from Nigeria says “Well you can join the army, they can definitely probably let you stay.” The other one was going back to college, and the third one was, you know, well if you get married you could probably stay also.
SL: Right.
ML [00:30:23]: But in my mind, it was more like “Well why don't I try to go back to college and try to get a Masters?” I knew several people from the University of Americas who had done that in different cities. In different countries. Some of them went to Germany, other ones went to Spain, and some to the United States. I knew it was going to be costly so I started to explore that. So I took some trips, I went to [pause] one lady lived in Raleigh so we went to the, I visited the university of, State University in North Carolina. And I didn’t know anything about Clemson, but there was some people from Blue Ridge Assembly that they were the directors of the YMCA in Clemson, and one of them offered me, opened up some opportunities there. So I kind of liked that, and started talking to the directors in Clemson and they said “Yeah, you can come here and help you.” In other words, there were some doors that started to open for me.
SL: Right
ML: So, I went and applied to Clemson. I got a place to stay, and they let me stay there. I paid for my room, for my board. For my food [laughs].
SL: Right
ML: The room was free, my food I paid for it. And then it was an opportunity to decide what I was going to do. And I visited the food science department. And because they knew I had the degree already in that field, they gave me a job.
SL: Right.
ML: So, the things were happening for me. But legally, I was there physically but as far as--how do you say--the credits, getting the credits, I was not admitted officially. I was kind of exploring what I was going to do, and I realized I needed to take more English classes. Because I felt that my English was really bad. The science I already knew, in Spanish.
SL: Right.
ML: And in English. But I was more interested in: What can I do with my field? How can I take what I know to use it in Mexico? And I realized that first I needed to improve my English, which was a big task for me.
SL: Right.
ML: You know, it was difficult. It was difficult because, again, I was by myself but I needed to master that so I could function. Like I am functioning right now.
SL: Right, right. So you hinted a little bit at it, but how did you feel like your degree from the University of the Americas…How did you feel like it translated to the United States and to Clemson specifically? In your opinion?
ML [00:33:50]: Well, it was a good opportunity for me to be there because people were very open, people respect me, you know, the doctors that I talked to. There was Dr. Moore, who was the permanent doctor in food industry and food science. He was kind of my mentor. He took me in, he gave me opportunity to work in the laboratory and start organizing everything there. And pretty much, I was probably, he wanted me to work on research but he knew that I needed time to adjust.
SL: Right.
ML: So, again, the sky was the limit there. We went to a lot of, well, you know being part of the food science group I met several students from other countries. I remember there was an assistant to Dr. Moore who was working on his PhD too, or Masters, that he kind of took me under his wing and he was helping me to fill out the forms which I was very intimidated. And helped me to get into the program, and also, um, so there was a lot of people very welcome. They went through my shoes, came before me, and they were studying and we went to several food events. I remember going to Atlanta to meet Dr. Labuza. Dr. Labuza was very famous for his research in water activity, you know, something that was, back then, really one of the fields that I remember. There are, I mean, so many fields in food industry. But anyway, I was meeting famous people that, before, it was just on a paper.
SL: Right.
ML: That I read about their articles on paper or on books, and I was very, you know, impressed meeting those people in person. And talk to them. Anyway, so everything was going well, and I thought it was a good opportunity for me. [00:36:17] But I had two tragedies that changed my life [laughs]. One, and it was I don’t know, just destiny. But basically, I needed to take two tests for being the next semester enrolled officially. One was the TOEFL. You know, the test for English as a second language proficiency. It’s a proficiency test to tell the university that if you can do it. That your English is good. And the other one is the GRE, I think. Graduate Record Examinate. The GRE. Which was a little bit more tougher that all the American people needed to take. The first one is just for foreign students. The second one was for all, you know, anybody that wanted to do a graduate study. So, the first one you know, unfortunately it was not offered on campus. It was in another city which was Greenville. So I needed to travel over there. And I didn’t know, you know it was on a Saturday morning. So talking to my people that I knew, there was another Chinese student that was going to take it. And I learned through my supervisor that says “This person needs to take it.” So I talked to him and I asked him if he could take me to the place, to Greenville, and he said “Yes, I’ll take you.” And then we set up a place and a time to meet. And then the second one was going to be offered there in the college, so I was already enrolled to take it there.
So I think it was like the end of October, or around October. It was around October when I took the test, I was supposed to meet this Chinese student to take the test. And I remember I got up in the morning early, and it was raining, it was pouring rain and everything. And I was out there in the corner where we were supposed to meet, and it was dark, and I was there for almost forty-five minutes and he didn’t show up. And I stayed there and stayed there and I never saw it, he never came back to pick me up. He probably did, but because of the language barrier maybe he didn’t know where I was and maybe he--I don't know. I don’t know what happened but he never showed up. And I was supposed to be there at 9, but by 8:30 I started crying and crying because, you know, that was very important for me to be in there. So I went to see other friends, and they didn’t have cars, so they couldn’t do anything. And they said “Don’t worry about it, don't worry about it,” but I felt, like, defeated because I wasn’t going to get into the next semester enrollment. And so, from then I started to feel, you know, and I didn't know back then, but I started to feel depressed because I didn’t know what to do. When I took the second test, I was encouraging to do it but when I took it I also felt defeated because it was really really difficult [laughs].
SL: [Laughs] Yeah, the GRE is…
ML [00:39:46]: It was very difficult, and I felt like a failure. Like “I failed, so what am I going to do? How am I going to get into the official Master’s degree?” And all this is the pressure that I knew it was costing me money, and I knew that my parents could not afford to send me to college, so kind of, I got into a depression stage.
SL: Yeah.
ML: I knew Christine, and Christine wanted to help me out and she always wanted to say “Well, you know maybe college is not for you. Maybe you can come to Asheville, come back to Asheville, and you can find a job here in Asheville and do something else.” And I felt like yes, that would be an option, but I really wanted to--I was kind of feeling like the opportunity to study and be in college for, was going to be much better. So I got into a depression. And back then I didn’t, never had depression before, nobody knew about it in my family. I got really depressed so I went back to Mexico defeated.
ML: And when I got back to Mexico, unfortunately my parents were transitioning from one, from Puebla to Guadalajara and the situation, the dynamics were not really good. They were renting a small place that was too small for the family, so it was very, it added more stress. In a good note, by then there was like, already, job opportunities for me and I got into a job as a food engineer and I worked in the Sabrita plant. But I was comparing that job with what I lived here in the United States and the freedom and what I was doing, it was like night and day. Even though I had a job there now I was not happy. My heart was in United States, my heart was in this area of North Carolina, And I wanted to come back. So I decided to come back one more time, so I didn’t gave up. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter] Yeah, right! So what was that like? Was that the last time you came, when you decided you know like you said not to give up, or how did that come about and what happened after that?
ML: Well, you know, through the whole time when I was in Clemson I was dating Christine, and she used to come visit me on weekends or every other weekend when she could. So we, you know, I kind of started being interested in her because she was always there for me, you know. Actually she took me from The Assembly to Clemson, and then when she knew where I was then she was coming every other week or every week. We had fun events, I remember one time we, you know, both being Catholics, the priest from the parish where I was staying in Clemson, he was doing outreach to migrant workers in another place called Walhalla. So I told him that I played the guitar, and he says: “Well why don’t you come over to celebrate mass on the field?” And I did the first time, and I realized that I needed music so the next time I brought my guitar and make it more fun. And Christine went one time with me to those outreach, going to visit the migrants and bringing the word of God on their own homes. You know, they were living in trailers in the middle of the mobile home park we celebrate mass and I was playing the guitar. So that was really really nice.
SL: Yeah
ML: Anyways, um, she was, you know, always offering me “Come back to my home.” So we continued to write letters when I was in Mexico defeated. So she said “Come back here, you can find a job, we can. There’s opportunities here.” So she was always having faith in me that my dream could come true.
SL: Yeah.
ML [00:44:35]: So I came back the third time and I actually came back with another friend. And then we wanted to plan our wedding but, kind of, things moved quickly and we got married.
SL: Right.
ML: [Laughter].
SL: And what year was it when--what year was it that you came back the third time, and then were married?
ML: Eighty-seven. 1987.
SL: Okay.
ML: 1987.
SL: And just for the sake of anyone listening to this interview in the future, can you describe who Christine is and how you met her for the first time?
ML: [Laughter]
SL: Just for context.
ML: Well Christine is my wife, my companion for thirty-five years. So she’s my wife. We met in 1986 in my second summer here. Not--she didn’t work in our field, it just happened. It was like, God put us together, to be honest, you know? I’m a very strong believer, and back in Mexico I always was praying for God for the right person to meet. And basically, through all this events that happened in my life, the way we met it was kind of a coincidence. Because she never went--I think that was the only time she went from Weaverville to Black Mountain, where I was. But I was working at the YMCA but we met in a local bar back then it was called the Town Pump… Town Pump? And we went there with my friends, from Mexico, on a night that they said “Hey let's go down to Black Mountain.” So I did. It was a group of five people, you know, boys and girls. And she came too, out of coincidence, because she didn’t planned to be there at all but one of her friends went and got her out of her job to go--she didn’t want to go by herself because her boyfriend, this girl’s boyfriend--her name is Lisa--and Lisa’s boyfriend was playing in a band, and he was playing in this particular place on that night. So she went and talked to the boss and said “Hey, can you let her come tonight?” And the boss did, Mr. Boyd, I remember his name, Mr. Boyd did let her out earlier. So they went there, and I was there with my friends, and then I remember my friend Paco said “Hey, there’s a lady outside that speaks Spanish. There’s two ladies out there that speak Spanish, let’s go meet them.” So I went outside, and actually Lisa, it was, she didn’t speak Spanish. She’s an American. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: And Lisa, I mean Christine, was both English and Spanish. So we started talking in Spanish and so forth. So we connected and we invited them to come back the next day for another event at The Assembly. Which was the talent show, which was open to anybody. And so we were hoping that both of them were going to come but in the end Christine just showed up. And from then, we kind of started developing a relationship.
SL: Right.
ML: And I remember vividly one time when I called her, she said “Hey”--her mom answered the phone--she said “Hey, would you like to come visit us?” and she say, “You know, we’d like you to come have dinner with us because we’re going to have steak.” and I said “Yes!” And you know the ironic thing is that that night we were going to have steak, too, at The Assembly.
SL: Oh!
ML: That night, but I said yes because I wanted to be out of The Assembly, I wanted to meet other people. So, I went and met her family, and there were some relatives visiting and so forth. But anyway, in the end it just happened that the food was delicious. Country food, it was potatoes and green beans and, and flavors that I never had. Well I tasted them at The Assembly but it was homemade, not bulk [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]. Yeah, that makes sense.
ML: Not bulk recipes.
SL: That difference matters, right.
ML: So I was like “Wow!” And I said to Christine's mom, “Hey, wow you’re a great cook, congratulations!” By the way, she’s from Colombia, and so I felt like I was at home. And she said, “No, no I didn't do the cooking. Christine did.” And I was like “Wow! Really?” [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: And I was really surprised because being so young--I think back then I was twenty-two, she was nineteen--I was like “Wow!”
SL: Yeah.
ML: “Congratulations, you really know how to cook.” Because it was a great meal. A great meal. So all those little things started to, you know, be in my mind. That we connected and that we, you know, eventually got married.
SL: Right, yeah. So, fast forwarding, or kind of switching like fast forwarding or looking to wrap up. After your third time coming to the states, like you describe and kind of coming back from that, as you put it: Trying one more time and not giving up and getting married to Christine--which is all well over I guess twenty years ago--when you think about your life now, I guess how do you view education, or educational experiences that maybe even some of your kids have had, how do you view them in light of the ones you had both in Mexico and the United States?
ML: Well, um, okay so could you rephrase that question?
SL: Yeah. So, when you think about education now like in 2023 in the United States, as you've been living here several years--several decades--how do you think education compares now than it did in the past, when you were part of education and part of the education system?
ML [00:51:28]: Sure. Well, through technology and through the new way of opportunities that students have, the world is shrinking quite a bit. There is more opportunities for new students, definitely. I mean I realize that people that really like school or they like to do something different, they kind of cling to their friends--in other words, there's a dynamic between teachers and students.
ML: You know, there’s a lot of students who are forced to go to school. There’s other students that love to go to school. And teachers kind of guide those students, well try to guide everybody, to do their best but not everybody has that call and not everybody is smart academically. [Clears throat]. The main thing here that I see is that the people that have, from experience, sometimes people have the opportunity to go to college and they have these scholarships and they want to succeed in college, but when they get there they are shocked because it’s not like a public school. Because they know they have to write important papers and they don’t know how to. I would not know how to, you know, if I had to write a paper when I was talking, you know, back thirty years ago. It's stressful. So not all the schools, not all the students have the same tools to succeed. Especially in public schools. So it’s important to take your education seriously, and unfortunately a lot of students, they don't. They take it for granted, they just want to use space but they aren’t looking about the future. In college, I know that if you are around people that want to help you can succeed easily. Like I felt--Even though my language was limited--I felt that, again, international students that they were in the same boat that I was, they were encouraging me to succeed. And I remember that. The problem is sometimes--I’m just going to give you an example. I knew of a lady that her son wanted to be a doctor. And she got a full ride to go to UNC Chapel Hill. And he went there very excited about it, and within a semester he came back defeated. And I don’t know all the details, but he came back with depression. And he felt that he was not welcome. He felt that he did not know where to go. And that’s what happens when you don’t have a core group of friends, or meet friends that can help you, you know, try it and know that you can do it. That happens quite a bit and quite more often, you know, that's why we see all these shootings. Those people are either mad or they’re depressed or they’re not welcome, and those things that are happening here in the United States it's a shame. Because, you know, not even in Mexico I remember somebody shooting a student, you know a student shooting their peers. Because there’s always some sort of--I mean there's frivolity and everything--but the worst that could happen is just, you know, fighting themselves. Like men. [laughs].
SL: Right.
ML: But not with a gun, not with a gun. But anyway. I don’t know if I'm answering your question but that’s what I see. [00:56:06] Right now, the opportunities that you can travel abroad and go learn from other places, come back and still get credits, that’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. I wish I had that opportunity when I was in college because that’s what I wanted to do. To come in a safe environment and come back to my home, but I didn’t know how. But now that people, and that’s what, we’ve been encouraging to do that to Jessica, to Robbie, to you, to go to another country and meet other people and come back and have more life experience that will open up the doors. Definitely coming here opened up this door for me, to work and you know through trial and effort find the right job for me. In my case, we haven't talked about that part yet, but in my case even though I have a food engineering degree and I wanted to use it for good, the language barrier limited it in the beginning. And then I saw a need here--eventually after trying different jobs--I did work in a plant here locally in a food beverage plant locally, but I felt like I was more in a prison after a while because it was just confined in an environment that was very routine [laughs].
SL: Yeah, that makes sense.
ML: It wasn't until I got into real estate that it’s very challenging career. Very fulfilling because you’re helping people get their homes, helping them with the most important decision they can make financially. You know the most biggest financial decision that they can make. But there's so many opportunities for people here for homeownership. So I've been helping the Hispanics to get their home and have some sort of stability. And open up opportunities for them.
SL: Yeah.
ML: And of course in real estate, as a realtor, completely the rules change, the contracts change everything change, so--the technology has changed, to sell real estate--so it’s very challenging. There’s not a routine, you know, that I can’t handle the routine.
SL: That makes sense.
ML: I need variety, I need contact with people. So that’s why I chose that career eventually, you know, because I saw that there was a big need for people to buy homes. And the way it came to me this opportunity was because first I started selling satellite dishes, and they didn't own their houses. And when I got into real estate I could sell them both the land and the satellite. And I did that for a while, you know for a couple of years or so. But now it’s not necessary. I have clients that they are investors now, clients that are first-time home buyers, clients that they need to sell their home because they have other transitions in their lives. But yeah, the real estate has been able to open up doors for other people and me too because I’ve met some wonderful realtors, wonderful people, and wonderful, you know all different types of people that are moving to Asheville. New friends and old friends. And it’s a great career, a great career for me.
SL: Yeah.
ML: In this case, it's going to allow me to retire soon. Hopefully.
SL: Yeah! [laughs] So I just have one last question, and it’s do you think that the experience-- the challenges you faced when you were at Clemson University and things like that and places like that, do you think the challenges you faced then are similar, or different, or at all changed from the ones that people or students who are originally born in another country, like Mexico or Central America--or anywhere in Latin America--do you think that the challenges you had are different from the ones they have today?
ML [1:01:00]: Well I think they are--there’s always going to be great challenges for everybody. There’s always going to be, you know anytime you change your environment to a new environment there’s always going to be challenges. It’s what you do about it, how do you react to it? That’s why you have to have a good core, core friends or family that can help you when you’re feeling down. I always encourage, you know being a man of faith, I always encourage somebody who goes to a university to be surrounded by, you know, by students that they go to church and they have the same faith. Because they are going to help you to succeed. You can't succeed by yourself, never. Never. You always need other people. Good people that can help you succeed, and could be a good teacher, good professor, good, older student. I think that’s very important not to stereotype that, you know, a lot of times you feel like “Okay I’m in this level, I can only relate to these people because they’re on the same level.” There’s always learning experience from older people and from younger people, the thing is that are we open to listening to those, to their experience?
SL: Yeah.
ML: So you don’t fail. Like I’m thinking about this kid that he didn't make it when he had all these opportunities, it’s because he didn’t have that core, you know, group of friends, or the family who was not able to listen to his needs, and figure out. And it's hard to give--as an immigrant it’s hard to give advice especially if you never been in college. You don’t know what college is like here in the United States.
SL: Right.
ML: You know it’s um, very simple. The way I learned--in engineering you just it's a lot of mathematic courses. And I was bombarded with all the other courses all the way to calculus and different courses. Anyway. The way I learned it in Spanish is different when I remember you know Robbie or Daniel, seeing them studying it was just completely different. I mean the results are the same, the solutions are the same, but the way they teach you is different. So as a parent how can you teach or help somebody study when the language and the technique is different?
SL: Yeah.
ML: You can’t. So there’s always more limitation for us to help our children in another, when you move to another language. Another country. You know, it’s hard. But it’s not impossible. If you have the dream to do it, you know you do it. Just like I, I didn’t give up. [laughs].
SL: Yeah [Laughter]. Yeah, awesome. Well that was the last question I have, but is there anything you want to add or contribute before we finish the interview?
ML [1:04:39]: Well, to any student at the university, just to take advantage of it. Everything you do there is going to reflect in the future. So make good decisions, treat others the way you want to be treated, and it doesn't--we all have different types of intelligences, and unfortunately in this, you know in this society that we have, this western culture that we have, we give a lot of weight to the intelligence of, you know, that has to do with grammar--well not grammar--but we measure what we can in just one part of intelligence, which is academic. But there's other intelligence that we need to develop. And we need to just accept each other and learn from each other to do good for you and for others. Always, you know, you learn and then you share. You learn and then you share what you learn. And put it in good use, not in bad use. You know?
SL: Yeah, right. Cool. Well thank you again for your time in doing the interview.
ML: Sure. I think I--we went in different directions but I’m glad that you guys are doing this project so I can help others to understand and help, you know, other students to see the perspective of people that they are not from, they were not born in this area, they came from other countries.
SL: Right.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[01:06:39]
Transcriber: Sophia Luna
Interview Date: March 31, 2023
Es: Transcripción
[00:00:00]
[START OF RECORDING]
Sophia Luna [00:00:04]: Okay. It's 9:26 in the morning on March thirty first--March 31, 2023, and I am on a Zoom call joined by Martin Luna in his home in Asheville, North Carolina. So, can you describe--.
Martin Luna: Hey.
SL: A little bit about where you're from and what your life was like there?
ML [00:00:26]: Well, I was born in La Barca, which is a little town in Jalisco, close to Guadalajara. But, but I, growing up in Mexico, I kind of grew up in different cities because my dad worked for a bank and he was promoted, or he was tired of working in a place, so he used to move around. So, I lived in a lot of different cities, you know, in Sonora, in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla, Querétaro, Toluca. So all those towns, some of them big towns, big cities, other ones, small--well, they were all cities--made me appreciate my countryside, and also learn to, to move around. So I was very close to my family because we were like, I have three brothers, four brothers and one sister. So we did a lot of things together growing up. So I was, you know, very family oriented, very, you know, driven, you know. [00:01:51] And I was one of the first ones to go to a private middle school and high school and then private college. My other siblings, they just went to state college. So it made a difference, you know, for me. It was very academic oriented, so I was striving to do my best in elementary school, middle school, high school. My parents never pressed me to study. They never pressed us to, you know, they just kind of coached us to do our best. But they never pressed us as far as academically. So it was more like my inner side motivation to always, you know, do what I can and do my best and learn as much as I could.
SL: Yeah. So where were you living when you started those private schools that you mentioned in Mexico?
ML [00:02:51]: We moved from Guadalajara to Mexico City, so I had to drive, I had to travel on the bus by myself. I was, I don't know, I was, I was probably you know, I was coming out of elementary school. So my mom took me to a bus and then I had to travel all the way to Mexico City because my dad was already working in the bank in Mexico City. And I remember when I got to the bus station, I was like, I started walking, following the people, and it was like a sea of people that I didn't know, and being so petite, you know, so I was petite. I was, I was one of the first one or the second one. Out of sixty people I was the shortest one. Anyway, I was very intimidated by that. But then finally I saw a smiling face and I recognized my dad, and I was like, “Oh, [Laugher] thank God he's there.” But yeah, so and I remember going to that middle school, you know, there's of course there's no school buses in Mexico. So I had to take public transportation, and mom raising four children back then, it was, always to do everything on my own and walk, you know, a couple of blocks and take the public bus. And sometimes it was so crowded [laughs].
SL: Yeah.
ML: That I had to, I had to just grab--. [Audio briefly cuts out due to internet connectivity issues]. Until people move up and then I could, you know, crawl up to the to the safer area. Never, never a seat because there’s always crowded. [laughs]
SL: And so when you when you started at that different school, like did you notice did you notice that it was different from the public school that you had gone to before or that your siblings were going to at the time or?
ML [00:04:46]: Of course. Of course, yeah. So, it was like night and day. You know, we only had one teacher for the whole elementary school for the [inaudible]. And there was kind of a very, you know, unformal informal but here it was very structured. Have like five or six classes every day. And all of them, you know, always pushing for doing our best. And also in this particular school it was just men. So we were just men just children. You know, middle schoolers. There was no female students. And it was run by an organization that was, you know, Catholic. Hermanos Maristas. So Maurice Brotherhood. So it was very prestigious and very difficult to get in because a lot of people wanted to study there, because of the formation, you know, academic formation.
SL: Yeah. So then how did it come about between you and your parents or your family that you decided to go to that prestigious school? Did you decide or was it--.
ML: I lost you. [laughs].
SL: Your parents, or you made the decision--.
ML: I lost you. I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything repeat that question, please?
SL: Oh, so when you when you mentioned that you were the only one of your siblings to go to this private school. So was that your decision or was that a decision that your parents sought out for you?
ML: Okay. I only heard my decision or my parents' decision. We having bad communication right now, so I only heard that. So, no, it was kind of. [00:06:47] My mom was kind of looking around, where should I go? And of course, he had relatives that they were in that organization, you know, in that brotherhood. So she kind of reached out to them to see if I could get in. But actually it was more academically their decision. That it was better. And of course, it was going to be, there was a cost, there was a tuition, of course. So they decided it was better for my education.
SL: Okay. And so then that was middle and high school. And so then moving, fast forwarding a bit, can you describe what your experience was like after high school and choosing to pursue higher education, whether that be in Mexico or whether when you decided to or if you decided to move to the United States?
ML: Okay. So in that particular school I met a lot of people, made friends and so forth. Some of them had the opportunity to travel to the United States. So the culture back then, for me, it was like I like a lot of American music and, you know, see TV programming and so forth; Of course dubbed in Spanish. But I was also taking English classes, you know, since middle school. I think it was more high school. In high school, I started taking English classes. So that opened up a little bit more of a desire to come to the United States in high school and actually I had a friend that was able to travel and do an exchange student. And then when he came back, he was like us, you know, really, really talking really. It was a great experience for him. So that kind of put the seed of me trying to do that. And I tried to. My dad, my dad at some point sent me to the border because he had an uncle, and I because I had really good grades that was my reward. He couldn't send me to; He didn’t know anybody to send me, you know, to the United States, but he knew somebody at the border. So I ended up going to a, you know, summer course of English, but it was in the Mexican side. So it made a big difference because you knew that you were like learning the structure, the grammar. But we were not practicing it because we were in Mexico. [laughs]. So it was an experience. It was really hot. So I was at right at the border of Matamoros. [00:09:39] But anyway, my transition to college was very interesting because I wanted to move to. I never liked Mexico City. I mean, I was safe and, you know, adapted, but I didn't like the fact that there was very little sun, very dark, a lot of traffic, some sort of crime. Anyway, because we traveled so many places there were other cities that were beautiful and that felt really good. So my dad got another job in Puebla and he was moving the whole family to Puebla. Two of my brothers were already in college, so they couldn't move. So they, they, they were going to stay in Mexico City. I wanted to move to Guadalajara, but my parents said no. Because they couldn't afford to split the family in three ways. So I had to follow suit. But there was like five or six universities in Puebla. And I chose the best and the most expensive one.
SL: [Laughter].
ML: And that kind of my parents, they did the effort to send me to the Universidad de las Americas Puebla, which is between Puebla and Cholula, and it's a very prestigious university. It's actually back then was the only one, or one of the few ones recognized by the Southern Association of the Board of Colleges in the United States. So that was a major thing back then. But anyway, I was not thinking about moving to the United States at all. I was just going over there to learn and I chose an engineering degree, which was a field that very few people; It was kind of a new career. It was food engineering. Like chemical engineering specializing in food. And I excelled there. I was one of the few students that finished the course. We started like thirty, thirty-seven students. And in Mexico to study to get a degree in college it's always five years.
SL: Right.
ML: Not four. So, so, so it was five years. And back then out of thirty-seven students from my generation, there were three that we finished. And also there were like three others that we catch [caught] up that they were behind. So we were like six or seven. I graduated in 1985.
SL: Okay.
ML: And at that time I also took English courses and I met all American people that were studying over there. So I had some connections, you know, with people from the United States. Of course, I was immersed in the city, so I had to take two buses to go to the college, you know, from where I live to go to the center of the city and then take another bus to go to Cholula. And anyway, I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends. And I was actually, like, my fourth year, I got into-- I was the president of my career in food engineering. And in that I met some people, some presidents of other areas. You know, there was like, I don't know, like sixteen different fields, careers. So we used to get together and do things, you know, to promote the university or for the good of everybody. [00:13:26] And I met a guy who told me about this excellent program that he went to and basically that it was in Black Mountain, North Carolina. And that basically if you were accepted they will give you a visa, a work study visa, and give you room and board and you could work there during the summer time. And so that was that became a dream for me to go once he told me about it.
SL: Yeah.
ML: That kind of started changing my life a little bit [laughs].
SL: Right. So, can you describe a little bit the process of what applying for this program in Black Mountain was like and how long that took, or just your general, like, experience applying for that program?
ML: Well, it was kind of difficult to get in because when he told me about it and I applied, he told me like in in April. In April, something like that, that's when I learned about this. So I applied immediately. And of course they sent me a letter saying they rejected me because they said it's already, you know, we already have the staff. You know, the American people plan ahead. So it was not like, hey, you can come now [laughs].
SL: Right [laughs].
ML: Last minute, last minute. But back then, I didn't know. I didn't know. I just started the process and I was intimidated because I had to fill out the form in English and I didn't know who to ask. So I did it on my own. My parents never speak English, so, um, and I didn't. I was kind of a solo person. I never asked for advice or I didn't know who to ask, you know, basically. But anyway, I was rejected. And then what I did is I went ahead and reapplied in November and I sent you know, they asked me for three reference letters. So I got my letters, I got everything. And then I got accepted. And then I got the letter. It was one of my happiest moments in my life because I knew that it was going to be something that I really wanted to try not knowing how it was going to be. But I just wanted to try, and to have that experience of being in another country.
ML: My parents, you know, tried to send me. But it was very expensive, really. So, this was like a big accomplishment for me. And that happened right after I graduated from college, you know. My dad did a big celebration. We got a lot of family gathering to celebrate my accomplishment. And then a few days later, I had to take a bus and come to the United States. Since I have like certain deadline to arrive, I was supposed to take a bus right after my graduation. But it was the party and we had so many family at home that one of my uncles said: “Well, don't worry about going on bus. I'll fly you in.”
SL: Oh, okay.
ML: So he was hoping to fly me all the way to here. But when he started checking on the prices and everything, he realized how expensive it was.
SL: [Laughter]
ML: To fly from Puebla or from Mexico City to Asheville. He went ahead and just flew me to Matamoros.
SL: Okay.
ML: And then from there I took the bus, which was fine. It was fine with me because I was going to do the whole, whole tour in a bus. I already had my ticket anyway. And back then it was like for fifty dollars, you could buy a ticket and you could go anywhere in the United States for, for, you know, seven days. You could travel all over the place with fifty dollars during seven days.
SL: Interesting. Okay. Can you remember what it was like when you first arrived or what your first impressions were of Black Mountain, and just what your general experience was, I guess in the first weeks and months of you living there and what you were doing in the program, too.
ML: [00:17:35] Sure. Well, I got really welcomed. I was very welcomed. They, you know, they sent somebody to pick me up in a band. Well, arriving, of course, traveling in a bus, I was like looking at a lot of terrains and a lot of time to think about different things. But I remember, you know, from seeing different sceneries. And then once we started getting to Hendersonville, I started seeing a lot of green and a lot of green. Never seen so much green during the summertime. You know, like everywhere. So I was very, very impressed with the beauty of the mountains and the beauty of the forest. So when this guy picked me up, took me over there, I was kind of late because I kind of took a detour. I got like two days late. I didn't got to the orientation. I got there like two days after because I took a detour to go to Orlando and meet some family member and then came back. I was just because I have that advantage of the--. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: You could travel right for free.
SL: Right. [laughs]
ML: Well, as long as wherever you want to go. I went to Orlando, but I didn't visit anything. I was just. It was just wasting time, really, because I didn't do anything [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: But anyway. I was really welcome. Everybody was friendly. Everybody was very, you know, young. Most of the people were younger than me, but they were very, very friendly. Because most of the staff was college. So they were in college, or some of them they were in Master’s, but we were kind of similar age. And the center was very organized. And, you know, to make the experience even better. And some of the jobs were kind of tedious. They rotate every three weeks. So every three weeks you change. Two or three weeks, you change to a different department. So making it fun. And of course, every time you--[Audio briefly cuts out due to internet connectivity issues].
SL: You were mentioning how at the place you worked, they changed every three weeks to keep things interesting for the people working there.
ML: Yes. Yes, and so I felt very welcome. This YMCA is one of the largest facilities in the southern area, the southern region. It is owned by ten different states around North Carolina. It’s a conference center. So they bring people or different groups through the week or for the weekend to have a conference. So some of them were small, like two hundred people, other ones were like fifteen hundred people. So we were about maybe, let’s see, I’m trying to remember. We were twenty men and maybe thirty or forty women plus the management people. And we were, you know, in different places on the campus. It’s a huge campus. So every week we had to change everything.
SL: Right.
ML: At the conference they were coming to learn a lot of different things so we had to set the whole campus to their needs. And then, so they’ve been doing this since 1908. You know the center was founded back then. So through the years it's been very well organized, there's a lot of brotherhood, there's a lot of history and it's very well organized. So when I came I was very impressed that everything was so organized and we had fun and also played and made it very interesting. So, through the whole two and a half month experience every weekend we had themed parties. New year’s, Christmas in July, international night, a talent show, different things--Hawaiian party--different activities that kept us engaged and kept us having fun, and made the work kind of easy.
SL: Yeah.
ML: And there were always opportunities. So I took one opportunity myself and I noticed that the people that work less were the lifeguards [laughs].
SL: [Laughter].
ML: So I find out how I can become a lifeguard [laughs].
SL: [Laughter].
ML: So I took the class, and I got my certificate of lifeguard. So I was able to work, you know, and that was the most fun thing to do because you just clean, give a little bit of maintenance to the pool, and just sit down and see people and enjoy the sun [laughs].
SL: [Laughs]. Right.
ML: And get paid without having to clean or having to do a lot of work [laughs].
SL: That's funny. So being, you mentioned that you moved, you started this program right after finishing college and your engineering degree. So when you were living in Black Mountain and in North Carolina were you aware of any, you know, educational opportunities that interested you? Or were you wanting to continue your education in the United States? What was your sense of the educational sphere of North Carolina?
ML [00:23:47]: Well, for me, back then my priority was to feel fluent in the language. And I knew that my English was very very limited. I remember when I put in my application that I speak 80 percent of English. I knew 80 percent. But I realized I didn’t know. I mean I knew the grammar and the structure but I didn’t know how to speak. You know. So to me that was kind of an obstacle, a big obstacle. So I did want to learn the language. My first--I knew that the program was going to finish so I tried to figure out how to stay more. And I knew that the assembly was the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly, so the assembly was hiring people to stay a little bit longer. And I wanted to stay. And I expressed my interest of staying, but they already hired other people that they had in mind. So I didn’t, I was not accepted. But when I talked to one of the executes about my desire to stay he kind of hooked me up with another executive from another town and said “Hey, this guy wants to stay as an exchange student.” You know, so he offered me, the gentleman offered me an opportunity to live in his home so I could continue with this experience and continue with learning the language. So I lived like two months with them in their home. And then when my visa expired I had to go back to Mexico.
SL: Right.
ML: And that was something that I had to do it on my own again. Nobody told me “Hey, you can stay.” I said “Well my visa will expire at the end of October, so I have to go back to my family.” And I did. So when I went back to Mexico, in my mind, I was like “Oh, that was a great experience, I feel better about the language, but I want to work on my field.” So I went to the town that I wanted to live, which was Guadalajara, and started looking for all the industries to find work and just start interviewing by myself. Talking to people saying “Hey, I just graduated from the university, I can help you.” I started offering my services. Because most people, they didn't know what food engineering could do in their industry. Remember I kind of went to like six or sevent interviews that I introduced myself to see if they were hiring and that I was available.
SL: Right. Right. So, did anything--.
ML: And then--.
SL: Go ahead.
ML: And then what happened was I went back to my parents to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s, and when I was back in Puebla, because I spent maybe a month exploring job opportunities in Mexico. A month, a month and a half and I was staying with relatives. Then I went to Puebla to see my parents, finally. [00:27:14] When I was there I got a phone call that changed my whole life. Because one of the executives called me and said “Hey, Martin, we really enjoyed your work ethic and we really would like for you to come back next year, would you like to do that?” And since I had a wonderful experience I said “Yes, of course!” So that phone call, without consulting anybody, I was like “Wow! That's great! I can go back!” Changed my whole life because then I was not pursue--I got distracted and was not pursuing my professional career. I kind of put that on the side and said “Well, I just need to work part time, you know, in another area or do something while I wait until I go back to United States.”
SL: Okay.
ML: So that’s what I did. I got a temporary job at the beach and I was using my English as I was working in a Japanese restaurant [laughs]. In a Japanese restaurant I was hired there. And I worked there for a while but it was hard to be on my own, to be honest. I was not used to being on my own, living by myself and making decisions by myself because we were always in a group. So YMCA was great because I had a brotherhood, a family, and I didn't have to worry about cleaning, cooking, or basic things. You know, so it was learning. But when I was in this beach, I was staying with some people first, but then, you know, they didn’t treat you as nice as the United States [laughs].
SL: Right.
ML: So it was a lot of decisions of: “How I'm going to get to my job? Where am I going to be living? Where am I going to stay?” And the accommodations they gave me were not the greatest ones. But anyway, I didn’t last too long there. When I got tired and just flew to Mexico City and went back to my parents and just waited until my opportunity to go back to the United States came.
SL: Right. And so what was your second experience like in the United States, and what did you do after the Blue Ridge Assembly?
ML: Sure. So it was even better, started meeting people again and then said “Well, I would like to stay here longer. How can I stay longer?” And it was three choices I had: One was, a friend from Nigeria says “Well you can join the army, they can definitely probably let you stay.” The other one was going back to college, and the third one was, you know, well if you get married you could probably stay also.
SL: Right.
ML [00:30:23]: But in my mind, it was more like “Well why don't I try to go back to college and try to get a Masters?” I knew several people from the University of Americas who had done that in different cities. In different countries. Some of them went to Germany, other ones went to Spain, and some to the United States. I knew it was going to be costly so I started to explore that. So I took some trips, I went to [pause] one lady lived in Raleigh so we went to the, I visited the university of, State University in North Carolina. And I didn’t know anything about Clemson, but there was some people from Blue Ridge Assembly that they were the directors of the YMCA in Clemson, and one of them offered me, opened up some opportunities there. So I kind of liked that, and started talking to the directors in Clemson and they said “Yeah, you can come here and help you.” In other words, there were some doors that started to open for me.
SL: Right
ML: So, I went and applied to Clemson. I got a place to stay, and they let me stay there. I paid for my room, for my board. For my food [laughs].
SL: Right
ML: The room was free, my food I paid for it. And then it was an opportunity to decide what I was going to do. And I visited the food science department. And because they knew I had the degree already in that field, they gave me a job.
SL: Right.
ML: So, the things were happening for me. But legally, I was there physically but as far as--how do you say--the credits, getting the credits, I was not admitted officially. I was kind of exploring what I was going to do, and I realized I needed to take more English classes. Because I felt that my English was really bad. The science I already knew, in Spanish.
SL: Right.
ML: And in English. But I was more interested in: What can I do with my field? How can I take what I know to use it in Mexico? And I realized that first I needed to improve my English, which was a big task for me.
SL: Right.
ML: You know, it was difficult. It was difficult because, again, I was by myself but I needed to master that so I could function. Like I am functioning right now.
SL: Right, right. So you hinted a little bit at it, but how did you feel like your degree from the University of the Americas…How did you feel like it translated to the United States and to Clemson specifically? In your opinion?
ML [00:33:50]: Well, it was a good opportunity for me to be there because people were very open, people respect me, you know, the doctors that I talked to. There was Dr. Moore, who was the permanent doctor in food industry and food science. He was kind of my mentor. He took me in, he gave me opportunity to work in the laboratory and start organizing everything there. And pretty much, I was probably, he wanted me to work on research but he knew that I needed time to adjust.
SL: Right.
ML: So, again, the sky was the limit there. We went to a lot of, well, you know being part of the food science group I met several students from other countries. I remember there was an assistant to Dr. Moore who was working on his PhD too, or Masters, that he kind of took me under his wing and he was helping me to fill out the forms which I was very intimidated. And helped me to get into the program, and also, um, so there was a lot of people very welcome. They went through my shoes, came before me, and they were studying and we went to several food events. I remember going to Atlanta to meet Dr. Labuza. Dr. Labuza was very famous for his research in water activity, you know, something that was, back then, really one of the fields that I remember. There are, I mean, so many fields in food industry. But anyway, I was meeting famous people that, before, it was just on a paper.
SL: Right.
ML: That I read about their articles on paper or on books, and I was very, you know, impressed meeting those people in person. And talk to them. Anyway, so everything was going well, and I thought it was a good opportunity for me. [00:36:17] But I had two tragedies that changed my life [laughs]. One, and it was I don’t know, just destiny. But basically, I needed to take two tests for being the next semester enrolled officially. One was the TOEFL. You know, the test for English as a second language proficiency. It’s a proficiency test to tell the university that if you can do it. That your English is good. And the other one is the GRE, I think. Graduate Record Examinate. The GRE. Which was a little bit more tougher that all the American people needed to take. The first one is just for foreign students. The second one was for all, you know, anybody that wanted to do a graduate study. So, the first one you know, unfortunately it was not offered on campus. It was in another city which was Greenville. So I needed to travel over there. And I didn’t know, you know it was on a Saturday morning. So talking to my people that I knew, there was another Chinese student that was going to take it. And I learned through my supervisor that says “This person needs to take it.” So I talked to him and I asked him if he could take me to the place, to Greenville, and he said “Yes, I’ll take you.” And then we set up a place and a time to meet. And then the second one was going to be offered there in the college, so I was already enrolled to take it there.
So I think it was like the end of October, or around October. It was around October when I took the test, I was supposed to meet this Chinese student to take the test. And I remember I got up in the morning early, and it was raining, it was pouring rain and everything. And I was out there in the corner where we were supposed to meet, and it was dark, and I was there for almost forty-five minutes and he didn’t show up. And I stayed there and stayed there and I never saw it, he never came back to pick me up. He probably did, but because of the language barrier maybe he didn’t know where I was and maybe he--I don't know. I don’t know what happened but he never showed up. And I was supposed to be there at 9, but by 8:30 I started crying and crying because, you know, that was very important for me to be in there. So I went to see other friends, and they didn’t have cars, so they couldn’t do anything. And they said “Don’t worry about it, don't worry about it,” but I felt, like, defeated because I wasn’t going to get into the next semester enrollment. And so, from then I started to feel, you know, and I didn't know back then, but I started to feel depressed because I didn’t know what to do. When I took the second test, I was encouraging to do it but when I took it I also felt defeated because it was really really difficult [laughs].
SL: [Laughs] Yeah, the GRE is…
ML [00:39:46]: It was very difficult, and I felt like a failure. Like “I failed, so what am I going to do? How am I going to get into the official Master’s degree?” And all this is the pressure that I knew it was costing me money, and I knew that my parents could not afford to send me to college, so kind of, I got into a depression stage.
SL: Yeah.
ML: I knew Christine, and Christine wanted to help me out and she always wanted to say “Well, you know maybe college is not for you. Maybe you can come to Asheville, come back to Asheville, and you can find a job here in Asheville and do something else.” And I felt like yes, that would be an option, but I really wanted to--I was kind of feeling like the opportunity to study and be in college for, was going to be much better. So I got into a depression. And back then I didn’t, never had depression before, nobody knew about it in my family. I got really depressed so I went back to Mexico defeated.
ML: And when I got back to Mexico, unfortunately my parents were transitioning from one, from Puebla to Guadalajara and the situation, the dynamics were not really good. They were renting a small place that was too small for the family, so it was very, it added more stress. In a good note, by then there was like, already, job opportunities for me and I got into a job as a food engineer and I worked in the Sabrita plant. But I was comparing that job with what I lived here in the United States and the freedom and what I was doing, it was like night and day. Even though I had a job there now I was not happy. My heart was in United States, my heart was in this area of North Carolina, And I wanted to come back. So I decided to come back one more time, so I didn’t gave up. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter] Yeah, right! So what was that like? Was that the last time you came, when you decided you know like you said not to give up, or how did that come about and what happened after that?
ML: Well, you know, through the whole time when I was in Clemson I was dating Christine, and she used to come visit me on weekends or every other weekend when she could. So we, you know, I kind of started being interested in her because she was always there for me, you know. Actually she took me from The Assembly to Clemson, and then when she knew where I was then she was coming every other week or every week. We had fun events, I remember one time we, you know, both being Catholics, the priest from the parish where I was staying in Clemson, he was doing outreach to migrant workers in another place called Walhalla. So I told him that I played the guitar, and he says: “Well why don’t you come over to celebrate mass on the field?” And I did the first time, and I realized that I needed music so the next time I brought my guitar and make it more fun. And Christine went one time with me to those outreach, going to visit the migrants and bringing the word of God on their own homes. You know, they were living in trailers in the middle of the mobile home park we celebrate mass and I was playing the guitar. So that was really really nice.
SL: Yeah
ML: Anyways, um, she was, you know, always offering me “Come back to my home.” So we continued to write letters when I was in Mexico defeated. So she said “Come back here, you can find a job, we can. There’s opportunities here.” So she was always having faith in me that my dream could come true.
SL: Yeah.
ML [00:44:35]: So I came back the third time and I actually came back with another friend. And then we wanted to plan our wedding but, kind of, things moved quickly and we got married.
SL: Right.
ML: [Laughter].
SL: And what year was it when--what year was it that you came back the third time, and then were married?
ML: Eighty-seven. 1987.
SL: Okay.
ML: 1987.
SL: And just for the sake of anyone listening to this interview in the future, can you describe who Christine is and how you met her for the first time?
ML: [Laughter]
SL: Just for context.
ML: Well Christine is my wife, my companion for thirty-five years. So she’s my wife. We met in 1986 in my second summer here. Not--she didn’t work in our field, it just happened. It was like, God put us together, to be honest, you know? I’m a very strong believer, and back in Mexico I always was praying for God for the right person to meet. And basically, through all this events that happened in my life, the way we met it was kind of a coincidence. Because she never went--I think that was the only time she went from Weaverville to Black Mountain, where I was. But I was working at the YMCA but we met in a local bar back then it was called the Town Pump… Town Pump? And we went there with my friends, from Mexico, on a night that they said “Hey let's go down to Black Mountain.” So I did. It was a group of five people, you know, boys and girls. And she came too, out of coincidence, because she didn’t planned to be there at all but one of her friends went and got her out of her job to go--she didn’t want to go by herself because her boyfriend, this girl’s boyfriend--her name is Lisa--and Lisa’s boyfriend was playing in a band, and he was playing in this particular place on that night. So she went and talked to the boss and said “Hey, can you let her come tonight?” And the boss did, Mr. Boyd, I remember his name, Mr. Boyd did let her out earlier. So they went there, and I was there with my friends, and then I remember my friend Paco said “Hey, there’s a lady outside that speaks Spanish. There’s two ladies out there that speak Spanish, let’s go meet them.” So I went outside, and actually Lisa, it was, she didn’t speak Spanish. She’s an American. [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: And Lisa, I mean Christine, was both English and Spanish. So we started talking in Spanish and so forth. So we connected and we invited them to come back the next day for another event at The Assembly. Which was the talent show, which was open to anybody. And so we were hoping that both of them were going to come but in the end Christine just showed up. And from then, we kind of started developing a relationship.
SL: Right.
ML: And I remember vividly one time when I called her, she said “Hey”--her mom answered the phone--she said “Hey, would you like to come visit us?” and she say, “You know, we’d like you to come have dinner with us because we’re going to have steak.” and I said “Yes!” And you know the ironic thing is that that night we were going to have steak, too, at The Assembly.
SL: Oh!
ML: That night, but I said yes because I wanted to be out of The Assembly, I wanted to meet other people. So, I went and met her family, and there were some relatives visiting and so forth. But anyway, in the end it just happened that the food was delicious. Country food, it was potatoes and green beans and, and flavors that I never had. Well I tasted them at The Assembly but it was homemade, not bulk [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]. Yeah, that makes sense.
ML: Not bulk recipes.
SL: That difference matters, right.
ML: So I was like “Wow!” And I said to Christine's mom, “Hey, wow you’re a great cook, congratulations!” By the way, she’s from Colombia, and so I felt like I was at home. And she said, “No, no I didn't do the cooking. Christine did.” And I was like “Wow! Really?” [laughs].
SL: [Laughter]
ML: And I was really surprised because being so young--I think back then I was twenty-two, she was nineteen--I was like “Wow!”
SL: Yeah.
ML: “Congratulations, you really know how to cook.” Because it was a great meal. A great meal. So all those little things started to, you know, be in my mind. That we connected and that we, you know, eventually got married.
SL: Right, yeah. So, fast forwarding, or kind of switching like fast forwarding or looking to wrap up. After your third time coming to the states, like you describe and kind of coming back from that, as you put it: Trying one more time and not giving up and getting married to Christine--which is all well over I guess twenty years ago--when you think about your life now, I guess how do you view education, or educational experiences that maybe even some of your kids have had, how do you view them in light of the ones you had both in Mexico and the United States?
ML: Well, um, okay so could you rephrase that question?
SL: Yeah. So, when you think about education now like in 2023 in the United States, as you've been living here several years--several decades--how do you think education compares now than it did in the past, when you were part of education and part of the education system?
ML [00:51:28]: Sure. Well, through technology and through the new way of opportunities that students have, the world is shrinking quite a bit. There is more opportunities for new students, definitely. I mean I realize that people that really like school or they like to do something different, they kind of cling to their friends--in other words, there's a dynamic between teachers and students.
ML: You know, there’s a lot of students who are forced to go to school. There’s other students that love to go to school. And teachers kind of guide those students, well try to guide everybody, to do their best but not everybody has that call and not everybody is smart academically. [Clears throat]. The main thing here that I see is that the people that have, from experience, sometimes people have the opportunity to go to college and they have these scholarships and they want to succeed in college, but when they get there they are shocked because it’s not like a public school. Because they know they have to write important papers and they don’t know how to. I would not know how to, you know, if I had to write a paper when I was talking, you know, back thirty years ago. It's stressful. So not all the schools, not all the students have the same tools to succeed. Especially in public schools. So it’s important to take your education seriously, and unfortunately a lot of students, they don't. They take it for granted, they just want to use space but they aren’t looking about the future. In college, I know that if you are around people that want to help you can succeed easily. Like I felt--Even though my language was limited--I felt that, again, international students that they were in the same boat that I was, they were encouraging me to succeed. And I remember that. The problem is sometimes--I’m just going to give you an example. I knew of a lady that her son wanted to be a doctor. And she got a full ride to go to UNC Chapel Hill. And he went there very excited about it, and within a semester he came back defeated. And I don’t know all the details, but he came back with depression. And he felt that he was not welcome. He felt that he did not know where to go. And that’s what happens when you don’t have a core group of friends, or meet friends that can help you, you know, try it and know that you can do it. That happens quite a bit and quite more often, you know, that's why we see all these shootings. Those people are either mad or they’re depressed or they’re not welcome, and those things that are happening here in the United States it's a shame. Because, you know, not even in Mexico I remember somebody shooting a student, you know a student shooting their peers. Because there’s always some sort of--I mean there's frivolity and everything--but the worst that could happen is just, you know, fighting themselves. Like men. [laughs].
SL: Right.
ML: But not with a gun, not with a gun. But anyway. I don’t know if I'm answering your question but that’s what I see. [00:56:06] Right now, the opportunities that you can travel abroad and go learn from other places, come back and still get credits, that’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. I wish I had that opportunity when I was in college because that’s what I wanted to do. To come in a safe environment and come back to my home, but I didn’t know how. But now that people, and that’s what, we’ve been encouraging to do that to Jessica, to Robbie, to you, to go to another country and meet other people and come back and have more life experience that will open up the doors. Definitely coming here opened up this door for me, to work and you know through trial and effort find the right job for me. In my case, we haven't talked about that part yet, but in my case even though I have a food engineering degree and I wanted to use it for good, the language barrier limited it in the beginning. And then I saw a need here--eventually after trying different jobs--I did work in a plant here locally in a food beverage plant locally, but I felt like I was more in a prison after a while because it was just confined in an environment that was very routine [laughs].
SL: Yeah, that makes sense.
ML: It wasn't until I got into real estate that it’s very challenging career. Very fulfilling because you’re helping people get their homes, helping them with the most important decision they can make financially. You know the most biggest financial decision that they can make. But there's so many opportunities for people here for homeownership. So I've been helping the Hispanics to get their home and have some sort of stability. And open up opportunities for them.
SL: Yeah.
ML: And of course in real estate, as a realtor, completely the rules change, the contracts change everything change, so--the technology has changed, to sell real estate--so it’s very challenging. There’s not a routine, you know, that I can’t handle the routine.
SL: That makes sense.
ML: I need variety, I need contact with people. So that’s why I chose that career eventually, you know, because I saw that there was a big need for people to buy homes. And the way it came to me this opportunity was because first I started selling satellite dishes, and they didn't own their houses. And when I got into real estate I could sell them both the land and the satellite. And I did that for a while, you know for a couple of years or so. But now it’s not necessary. I have clients that they are investors now, clients that are first-time home buyers, clients that they need to sell their home because they have other transitions in their lives. But yeah, the real estate has been able to open up doors for other people and me too because I’ve met some wonderful realtors, wonderful people, and wonderful, you know all different types of people that are moving to Asheville. New friends and old friends. And it’s a great career, a great career for me.
SL: Yeah.
ML: In this case, it's going to allow me to retire soon. Hopefully.
SL: Yeah! [laughs] So I just have one last question, and it’s do you think that the experience-- the challenges you faced when you were at Clemson University and things like that and places like that, do you think the challenges you faced then are similar, or different, or at all changed from the ones that people or students who are originally born in another country, like Mexico or Central America--or anywhere in Latin America--do you think that the challenges you had are different from the ones they have today?
ML [1:01:00]: Well I think they are--there’s always going to be great challenges for everybody. There’s always going to be, you know anytime you change your environment to a new environment there’s always going to be challenges. It’s what you do about it, how do you react to it? That’s why you have to have a good core, core friends or family that can help you when you’re feeling down. I always encourage, you know being a man of faith, I always encourage somebody who goes to a university to be surrounded by, you know, by students that they go to church and they have the same faith. Because they are going to help you to succeed. You can't succeed by yourself, never. Never. You always need other people. Good people that can help you succeed, and could be a good teacher, good professor, good, older student. I think that’s very important not to stereotype that, you know, a lot of times you feel like “Okay I’m in this level, I can only relate to these people because they’re on the same level.” There’s always learning experience from older people and from younger people, the thing is that are we open to listening to those, to their experience?
SL: Yeah.
ML: So you don’t fail. Like I’m thinking about this kid that he didn't make it when he had all these opportunities, it’s because he didn’t have that core, you know, group of friends, or the family who was not able to listen to his needs, and figure out. And it's hard to give--as an immigrant it’s hard to give advice especially if you never been in college. You don’t know what college is like here in the United States.
SL: Right.
ML: You know it’s um, very simple. The way I learned--in engineering you just it's a lot of mathematic courses. And I was bombarded with all the other courses all the way to calculus and different courses. Anyway. The way I learned it in Spanish is different when I remember you know Robbie or Daniel, seeing them studying it was just completely different. I mean the results are the same, the solutions are the same, but the way they teach you is different. So as a parent how can you teach or help somebody study when the language and the technique is different?
SL: Yeah.
ML: You can’t. So there’s always more limitation for us to help our children in another, when you move to another language. Another country. You know, it’s hard. But it’s not impossible. If you have the dream to do it, you know you do it. Just like I, I didn’t give up. [laughs].
SL: Yeah [Laughter]. Yeah, awesome. Well that was the last question I have, but is there anything you want to add or contribute before we finish the interview?
ML [1:04:39]: Well, to any student at the university, just to take advantage of it. Everything you do there is going to reflect in the future. So make good decisions, treat others the way you want to be treated, and it doesn't--we all have different types of intelligences, and unfortunately in this, you know in this society that we have, this western culture that we have, we give a lot of weight to the intelligence of, you know, that has to do with grammar--well not grammar--but we measure what we can in just one part of intelligence, which is academic. But there's other intelligence that we need to develop. And we need to just accept each other and learn from each other to do good for you and for others. Always, you know, you learn and then you share. You learn and then you share what you learn. And put it in good use, not in bad use. You know?
SL: Yeah, right. Cool. Well thank you again for your time in doing the interview.
ML: Sure. I think I--we went in different directions but I’m glad that you guys are doing this project so I can help others to understand and help, you know, other students to see the perspective of people that they are not from, they were not born in this area, they came from other countries.
SL: Right.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[01:06:39]
Transcriber: Sophia Luna
Interview Date: March 31, 2023
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1015 -- Luna, Martin.
Description
An account of the resource
North Carolina resident Martin Luna recounts his experience moving to the United States from Jalisco, Mexico in 1985 as a recently-graduated food engineering student. Luna arrived to work at the Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina over the summer as an international student worker. Throughout the interview he describes the importance of several interpersonal relationships that shaped his work experience and that created the opportunity for him to attempt to pursue graduate school at Clemson University. He references the language barrier as a recurring challenge in his U.S. education. He also describes the role mental health had in his experiences in the U.S. Luna reflects on his experiences in both Mexico and the U.S.’s education systems, and closes the interview describing the kinds of challenges current Latin American immigrant students face within education systems and how they compare to the ones he experienced.
Source
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-03-31
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29328">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
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R1015_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/ecc34e9852c89e0a4f5799fbfbbe9968.mp3
cb38e454fef7815c51bf8e19c59c329f
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/a51a166435f005098b15ee40c6fb4cbb.pdf
64f709f76565e502b7ee56d7f996f318
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1008
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2023-05-30
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Robalino, Katelyn.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Civil servants
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1993
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Flushing -- Queens -- New York
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Chapel Hill -- Durham County -- North Carolina
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
N/A
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Velásquez, Daniel.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
Katelyn Robalino is a Community Connections Coordinator for the Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department at the Town of Chapel Hill. She was first interviewed by New Roots in 2013 when she was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill; this 2023 interview is an update on her journey, the various professional roles she has held, and lessons learned along the way. Soon after graduation, she worked as a Bilingual Teaching Assistant at a Montessori school in Charlotte and subsequently moved to Louisville, KY, where she held two AmeriCorps VISTA appointments and was a staff member for local nonprofits focused on community education and advocacy. Katelyn shares reflections on many topics throughout her interview, including imposter syndrome and other challenges she has faced, her sense of purpose and justice, and her ideas about leadership and the sharing of power. Lastly, she emphasizes the value of lived experience as a professional asset, which she believes has helped her in her current role at the Town of Chapel Hill.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Katelyn Jessenia Robalino by Daniel Velásquez, 30 May 2023, R-1008, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29340
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
Activism; Community and social services and programs; Education; Family; Labor and employment
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Funcionarios públicos
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Katelyn Robalino es Coordinadora de Conexiones Comunitarias del Departamento de Vivienda Asequible y Conexiones Comunitarias de la ciudad de Chapel Hill. Nuevas Raíces la entrevistó por primera vez en el 2013, cuando era estudiante de segundo año en UNC-Chapel Hill; esta entrevista del 2023 es una puesta al día de su trayectoria, las diversas funciones profesionales que ha desempeñado y las lecciones aprendidas a lo largo del camino. Poco después de graduarse, trabajó como Asistente de Enseñanza Bilingüe en una escuela Montessori en Charlotte y posteriormente se mudó a Louisville, KY, donde ocupó dos puestos de AmeriCorps VISTA y fue empleada de organizaciones locales sin fines de lucro centradas en la educación y la abogacía comunitaria. A lo largo de la entrevista, Katelyn reflexiona sobre muchos temas, como el síndrome del impostor y otros retos a los que se ha enfrentado, su sentido de la justicia y su propósito, y sus ideas sobre el liderazgo y el reparto del poder. Por último, hace hincapié en el valor de la experiencia vivida como ventaja profesional, lo que considera le ha ayudado en su puesto actual en la ciudad de Chapel Hill.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Katelyn Jessenia Robalino por Daniel Velásquez, 30 May 2023, R-1008, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
Activismo; Educación; Familia; Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios; Trabajo y empleo
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: Okay, today is the 30th of May of 2023. I am Daniel Velásquez. I am in the Global Education Center at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. I'm here with Katelyn Robalino, a Community Connections Coordinator for the Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department at the Town of Chapel Hill. Katelyn, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Katelyn Robalino: Yeah.
DV: And updating us on what you've been up to. Katelyn has an interview with us already archived on the New Roots website, but she has journeyed past that interview and is here to update us on what she's been up to. So, thank you for being with us.
KR: Yeah, definitely, it feels like so long ago now. It was 10 years ago.
DV: Wow. Okay, well can you update us on the last years of college and the time immediately after? I think that that was the time of your first interview. You were in, I think, a sophomore or junior in college?
KR: I think I was a sophomore. Yeah, I must have been because it was in the spring of 2013, so I was in in my second semester of my sophomore year. I wouldn't necessarily say that I ended up doing what I thought I was going to do. I had kind of some vague interests in education because my work study when I was an undergrad was at the Franklin Porter Graham Child Development Center, which actually doesn't exist. So, my work study job was a teaching assistant for two years. So, my first two years of undergrad I worked there and I really loved it. And that was the first time that I considered I really like working with children and being part of that environment and watching them develop and assisting in that process. And I was like, I wonder if I could be a teacher, but at the time I was so locked into my major that I kind of was like, I don't think I can necessarily do that.
DV: Can you remind us, what was your major?
KR: I was a studio art and Italian double major, so two different, really unrelated ones. And at the time I was interested in either art education or art therapy, so I was already thinking about a more professionalized degree, getting a master's eventually, but I wasn't quite sure exactly what that would look like. So, I did art and Italian not really with a specific purpose other than those were subjects that I was interested in. And then I, you know, after graduation, I had applied for a couple of different education-related stuff. I did apply for Teach for America, I got to the final round, didn't get in, was really devastated by that. Did some teaching, residency applications, again got through a few rounds, but really just panicked and was like, I don't know if this is exactly what I want to do, so I'm just going to take a step back. And I moved back home, I lived with my parents for a few months, for a couple years actually. But as I was living with them, you know, that summer right after graduation I was just at home, you know, I had friends that were already figuring out what their next steps were going to be. Some were in the same boat as me. And my mom and I were driving to run errands somewhere near my parents' house and she was like, oh, there's this Montessori school that's really close to the shopping center where we live, have you thought about seeing if they're like--. Just look, you never know, you know, because it's a private school, right. So, they have different requirements for what kind of, you know, teaching certifications you'd need. Usually, private schools run pretty independently in that sense, so luckily, they were looking for a bilingual teaching assistant for a primary classroom, so I applied, and I got the job and I started working there and I was there for three years. Really enjoyed Montessori approach, learned a lot from it.
DV: This was now 2015, still? Like when you got the Montessori job? So, you graduated 2015?
KJ: Yeah, so I graduated in 2015, was at home for two months scrambling and [laughter] kind of breaking down because I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. And then realizing: oh, it's fine, I don't have to figure that out. It's still a lesson I'm learning now, but I got the job, I think, August.
DV: So just before the school year started, basically.
KJ: Yeah, so it worked out really well, and then I stayed there for three years.
DV: Okay. Well, start telling us about your time at the Montessori school.
KR: Yeah. I really loved the environment of Montessori education, especially in a primary classroom, which is a multi-age group, ages three to six. Everything is kind of oriented towards that stage of development, and so it's a lot of sensory activities, a lot of practical activities, like learning how to take care of yourself, like hand washing, which sounds a little bit very practical, but they really do need to know how to do it because they don't know how to wash their hands well at that point. Hand washing, but also things like taking care of the garden outside or watering the plants in the classroom. And also, social skills, you know, it's their first time really being in a social environment that's not their family, so I found that really, really exciting to be a part of that process. And I also met my partner there, so I'm really grateful for that season of my life for what it was. But at the end of it, I was really ready to just go somewhere that I could continue to apply those lessons that I learned there in a space where I knew that I was going to be able to give back, I guess. Private school, I guess now looking back at it, I'm not necessarily sure I agree with the idea of private school as a concept, and so working at a private school was like, this is great that these resources are available to these students but I know from my upbringing, and as a first generation college graduate, that none of these things were available to me, and I still figured it out, and I'm really grateful for that. But I think one of the reasons I was able to do that is because I had people like me that were spurring me on to those things. And so, I was like, I guess my thinking after these three years was, I've learned a lot of things, and I want to be able to take that into other settings. And not--. There's always going to be someone that's willing to work here. There's not always going to be somebody that's willing to work in other settings, you know, that, for lack of a better word, underserved or underprivileged. And I'm using air quotes, because I don't really like saying that, but it's, you know, that's what I was thinking about at the time was, you know, I didn't have all of these things that I am giving my students and I still was able to be who I am. And I want to be able to do that for somebody else.
DV: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So private school was in a way somewhat insulated, and you wanted to take some more of that elsewhere. So where else did you go from there?
KR: Yeah, so at that point I had been dating my partner for two years and his family is from Louisville, Kentucky. His dad is, that's where he grew up and his grandparents were still based there and some of his extended family. And so, his grandfather had really progressed in his dementia and he knew that he was going to, you know, not have so much time with him and so he told me, you know, I want to make this move and I want you to come with me. And honestly at the time I really didn't want to stay in Charlotte. I've never had an affinity to Charlotte. I think I probably referenced this in my previous interview, but I moved to Charlotte when I was a sophomore in high school, so I had a very difficult time adjusting to suburban Charlotte, growing up in New York City. So, I was just not really looking to stay, and this was my reason to leave, so I jumped at the opportunity to start anew and didn't really have a plan. But I ended up, through one of Matt's college friends--. She was working at a non-profit, and I ended up working at that non-profit too, as my first year as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. And then my two years after that as a staff member. So, that was--. And then after that, I actually did another VISTA year with a different non-profit organization. So, I did two VISTA years in Louisville.
DV: In Louisville, okay.
KR: Yeah, and I got a really intense non-profit background in small non-profit, like local non-profit work.
DV: A crash course.
KR: Yeah.
DV: Okay, and what kind of work were you doing at least for the first VISTA?
KR: Yeah, so the first VISTA was with Educational Justice, small non-profit startup kind of type of non-profit. The focus was on 5th through 8th grade students and mentoring them through our 9th through 12th grade volunteers. So, we would pair, ideally we would pair a 5th grade student with a 9th grade student so they could stay paired for multiple years. If you know about Blue Ribbon Mentor here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, well, there's a--. Through Chapel Hill- Carrboro Community Schools, there's a similar kind of program where they do a kind of a more consistent, intense type of mentoring program so that they build a relationship and they kind of follow each other through their schooling. So, I think Blue Ribbon in Chapel Hill does this, I think, with adults. So, it's a little bit different, but it's the same idea of forming a relationship with someone and emphasizing that in order to connect that to their academic success. So, I was a program administrator, so I basically facilitated the applications on both ends for the students receiving tutoring and for the students interested in volunteering, and also orienting the families. And doing all of that in Spanish too, because I was the only Spanish speaker. So yeah, that was definitely, like you said, a crash course. I'd never used Spanish professionally really before that.
DV: Wow.
KR: I mean, I had at the Montessori school, technically I was, you know, giving language--. I was speaking in Spanish to the children, but nothing as intentional as this kind of--. It was more of a professional setting, I guess, that's as far as I can say.
DV: Yeah. What is educational justice?
KR: The non-profit or the concept in general?
DV: The concept, I think I get some of the outlines from where you've already described, the work you were doing, but what does it mean to you?
KR: To me, well, that's a big question. I mean, I think equal outcomes is probably what I would say now. It's the idea that regardless of where you start, you have the potential to reach the same outcome as somebody else. I don't think that's true necessarily, but right now as we exist today, but that's the goal is being able to have equal outcomes, yeah, and equal opportunities.
DV: Okay, I understand. And did this lead to the next VISTA appointment, or were you looking for something else to be able to stay in Louisville another year?
KR: Kind of. That's where it gets kind of messy, and I don't mind saying it because I think it's more public information now. Basically, the board of that nonprofit, EJ for short, made a lot of decisions that the staff did not agree with. And so, we were seven full-time staff, and all seven full-time staff left.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah. So, it was kind of an unexpected move for me. I was honestly fully intending to stay in that job for a long time. Coming to Louisville was also originally not part of my plan, and so when I moved, I was like, okay, let's see how this goes. And then I ended up loving my job. My partner's grandfather passed away about a year into us living in Louisville, and he was like, we don't have to stay here. I did what I wanted to do, I was there for my family, and if we want to move on, we can. And I was like, no, I love it here. I've really built my community here. I was really invested in the local students, in the local nonprofit culture. It is kind of cliquey, but it is just very--. Everyone knows everyone, and I was networking, I was building myself professionally. And then that happened, and it really kind of pulled the rug out for me and what I thought that I was going to do and so the VISTA position--. Honestly, I was kind of looking for something but I wasn't sure what I was going to transition out of or what other nonprofit work I could transition into, and so it was housing advocacy work and I was like, well I am interested in kind of more the advocacy side of things. And I know based on my experience in this education nonprofit that housing is the most intersectional issue, and so I was like, at least--. Even if I don't continue in housing advocacy, at least I will have a foundational understanding that I can take with me into my other jobs because housing affects everyone. That's ultimately why I ended up taking that position, even though I don't think I was necessarily, it wasn't my first choice, I would say, because I didn't want to do another VISTA position again. But I was also very wary of non-profit work because of my experience that I just had. And I wanted to go somewhere where I knew that I would have a good team and a good boss. And I got that feeling from the beginning of the interview process with them. And the boss that I ended up working with I still really respect and admire and think about him very often because of the work culture that he created. So, although it wasn't in my plan, I am really grateful for that time too because of what I also learned there.
DV: So, tell us more about that time.
KR: Yeah, so that was at Coalition for the Homeless which is a housing advocacy organization. And they focus not only on homelessness, but also on just, renters’ rights issues. So, my main focus was helping with the eviction outreach team. So, when the federal government did the CARES Act or ARPA, I can't remember that, or the--. Yeah, it was the ARPA money. When they distributed that to the state, Louisville got its own pot of funds from the state to do emergency rental assistance with the Louisville Office of Housing, their government there. And they asked the coalition if--. They used some of that funding to hire eviction outreach workers, because we do the work of actually letting people know about the program. Because in the beginning, they had this emergency rental assistance money, basically for anyone that qualified under a certain income bracket, they could apply and get their rent paid out. If they had any back rents that they owed, they could get that paid and then avoid eviction. And so that was the big thing, once people have an eviction on their record, it's really, really hard to rent anywhere else. And so, we wanted to be able for them to avoid that. But in the beginning, when they first started the program, so many people just didn't know that they were, the local government was doing that. That's when they asked the Coalition to step in and help with that. And so, our team of outreach workers was going almost, I mean, probably five times, like Monday through Friday, we had--. There was three, yeah, three of them, were going door to door. They would get the eviction court docket and just go down the list and be like, hey, my name is so and so, I work for the Coalition, I'm a volunteer, I'm not the government, I'm not police, I'm just here to let you know that the Louisville Metro is offering rental assistance, and if you fall under a certain income bracket, you'll qualify, and here's the information. And so just spreading that as much as possible. And basically, I helped with the facilitation of that. We also managed volunteers once a month to help us do that, so I also managed that. So, kind of having to do all the background-slash-admin work for making that as an organized effort, because the grant was for a year. So that's kind of how my job corresponded for the grant’s term, was to help with that until the funds ran out, which they did, I think maybe a few months after I left in October.
DV: So, this was also a bilingual position. You were doing this--. You were using Spanish professionally again?
KR: Yes. I would say not to the same extent, only because at EJ I was conducting entire orientations and presentations in Spanish, whereas this was more casual. Like--.
DV: Sometimes you just need to use the language.
KR: Yeah, it was like if I knocked on a door and someone spoke Spanish, then I would speak Spanish. And we did get flyers translated and stuff like that, but I didn't translate those. We got those professionally translated because it's a lot of housing jargon. But yeah, it was more informal.
DV: Okay.
KR: Yeah.
DV: And then it's after that that you came back to North Carolina?
KR: Yes
DV: Okay. So, before we get to that, are there any anecdotes or experiences that you think might be interesting to share from the two VISTAs or from the Montessori School, from that time since college to this point?
KR: Yeah, I thought a lot about that because, I mean, it all kind of blends together now. But I think something that is more recent, when I was working at the coalition, towards the end of my time there, we tried to kind of facilitate these community conversations to figure out where to target our advocacy work, and also to include people with lived experience, people who are actually living through eviction, people that are actually renters and living paycheck-to-paycheck, to include them in the conversation of advocacy work. We were able to talk to some people, not too many. I think that was one issue too, is that just because of who the nonprofit is in the community, it was always hard to get a larger group of people together. But in one of those conversations, somebody that was there and participated, she had a very simple question. I'd never thought about it, but she just kind of said, I don't understand why you're doing this. Why do you care? Why does this matter to you? You're not going to be affected by this in any way. And yeah, I was taken aback, I think, because no one had ever been so direct with me in that way, and at this point I've been working in kind of, I don't want to say pub--. Not public, I guess just a kind of service settings. I worked in a classroom for such a long time, from age 18 to, you know, whatever, however much time I was in at the Montessori school, like six, no, seven years basically I was in a classroom setting to some capacity. So, some, you know--. In service to children and then serving the community and then serving renters and people on eviction and I never really asked myself that, and it was like, it stuck with me I guess because it was good to remember. I'm doing this for a reason, not just because I think it's the right thing to do, although I do think it's the right thing to do. But because I want to see the community be supported and the community that I love be taken care of. And so, it's just a nice reminder to be like, I'm not just doing this out of the goodness of my heart but because I believe in seeing that--. What is, like, realizing the world that I want to see, I guess. Being a part of that, not just saying like, oh, we need to change the way that housing is--. The, you know, housing legislation. Or we need to change the way that, you know, we treat homeless people, or we need to change the way that children are educated. I want to, when I say that, I want to be a part of that change too. So--.
DV: That question that you were asked, did it come from a confrontational standpoint or was it just a query, someone was just curious? Like, why do you care?
KR: I think a little bit of both, honestly. I think a little bit of both because that specific community conversation, we were in Louisville's West End, which is predominantly Black, and I'm Latina, obviously, and my supervisor was white, and so the majority of people participating in the conversation were Black, and so that, I think, dynamic of us as the facilitators, and them as the participants being Black, was pretty obvious, you know, it stood out, and also because of the location we were in the West End, which is their neighborhood. And I mean, people can Google this, but you know, especially with what happened with Breonna Taylor and all of that, there's just a lot of tension and a lot of people that don't--. Specifically, the government, but also the community at large, they don't feel heard or listened to or cared about in any way, especially in the West End. And so, for us to be there in their space, I think she was taken aback, but it was confrontational because it's like, why are you here, coming into our space and our community and what's your investment here? What's your real motivation, I guess. And I understood that, I wasn't offended by that. I understood where she was coming from. And I was glad that she asked it, because I still think, it makes me think now even, now in my work, now why do I do this? So, I keep that question in my head continuously.
DV: There are trust issues, obviously.
KR: Yeah, definitely. And I totally understand that.
DV: Yeah. Any other anecdotes you want to share from those previous experiences?
KR: I think, I mean, this kind of is in a similar vein, but maybe on the flip side of that conversation was when I first got hired, my supervisor who is the Director of Education and Advocacy, his name is George. One of the first things that he said to me when he hired me was, you know, I think about this job as really important to acknowledge power and power dynamics because of the type of work that we do. And so, there's going to be times that you're going to--. I'm going to say something or tell you to do something in a certain way and maybe you don't agree or you think that it could be done in a different way, but maybe you don't feel comfortable to say that, or share that with me, because I'm your boss, and you're my employee, and you report to me. And it's really important for you to know that I want you to know that I acknowledge that, and that if you do feel that way, you can tell me, and we can talk about it. It's always going to be a conversation.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah, I've never had a boss do that for me before. And I've also, again, something I've taken with me is thinking about not just myself as a person that has the potential to--. Or I guess in the past I have thought of myself as a person that has had power taken from them, but not necessarily as a person that can share or give power to others. And so now, I think because he gave me that ability to say, I do have power, and I do have the ability to share that power and give up power when I need to, or wield it in a way that will give others power too, I'm very mindful of that now. And that's something that I also take into my work, is like, how am I sharing my power? How am I yielding my own power? Because I do, we all do have our own power that we're sharing or receiving or wielding, so it's a question that also I take with me in my work, especially now as I’ve progressed, I feel like I’ve come into a new space in my career and working for the town. But that's something that also sticks with me, is the idea of power and how we can wield it positively or negatively.
DV: Yeah, I understand. It sounds like that whole experience was very enlightening.
KR: Yeah.
DV: What are some challenges that you encountered so far, in your journey and the various positions that you've held?
KR: Challenges. I did write this down because I was like, I can think of so many. Honestly, first one is just very practical, being broke. Working in a non-profit sector means that you're just underpaid. Luckily, I wasn't overworked most of the time. I think that both of the supervisors that I had were very respectful of my time, but I was definitely underpaid, which meant that I worked two jobs a lot of the time. And I only stopped working two jobs when my partner and I moved in together. So, it wasn't necessarily that I had been in a higher income bracket. It was just that I was sharing expenses with somebody now, so it was easier. So that was quite difficult. I was just really tired all the time.
DV: Through the time that you were in the Montessori school and the VISTAs, you were working two jobs?
KR: Yeah.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah. It was tough. And then, once I became a staff member at EJ, once my VISTA year was over, then I stopped working two jobs. Although I did a couple of times still, like seasonally, for Christmas gift shopping and stuff like that. I would pick up some shifts--. I worked at Starbucks on and off and then I worked at a local bakery, you know, just like icing the pastries and slicing bread and making coffee and stuff like that. So, it wasn't anything glamorous. But yeah, that was probably the hardest thing is, I was just--. It's so hard to be present when you're tired all the time and just working. But I think that also kind of contributed to the other things which is like, you know, networking and figuring out how to have, you know, build a resume and focusing on, kind of, long-term planning; it was hard for me to do during that time because I was working so much. And then also just not having that generational knowledge of career advancement. My mom did eventually get her degree. She did get her degree when I was--. Right before I started college, actually, she graduated with her Bachelor's degree in communications. But even for my mom, she was kind of starting her career late, and I saw her kind of having to figure that out a few times. I don't feel like I had a lot of guidance in what are my next steps here. I knew how to get to college, but then once I got to college and finished college, I was like, I don't know what to do next, really. I don't know what are my next steps. I don't know how to describe that more other than the generational knowledge.
DV: It sounds like you were navigating that with your mom almost at the same time then.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So, she didn't have that to be able to give to you.
KR: Yes, and she would--. If I asked, she would say the same thing. I think both of my parents are pretty self-aware of like, there's lots of things that in this regard we couldn't really share our guidance on because we also didn't have that guidance. And I think that having that lack of knowledge then also contributed to my imposter syndrome. I think that to me, coupled with what I talked about, not having--. Having a second job, but just like, I didn't have the vocabulary for it at the time, but when I was an undergrad, looking back now, I realize I had a lot of imposter syndrome. And even when I was, I think, at the non-profit that I was working at, I don't think I felt it as strongly. But it was, I think, the positions that I was taking and my, I guess, I don't want to say inability, because I don't think that's the right word. But I guess that feeling of feeling stuck, like I'm just going to stay in this nonprofit work and not really--. Kind of making lateral moves, I guess, for those four years in Louisville. It felt very lateral to me, those moves. I think one of the reasons that I wasn't, I guess, willing to take that risk is because I did have a lot of that imposter syndrome of, well, this is what I'm good at, and I don't think that I could do anything--.
DV: At a higher level?
KR: Yeah, I couldn't really see that for myself. But that's, I mean, yeah, that's imposter syndrome, I think. That and working two jobs, both of those things were probably the toughest.
DV: Well, how did you navigate, especially the imposter syndrome, how did you navigate that kind of challenge?
KR: I mean, honestly, what's funny is that I was telling my sister when I started this job with the town that this is the first time I felt imposter syndrome this strongly since I was in college. Starting at the town has really made me, brought me back to my college years and feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what's going on, and I am not good at this. Which is not true. I know it's not true but I think more recently it's just been giving myself time. Yeah, I mean it sounds simple; I know that it's a little bit more complicated than that but really just giving myself time to adjust and giving myself space to do that, which is like--. It sounds, again, sounds obvious, but I didn't do that. And I don't--. I think that--. I didn’t think I was going to be getting emotional.
DV: It’s okay.
KR: When I think about my grandma coming here when she was in her 30s, my mom's mom, she never learned to speak English. She did lots of--.
DV: Take your time. [KR accepts a box of tissues].
KR: Thank you. She did lots of odd jobs, and cleaning houses, and making food for people. And I think, when I think about that, it's hard to feel like, gosh, I just lost my train of thought. I guess my point is that when I think about giving myself time and patience and grace, I think about how nobody else in my family had that. I feel like me and my sisters--especially my sister that I'm closest to in age, but both of us, I guess our generation--we're the first ones in our family to be able to say, I'm allowed to take up space, and I'm allowed to take time for myself and make those mistakes. Or even just make space to grow and change and learn. My grandma didn't have time to think about those things. And so, I think that one of the reasons why imposter system was so hard is because I didn’t always feel like, and still don’t sometime feel like I deserve to take that space, or that time, or that grace for myself, or that patience. But I think what's helped me is to think about, you know, because my grandma did these things, I can do those things. And it would be a waste if I didn't do those things that my grandma didn't get to do. I told my sister as much when she graduated last weekend, she got her Master's in urban and regional planning at Harvard, and I told her, I said, you're able to do this, and you're able to take this time to figure out who you are and who you want to be. Our parents didn't get to do that. Our grandma didn't get to do that. Our grandparents really didn't. And I'm proud of her for her degree, but I'm most proud that she's gotten to do that and that those opportunities have been afforded to us because our parents made those sacrifices. And our grandparents couldn’t, and they didn't have that time to take up that space and figure out their imposter syndrome, they just had to do things and not really think about it. And so, I think I’m--. I don't know, right now it feels like I'm always going to struggle with imposter syndrome, maybe I won't. But when I do, when I'm having a really hard day and I'm feeling like I'm spiraling, I don't know what's going on, I don't know what I'm doing; I try to remember, I don't always have to know what I'm doing and it's okay that I don't have it all figured out. Some days it's easier than others. And honestly, just acknowledging it and saying it out loud is the first step for me, and talking about it, honestly, with my sister, that really helps too, because we struggle with a lot of the same things. And honoring that lived experience is something we've talked about more recently too. And this kind of veers into a kind of a segue-way conversation, I guess, but just the idea that the lived experience that we have is valuable in our professional life and was not a consideration that I had until this job that I took with the town. And I've really been grateful for that, that that's something that the town values. And in the entire process that I was interviewing for, I felt like my lived experience was one of the reasons I was hired and I'm proud of that and I'm glad that they value that. And I've not necessarily worked somewhere where they were very explicit about that value and when I talked to my sister about it I hadn't realized that she was feeling that kind of imposter syndrome of, well, you know me and my peers are all applying to this fellowship with the city of New York. And they all have the same degree as me, right? So how am I going to stand out because we're all from Harvard. And I was telling her, I was like, you grew up in New York. We grew up low income. You have experience living in New York, in a way. And we left because of how gentrified it got and because how expensive it got, and like, that's important in the way that it informs your work because you're not talking about policy and people and their lived experience as a separate thing because you've lived that. And, you know, not everybody has that. That's something that's changing and that's something you should value and she'd always what she told me was: oh, I always just thought I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I don't want people to just say, oh, you're just this poor girl that grew up in the inner city, that kind of narrative. And it's like, no, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that that is something that is valuable to have that experience. So, all that to say that, that really helps with imposter syndrome. But again, not every day is the same.
DV: Well thanks for sharing.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So, four years in Louisville?
KR: Yes.
DV: Two years doing a VISTA and then you stayed on at the second one, at the second non-profit?
KR: No, it was one year as a VISTA in the first non-profit at EJ, that's the name. So, I was one year as a VISTA at EJ, then two years on staff at EJ, the same place. So, I was there for three years. And then I did another AmeriCorps VISTA term at the Coalition for the Homeless for one year.
DV: Okay.
KR: And then I moved back here.
DV: And so, tell us about the move back to North Carolina. The decision and also what happened after.
KR: Sure. So honestly, decision also kind of unilateral for me, not unilateral for my partner. He wanted to apply to graduate school at UNC. So, he wanted to go to the occupational therapy program. So, he had already been applying, and he got in. He made his decision in April of 2022 that he wanted to accept it. Of course, I was happy to come back here. I had so many fond memories on UNC's campus and just like in Chapel Hill in general. And so, I was very happy that he wanted to come live here and be a student here. And so, I was like, absolutely, whatever job, I'll figure it out eventually. I did finish out my VISTA term remotely with the Coalition for the Homeless. So, I still had a job for a few months. And then I really, really took the time. I think this was the first time, actually, that I was like, okay, I have some savings and I have my partner, you know, and I want to take the time to actually look for a job that I really, really want and not just something that I'm going to take because I'm like, I don't know what to do next and I can't be broke right now, because I did feel like I was living paycheck to paycheck for a while. And so, I didn’t'--. I was looking for a job for about two months.
DV: This was last year?
KR: Yeah, in 2022. Yeah, so I applied but I was very judicious. I really just tried to apply to the jobs that I knew that I was interested in. And then coincidentally, my sister had actually applied for this job a few years back. And so, I showed her the posting, and she was like, oh, I applied for this job. Like, you know, you should totally apply for it I feel like you would be a really good fit and so that was really helpful before I started working for the town. I had someone you know, my sister, to help me through that process, but I did look for a long time and I was very, just much more selective than I had been in the past because I knew I was going to be also the only person working in our house, since my partner's a student.
DV: Okay, so then you now serve as the Community Connections Coordinator in Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department in Chapel Hill. So, can you tell us any details about this role and what your work is there?
KR: Yes. Actually, I'm going to look at my notes now because I'm doing my short elevator pitch. So, our team focuses on implementing the town's equitable community engagement policies and practices. We assist other departments within the town with any community engagement efforts or events that they have and also our team does community events, often to hear from residents. And also, specifically, we always target our outreach to those who identify as historically marginalized communities. There is two Community Connections Coordinators and a Community Connections Manager. So, I specifically focus on the town's implementations of the Building Integrated Communities grant, and that's a grant we have through UNC and Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation. The big grant helps us, or helps I guess local governments at large, to create inclusive practices for immigrant and refugee communities, and that also includes our language access services, and I facilitate that across the town departments as well as externally for residents who use the town services or attend the town events. So that's a big focus, is language access in my in my job.
DV: Okay, and you've been doing that since December I think you had mentioned before?
KR: Yes, like mid-December and then I went away for the holidays and then really started in January. Although I did get a couple weeks of work in December, yeah.
DV: Okay, how's that going?
KR: It's good. It's super, super new. Everything that I'm doing is just something that I've never done before. I felt like all the previous roles I had once I graduated were very related. So, you know, like I worked at the Montessori School and then I worked at an education center non-profit and then I worked in housing advocacy. So, all kind of related very directly. Although even now this role I still see as really centered on community education, whether that's the town staff as the community or the residents at large as community. I think, I really love the work of community education at-large and so this is I guess just doing that in a really new way and through local government lens. It's just very different than any other role that I've had. So, yeah, it's all new to me.
DV: Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you if you still connected it to education, since that was a theme that you were developing in college. So, it seems like you do.
KR: Yes, definitely. And I think I'm still interested in eventually getting my Masters of Ed because I've, what I've observed in all of the different roles that I've had, even in a place like Starbucks where I worked, is that a lot of people don't know how to, when they're training somebody, teach them a process in a way that is, that is going to stick with them and then that they're able to absorb that information enough that then they can go and teach the next person. So basically, teaching as a skill. I think it is a hard skill and it's definitely a skill that you need to work on and learn and I think when people are in different managerial positions especially, they don't necessarily teach them that. And I like having that lens of education in all of my work that I've done, so I think about that a lot. I'm sorry, I think I lost my train of thought. What was the question?
DV: Oh, no. I was saying that--. Noticing that you still connect it to education in a way.
KR: Yes, I definitely do. I think it's important, and I want to continue. It's intentional on my part, at least, to continue that lens of education of treating it--. Any process that I do, whether that's speaking with a resident about the services that we offer or speaking with another town staff member, approaching it as: I want to give you this information so you can go and give it to somebody else in a digestible, easy way. So, I'm going to bring it down to brass tacks, be visual or auditory, whatever is the way that you best receive information. Knowing your audience, I guess.
DV: Considering all of these experiences since your last interview, since you were in college and through the experiences you've just shared with us, what were some of the main factors that you think helped you along the way? Whether abstract or, you’ve already mentioned some specific people that were important, factors that you think that have been important in your journey?
KR: Yeah, my family for sure. I mean, even though we don't necessarily--. I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with them on a lot of our world views anymore. They're quite religious and I'm not. That religious upbringing really did give me a sense of what it means to take care of your community and to be a part of bringing justice to the world, I guess, in that sense. So, my sense of justice has always come from my family and my religious upbringing, even though I have implemented it, I guess, in a different way than they expected. Although they do really, really like what I do. They think it's really cool. But yeah, my family, for sure. Having people that look like me, just--. And it sounds weird saying it now, because again, it was one of those things I don't think I was conscious of when I was a kid, but my parents always made sure that, even though they didn't have a college degree, that we were interacting with other adults who did, or that were professionals in some way, and had, and were Latino or Latine people. And so that was really cool. Looking back on it now, I realized that was very intentional on my parents' part.
DV: They wanted you to see many different roles that someone like you could, spaces that you could fill?
KR: Yeah, and my mom's brothers, her half-brothers, they specifically were the ones that really introduced me to other professionals because my parents' network was small in the sense that a lot of their community and the people that they were close to, their loved ones, our chosen church family, a lot of them were similar to my parents. They were first-gen Americans, were also working-class, blue-collar jobs, and so my mom's half-brothers, both of them, had their Master's degrees. And so, the time that I got to spend with them, whether here or in New York, because that's where I lived, but so the time I got to spend with them either in New York or on the West Coast was a lot of them introducing me to their network and their friends, which were all professionals like them. And again, this is not something conscious that I realized at the time, but looking back on it now, it was like, yeah, I was able to meet that network of extended people that looked like me and that were professionals and gave me an idea of the different possibilities that I could have. Yeah, that was helpful for sure. That and now I guess more contemporary is just valuing and honoring my lived experience which I kind of spoke to earlier, but yeah. I don't know if I could make it more--. I think that's pretty much it, is just being very conscious of valuing and honoring my lived experience as important and as something that I can bring to the table as an asset, not just as something that's part of my, part of who I am, but something that I can share with other people too, professionally as--. In the professional space as well.
DV: What do you think is the meaning of leadership and what advice would you give to future Latine leaders?
KR: Yeah, that was a hard question, too. I think, though, that kind of the anecdote that I shared earlier, kind of still applies I think in this case. For me the best supervisors that I've had and the people that I've considered leaders are people that know how to share their power first and foremost, and also just know how to push their team to their best work but not in a way that's demanding or that's you know I guess kind of like a stick with a, you know, the sticker carrot method, I guess that's what I think of. But just in a way that's really genuine of believing, you know, this is what I know that you can do. And being genuinely enthusiastic about it and also being genuine about, you know, there's going to be times when this doesn't work and that's okay and we can start over or try something else, and I'll be supportive of that. Those environments for me have always felt like the leadership that I've been most attracted to and most admired when I've seen in other people and so that's something that I would like to have as my leadership style, too.
DV: Great, thank you. Alright, to conclude what are your hopes for the future? For your personal life or professional life, for your community?
KR: Yeah, for myself, I mean I do want to get my Master's in Ed and eventually I want to have kids, eventually. But I don't think that's--. I think it's one of many successes. I'd like to own a home sometime, eventually. My sister and I have talked about owning a duplex together, because we grew up in a duplex with my grandparents downstairs, so we'd like to own a duplex together, raise our kids together.
DV: That's so lovely.
KR: Yeah, yeah. We've got to figure out our--. Now that she's got her master's, now I've got to get my master's, and then we can start thinking about our next steps in the future. And then professionally, after I get my master's, I don't, I mean, I want to keep--. I mean, I think I can see myself continuing in local government to be honest, I really enjoyed it. And I can see myself progressing, you know, in a way that I hadn't been able to see before in my other roles, to be honest. Even becoming a director of a department would be--. I can see being really a cool job. But I'm also open to, you know, I don't want to put myself in a box too much, I guess, and I guess that's my future aspiration, is to continue to push myself a little bit. Because if I hadn't taken that time to push myself and try applying to this job with the town, I think I would have continued in nonprofit work. So, I guess that's my professional hope for the future, is not being stagnant, being willing to be a little bit uncomfortable. And for my community, I mean, I just--. I want to see more people just be taken care of, to be honest, if I could put it that concisely. And also, just more opportunities for civic engagement. I think now more than ever I'm realizing being civically engaged is so important. And I know, I've always heard that voting is important, being involved in your community is important, but being involved in what your local government is doing, going to the town council meetings if you can, and just knowing what's going on in your city is so important. Yeah, I mean, I just want to see people thrive, I guess. That's the long-winded way of saying it. I just want to see people thrive.
DV: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, thank you so much, Katelyn.
[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 May 30
Date of Transcription: 2023 August 7 / Revisions: 2023 October 17
Es: Transcripción
Daniel Velásquez: Okay, today is the 30th of May of 2023. I am Daniel Velásquez. I am in the Global Education Center at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. I'm here with Katelyn Robalino, a Community Connections Coordinator for the Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department at the Town of Chapel Hill. Katelyn, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Katelyn Robalino: Yeah.
DV: And updating us on what you've been up to. Katelyn has an interview with us already archived on the New Roots website, but she has journeyed past that interview and is here to update us on what she's been up to. So, thank you for being with us.
KR: Yeah, definitely, it feels like so long ago now. It was 10 years ago.
DV: Wow. Okay, well can you update us on the last years of college and the time immediately after? I think that that was the time of your first interview. You were in, I think, a sophomore or junior in college?
KR: I think I was a sophomore. Yeah, I must have been because it was in the spring of 2013, so I was in in my second semester of my sophomore year. I wouldn't necessarily say that I ended up doing what I thought I was going to do. I had kind of some vague interests in education because my work study when I was an undergrad was at the Franklin Porter Graham Child Development Center, which actually doesn't exist. So, my work study job was a teaching assistant for two years. So, my first two years of undergrad I worked there and I really loved it. And that was the first time that I considered I really like working with children and being part of that environment and watching them develop and assisting in that process. And I was like, I wonder if I could be a teacher, but at the time I was so locked into my major that I kind of was like, I don't think I can necessarily do that.
DV: Can you remind us, what was your major?
KR: I was a studio art and Italian double major, so two different, really unrelated ones. And at the time I was interested in either art education or art therapy, so I was already thinking about a more professionalized degree, getting a master's eventually, but I wasn't quite sure exactly what that would look like. So, I did art and Italian not really with a specific purpose other than those were subjects that I was interested in. And then I, you know, after graduation, I had applied for a couple of different education-related stuff. I did apply for Teach for America, I got to the final round, didn't get in, was really devastated by that. Did some teaching, residency applications, again got through a few rounds, but really just panicked and was like, I don't know if this is exactly what I want to do, so I'm just going to take a step back. And I moved back home, I lived with my parents for a few months, for a couple years actually. But as I was living with them, you know, that summer right after graduation I was just at home, you know, I had friends that were already figuring out what their next steps were going to be. Some were in the same boat as me. And my mom and I were driving to run errands somewhere near my parents' house and she was like, oh, there's this Montessori school that's really close to the shopping center where we live, have you thought about seeing if they're like--. Just look, you never know, you know, because it's a private school, right. So, they have different requirements for what kind of, you know, teaching certifications you'd need. Usually, private schools run pretty independently in that sense, so luckily, they were looking for a bilingual teaching assistant for a primary classroom, so I applied, and I got the job and I started working there and I was there for three years. Really enjoyed Montessori approach, learned a lot from it.
DV: This was now 2015, still? Like when you got the Montessori job? So, you graduated 2015?
KJ: Yeah, so I graduated in 2015, was at home for two months scrambling and [laughter] kind of breaking down because I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. And then realizing: oh, it's fine, I don't have to figure that out. It's still a lesson I'm learning now, but I got the job, I think, August.
DV: So just before the school year started, basically.
KJ: Yeah, so it worked out really well, and then I stayed there for three years.
DV: Okay. Well, start telling us about your time at the Montessori school.
KR: Yeah. I really loved the environment of Montessori education, especially in a primary classroom, which is a multi-age group, ages three to six. Everything is kind of oriented towards that stage of development, and so it's a lot of sensory activities, a lot of practical activities, like learning how to take care of yourself, like hand washing, which sounds a little bit very practical, but they really do need to know how to do it because they don't know how to wash their hands well at that point. Hand washing, but also things like taking care of the garden outside or watering the plants in the classroom. And also, social skills, you know, it's their first time really being in a social environment that's not their family, so I found that really, really exciting to be a part of that process. And I also met my partner there, so I'm really grateful for that season of my life for what it was. But at the end of it, I was really ready to just go somewhere that I could continue to apply those lessons that I learned there in a space where I knew that I was going to be able to give back, I guess. Private school, I guess now looking back at it, I'm not necessarily sure I agree with the idea of private school as a concept, and so working at a private school was like, this is great that these resources are available to these students but I know from my upbringing, and as a first generation college graduate, that none of these things were available to me, and I still figured it out, and I'm really grateful for that. But I think one of the reasons I was able to do that is because I had people like me that were spurring me on to those things. And so, I was like, I guess my thinking after these three years was, I've learned a lot of things, and I want to be able to take that into other settings. And not--. There's always going to be someone that's willing to work here. There's not always going to be somebody that's willing to work in other settings, you know, that, for lack of a better word, underserved or underprivileged. And I'm using air quotes, because I don't really like saying that, but it's, you know, that's what I was thinking about at the time was, you know, I didn't have all of these things that I am giving my students and I still was able to be who I am. And I want to be able to do that for somebody else.
DV: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So private school was in a way somewhat insulated, and you wanted to take some more of that elsewhere. So where else did you go from there?
KR: Yeah, so at that point I had been dating my partner for two years and his family is from Louisville, Kentucky. His dad is, that's where he grew up and his grandparents were still based there and some of his extended family. And so, his grandfather had really progressed in his dementia and he knew that he was going to, you know, not have so much time with him and so he told me, you know, I want to make this move and I want you to come with me. And honestly at the time I really didn't want to stay in Charlotte. I've never had an affinity to Charlotte. I think I probably referenced this in my previous interview, but I moved to Charlotte when I was a sophomore in high school, so I had a very difficult time adjusting to suburban Charlotte, growing up in New York City. So, I was just not really looking to stay, and this was my reason to leave, so I jumped at the opportunity to start anew and didn't really have a plan. But I ended up, through one of Matt's college friends--. She was working at a non-profit, and I ended up working at that non-profit too, as my first year as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. And then my two years after that as a staff member. So, that was--. And then after that, I actually did another VISTA year with a different non-profit organization. So, I did two VISTA years in Louisville.
DV: In Louisville, okay.
KR: Yeah, and I got a really intense non-profit background in small non-profit, like local non-profit work.
DV: A crash course.
KR: Yeah.
DV: Okay, and what kind of work were you doing at least for the first VISTA?
KR: Yeah, so the first VISTA was with Educational Justice, small non-profit startup kind of type of non-profit. The focus was on 5th through 8th grade students and mentoring them through our 9th through 12th grade volunteers. So, we would pair, ideally we would pair a 5th grade student with a 9th grade student so they could stay paired for multiple years. If you know about Blue Ribbon Mentor here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, well, there's a--. Through Chapel Hill- Carrboro Community Schools, there's a similar kind of program where they do a kind of a more consistent, intense type of mentoring program so that they build a relationship and they kind of follow each other through their schooling. So, I think Blue Ribbon in Chapel Hill does this, I think, with adults. So, it's a little bit different, but it's the same idea of forming a relationship with someone and emphasizing that in order to connect that to their academic success. So, I was a program administrator, so I basically facilitated the applications on both ends for the students receiving tutoring and for the students interested in volunteering, and also orienting the families. And doing all of that in Spanish too, because I was the only Spanish speaker. So yeah, that was definitely, like you said, a crash course. I'd never used Spanish professionally really before that.
DV: Wow.
KR: I mean, I had at the Montessori school, technically I was, you know, giving language--. I was speaking in Spanish to the children, but nothing as intentional as this kind of--. It was more of a professional setting, I guess, that's as far as I can say.
DV: Yeah. What is educational justice?
KR: The non-profit or the concept in general?
DV: The concept, I think I get some of the outlines from where you've already described, the work you were doing, but what does it mean to you?
KR: To me, well, that's a big question. I mean, I think equal outcomes is probably what I would say now. It's the idea that regardless of where you start, you have the potential to reach the same outcome as somebody else. I don't think that's true necessarily, but right now as we exist today, but that's the goal is being able to have equal outcomes, yeah, and equal opportunities.
DV: Okay, I understand. And did this lead to the next VISTA appointment, or were you looking for something else to be able to stay in Louisville another year?
KR: Kind of. That's where it gets kind of messy, and I don't mind saying it because I think it's more public information now. Basically, the board of that nonprofit, EJ for short, made a lot of decisions that the staff did not agree with. And so, we were seven full-time staff, and all seven full-time staff left.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah. So, it was kind of an unexpected move for me. I was honestly fully intending to stay in that job for a long time. Coming to Louisville was also originally not part of my plan, and so when I moved, I was like, okay, let's see how this goes. And then I ended up loving my job. My partner's grandfather passed away about a year into us living in Louisville, and he was like, we don't have to stay here. I did what I wanted to do, I was there for my family, and if we want to move on, we can. And I was like, no, I love it here. I've really built my community here. I was really invested in the local students, in the local nonprofit culture. It is kind of cliquey, but it is just very--. Everyone knows everyone, and I was networking, I was building myself professionally. And then that happened, and it really kind of pulled the rug out for me and what I thought that I was going to do and so the VISTA position--. Honestly, I was kind of looking for something but I wasn't sure what I was going to transition out of or what other nonprofit work I could transition into, and so it was housing advocacy work and I was like, well I am interested in kind of more the advocacy side of things. And I know based on my experience in this education nonprofit that housing is the most intersectional issue, and so I was like, at least--. Even if I don't continue in housing advocacy, at least I will have a foundational understanding that I can take with me into my other jobs because housing affects everyone. That's ultimately why I ended up taking that position, even though I don't think I was necessarily, it wasn't my first choice, I would say, because I didn't want to do another VISTA position again. But I was also very wary of non-profit work because of my experience that I just had. And I wanted to go somewhere where I knew that I would have a good team and a good boss. And I got that feeling from the beginning of the interview process with them. And the boss that I ended up working with I still really respect and admire and think about him very often because of the work culture that he created. So, although it wasn't in my plan, I am really grateful for that time too because of what I also learned there.
DV: So, tell us more about that time.
KR: Yeah, so that was at Coalition for the Homeless which is a housing advocacy organization. And they focus not only on homelessness, but also on just, renters’ rights issues. So, my main focus was helping with the eviction outreach team. So, when the federal government did the CARES Act or ARPA, I can't remember that, or the--. Yeah, it was the ARPA money. When they distributed that to the state, Louisville got its own pot of funds from the state to do emergency rental assistance with the Louisville Office of Housing, their government there. And they asked the coalition if--. They used some of that funding to hire eviction outreach workers, because we do the work of actually letting people know about the program. Because in the beginning, they had this emergency rental assistance money, basically for anyone that qualified under a certain income bracket, they could apply and get their rent paid out. If they had any back rents that they owed, they could get that paid and then avoid eviction. And so that was the big thing, once people have an eviction on their record, it's really, really hard to rent anywhere else. And so, we wanted to be able for them to avoid that. But in the beginning, when they first started the program, so many people just didn't know that they were, the local government was doing that. That's when they asked the Coalition to step in and help with that. And so, our team of outreach workers was going almost, I mean, probably five times, like Monday through Friday, we had--. There was three, yeah, three of them, were going door to door. They would get the eviction court docket and just go down the list and be like, hey, my name is so and so, I work for the Coalition, I'm a volunteer, I'm not the government, I'm not police, I'm just here to let you know that the Louisville Metro is offering rental assistance, and if you fall under a certain income bracket, you'll qualify, and here's the information. And so just spreading that as much as possible. And basically, I helped with the facilitation of that. We also managed volunteers once a month to help us do that, so I also managed that. So, kind of having to do all the background-slash-admin work for making that as an organized effort, because the grant was for a year. So that's kind of how my job corresponded for the grant’s term, was to help with that until the funds ran out, which they did, I think maybe a few months after I left in October.
DV: So, this was also a bilingual position. You were doing this--. You were using Spanish professionally again?
KR: Yes. I would say not to the same extent, only because at EJ I was conducting entire orientations and presentations in Spanish, whereas this was more casual. Like--.
DV: Sometimes you just need to use the language.
KR: Yeah, it was like if I knocked on a door and someone spoke Spanish, then I would speak Spanish. And we did get flyers translated and stuff like that, but I didn't translate those. We got those professionally translated because it's a lot of housing jargon. But yeah, it was more informal.
DV: Okay.
KR: Yeah.
DV: And then it's after that that you came back to North Carolina?
KR: Yes
DV: Okay. So, before we get to that, are there any anecdotes or experiences that you think might be interesting to share from the two VISTAs or from the Montessori School, from that time since college to this point?
KR: Yeah, I thought a lot about that because, I mean, it all kind of blends together now. But I think something that is more recent, when I was working at the coalition, towards the end of my time there, we tried to kind of facilitate these community conversations to figure out where to target our advocacy work, and also to include people with lived experience, people who are actually living through eviction, people that are actually renters and living paycheck-to-paycheck, to include them in the conversation of advocacy work. We were able to talk to some people, not too many. I think that was one issue too, is that just because of who the nonprofit is in the community, it was always hard to get a larger group of people together. But in one of those conversations, somebody that was there and participated, she had a very simple question. I'd never thought about it, but she just kind of said, I don't understand why you're doing this. Why do you care? Why does this matter to you? You're not going to be affected by this in any way. And yeah, I was taken aback, I think, because no one had ever been so direct with me in that way, and at this point I've been working in kind of, I don't want to say pub--. Not public, I guess just a kind of service settings. I worked in a classroom for such a long time, from age 18 to, you know, whatever, however much time I was in at the Montessori school, like six, no, seven years basically I was in a classroom setting to some capacity. So, some, you know--. In service to children and then serving the community and then serving renters and people on eviction and I never really asked myself that, and it was like, it stuck with me I guess because it was good to remember. I'm doing this for a reason, not just because I think it's the right thing to do, although I do think it's the right thing to do. But because I want to see the community be supported and the community that I love be taken care of. And so, it's just a nice reminder to be like, I'm not just doing this out of the goodness of my heart but because I believe in seeing that--. What is, like, realizing the world that I want to see, I guess. Being a part of that, not just saying like, oh, we need to change the way that housing is--. The, you know, housing legislation. Or we need to change the way that, you know, we treat homeless people, or we need to change the way that children are educated. I want to, when I say that, I want to be a part of that change too. So--.
DV: That question that you were asked, did it come from a confrontational standpoint or was it just a query, someone was just curious? Like, why do you care?
KR: I think a little bit of both, honestly. I think a little bit of both because that specific community conversation, we were in Louisville's West End, which is predominantly Black, and I'm Latina, obviously, and my supervisor was white, and so the majority of people participating in the conversation were Black, and so that, I think, dynamic of us as the facilitators, and them as the participants being Black, was pretty obvious, you know, it stood out, and also because of the location we were in the West End, which is their neighborhood. And I mean, people can Google this, but you know, especially with what happened with Breonna Taylor and all of that, there's just a lot of tension and a lot of people that don't--. Specifically, the government, but also the community at large, they don't feel heard or listened to or cared about in any way, especially in the West End. And so, for us to be there in their space, I think she was taken aback, but it was confrontational because it's like, why are you here, coming into our space and our community and what's your investment here? What's your real motivation, I guess. And I understood that, I wasn't offended by that. I understood where she was coming from. And I was glad that she asked it, because I still think, it makes me think now even, now in my work, now why do I do this? So, I keep that question in my head continuously.
DV: There are trust issues, obviously.
KR: Yeah, definitely. And I totally understand that.
DV: Yeah. Any other anecdotes you want to share from those previous experiences?
KR: I think, I mean, this kind of is in a similar vein, but maybe on the flip side of that conversation was when I first got hired, my supervisor who is the Director of Education and Advocacy, his name is George. One of the first things that he said to me when he hired me was, you know, I think about this job as really important to acknowledge power and power dynamics because of the type of work that we do. And so, there's going to be times that you're going to--. I'm going to say something or tell you to do something in a certain way and maybe you don't agree or you think that it could be done in a different way, but maybe you don't feel comfortable to say that, or share that with me, because I'm your boss, and you're my employee, and you report to me. And it's really important for you to know that I want you to know that I acknowledge that, and that if you do feel that way, you can tell me, and we can talk about it. It's always going to be a conversation.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah, I've never had a boss do that for me before. And I've also, again, something I've taken with me is thinking about not just myself as a person that has the potential to--. Or I guess in the past I have thought of myself as a person that has had power taken from them, but not necessarily as a person that can share or give power to others. And so now, I think because he gave me that ability to say, I do have power, and I do have the ability to share that power and give up power when I need to, or wield it in a way that will give others power too, I'm very mindful of that now. And that's something that I also take into my work, is like, how am I sharing my power? How am I yielding my own power? Because I do, we all do have our own power that we're sharing or receiving or wielding, so it's a question that also I take with me in my work, especially now as I’ve progressed, I feel like I’ve come into a new space in my career and working for the town. But that's something that also sticks with me, is the idea of power and how we can wield it positively or negatively.
DV: Yeah, I understand. It sounds like that whole experience was very enlightening.
KR: Yeah.
DV: What are some challenges that you encountered so far, in your journey and the various positions that you've held?
KR: Challenges. I did write this down because I was like, I can think of so many. Honestly, first one is just very practical, being broke. Working in a non-profit sector means that you're just underpaid. Luckily, I wasn't overworked most of the time. I think that both of the supervisors that I had were very respectful of my time, but I was definitely underpaid, which meant that I worked two jobs a lot of the time. And I only stopped working two jobs when my partner and I moved in together. So, it wasn't necessarily that I had been in a higher income bracket. It was just that I was sharing expenses with somebody now, so it was easier. So that was quite difficult. I was just really tired all the time.
DV: Through the time that you were in the Montessori school and the VISTAs, you were working two jobs?
KR: Yeah.
DV: Wow.
KR: Yeah. It was tough. And then, once I became a staff member at EJ, once my VISTA year was over, then I stopped working two jobs. Although I did a couple of times still, like seasonally, for Christmas gift shopping and stuff like that. I would pick up some shifts--. I worked at Starbucks on and off and then I worked at a local bakery, you know, just like icing the pastries and slicing bread and making coffee and stuff like that. So, it wasn't anything glamorous. But yeah, that was probably the hardest thing is, I was just--. It's so hard to be present when you're tired all the time and just working. But I think that also kind of contributed to the other things which is like, you know, networking and figuring out how to have, you know, build a resume and focusing on, kind of, long-term planning; it was hard for me to do during that time because I was working so much. And then also just not having that generational knowledge of career advancement. My mom did eventually get her degree. She did get her degree when I was--. Right before I started college, actually, she graduated with her Bachelor's degree in communications. But even for my mom, she was kind of starting her career late, and I saw her kind of having to figure that out a few times. I don't feel like I had a lot of guidance in what are my next steps here. I knew how to get to college, but then once I got to college and finished college, I was like, I don't know what to do next, really. I don't know what are my next steps. I don't know how to describe that more other than the generational knowledge.
DV: It sounds like you were navigating that with your mom almost at the same time then.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So, she didn't have that to be able to give to you.
KR: Yes, and she would--. If I asked, she would say the same thing. I think both of my parents are pretty self-aware of like, there's lots of things that in this regard we couldn't really share our guidance on because we also didn't have that guidance. And I think that having that lack of knowledge then also contributed to my imposter syndrome. I think that to me, coupled with what I talked about, not having--. Having a second job, but just like, I didn't have the vocabulary for it at the time, but when I was an undergrad, looking back now, I realize I had a lot of imposter syndrome. And even when I was, I think, at the non-profit that I was working at, I don't think I felt it as strongly. But it was, I think, the positions that I was taking and my, I guess, I don't want to say inability, because I don't think that's the right word. But I guess that feeling of feeling stuck, like I'm just going to stay in this nonprofit work and not really--. Kind of making lateral moves, I guess, for those four years in Louisville. It felt very lateral to me, those moves. I think one of the reasons that I wasn't, I guess, willing to take that risk is because I did have a lot of that imposter syndrome of, well, this is what I'm good at, and I don't think that I could do anything--.
DV: At a higher level?
KR: Yeah, I couldn't really see that for myself. But that's, I mean, yeah, that's imposter syndrome, I think. That and working two jobs, both of those things were probably the toughest.
DV: Well, how did you navigate, especially the imposter syndrome, how did you navigate that kind of challenge?
KR: I mean, honestly, what's funny is that I was telling my sister when I started this job with the town that this is the first time I felt imposter syndrome this strongly since I was in college. Starting at the town has really made me, brought me back to my college years and feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what's going on, and I am not good at this. Which is not true. I know it's not true but I think more recently it's just been giving myself time. Yeah, I mean it sounds simple; I know that it's a little bit more complicated than that but really just giving myself time to adjust and giving myself space to do that, which is like--. It sounds, again, sounds obvious, but I didn't do that. And I don't--. I think that--. I didn’t think I was going to be getting emotional.
DV: It’s okay.
KR: When I think about my grandma coming here when she was in her 30s, my mom's mom, she never learned to speak English. She did lots of--.
DV: Take your time. [KR accepts a box of tissues].
KR: Thank you. She did lots of odd jobs, and cleaning houses, and making food for people. And I think, when I think about that, it's hard to feel like, gosh, I just lost my train of thought. I guess my point is that when I think about giving myself time and patience and grace, I think about how nobody else in my family had that. I feel like me and my sisters--especially my sister that I'm closest to in age, but both of us, I guess our generation--we're the first ones in our family to be able to say, I'm allowed to take up space, and I'm allowed to take time for myself and make those mistakes. Or even just make space to grow and change and learn. My grandma didn't have time to think about those things. And so, I think that one of the reasons why imposter system was so hard is because I didn’t always feel like, and still don’t sometime feel like I deserve to take that space, or that time, or that grace for myself, or that patience. But I think what's helped me is to think about, you know, because my grandma did these things, I can do those things. And it would be a waste if I didn't do those things that my grandma didn't get to do. I told my sister as much when she graduated last weekend, she got her Master's in urban and regional planning at Harvard, and I told her, I said, you're able to do this, and you're able to take this time to figure out who you are and who you want to be. Our parents didn't get to do that. Our grandma didn't get to do that. Our grandparents really didn't. And I'm proud of her for her degree, but I'm most proud that she's gotten to do that and that those opportunities have been afforded to us because our parents made those sacrifices. And our grandparents couldn’t, and they didn't have that time to take up that space and figure out their imposter syndrome, they just had to do things and not really think about it. And so, I think I’m--. I don't know, right now it feels like I'm always going to struggle with imposter syndrome, maybe I won't. But when I do, when I'm having a really hard day and I'm feeling like I'm spiraling, I don't know what's going on, I don't know what I'm doing; I try to remember, I don't always have to know what I'm doing and it's okay that I don't have it all figured out. Some days it's easier than others. And honestly, just acknowledging it and saying it out loud is the first step for me, and talking about it, honestly, with my sister, that really helps too, because we struggle with a lot of the same things. And honoring that lived experience is something we've talked about more recently too. And this kind of veers into a kind of a segue-way conversation, I guess, but just the idea that the lived experience that we have is valuable in our professional life and was not a consideration that I had until this job that I took with the town. And I've really been grateful for that, that that's something that the town values. And in the entire process that I was interviewing for, I felt like my lived experience was one of the reasons I was hired and I'm proud of that and I'm glad that they value that. And I've not necessarily worked somewhere where they were very explicit about that value and when I talked to my sister about it I hadn't realized that she was feeling that kind of imposter syndrome of, well, you know me and my peers are all applying to this fellowship with the city of New York. And they all have the same degree as me, right? So how am I going to stand out because we're all from Harvard. And I was telling her, I was like, you grew up in New York. We grew up low income. You have experience living in New York, in a way. And we left because of how gentrified it got and because how expensive it got, and like, that's important in the way that it informs your work because you're not talking about policy and people and their lived experience as a separate thing because you've lived that. And, you know, not everybody has that. That's something that's changing and that's something you should value and she'd always what she told me was: oh, I always just thought I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I don't want people to just say, oh, you're just this poor girl that grew up in the inner city, that kind of narrative. And it's like, no, that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that that is something that is valuable to have that experience. So, all that to say that, that really helps with imposter syndrome. But again, not every day is the same.
DV: Well thanks for sharing.
KR: Yeah.
DV: So, four years in Louisville?
KR: Yes.
DV: Two years doing a VISTA and then you stayed on at the second one, at the second non-profit?
KR: No, it was one year as a VISTA in the first non-profit at EJ, that's the name. So, I was one year as a VISTA at EJ, then two years on staff at EJ, the same place. So, I was there for three years. And then I did another AmeriCorps VISTA term at the Coalition for the Homeless for one year.
DV: Okay.
KR: And then I moved back here.
DV: And so, tell us about the move back to North Carolina. The decision and also what happened after.
KR: Sure. So honestly, decision also kind of unilateral for me, not unilateral for my partner. He wanted to apply to graduate school at UNC. So, he wanted to go to the occupational therapy program. So, he had already been applying, and he got in. He made his decision in April of 2022 that he wanted to accept it. Of course, I was happy to come back here. I had so many fond memories on UNC's campus and just like in Chapel Hill in general. And so, I was very happy that he wanted to come live here and be a student here. And so, I was like, absolutely, whatever job, I'll figure it out eventually. I did finish out my VISTA term remotely with the Coalition for the Homeless. So, I still had a job for a few months. And then I really, really took the time. I think this was the first time, actually, that I was like, okay, I have some savings and I have my partner, you know, and I want to take the time to actually look for a job that I really, really want and not just something that I'm going to take because I'm like, I don't know what to do next and I can't be broke right now, because I did feel like I was living paycheck to paycheck for a while. And so, I didn’t'--. I was looking for a job for about two months.
DV: This was last year?
KR: Yeah, in 2022. Yeah, so I applied but I was very judicious. I really just tried to apply to the jobs that I knew that I was interested in. And then coincidentally, my sister had actually applied for this job a few years back. And so, I showed her the posting, and she was like, oh, I applied for this job. Like, you know, you should totally apply for it I feel like you would be a really good fit and so that was really helpful before I started working for the town. I had someone you know, my sister, to help me through that process, but I did look for a long time and I was very, just much more selective than I had been in the past because I knew I was going to be also the only person working in our house, since my partner's a student.
DV: Okay, so then you now serve as the Community Connections Coordinator in Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department in Chapel Hill. So, can you tell us any details about this role and what your work is there?
KR: Yes. Actually, I'm going to look at my notes now because I'm doing my short elevator pitch. So, our team focuses on implementing the town's equitable community engagement policies and practices. We assist other departments within the town with any community engagement efforts or events that they have and also our team does community events, often to hear from residents. And also, specifically, we always target our outreach to those who identify as historically marginalized communities. There is two Community Connections Coordinators and a Community Connections Manager. So, I specifically focus on the town's implementations of the Building Integrated Communities grant, and that's a grant we have through UNC and Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation. The big grant helps us, or helps I guess local governments at large, to create inclusive practices for immigrant and refugee communities, and that also includes our language access services, and I facilitate that across the town departments as well as externally for residents who use the town services or attend the town events. So that's a big focus, is language access in my in my job.
DV: Okay, and you've been doing that since December I think you had mentioned before?
KR: Yes, like mid-December and then I went away for the holidays and then really started in January. Although I did get a couple weeks of work in December, yeah.
DV: Okay, how's that going?
KR: It's good. It's super, super new. Everything that I'm doing is just something that I've never done before. I felt like all the previous roles I had once I graduated were very related. So, you know, like I worked at the Montessori School and then I worked at an education center non-profit and then I worked in housing advocacy. So, all kind of related very directly. Although even now this role I still see as really centered on community education, whether that's the town staff as the community or the residents at large as community. I think, I really love the work of community education at-large and so this is I guess just doing that in a really new way and through local government lens. It's just very different than any other role that I've had. So, yeah, it's all new to me.
DV: Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask you if you still connected it to education, since that was a theme that you were developing in college. So, it seems like you do.
KR: Yes, definitely. And I think I'm still interested in eventually getting my Masters of Ed because I've, what I've observed in all of the different roles that I've had, even in a place like Starbucks where I worked, is that a lot of people don't know how to, when they're training somebody, teach them a process in a way that is, that is going to stick with them and then that they're able to absorb that information enough that then they can go and teach the next person. So basically, teaching as a skill. I think it is a hard skill and it's definitely a skill that you need to work on and learn and I think when people are in different managerial positions especially, they don't necessarily teach them that. And I like having that lens of education in all of my work that I've done, so I think about that a lot. I'm sorry, I think I lost my train of thought. What was the question?
DV: Oh, no. I was saying that--. Noticing that you still connect it to education in a way.
KR: Yes, I definitely do. I think it's important, and I want to continue. It's intentional on my part, at least, to continue that lens of education of treating it--. Any process that I do, whether that's speaking with a resident about the services that we offer or speaking with another town staff member, approaching it as: I want to give you this information so you can go and give it to somebody else in a digestible, easy way. So, I'm going to bring it down to brass tacks, be visual or auditory, whatever is the way that you best receive information. Knowing your audience, I guess.
DV: Considering all of these experiences since your last interview, since you were in college and through the experiences you've just shared with us, what were some of the main factors that you think helped you along the way? Whether abstract or, you’ve already mentioned some specific people that were important, factors that you think that have been important in your journey?
KR: Yeah, my family for sure. I mean, even though we don't necessarily--. I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with them on a lot of our world views anymore. They're quite religious and I'm not. That religious upbringing really did give me a sense of what it means to take care of your community and to be a part of bringing justice to the world, I guess, in that sense. So, my sense of justice has always come from my family and my religious upbringing, even though I have implemented it, I guess, in a different way than they expected. Although they do really, really like what I do. They think it's really cool. But yeah, my family, for sure. Having people that look like me, just--. And it sounds weird saying it now, because again, it was one of those things I don't think I was conscious of when I was a kid, but my parents always made sure that, even though they didn't have a college degree, that we were interacting with other adults who did, or that were professionals in some way, and had, and were Latino or Latine people. And so that was really cool. Looking back on it now, I realized that was very intentional on my parents' part.
DV: They wanted you to see many different roles that someone like you could, spaces that you could fill?
KR: Yeah, and my mom's brothers, her half-brothers, they specifically were the ones that really introduced me to other professionals because my parents' network was small in the sense that a lot of their community and the people that they were close to, their loved ones, our chosen church family, a lot of them were similar to my parents. They were first-gen Americans, were also working-class, blue-collar jobs, and so my mom's half-brothers, both of them, had their Master's degrees. And so, the time that I got to spend with them, whether here or in New York, because that's where I lived, but so the time I got to spend with them either in New York or on the West Coast was a lot of them introducing me to their network and their friends, which were all professionals like them. And again, this is not something conscious that I realized at the time, but looking back on it now, it was like, yeah, I was able to meet that network of extended people that looked like me and that were professionals and gave me an idea of the different possibilities that I could have. Yeah, that was helpful for sure. That and now I guess more contemporary is just valuing and honoring my lived experience which I kind of spoke to earlier, but yeah. I don't know if I could make it more--. I think that's pretty much it, is just being very conscious of valuing and honoring my lived experience as important and as something that I can bring to the table as an asset, not just as something that's part of my, part of who I am, but something that I can share with other people too, professionally as--. In the professional space as well.
DV: What do you think is the meaning of leadership and what advice would you give to future Latine leaders?
KR: Yeah, that was a hard question, too. I think, though, that kind of the anecdote that I shared earlier, kind of still applies I think in this case. For me the best supervisors that I've had and the people that I've considered leaders are people that know how to share their power first and foremost, and also just know how to push their team to their best work but not in a way that's demanding or that's you know I guess kind of like a stick with a, you know, the sticker carrot method, I guess that's what I think of. But just in a way that's really genuine of believing, you know, this is what I know that you can do. And being genuinely enthusiastic about it and also being genuine about, you know, there's going to be times when this doesn't work and that's okay and we can start over or try something else, and I'll be supportive of that. Those environments for me have always felt like the leadership that I've been most attracted to and most admired when I've seen in other people and so that's something that I would like to have as my leadership style, too.
DV: Great, thank you. Alright, to conclude what are your hopes for the future? For your personal life or professional life, for your community?
KR: Yeah, for myself, I mean I do want to get my Master's in Ed and eventually I want to have kids, eventually. But I don't think that's--. I think it's one of many successes. I'd like to own a home sometime, eventually. My sister and I have talked about owning a duplex together, because we grew up in a duplex with my grandparents downstairs, so we'd like to own a duplex together, raise our kids together.
DV: That's so lovely.
KR: Yeah, yeah. We've got to figure out our--. Now that she's got her master's, now I've got to get my master's, and then we can start thinking about our next steps in the future. And then professionally, after I get my master's, I don't, I mean, I want to keep--. I mean, I think I can see myself continuing in local government to be honest, I really enjoyed it. And I can see myself progressing, you know, in a way that I hadn't been able to see before in my other roles, to be honest. Even becoming a director of a department would be--. I can see being really a cool job. But I'm also open to, you know, I don't want to put myself in a box too much, I guess, and I guess that's my future aspiration, is to continue to push myself a little bit. Because if I hadn't taken that time to push myself and try applying to this job with the town, I think I would have continued in nonprofit work. So, I guess that's my professional hope for the future, is not being stagnant, being willing to be a little bit uncomfortable. And for my community, I mean, I just--. I want to see more people just be taken care of, to be honest, if I could put it that concisely. And also, just more opportunities for civic engagement. I think now more than ever I'm realizing being civically engaged is so important. And I know, I've always heard that voting is important, being involved in your community is important, but being involved in what your local government is doing, going to the town council meetings if you can, and just knowing what's going on in your city is so important. Yeah, I mean, I just want to see people thrive, I guess. That's the long-winded way of saying it. I just want to see people thrive.
DV: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, thank you so much, Katelyn.
[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]
Transcribers: Sofia Godoy & Daniel Velásquez
Interview Date: 2023 May 30
Date of Transcription: 2023 August 7 / Revisions: 2023 October 17
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
R-1008 -- Robalino, Katelyn.
Description
An account of the resource
Katelyn Robalino is a Community Connections Coordinator for the Affordable Housing and Community Connections Department at the Town of Chapel Hill. She was first interviewed by New Roots in 2013 when she was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill; this 2023 interview is an update on her journey, the various professional roles she has held, and lessons learned along the way. Soon after graduation, she worked as a Bilingual Teaching Assistant at a Montessori school in Charlotte and subsequently moved to Louisville, KY, where she held two AmeriCorps VISTA appointments and was a staff member for local nonprofits focused on community education and advocacy. Katelyn shares reflections on many topics throughout her interview, including imposter syndrome and other challenges she has faced, her sense of purpose and justice, and her ideas about leadership and the sharing of power. Lastly, she emphasizes the value of lived experience as a professional asset, which she believes has helped her in her current role at the Town of Chapel Hill.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
Rights
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No restrictions. Open to research
Date
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2023-05-30
Publisher
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29340">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
R1008_Audio.mp3
-
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/f7eca2fc0e311e62e6f88103e4b4ff8d.mp3
11215696786813a8c92ab996391e8934
https://newroots.lib.unc.edu/files/original/ff565255a4915620e0d5affc0602d54b.pdf
24082066a6d31aa333a6ee1f0bbeb868
SOHP Interview - Bilingual
Southern Oral History Program Interview with metadata in English and Spanish
Interview number
Número de entrevista
R-1003
En: Restrictions
Es: Restricciones
No restrictions. Open to research
Date
Fecha
2021-08-05
Interviewee
Entrevistado/a
Rivera, Natalie.
En: Interviewee Occupation
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Health Service Workers
Interviewee Date of Birth
Fecha de nacimiento del entrevistado
1987
En: Interviewee Gender
Es: Género de entrevistado
Female
Interviewee Place of Origin
Lugar de origen del entrevistado
Greensboro -- North Carolina -- United States
Interviewee Places of Residence
Lugares de residencia del entrevistado
Mebane -- Alamance County -- North Carolina
Interviewer
Entrevistador/a
Therber, Sophie.
En: Language of Interview
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
English
En: Abstract
Es: Abstracto en español
This oral history interview was conducted by Sophie Therber with interviewee Natalie Rivera via Zoom on August 5, 2021. Natalie is from rural North Carolina and has been working with immigrant communities since college. This interview follows her many roles in organizations dedicated to immigrant health and well-being. The main focus of this interview is Natalie’s involvement with the Farmworker Health Program and her experience helping farmworkers mitigate the COVID pandemic and extreme weather, as well as other challenges such as HIV education, Internet access, and emergency-related communication in Spanish. Natalie describes her experience addressing disasters such as COVID and hurricanes, discussing the need to set protocols to address disasters and explains how sometimes immigrant communities do not receive the help that they need in the face of these disasters. She emphasizes the way that communities can come together to accomplish amazing feats in the face of adversity.
En: Citation
Es: Citación
Interview with Natalie Rivera by Sophie Therber, 05 August 2021, R-1003, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reference URL
URL de referencia
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29193
Repository
Repositorio
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
En: Themes
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Agricultural workers; Health; Climate Change; Community and social services and programs
En: Transcript
Es: Transcripción
Sophie Therber [00:00:02] My name is Sophie Therber, and I'm interviewing Natalie Rivera. Today is August 5th, 2021, and the time is 8:41 a.m. Natalie, thank you so much for agreeing to participate in this. And just to start, can you tell me where you're from and just a little bit about that area?
Natalie Rivera [00:00:26] I'll turn my video off, just to help us out a little bit. Where I'm from, as far as ...Give me a little more information on that.
Sophie Therber [00:00:35] Yeah, sure. So, where did you grow up? Where do you live now?
Natalie Rivera [00:00:40] Okay, yeah, so I was born and raised in North Carolina, primarily in the Piedmont region. I grew up in that area and then ended up going to university at UNC Wilmington and then lived in Wilmington about, gosh, like, 13 years, just recently moved back to Piedmont area, specifically to Mebane. But I've pretty much been in North Carolina my whole life.
Sophie Therber [00:01:14] And what has influenced your decision to stay and continue living in North Carolina?
Natalie Rivera [00:01:22] I think I always wanted to leave. Not even, maybe, permanently, but just, mainly I have family here and I think probably why I stick around. After college, I really got into outreach and farmworker health and really ended up just loving the work and staying for that reason. I really loved my job and everything. So, I mean, that's really the main reason I've stayed.
Sophie Therber [00:02:03] How did you first get involved in outreach and farmworker health?
Natalie Rivera [00:02:08] So I did my undergrad at UNC Wilmington, double-major Spanish and communication studies, so I was, you know, learning Spanish and I did an internship with this place in Wilmington called Centro Latino. Well, Centro Latino under a broader organization called Amigos Internacional. And they did that internship. I got to work with a lot of different people. And the main purpose was sort of a resource center for Latinos and for immigrants in the community would come, anything that was needed, paperwork, looking for jobs, reading through their mail, like refers to resources, everything. And I just kind of really enjoyed the work, ended up staying there for another year through an AmeriCorps access service program and got to dive a little bit deeper in understanding the immigrant community in North Carolina, especially Mexican and Central American immigrants, and kind of learning their stories. I realized all of the challenges with our broken immigration system and just wanted to continue doing that work. But I'm also, being from rural North Carolina, just kind of had a special interest in learning more about, I guess, sort of agriculture, farming and sort of where -- I didn't quite because, I was more of an urban area, so I didn't quite see where our immigrant community and agriculture sort of intersect. So I ended up, after I graduated, applying for a fellowship through Student Action with Farmworkers, based in Durham and the Fellowship basically gives students that are from North Carolina, from rural North Carolina. They choose, for the fellowship and for internship program, they choose kind of a mixed group, like rural North Carolina or farmworker families or had worked in farm work. So I got chosen for the fellowship and was placed at an organization called the Farmworkers Project, or we call it El Proyecto. That's in Benton, North Carolina. And that's when I really started to dive in and learn about farm workers. So in more of the context. I was looking and also learning about public health, kind of trying to find a way to also tie in the Spanish that had learned and also look for ways to better serve the community, and really fell in love with public and community health. So ended up doing that for a while. But I'll stop there. I can keep going with the whole story of life story until now, but yeah. I'll pause just for a second, if you have another question
Sophie Therber [00:05:17] Okay, yeah. And I'd love to hear more about what your journey has been like since then. But I do have a question. What was it like to learn Spanish and then be speaking another language in your professional life after having learned it?
Natalie Rivera [00:05:34] Yeah, it was. It was really challenging, I think. I don't think that I'm someone that was naturally good at another language, but I had done an exchange program and learned some there. And through getting to work at the Centro Latino. And definitely when I worked at the Farmworkers Project, all of my coworkers, my boss, everyone spoke Spanish so was very immersed and they were so nice and graceful to me. I think one thing that helped is focusing on certain topics and learning all the vocab. And so I got really good at learning specific topics and everything for it. Like I was a HIV educator at Farmworker's Project and it was nice, as I just said, one area to focus on and can really improve the Spanish that way. But eventually you get the hang of it and it gets more and more comfortable and it feels very natural. So there's definitely times where it was a struggle, though.
Sophie Therber [00:06:38] Yeah. Did you say that you were working with HIV in farmworkers?
Natalie Rivera [00:06:45] Yeah, it was an HIV educator.
Sophie Therber [00:06:47] Okay, HIV educator. What was that like? What kind of responsibilities did you have in that role?
Natalie Rivera [00:06:52] Yeah, so I basically, it was pretty easy. I was given a flip chart, so I was already kind of pre-prepared for me, and myself and another outreach worker, as we were called, really, we went out. And after we would do initial visits with farm workers where we do like health assessments and referred to the clinic and other resources, then my coworker and I would follow up and she would do a pesticide education series and then I would do the HIV. And I really liked [it] because I got trained on popular education, so I would do different things to be really interactive because, you know, it's a tough topic. And even coming from my background, that's pretty conservative and didn't even get a lot of -- any sex education in school at all, so it was it was like I also became really passionate about it at the same time. It's so important because I realized, like, maybe a lot of people aren't getting this. So we try to just, you know, didn't want to assume that no one knew what this was, but just use it as an opportunity to have a conversation and grow a relationship with farm workers that were there working. And it was fun and it was we would make it both of our conversations entertaining and interactive. Hopefully, folks could learn from it. But it also could be just something to do after work. It was overall a really good experience doing that. I kind of forgot, now, that part, but I'm glad that we're talking about it.
Sophie Therber [00:08:39] Right, that's so interesting in that you were able to take something that people don't normally talk [about], I mean, like you said, not having a lot of sex education in school, and kind of make it into a more fun conversation and learning experience for people.
Natalie Rivera [00:08:53] Yeah, absolutely.
Sophie Therber [00:08:56] Do you feel that there have been any similarities with your role working as an HIV educator to your role now because of the pandemic?
Natalie Rivera [00:09:10] I think I may have to...I may need to fast forward a little bit and tell you what I've done since then.
Sophie Therber [00:09:16] OK, that would be great.
Natalie Rivera [00:09:18] I wonder if that might help. So, I'm finishing my fellowship there. I just really fell in love with work, fell in love with community health in general. I also did a...I got to do a community health project, so I was there [and] ended up where I just went in to a farmworker camp and met with a small group of farm workers. And the idea was just to ask them, "Hey, what do you want to learn about? What do you need?" So, again, like using that popular education, using this community health model of really asking what's needed with no intentions in mind. And I remember just loving that concept of just asking, "Hey, I'm here, I'm a resource. I need to do this. So what do you need me to do for you?" And ended up, the group wanted to learn about, like contact dermatitis because they were working in tobacco and were getting a lot of, we get a lot of rashes and scabs. And I would say I got to learn about that and got to work with the medical provider at the time to develop some curriculum. So I feel like that in itself, that piece led me into wanting to pursue my master's in public health. And then it also made me want to continue just the work in general of outreach. So when I moved back to Wilmington, I had known that the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, who partially funds the Farmworkers Project, was working. I knew that they had been looking for potentially opening a new site down in Pender County, which wasn't too far from where I was living in Wilmington. And I reached out to them and I said, "hey, if you guys are ever planning to open anything or want to do anything, like, I would just love to be a part of whatever I can do." And so that actually led to... that was kind of funny because I've done lots of internships, fellowships and everything at this point, but they came back and like, "well, would you want to intern for the summer?" And I'm like, "you know what? Fine, I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to get into this work." So [I] ended up interning for the summer at the local Pender County Health Department and working very closely with the cooperative extension, who at that time also had a pesticide educator, so I was kind of familiar with that work because I've worked with another pesticide person in another county. Worked closely with her and did that internship for the whole summer, it was full-time. And I went with her to visit some of the farms where she did pesticide education. So, I started mapping out where all the farms were, where the camps were, mapping out all the resources, all the clinics. I was thinking, like, "What does Farmworkers Project do? How do they do their outreach? I need to just replicate that model." So, by the end of it, I was like, "well, this was great. But, you know, I want to do more." Ended up, NC Farmworker Health said, "well, what if we offered you a position of the outreach coordinator role and we paid you for about eight months, and during that time you applied for our official grant and then you could start the program there?" That was in, I think it was 2012 or 2013, maybe. So, nine, or however many years ago. I don't know what year we're in, but it was a long time ago. That's really where it all started. I was there for about eight years, in that role. We grew tremendously, worked with the health department, ended up kind of outgrowing the health department and moved the program over to a community health center that was like down the street. That was here before I left. We were there for several years. And then we started a mobile clinic. We started, just all kinds of services. Dental services, worked with optometry services, just tried to, as much as we can, making a robust program. And right before I left, this incredible person started working with us -- she's a nurse -- and running our mobile clinic. And I just knew, I was -- oh, then we also extended and open another satellite site. But anyway, so I just knew that she...I was like, "I hope, I wish she could take the program for me" because I think I was just kind of ready. And I'd just finished my master's in public health. I did it online through UNC, and I was just kind of ready. It just felt like I'd done everything I needed to, and maybe somebody else could come in and have kind of a fresh look on it. So I got really lucky, and she took over my position. That was last year, in 2020 I left. And it was really hard and sad to leave, but it was just...it felt really good in the moment to have her and have all the other staff that was there. But I think...going very back to your question and thinking about what about that initial position fellowship...I think I learned the most from that experience doing that community-based work where you just ask what's needed. You don't really have an intention. You don't really an agenda. Because sometimes, even with public health, we can get sort of tunnel vision. This is the project I need to do. This is what, like, "oh, I know. I have to do HIV education and you need education. But I really liked that freedom, that opportunity to be really open. And I feel like that's a theme we would keep throughout that new program, we ended up calling it Manos Unidas, was the outreach program that was created in Pender County. And it served 10 counties. Really, that was always a theme with everyone that was hired to work with. Our vision is that we don't need to exist. We're here to fill a gap and a barrier that exists right now. But we're just here to serve. And that's something I learned from AmeriCorps, too. It's just all about service. Empowering people is important. And so, yeah, I feel like that's where I really learned a lot from all that. And thinking about my role, and I'm going into [your] question about my role right now. But I guess I should pause because I'm telling you quite a bit with this story.
Sophie Therber [00:16:12] No, that's all really great. It sounds like your job has just changed so much from your first involvement with Manos Unidas and just asking people what they need, and now having kind of a more public health-focused role with the Farmworker Health Program. And I would love to hear more about what you're doing now. So go ahead, and you can continue.
Natalie Rivera [00:16:35] Yeah. I worked at the Farmworkers Project with the HIV project and then moved, and we started the Manos Unidas in in Pender County, and then from there -- and that was funded by the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program; actually, both of those sites are funded by them. It's just a different area. So, left that position and actually had some plans to take some time off and do some traveling. I was excited, you know. But unfortunately, the pandemic started and we were all stopped in our tracks, right? Any plans that anybody had, that was it. We needed to stay put. So, I was sitting there thinking, you know, this is going on, I have a degree in public health, I need to -- obviously, first of all, I'm going to find a job and I want to find a job at this point. And I didn't know quite what that was. And I just started looking around and something with the COVID response and found this position as the Internet Connectivity Project coordinator with the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, who I had known for all these years and had funded different areas where I had worked and were great funders, very involved with each and any of the sites I worked with. I thought, "well, let me see what this is about," interviewed with them, got hired, and was super excited...supposed to be a six-month position. The idea is with COVID, everyone is at home. Everybody's grounded. Farm workers are more isolated than they had ever been. And outreach workers weren't really able to go out first and do what they do best, [which] is go out to the farms, into the camps and do outreach. NC Farmworker Health Program came up with the idea that we should try to make sure farm workers have Internet connectivity as a way to do phone calls and telemedicine and all that. And so that was my goal, coming in. We've done all kinds of different models to figure that out, and the first thing to do, going back to that incorporating community feedback, is been working closely with East Carolina University, who's doing the monitoring evaluation for the for the project and for the Internet connectivity project itself. And we just actually went out earlier this week, funny story, to the old site where I used to work. And we did qualitative interviews with farm workers to get their feedback on Internet connectivity and how some of these different projects are going, where we put Internet routers and different farms, different camps. And so trying to incorporate that into the project as we go, because it's also been an emergency. So it wasn't like we could just do an assessment, wait, and then implement. We did a process evaluation because we were in an emergency, and we had to just get things going to the best of our knowledge, which was somewhat...Because I had done outreach, I really understood farmworker housing, and kind of how isolated it can be, and different ways that we had even gotten the Internet going into doing our mobile clinics. So I wasn't totally off with with getting things started. But in understanding that relationship between outreach workers and farm workers is a close relationship. So one of our models is the lending program that the outreach workers actually bring hotspots out to the farm workers and borrow them. And it's -- not only it was a way to literally reconnect, like come out, we're going to bring this -- but also build that relationship. And it's like a whole ‘nother, and what I've heard and the feedback we've heard from outreach workers is that it offered another incentive for building that relationship, another resource, and that it has been helpful, so far, as we're getting that feedback. Yeah.
Sophie Therber [00:21:00] Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to just tell me all the different positions that you've had and how your jobs and what you've been focusing on has changed so much throughout your whole career. That's really interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more about -- so, you were saying that you went and had qualitative interviews with the farm workers to discuss their experience with Internet connectivity. How were they reacting, and what was their experience with that?
Natalie Rivera [00:21:32] Yes, so are the students working with us, Paula. She's just awesome, got to meet her the other night. So she had so far only been doing because we started the project at the end of last semester or the end of last year. Last season, really, we weren't able to interview farmworker's before going left in the season was over. So we ended up our first goal was to interview the outreach workers because in general, the outreach workers can speak a little bit to some of farmworkers, some of the feedback they're getting. And so that gave us enough information to just continue what we're doing and adjust things as needed. When the season started back this year, we were ready to start interviewing farmworkers as soon as they arrived in the area. She had interviewed about seven or eight farm workers over the phone, and they met with her to see how it was going. And it was just very positive feedback. "This is great. We love it," you know? And I'm like, "Okay, give me some critical feedback. I mean, something." So, we ended up...I needed to do a site visit or this other model, so there's the lending program and there's another model we're calling the Internet hub. And this particular model, it was a very large camp: 80 farmworkers in one location, 40 in another, 40 in another. It was a little bit challenging to just provide hot spots to everyone. So, we did an Internet hub model where we put a really big router on this outdoor picnic shelter area. So it was a centralized location where anyone can go and get Internet. I wanted to see how that was going because it was done through more of a grower-crew leader relationship, versus the outreach workers and farm workers. Plus, since COVID had started, the local outreach program, Manos Unidas, had been having issues visiting that camp because there was a lot of fear around COVID still, and outbreaks. And I'm sure, talking to Gayle and Nicandro [other people interviewed for this project], you got a lot of this, but we planned to go together, and they talked about telemedicine. And so it would be with the crew that are coming with us, and it would be an opportunity to reopen the door. And then I could just get some more casual anecdotal conversations about Internet, and then Paula could do the official interview. It actually went really well. She said, "these are some of the best interviews I've had because it just so much more engaging in-person." I haven't gotten to talk to her yet about how what she learned in those interviews, because I myself just wanted to just walk around, and I talked to groups and heard different things. The feedback that I got just doing that, which is in our official IRB, it just helps me with the project, was the Internet hub...they didn't like that it didn't reach out to all the housing units. When they were inside, they couldn't get Internet because part of that is that those housing units are metal buildings, so it's just really not going to penetrate through the buildings, the signal. And we kind of knew that going on in, but just wanted to see what it would be like. So that was one of the good critical feedback. And then also that when everyone gets on the Internet, it slows down. Again, it was really good to get that feedback. And then everyone said, "It's nice. I had a data plan and I was able to get a smaller data plan because now I can go out there and I can connect to the Internet and I can make a phone call." So folks did really like having the Internet, but the quality wasn't as good as it could have been. And that was an interesting thing, because the grower had wanted to do a better Internet like the fiber, but the service provider wasn't available to that particular area, which is something we're learning about and finding out that really, most of these migrants do not have the option of, through the Internet service provider, to have...You know, we go to a residential home and the Internet has been there for years. You just move in and you call and you get your set up. But like with migrant housing, it's never been set up. They call it "the last mile," getting that line and it just hasn't happened, hasn't been talked about before. That's why we went with this Internet hub. And it's like a cellular network model, so it feeds off of cell towers. But, anyway. Any questions?
Sophie Therber [00:26:34] Yeah, that's really interesting, especially the part about how you had this idea to use the Internet hubs, and they enjoyed having access to the Internet, but it just wasn't really meeting their needs to have Internet inside of their homes and things like that. So, is this program something that's just a specific sites where farmworkers live, or is it in a certain county, or is it just at one sit hubs? What is the extent of this program?
Natalie Rivera [00:27:01] Yes, so we're statewide with it, anywhere that's interested in the state can can sign up. We have as far as the hotspot lending partners, as I call them, outreach programs that are the clinics that we're working with to distribute hot spots. We have about, about nine partners doing that and about a little over three hundred hot spots in their hands. And then I'm working on a report right now figuring out how many of those hot spots were distributed to farm workers and how many farmers had access to those hot spots. When we did our report back in April, it was it was pretty high the how many had been distributed. But we know we know that it's not going to be one hundred percent. So I'm waiting to see what that looks like. And then we have the Internet hubs. We've only done about 14 of those so far. But it's only on about six different farms across the state, so trying to work on that uptake. However, the process of getting those ordering and getting those installed is like...I mean, we're looking at an 11 week, like, lag time. It's pretty -- it's definitely slowing up, maybe, what I would have hoped we could have done. And, like I said, it's just one option. And then the other piece that is also a statewide option is we work closely with the North Carolina Institute of Agromedicine, who we contracted with to do a reimbursement program for farms, where if the farmer is interested in going through that process of talking with Internet service providers, getting it set up in their area, then they'll actually reimburse the farmer for the router and the services and installation of that. And that's then about five farms, too. But the only trick with that is...some of the farms that have wanted to do it actually found out and hit a wall and said, "The Internet service company is not coming out to the farm, and so what can we do?" So, when that happens, depending on the size of the pants, we refer them to either a local health clinic that has hotspots, or that's when we started the Internet hub because it was a couple -- this particular farm, it was so big that we were trying to find another solution that would not require, like, 20 hotspots. So, yes, it really is across the state, and then because you were running in all these infrastructure issues, we're working closely with the North Carolina Broadband Infrastructure Office to talk about, well, how can we influence and promote digital inclusivity and that the last mile does get to migrant housing because that is the long-term solution, right? That's the long term solution because cellular network data isn't the best. It's not the gold standard, you know? So that's the, sort of, fourth thing that we're doing is trying to just overall work on infrastructure. But yeah, but it is statewide.
Sophie Therber [00:30:31] One thing that stands out to me is all the different partnerships that you have with places around the state, like you mentioned, NC Broadband, you're working directly with the growers at the places where the farm workers are living, agromedicine. So, what has it been like for you to create and maintain these partnerships with so many different stakeholders?
Natalie Rivera [00:30:52] Yeah, you know, it's one of the things you learn in your MPH school is doing that stakeholder matrix, so maybe I started out trying to do one, but it's more like -- I think they have you do that matrix over and over because they just want to get it in your head like a natural way that you keep in contact with everyone. Like what's their purpose? We knew the agromedicine's really good with growers and that relationship. So, that's why we ended up going with them for that contract. I check in with the health clinics. We do quarterly reports, so far we're going to go on the second time this year. So everyone's very busy. So I try not to do too much of a check in, but I also kind of regularly try to schedule meetings to keep myself available. I just did a meeting with one of our partners that's a little more focused on seasonal families that I wanted to know more about that because a lot of our work's been focused on migrant workers and living in migrant housing. And this partner happened to do more work with seasonal families and reached out and said, "Can we supply these hotspots to students that the schools aren't able to supply?" And so we had a whole conversation about it and they've been doing that. But, yeah, I just try to check in and then there is something else we're doing, which me and several partners are -- oh, yeah. So I held this series of meetings in February called Assessing the Digital Divide for Farmworkers. And I just invited all the partners that I've been working with to meet and talk more about what we can do to solve this problem, like what's needed, what the farmworkers need, that sort of things. And we did two meetings the result of that was that maybe we should keep meeting and maybe we need to sort of look and partner on the whole agricultural community and that be our approach to better broadband for agricultural communities, because there's so many benefits in the farms having better Internet -- from the technology they can use on the field, just everything, payroll systems, everything being online -- to the farmers and families themselves, maybe having better access to Internet for telemedicine, their overall health. And then the same thing with farm workers. With better access to telemedicine, better access resources, emotional well-being, being far from their family. So, right now, we're looking at an approach that brings everyone together. And so probably around October, we're going to start quarterly meetings called the North Carolina Agricultural Digital Alliance. And that's another way I'm thinking that partners will come together and continue to talk about this topic. And the broadband infrastructure office has supported the idea that they would take feedback from this group, joined some of the meetings when they can. So that's another way we're looking to engage partners. It's been a lot of it's not a lot of work. It is hard to keep up with everybody, but it's worth it. So it's really important to do.
Sophie Therber [00:34:16] That's so incredible that you're able to kind of take the people in different groups that you're working with now and form the digital alliance, and that's really exciting that that's something that's on the horizon for you and your organization. I'd like to switch gears -- oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.
Natalie Rivera [00:34:34] No. Yeah, I think it'll be great. And I'll say, we're looking at it being housed in the potentially cooperative extension who has local counties. So that'll be really nice to where we'll support it. But yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
Sophie Therber [00:34:54] Thank you for adding that. I would just like to switch gears and ask -- you've been working with farmworker communities for a long time, and have you had any kind of personal experience with natural disasters or extreme weather affecting these communities in the time that you've been working with them?
Natalie Rivera [00:35:12] Yeah, yes, absolutely, and I was like, "oh, yeah, we were supposed to talk about that, too." Yes, I think that's why Elizabeth or Gayle or somebody referred me to you. So, when I was the outreach coordinator or at the time program director at Manos Unidas, we obviously went through a couple of hurricanes. In particular, Hurricane Florence was pretty, just devastating. And we're really far east, so it really impacted the communities. We went through Hurricane Florence and then the follow-up hurricane and then the next year, I think it was Dorian or something. But yeah, we've definitely had that experience for sure, or had that experience.
Sophie Therber [00:36:04] And if you had to explain your experience with Hurricane Florence or any other natural disasters or extreme weather to somebody who had never experienced that kind of flooding damage, what would you -- how would you describe that to somebody?
Natalie Rivera [00:36:19] It's like, it's a lot. Like, every time I think about it, I don't...I get emotional about it because it you don't realize how devastating it is until it's over, because I feel like you're just in response mode. And I'm probably making it sound a certain way. But we were in we were actually at a conference, the group of us were at a conference in New Orleans, of all places, and flew back early from the conference, heard this was happening. And you know, and again, I'm telling this from my experience as the program director, outreach coordinator. But obviously, you know, the concern was, what are we doing? I got a call from the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, and they were saying, "Hey, just wondering what you guys are doing for the farm workers in your area, like, do you have any protocol?" And I was like, "No, we don't!" I don't know. We don't know what to do. This isn't part of our...I mean, we have our role and we have all these different aspects of our health program, but not necessarily this kind of an emergency. And I never really realized what could happen out a little bit further from the coast with the river flooding. So we just started making -- we were like, okay, so we just started making phone calls. And our database system is not very efficient for mass texting or emails or phone calls. And so we just dived in and all of us, the ones that were at that conference flew back early. Luckily, I mean, my parents were amazing and drove down to Wilmington and boarded up my house so I didn't have to worry about that, and I actually flew in to Charlotte and they picked me up and I stayed with them. Like I said, I'm from the Piedmont area, so it's a little bit safer. And then most of my staff, the staff also evacuated. Some of them were living in Wilmington, some were living in Pender County. A lot of them evacuated up to Raleigh. So we're just kind of like sitting ducks. And in the meantime, we're all monitoring the local county emergency protocols and where shelters are. And they just did an amazing job. While everyone's just sitting there like, "What is going to happen to our homes and our community and everything?" And they would just sit in their hotel rooms or in their family rooms. And we were all off work. We found out, and we probably knew at that time, we were going to be getting paid for the fact that it's an emergency and we can't go to work. But none of them really had to do anything. But everybody really did a great job. We started a Google doc and just started throwing resources in it and calling everyone we could. But it was it was hard because we just didn't have an efficient system. And when it was all said and done, everybody is waiting to figure out when you go back. I finally -- and then it was just crazy that Highway 40 was closed down. Every entryway back to Wilmington into that area was closed. And I mean, it's just something like apocalyptic. I'm not the age where I've experienced the other devastating hurricanes in that area, either. And a lot of us weren't. So, this was very new to be in a lot of my staff as well. So I finally heard that [Highway] 421 was open and I hopped in a car with a friend. Actually my husband had already left my parents' house and he was on call to go to a shelter in Sampson County, because he was also working in the health -- it's so funny, he actually became a health educator for pesticides, but working for a cooperative extension in Sampson County. So, he got called in to go to a shelter and he had already left to do that. And so I hopped in the car with my friend an drove back to Wilmington. And right when we got back, I got a call from the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry who is like, amazing. You should interview them if you have a chance, with Lariza. And she said, "Hey, we've got all these.." -- They're a little further out, in Clinton, so they weren't impacted -- she could tell you how it impacted they were, but a little further inland, I guess. And they got these donations and everything, can we get them out to the farms? And all I knew was a lot of the roads were washed out, but we wanted to try to see what we can do and get out to some of these camps that we don't know what's going on. Now, luckily, this happened at the end of the season, a lot of the farm workers had gone home. I even found out later, like a whole group of farm workers actually just flew out before anything happened in our area. So we were like, we can't get in touch with anyone. We just need to go out and see what's going on. And we have these food donations, so a group of us had planned to go the next day. Some of us who live in Wilmington, some of us who were on the other side of the flooding, meet at our office and get the van now and then drive off to Clinton or wherever the office was, I forget if it's Dunn. Somewhere out there. And start distributing supplies. And a couple people were coming from Raleigh. The crazy thing is, is that same night, I think that same evening, the road 421 washed out again. And I remember my husband was took a video of the river, the river as it started to rise. And he was driving through it. And I'm like, "Oh my God." And he made it home safe so. So we were like, "Well, how the hell are we going to get to the office?" And so we found this other route and it took us -- what would normally take 45 minutes from Wilmington, it took, like, an hour and a half the way we had to go to get there. And then I had another staff person that -- I'll tell you what, we didn't end up going to the office, we ended up going all the way up to the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry where we're picking up supplies. And that was where it was really hard drive anyway for us. So I forget how long it took, but it took longer because we were constantly running into the roads that were closed because they were flooded out. And then, so we got there and one of my staff got to the office. He was telling me how all around he had to go to get the van. And I was like, "Oh, my God." And I'm like, "What are we doing? Am I supposed to be allowing the staff to do this?" Like, I was also kind of freaking out, like, I know we need to do this, but also we don't have any safety protocols. It's just, we were not prepared for this. But luckily, everyone was so willing and so helpful and it was the greatest staff. So we started picking up supplies and we started delivering it to the camps that we knew were in the area. And that's where it got really...Just doing that all day, and we had some of the information from the phone calls we'd made, but we went to a farm that we thought only had like 20 workers. And I only brought enough for that and showed up, and it was, like, 80 people there. And I was like, "Wait, you guys were here? You guys, you didn't get evacuated or something?" And it's still to this day, I'm trying to wrap my brain [around] why they didn't leave. They had flooding and they weren't able -- they were sort of stuck in their homes. At that point, there wasn't any flooding. But I was worried. I was worried about this particular camp because I do remember from two years before when we had that flooding the area, they said it got flooded, and it was with a new group for us. And so we didn't really know about them until after that happened. I was just kind of worried that they had been flooded out again. Apparently, I guess some of them had evacuated, but they had been returned. And everything was closed down, too, so if you're not racked in foods, then, you know, you're kind of stuck. We left, and actually, my husband was -- that day, he had come with us because he had gotten permission from his work to do this work as well. And it was actually both of us that were out, and we left and I was just like freaking out because I was thinking we didn't leave enough food, you know? And again, people are resilient, but it just didn't sit well because we couldn't get back to the ministries in time. And I called her and she was thinking about doing another delivery with her group the next day. But I ended up driving by a firehouse and I was like, "Oh, gosh, maybe they at least have water and we could go drop off the water." And I got out and I said, "Hey, are you all familiar with this with this camp of farm workers? We really wanted to bring -- do you have extra water, just bring over to them?" And they were like, "Oh, my gosh;" they knew about this group, but they also didn't realize they were still there. So was again, speaking of this isolation, I mean, it's just this incredible isolation that farmworkers experience when they're here on their contract, it's really not safe. So they were the sweetest group of women. They said, "You know what, we actually have all this hot food we're serving, and how many plates do you need?" And I was like, "You know, like I think we need like a hundred plates." And so they said, "Don't worry about it. We're going to put their plates together right now. We're going to go deliver them." And I can't even remember if we delivered them. Who knows? I think they just went over and they said, "We'll deliver them hot food tomorrow and Sunday," or something like that. And I was like, oh, so just grateful. And obviously, I don't know how when maybe the food wasn't perfect. It wasn't maybe the most culturally appropriate food. I mean, but it was something and it was just a really great experience. But coming back, we realized that other route we took to get in was closed. So, we had to drive all the way up Highway 40 and then cut in and go through Jacksonville. Again, what would take 45 minutes from the office to get home took us 3 hours. And it was a group of us, two different vehicles doing that. And then we waited, and the next day I think some of the groups that were on the other side of the flooding kept delivering. And it finally subsided where we could get in through at least one route, and we kept delivering food and water and working with the local shelters. It was an overwhelming experience because we were seeing how unprepared we were and how vulnerable farmworkers are during a disaster like this and how bad the flooding is in that area. So, it was a mess.
Sophie Therber [00:47:44] Wow, that's really incredible. I mean, I was honestly at the edge of my seat when you were talking about, like, all the road closures and having to make all of these backup plans and change what you were doing, and all of these different people, like the Episcopal Farmworkers Ministry and the local shelters and the woman with the hot food coming together at the last minute, basically, to address these issues. So. That's really incredible to hear about.
Natalie Rivera [00:48:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a definitely a group community effort.
Sophie Therber [00:48:16] And just hearing you talk about the devastation, you were saying the conditions were almost apocalyptic, the isolation that farm workers are experiencing and just how vulnerable they are. What stands out to you, if you had to pick just a couple, the biggest challenges in addressing this issue for the communities that you were working with?
Natalie Rivera [00:48:39] Yeah, so after that experience, we were obviously like, "We need to set up protocols, we need to do more when something like this happens again." It was even, I do remember even one instance we had gone back, we were even all back in the office and Red Cross came in and they said, "We have all these cleaning supplies, can you give us some locations?" And I was like, I can't give you -- I'm remembering how it went, but I gave them some neighborhoods. I didn't want to give exact addresses because we can't do that. But I said, "You can go into this neighborhood and this neighborhood and just drive." Because that's really what they would do anyway. They would just go to neighborhoods and drive around and drop off supplies. So I did that. And then the next day I got a phone call from the Red Cross, a different person, and they said, "Hey, I heard you're really good contact for doing, like figuring out where to go. Can you give me some locations?" And I was like, "I literally just did that yesterday." And it was just frustrating because I know this stuff is going to happen, but it just wasn't efficient and a lot of different things. And I didn't feel like we were in the right place where we could just respond. After that happened, we started thinking about what we had capacity for and what we needed to really raise up to our community for filling in the holes. You have emergency management, but you also realize, like not a lot of communication goes out in Spanish, and maybe not everyone has access to that. And what's crazier is obviously now a couple of years later, doing this Internet project, realizing a huge hole in the whole thing was that farmworker's, a lot of times don't have Internet or don't have cell phone signal to even get the message. That's really just bizarre. Now, in this position, that's something I've talked about a lot, is how it helps with emergency communication. And many of the farms I talked to said the same thing. They said this is this is crucial because during Florence, we weren't able to communicate as well as or more immediately, they would have to go out. You have to go out to the farm and out to the camp, a lot of times, to know what workers need. Obviously, the farms know a little more because they're their employees. So there obviously should be a better sense of responsibility there. If you ever interview anyone else, Melissa Bailey out on another area with Kinston Community Health Center, played a role or received communication for a group of farm workers that actually really did get flooded in. And there was this whole miscommunication that happened. And, you know, the grower didn't evacuate the workers, and they literally got flooded in. And you can Google this and see pictures of farm workers like waist deep evacuating the camp. We didn't see that in our area, but I know Melissa Bailey could talk more about that and what happened. And so that's when we realize this is far from over. Farmworkers are vulnerable. They're already vulnerable. We already see just so many, you know, there's a lot of power dynamics, and it's not very normal for an employer to have that much power or responsibility for their workers or the nature of our H-2A contracts puts a lot of responsibility on the grower to make sure the workers are safe. And if the grower isn't fulfilling their role and doing that, the farmworkers are one hundred percent vulnerable. And if the infrastructure isn't there, Internet and cell phone service and money to buy a cell phone. And if that's not there, then that's a whole ‘nother issue. And farms need to have evacuation plans for their workers. So a lot of it was we knew, and thinking about what we could do as an outreach program, we knew a lot of it was beyond our capacity in our scope and even our funding. So we did apply for some funding from some grants that came out right after Florence. And the first one we did, we wanted to do, kind of, an assessment and do interviews with farm workers to see what we could do and what was needed. We were able to hire someone to really focus on that project. And they interviewed with farm workers. And some of the things we learned about was like, you know, even just they were going to like the vehicle that was there and charging their phones. And so we realized maybe battery-powered chargers would be important and flashlights. And so if they did stay in their house, like if there was a low flood risk then and they weren't in a flood zone, then at least they could have different forms of power. And we tried to think about education we could do. We also set protocols for our outreach team for what to do. And we were trying to explore -- and to this day, it was so funny. I just saw Angie yesterday, or two days ago, who took over my position there. And she's like, "We're still trying to figure out this mass texting thing," because the database that they use, it's so outdated, it just doesn't allow for that. So that's something that we've just been exploring. Also met with some of the county emergency management directors to kind of talk more about farmworkers and how they can be included in their plans. And we hit a lot of walls with that because there was turnover. We would make one relationship and then that person would leave and we would ask for one thing, and they would say that it was. Like Code Red, "Oh, yes, it's in Spanish." Well, after further, you know, because we were like, we can show farmworkers how to sign up for Code Red. That's an infrastructure that exists. You don't need to create and recreate the wheel. But when we realized it's actually not in Spanish, you could sign up. And if your phone's in Spanish, like the instructions, things will come. But if that particular message is being sent out in English, it doesn't translate it the way that it's inputted. So, we discovered a lot of issues, but I felt like we didn't resolve. I felt like we weren't really able to resolve those issues in the end. And I think to this day it's still a problem. And then COVID, and then the pandemic happened and that exposed even more. I mean, it just exposed all the cracks in the system.
Sophie Therber [00:55:25] Were there any ways, specifically with Internet accessibility and communication and just having access to messaging in Spanish, that any lessons that you and your organization have learned from your time dealing with the hurricanes that have carried over and applied to the way that you're addressing the pandemic?
Natalie Rivera [00:55:46] Yes, so when I first started, I wanted to incorporate, you know, okay, farmworkers have Internet, let's also look at systems that provide emergency communication and I started exploring that as part of my role and realized that, again, I just continue to realize that all the county systems really have a challenge when messages are inputted into their mass texting system that they aren't going through in Spanish. I mean, again, I didn't explore every single one. But, you know, we learn that some groups do Facebook and they will post bilingual messages, but maybe the county doesn't have access to someone that's translating the documents. So they're only posting in English. So I didn't do -- there needs to be a more official study done on this, but it's...yeah, there needs to be something more done because I feel like, it just wasn't, I just feel like it's still not resolved at all. I mean, I think if we had another -- and we were talking about it last year, like, freaking out because, you know, this pandemic's coming, but how can we prepare our sites better? Because it's now working for the four NC Farmworker Health Program. It's like even their capacity with their specific funding isn't completely filling that gap, either there is some onus on our emergency management, you know, on our emergency management programs within the state and within the counties to really look at this and dive deeper, that we have a huge population of Spanish speakers and, or monolingual Spanish speakers. And we're not -- I don't think we're filling the gap, but, you know. I don't know. I don't know what to do. Episcopal Farmworker Ministries, I talked to Lariza a while back about this, and they did get a mass texting system, but it's very local to their area. And she said it to me again. She was like, "We need something that statewide or at least the county, because we can't keep --" you know, they relay the messages through their system. But it's just unfortunate that that system at the county level couldn't just be inclusive of everyone, that they have to replicate it so that it does work. Yeah.
Sophie Therber [00:58:20] And you mentioned the need for a study about this, but just in general, if you and your organization to have more supports to address this issue, what would, what would those be and what would that look like?
Natalie Rivera [00:58:34] I mean, I think like if we had a position that was a permanent full-time position, really strategizing and focusing on emergency response for farm workers, and then that person could have a seat at the table on the greater emergency plan statewide, I think that would be ideal. I don't know. It takes a lot to approve a position like that. And while we might have all this additional funding during this pandemic, that isn't going to necessarily continue in the next year or two. So if you don't have continuous funding, I guess it's hard to make a permanent position available because you have to base it off of what you would normally get. So that's kind of my understanding from my office that I'm learning about. So, I could see that. And it would also just be nice if, you know, I'm sure there's other ways around it. If there was sort of an equity person that really had to focus on equity and inclusion at the emergency management, that could just make sure that, because it's not, you know, it's not just farm workers, there's a lot of vulnerable populations that need an eye and support and they need to have a voice as well. So, I'm sure there's lots of ways to go about it. I do think more and more offices are moving towards a focus on equity. And you know, but I think a lot of us, maybe a lot of people may not. It's a concept that I don't know that everyone grasped...It's odd. You'd think so, but I think people like to try to make their own definitions of what equity is, and that's not really how it works. You really need to talk with the community and learn what's needed, what barriers there are and how to break down those barriers. You can't just decide, "well, I think this would make it more equitable," and, you know, anyway.
Sophie Therber [01:00:46] Right. That totally makes sense, and that's a really interesting point. Is there anything else that you would like to add before I stop the recording?
Natalie Rivera [01:00:58] Man. I think, I appreciate the time to talk about this and reflect and it was really interesting connecting what I, you know, the journey that I've been on. So it's kind of funny that that's a piece of this project is a personal journey and then also just farmworker health. Thinking about the project I'm doing now and I guess how much it relates and how much some of my work is sort of influenced by that experience, being in a state of emergency, I mean, and now we are again, in a state of emergency, but it's the whole state. Yeah, I just appreciate it and I think, you know, there was a lot of partners during that time, there's a lot of groups that did a lot of amazing work as well. Farmworker Ministries, I know Kinston Community Health Center was doing a lot in their community. And it's you know, that that's what it takes. Just everybody, everybody coming together. But it I don't think it's been -- I think they're still pretty big gaps, it's surprising after a few years. And now we have the pandemic. So, yeah, that's it. That's all I got, right?
Sophie Therber [01:02:09] Yeah. It is kind of interesting to conceptualize the pandemic in relation to other disasters that you have experienced. So thank you so much for your time and explaining to me your story. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording really quickly.
End of the interview.
Es: Restricciones
Sin restricciones. Abierta para investigación.
Es: Ocupación del entrevistado
Trabajadores de servicios de salud
Es: Género de entrevistado
Mujer
Es: Lengua de le entrevista
Inglés
Es: Resumen
Esta entrevista de historia oral fue realizada por Sophie Therber con la entrevistada Natalie Rivera vía Zoom el 5 de agosto de 2021. Natalie es de la zona rural de Carolina del Norte y ha estado trabajando con comunidades inmigrantes desde la universidad. En la entrevista, ella habla de sus numerosos roles en organizaciones dedicadas a la salud y el bienestar de los migrantes. El tema central de esta entrevista es la participación de Natalie en el Programa de Salud del Trabajador Agrícola y su experiencia ayudando a los trabajadores agrícolas a mitigar la pandemia del COVID y el clima extremo, al igual que otros desafíos tales como la educación sobre el VIH, el acceso a internet y la comunicación en español relacionada con emergencias. Natalie describe su experiencia atendiendo desastres tales como el COVID y los huracanes, al abordar la necesidad de establecer protocolos para atender desastres y explica cómo, en algunas ocasiones, las comunidades de inmigrantes no reciben la ayuda que necesitan para enfrentar estos desastres. Ella hace énfasis en la forma en que las comunidades pueden unirse para alcanzar grandes logros ante la adversidad.
Es: Citación
Entrevista con Natalie Rivera por Sophie Therber, 05 August 2021, R-1003, en Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, Universidad de Carolina del Norte en Chapel Hill.
Es: Temas
COVID-19; Trabajadores agrícolas; Salud; Cambio climático; Programas y servicios sociales y comunitarios
Es: Transcripción
Sophie Therber [00:00:02] My name is Sophie Therber, and I'm interviewing Natalie Rivera. Today is August 5th, 2021, and the time is 8:41 a.m. Natalie, thank you so much for agreeing to participate in this. And just to start, can you tell me where you're from and just a little bit about that area?
Natalie Rivera [00:00:26] I'll turn my video off, just to help us out a little bit. Where I'm from, as far as ...Give me a little more information on that.
Sophie Therber [00:00:35] Yeah, sure. So, where did you grow up? Where do you live now?
Natalie Rivera [00:00:40] Okay, yeah, so I was born and raised in North Carolina, primarily in the Piedmont region. I grew up in that area and then ended up going to university at UNC Wilmington and then lived in Wilmington about, gosh, like, 13 years, just recently moved back to Piedmont area, specifically to Mebane. But I've pretty much been in North Carolina my whole life.
Sophie Therber [00:01:14] And what has influenced your decision to stay and continue living in North Carolina?
Natalie Rivera [00:01:22] I think I always wanted to leave. Not even, maybe, permanently, but just, mainly I have family here and I think probably why I stick around. After college, I really got into outreach and farmworker health and really ended up just loving the work and staying for that reason. I really loved my job and everything. So, I mean, that's really the main reason I've stayed.
Sophie Therber [00:02:03] How did you first get involved in outreach and farmworker health?
Natalie Rivera [00:02:08] So I did my undergrad at UNC Wilmington, double-major Spanish and communication studies, so I was, you know, learning Spanish and I did an internship with this place in Wilmington called Centro Latino. Well, Centro Latino under a broader organization called Amigos Internacional. And they did that internship. I got to work with a lot of different people. And the main purpose was sort of a resource center for Latinos and for immigrants in the community would come, anything that was needed, paperwork, looking for jobs, reading through their mail, like refers to resources, everything. And I just kind of really enjoyed the work, ended up staying there for another year through an AmeriCorps access service program and got to dive a little bit deeper in understanding the immigrant community in North Carolina, especially Mexican and Central American immigrants, and kind of learning their stories. I realized all of the challenges with our broken immigration system and just wanted to continue doing that work. But I'm also, being from rural North Carolina, just kind of had a special interest in learning more about, I guess, sort of agriculture, farming and sort of where -- I didn't quite because, I was more of an urban area, so I didn't quite see where our immigrant community and agriculture sort of intersect. So I ended up, after I graduated, applying for a fellowship through Student Action with Farmworkers, based in Durham and the Fellowship basically gives students that are from North Carolina, from rural North Carolina. They choose, for the fellowship and for internship program, they choose kind of a mixed group, like rural North Carolina or farmworker families or had worked in farm work. So I got chosen for the fellowship and was placed at an organization called the Farmworkers Project, or we call it El Proyecto. That's in Benton, North Carolina. And that's when I really started to dive in and learn about farm workers. So in more of the context. I was looking and also learning about public health, kind of trying to find a way to also tie in the Spanish that had learned and also look for ways to better serve the community, and really fell in love with public and community health. So ended up doing that for a while. But I'll stop there. I can keep going with the whole story of life story until now, but yeah. I'll pause just for a second, if you have another question
Sophie Therber [00:05:17] Okay, yeah. And I'd love to hear more about what your journey has been like since then. But I do have a question. What was it like to learn Spanish and then be speaking another language in your professional life after having learned it?
Natalie Rivera [00:05:34] Yeah, it was. It was really challenging, I think. I don't think that I'm someone that was naturally good at another language, but I had done an exchange program and learned some there. And through getting to work at the Centro Latino. And definitely when I worked at the Farmworkers Project, all of my coworkers, my boss, everyone spoke Spanish so was very immersed and they were so nice and graceful to me. I think one thing that helped is focusing on certain topics and learning all the vocab. And so I got really good at learning specific topics and everything for it. Like I was a HIV educator at Farmworker's Project and it was nice, as I just said, one area to focus on and can really improve the Spanish that way. But eventually you get the hang of it and it gets more and more comfortable and it feels very natural. So there's definitely times where it was a struggle, though.
Sophie Therber [00:06:38] Yeah. Did you say that you were working with HIV in farmworkers?
Natalie Rivera [00:06:45] Yeah, it was an HIV educator.
Sophie Therber [00:06:47] Okay, HIV educator. What was that like? What kind of responsibilities did you have in that role?
Natalie Rivera [00:06:52] Yeah, so I basically, it was pretty easy. I was given a flip chart, so I was already kind of pre-prepared for me, and myself and another outreach worker, as we were called, really, we went out. And after we would do initial visits with farm workers where we do like health assessments and referred to the clinic and other resources, then my coworker and I would follow up and she would do a pesticide education series and then I would do the HIV. And I really liked [it] because I got trained on popular education, so I would do different things to be really interactive because, you know, it's a tough topic. And even coming from my background, that's pretty conservative and didn't even get a lot of -- any sex education in school at all, so it was it was like I also became really passionate about it at the same time. It's so important because I realized, like, maybe a lot of people aren't getting this. So we try to just, you know, didn't want to assume that no one knew what this was, but just use it as an opportunity to have a conversation and grow a relationship with farm workers that were there working. And it was fun and it was we would make it both of our conversations entertaining and interactive. Hopefully, folks could learn from it. But it also could be just something to do after work. It was overall a really good experience doing that. I kind of forgot, now, that part, but I'm glad that we're talking about it.
Sophie Therber [00:08:39] Right, that's so interesting in that you were able to take something that people don't normally talk [about], I mean, like you said, not having a lot of sex education in school, and kind of make it into a more fun conversation and learning experience for people.
Natalie Rivera [00:08:53] Yeah, absolutely.
Sophie Therber [00:08:56] Do you feel that there have been any similarities with your role working as an HIV educator to your role now because of the pandemic?
Natalie Rivera [00:09:10] I think I may have to...I may need to fast forward a little bit and tell you what I've done since then.
Sophie Therber [00:09:16] OK, that would be great.
Natalie Rivera [00:09:18] I wonder if that might help. So, I'm finishing my fellowship there. I just really fell in love with work, fell in love with community health in general. I also did a...I got to do a community health project, so I was there [and] ended up where I just went in to a farmworker camp and met with a small group of farm workers. And the idea was just to ask them, "Hey, what do you want to learn about? What do you need?" So, again, like using that popular education, using this community health model of really asking what's needed with no intentions in mind. And I remember just loving that concept of just asking, "Hey, I'm here, I'm a resource. I need to do this. So what do you need me to do for you?" And ended up, the group wanted to learn about, like contact dermatitis because they were working in tobacco and were getting a lot of, we get a lot of rashes and scabs. And I would say I got to learn about that and got to work with the medical provider at the time to develop some curriculum. So I feel like that in itself, that piece led me into wanting to pursue my master's in public health. And then it also made me want to continue just the work in general of outreach. So when I moved back to Wilmington, I had known that the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, who partially funds the Farmworkers Project, was working. I knew that they had been looking for potentially opening a new site down in Pender County, which wasn't too far from where I was living in Wilmington. And I reached out to them and I said, "hey, if you guys are ever planning to open anything or want to do anything, like, I would just love to be a part of whatever I can do." And so that actually led to... that was kind of funny because I've done lots of internships, fellowships and everything at this point, but they came back and like, "well, would you want to intern for the summer?" And I'm like, "you know what? Fine, I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to get into this work." So [I] ended up interning for the summer at the local Pender County Health Department and working very closely with the cooperative extension, who at that time also had a pesticide educator, so I was kind of familiar with that work because I've worked with another pesticide person in another county. Worked closely with her and did that internship for the whole summer, it was full-time. And I went with her to visit some of the farms where she did pesticide education. So, I started mapping out where all the farms were, where the camps were, mapping out all the resources, all the clinics. I was thinking, like, "What does Farmworkers Project do? How do they do their outreach? I need to just replicate that model." So, by the end of it, I was like, "well, this was great. But, you know, I want to do more." Ended up, NC Farmworker Health said, "well, what if we offered you a position of the outreach coordinator role and we paid you for about eight months, and during that time you applied for our official grant and then you could start the program there?" That was in, I think it was 2012 or 2013, maybe. So, nine, or however many years ago. I don't know what year we're in, but it was a long time ago. That's really where it all started. I was there for about eight years, in that role. We grew tremendously, worked with the health department, ended up kind of outgrowing the health department and moved the program over to a community health center that was like down the street. That was here before I left. We were there for several years. And then we started a mobile clinic. We started, just all kinds of services. Dental services, worked with optometry services, just tried to, as much as we can, making a robust program. And right before I left, this incredible person started working with us -- she's a nurse -- and running our mobile clinic. And I just knew, I was -- oh, then we also extended and open another satellite site. But anyway, so I just knew that she...I was like, "I hope, I wish she could take the program for me" because I think I was just kind of ready. And I'd just finished my master's in public health. I did it online through UNC, and I was just kind of ready. It just felt like I'd done everything I needed to, and maybe somebody else could come in and have kind of a fresh look on it. So I got really lucky, and she took over my position. That was last year, in 2020 I left. And it was really hard and sad to leave, but it was just...it felt really good in the moment to have her and have all the other staff that was there. But I think...going very back to your question and thinking about what about that initial position fellowship...I think I learned the most from that experience doing that community-based work where you just ask what's needed. You don't really have an intention. You don't really an agenda. Because sometimes, even with public health, we can get sort of tunnel vision. This is the project I need to do. This is what, like, "oh, I know. I have to do HIV education and you need education. But I really liked that freedom, that opportunity to be really open. And I feel like that's a theme we would keep throughout that new program, we ended up calling it Manos Unidas, was the outreach program that was created in Pender County. And it served 10 counties. Really, that was always a theme with everyone that was hired to work with. Our vision is that we don't need to exist. We're here to fill a gap and a barrier that exists right now. But we're just here to serve. And that's something I learned from AmeriCorps, too. It's just all about service. Empowering people is important. And so, yeah, I feel like that's where I really learned a lot from all that. And thinking about my role, and I'm going into [your] question about my role right now. But I guess I should pause because I'm telling you quite a bit with this story.
Sophie Therber [00:16:12] No, that's all really great. It sounds like your job has just changed so much from your first involvement with Manos Unidas and just asking people what they need, and now having kind of a more public health-focused role with the Farmworker Health Program. And I would love to hear more about what you're doing now. So go ahead, and you can continue.
Natalie Rivera [00:16:35] Yeah. I worked at the Farmworkers Project with the HIV project and then moved, and we started the Manos Unidas in in Pender County, and then from there -- and that was funded by the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program; actually, both of those sites are funded by them. It's just a different area. So, left that position and actually had some plans to take some time off and do some traveling. I was excited, you know. But unfortunately, the pandemic started and we were all stopped in our tracks, right? Any plans that anybody had, that was it. We needed to stay put. So, I was sitting there thinking, you know, this is going on, I have a degree in public health, I need to -- obviously, first of all, I'm going to find a job and I want to find a job at this point. And I didn't know quite what that was. And I just started looking around and something with the COVID response and found this position as the Internet Connectivity Project coordinator with the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, who I had known for all these years and had funded different areas where I had worked and were great funders, very involved with each and any of the sites I worked with. I thought, "well, let me see what this is about," interviewed with them, got hired, and was super excited...supposed to be a six-month position. The idea is with COVID, everyone is at home. Everybody's grounded. Farm workers are more isolated than they had ever been. And outreach workers weren't really able to go out first and do what they do best, [which] is go out to the farms, into the camps and do outreach. NC Farmworker Health Program came up with the idea that we should try to make sure farm workers have Internet connectivity as a way to do phone calls and telemedicine and all that. And so that was my goal, coming in. We've done all kinds of different models to figure that out, and the first thing to do, going back to that incorporating community feedback, is been working closely with East Carolina University, who's doing the monitoring evaluation for the for the project and for the Internet connectivity project itself. And we just actually went out earlier this week, funny story, to the old site where I used to work. And we did qualitative interviews with farm workers to get their feedback on Internet connectivity and how some of these different projects are going, where we put Internet routers and different farms, different camps. And so trying to incorporate that into the project as we go, because it's also been an emergency. So it wasn't like we could just do an assessment, wait, and then implement. We did a process evaluation because we were in an emergency, and we had to just get things going to the best of our knowledge, which was somewhat...Because I had done outreach, I really understood farmworker housing, and kind of how isolated it can be, and different ways that we had even gotten the Internet going into doing our mobile clinics. So I wasn't totally off with with getting things started. But in understanding that relationship between outreach workers and farm workers is a close relationship. So one of our models is the lending program that the outreach workers actually bring hotspots out to the farm workers and borrow them. And it's -- not only it was a way to literally reconnect, like come out, we're going to bring this -- but also build that relationship. And it's like a whole ‘nother, and what I've heard and the feedback we've heard from outreach workers is that it offered another incentive for building that relationship, another resource, and that it has been helpful, so far, as we're getting that feedback. Yeah.
Sophie Therber [00:21:00] Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to just tell me all the different positions that you've had and how your jobs and what you've been focusing on has changed so much throughout your whole career. That's really interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more about -- so, you were saying that you went and had qualitative interviews with the farm workers to discuss their experience with Internet connectivity. How were they reacting, and what was their experience with that?
Natalie Rivera [00:21:32] Yes, so are the students working with us, Paula. She's just awesome, got to meet her the other night. So she had so far only been doing because we started the project at the end of last semester or the end of last year. Last season, really, we weren't able to interview farmworker's before going left in the season was over. So we ended up our first goal was to interview the outreach workers because in general, the outreach workers can speak a little bit to some of farmworkers, some of the feedback they're getting. And so that gave us enough information to just continue what we're doing and adjust things as needed. When the season started back this year, we were ready to start interviewing farmworkers as soon as they arrived in the area. She had interviewed about seven or eight farm workers over the phone, and they met with her to see how it was going. And it was just very positive feedback. "This is great. We love it," you know? And I'm like, "Okay, give me some critical feedback. I mean, something." So, we ended up...I needed to do a site visit or this other model, so there's the lending program and there's another model we're calling the Internet hub. And this particular model, it was a very large camp: 80 farmworkers in one location, 40 in another, 40 in another. It was a little bit challenging to just provide hot spots to everyone. So, we did an Internet hub model where we put a really big router on this outdoor picnic shelter area. So it was a centralized location where anyone can go and get Internet. I wanted to see how that was going because it was done through more of a grower-crew leader relationship, versus the outreach workers and farm workers. Plus, since COVID had started, the local outreach program, Manos Unidas, had been having issues visiting that camp because there was a lot of fear around COVID still, and outbreaks. And I'm sure, talking to Gayle and Nicandro [other people interviewed for this project], you got a lot of this, but we planned to go together, and they talked about telemedicine. And so it would be with the crew that are coming with us, and it would be an opportunity to reopen the door. And then I could just get some more casual anecdotal conversations about Internet, and then Paula could do the official interview. It actually went really well. She said, "these are some of the best interviews I've had because it just so much more engaging in-person." I haven't gotten to talk to her yet about how what she learned in those interviews, because I myself just wanted to just walk around, and I talked to groups and heard different things. The feedback that I got just doing that, which is in our official IRB, it just helps me with the project, was the Internet hub...they didn't like that it didn't reach out to all the housing units. When they were inside, they couldn't get Internet because part of that is that those housing units are metal buildings, so it's just really not going to penetrate through the buildings, the signal. And we kind of knew that going on in, but just wanted to see what it would be like. So that was one of the good critical feedback. And then also that when everyone gets on the Internet, it slows down. Again, it was really good to get that feedback. And then everyone said, "It's nice. I had a data plan and I was able to get a smaller data plan because now I can go out there and I can connect to the Internet and I can make a phone call." So folks did really like having the Internet, but the quality wasn't as good as it could have been. And that was an interesting thing, because the grower had wanted to do a better Internet like the fiber, but the service provider wasn't available to that particular area, which is something we're learning about and finding out that really, most of these migrants do not have the option of, through the Internet service provider, to have...You know, we go to a residential home and the Internet has been there for years. You just move in and you call and you get your set up. But like with migrant housing, it's never been set up. They call it "the last mile," getting that line and it just hasn't happened, hasn't been talked about before. That's why we went with this Internet hub. And it's like a cellular network model, so it feeds off of cell towers. But, anyway. Any questions?
Sophie Therber [00:26:34] Yeah, that's really interesting, especially the part about how you had this idea to use the Internet hubs, and they enjoyed having access to the Internet, but it just wasn't really meeting their needs to have Internet inside of their homes and things like that. So, is this program something that's just a specific sites where farmworkers live, or is it in a certain county, or is it just at one sit hubs? What is the extent of this program?
Natalie Rivera [00:27:01] Yes, so we're statewide with it, anywhere that's interested in the state can can sign up. We have as far as the hotspot lending partners, as I call them, outreach programs that are the clinics that we're working with to distribute hot spots. We have about, about nine partners doing that and about a little over three hundred hot spots in their hands. And then I'm working on a report right now figuring out how many of those hot spots were distributed to farm workers and how many farmers had access to those hot spots. When we did our report back in April, it was it was pretty high the how many had been distributed. But we know we know that it's not going to be one hundred percent. So I'm waiting to see what that looks like. And then we have the Internet hubs. We've only done about 14 of those so far. But it's only on about six different farms across the state, so trying to work on that uptake. However, the process of getting those ordering and getting those installed is like...I mean, we're looking at an 11 week, like, lag time. It's pretty -- it's definitely slowing up, maybe, what I would have hoped we could have done. And, like I said, it's just one option. And then the other piece that is also a statewide option is we work closely with the North Carolina Institute of Agromedicine, who we contracted with to do a reimbursement program for farms, where if the farmer is interested in going through that process of talking with Internet service providers, getting it set up in their area, then they'll actually reimburse the farmer for the router and the services and installation of that. And that's then about five farms, too. But the only trick with that is...some of the farms that have wanted to do it actually found out and hit a wall and said, "The Internet service company is not coming out to the farm, and so what can we do?" So, when that happens, depending on the size of the pants, we refer them to either a local health clinic that has hotspots, or that's when we started the Internet hub because it was a couple -- this particular farm, it was so big that we were trying to find another solution that would not require, like, 20 hotspots. So, yes, it really is across the state, and then because you were running in all these infrastructure issues, we're working closely with the North Carolina Broadband Infrastructure Office to talk about, well, how can we influence and promote digital inclusivity and that the last mile does get to migrant housing because that is the long-term solution, right? That's the long term solution because cellular network data isn't the best. It's not the gold standard, you know? So that's the, sort of, fourth thing that we're doing is trying to just overall work on infrastructure. But yeah, but it is statewide.
Sophie Therber [00:30:31] One thing that stands out to me is all the different partnerships that you have with places around the state, like you mentioned, NC Broadband, you're working directly with the growers at the places where the farm workers are living, agromedicine. So, what has it been like for you to create and maintain these partnerships with so many different stakeholders?
Natalie Rivera [00:30:52] Yeah, you know, it's one of the things you learn in your MPH school is doing that stakeholder matrix, so maybe I started out trying to do one, but it's more like -- I think they have you do that matrix over and over because they just want to get it in your head like a natural way that you keep in contact with everyone. Like what's their purpose? We knew the agromedicine's really good with growers and that relationship. So, that's why we ended up going with them for that contract. I check in with the health clinics. We do quarterly reports, so far we're going to go on the second time this year. So everyone's very busy. So I try not to do too much of a check in, but I also kind of regularly try to schedule meetings to keep myself available. I just did a meeting with one of our partners that's a little more focused on seasonal families that I wanted to know more about that because a lot of our work's been focused on migrant workers and living in migrant housing. And this partner happened to do more work with seasonal families and reached out and said, "Can we supply these hotspots to students that the schools aren't able to supply?" And so we had a whole conversation about it and they've been doing that. But, yeah, I just try to check in and then there is something else we're doing, which me and several partners are -- oh, yeah. So I held this series of meetings in February called Assessing the Digital Divide for Farmworkers. And I just invited all the partners that I've been working with to meet and talk more about what we can do to solve this problem, like what's needed, what the farmworkers need, that sort of things. And we did two meetings the result of that was that maybe we should keep meeting and maybe we need to sort of look and partner on the whole agricultural community and that be our approach to better broadband for agricultural communities, because there's so many benefits in the farms having better Internet -- from the technology they can use on the field, just everything, payroll systems, everything being online -- to the farmers and families themselves, maybe having better access to Internet for telemedicine, their overall health. And then the same thing with farm workers. With better access to telemedicine, better access resources, emotional well-being, being far from their family. So, right now, we're looking at an approach that brings everyone together. And so probably around October, we're going to start quarterly meetings called the North Carolina Agricultural Digital Alliance. And that's another way I'm thinking that partners will come together and continue to talk about this topic. And the broadband infrastructure office has supported the idea that they would take feedback from this group, joined some of the meetings when they can. So that's another way we're looking to engage partners. It's been a lot of it's not a lot of work. It is hard to keep up with everybody, but it's worth it. So it's really important to do.
Sophie Therber [00:34:16] That's so incredible that you're able to kind of take the people in different groups that you're working with now and form the digital alliance, and that's really exciting that that's something that's on the horizon for you and your organization. I'd like to switch gears -- oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.
Natalie Rivera [00:34:34] No. Yeah, I think it'll be great. And I'll say, we're looking at it being housed in the potentially cooperative extension who has local counties. So that'll be really nice to where we'll support it. But yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
Sophie Therber [00:34:54] Thank you for adding that. I would just like to switch gears and ask -- you've been working with farmworker communities for a long time, and have you had any kind of personal experience with natural disasters or extreme weather affecting these communities in the time that you've been working with them?
Natalie Rivera [00:35:12] Yeah, yes, absolutely, and I was like, "oh, yeah, we were supposed to talk about that, too." Yes, I think that's why Elizabeth or Gayle or somebody referred me to you. So, when I was the outreach coordinator or at the time program director at Manos Unidas, we obviously went through a couple of hurricanes. In particular, Hurricane Florence was pretty, just devastating. And we're really far east, so it really impacted the communities. We went through Hurricane Florence and then the follow-up hurricane and then the next year, I think it was Dorian or something. But yeah, we've definitely had that experience for sure, or had that experience.
Sophie Therber [00:36:04] And if you had to explain your experience with Hurricane Florence or any other natural disasters or extreme weather to somebody who had never experienced that kind of flooding damage, what would you -- how would you describe that to somebody?
Natalie Rivera [00:36:19] It's like, it's a lot. Like, every time I think about it, I don't...I get emotional about it because it you don't realize how devastating it is until it's over, because I feel like you're just in response mode. And I'm probably making it sound a certain way. But we were in we were actually at a conference, the group of us were at a conference in New Orleans, of all places, and flew back early from the conference, heard this was happening. And you know, and again, I'm telling this from my experience as the program director, outreach coordinator. But obviously, you know, the concern was, what are we doing? I got a call from the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program, and they were saying, "Hey, just wondering what you guys are doing for the farm workers in your area, like, do you have any protocol?" And I was like, "No, we don't!" I don't know. We don't know what to do. This isn't part of our...I mean, we have our role and we have all these different aspects of our health program, but not necessarily this kind of an emergency. And I never really realized what could happen out a little bit further from the coast with the river flooding. So we just started making -- we were like, okay, so we just started making phone calls. And our database system is not very efficient for mass texting or emails or phone calls. And so we just dived in and all of us, the ones that were at that conference flew back early. Luckily, I mean, my parents were amazing and drove down to Wilmington and boarded up my house so I didn't have to worry about that, and I actually flew in to Charlotte and they picked me up and I stayed with them. Like I said, I'm from the Piedmont area, so it's a little bit safer. And then most of my staff, the staff also evacuated. Some of them were living in Wilmington, some were living in Pender County. A lot of them evacuated up to Raleigh. So we're just kind of like sitting ducks. And in the meantime, we're all monitoring the local county emergency protocols and where shelters are. And they just did an amazing job. While everyone's just sitting there like, "What is going to happen to our homes and our community and everything?" And they would just sit in their hotel rooms or in their family rooms. And we were all off work. We found out, and we probably knew at that time, we were going to be getting paid for the fact that it's an emergency and we can't go to work. But none of them really had to do anything. But everybody really did a great job. We started a Google doc and just started throwing resources in it and calling everyone we could. But it was it was hard because we just didn't have an efficient system. And when it was all said and done, everybody is waiting to figure out when you go back. I finally -- and then it was just crazy that Highway 40 was closed down. Every entryway back to Wilmington into that area was closed. And I mean, it's just something like apocalyptic. I'm not the age where I've experienced the other devastating hurricanes in that area, either. And a lot of us weren't. So, this was very new to be in a lot of my staff as well. So I finally heard that [Highway] 421 was open and I hopped in a car with a friend. Actually my husband had already left my parents' house and he was on call to go to a shelter in Sampson County, because he was also working in the health -- it's so funny, he actually became a health educator for pesticides, but working for a cooperative extension in Sampson County. So, he got called in to go to a shelter and he had already left to do that. And so I hopped in the car with my friend an drove back to Wilmington. And right when we got back, I got a call from the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry who is like, amazing. You should interview them if you have a chance, with Lariza. And she said, "Hey, we've got all these.." -- They're a little further out, in Clinton, so they weren't impacted -- she could tell you how it impacted they were, but a little further inland, I guess. And they got these donations and everything, can we get them out to the farms? And all I knew was a lot of the roads were washed out, but we wanted to try to see what we can do and get out to some of these camps that we don't know what's going on. Now, luckily, this happened at the end of the season, a lot of the farm workers had gone home. I even found out later, like a whole group of farm workers actually just flew out before anything happened in our area. So we were like, we can't get in touch with anyone. We just need to go out and see what's going on. And we have these food donations, so a group of us had planned to go the next day. Some of us who live in Wilmington, some of us who were on the other side of the flooding, meet at our office and get the van now and then drive off to Clinton or wherever the office was, I forget if it's Dunn. Somewhere out there. And start distributing supplies. And a couple people were coming from Raleigh. The crazy thing is, is that same night, I think that same evening, the road 421 washed out again. And I remember my husband was took a video of the river, the river as it started to rise. And he was driving through it. And I'm like, "Oh my God." And he made it home safe so. So we were like, "Well, how the hell are we going to get to the office?" And so we found this other route and it took us -- what would normally take 45 minutes from Wilmington, it took, like, an hour and a half the way we had to go to get there. And then I had another staff person that -- I'll tell you what, we didn't end up going to the office, we ended up going all the way up to the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry where we're picking up supplies. And that was where it was really hard drive anyway for us. So I forget how long it took, but it took longer because we were constantly running into the roads that were closed because they were flooded out. And then, so we got there and one of my staff got to the office. He was telling me how all around he had to go to get the van. And I was like, "Oh, my God." And I'm like, "What are we doing? Am I supposed to be allowing the staff to do this?" Like, I was also kind of freaking out, like, I know we need to do this, but also we don't have any safety protocols. It's just, we were not prepared for this. But luckily, everyone was so willing and so helpful and it was the greatest staff. So we started picking up supplies and we started delivering it to the camps that we knew were in the area. And that's where it got really...Just doing that all day, and we had some of the information from the phone calls we'd made, but we went to a farm that we thought only had like 20 workers. And I only brought enough for that and showed up, and it was, like, 80 people there. And I was like, "Wait, you guys were here? You guys, you didn't get evacuated or something?" And it's still to this day, I'm trying to wrap my brain [around] why they didn't leave. They had flooding and they weren't able -- they were sort of stuck in their homes. At that point, there wasn't any flooding. But I was worried. I was worried about this particular camp because I do remember from two years before when we had that flooding the area, they said it got flooded, and it was with a new group for us. And so we didn't really know about them until after that happened. I was just kind of worried that they had been flooded out again. Apparently, I guess some of them had evacuated, but they had been returned. And everything was closed down, too, so if you're not racked in foods, then, you know, you're kind of stuck. We left, and actually, my husband was -- that day, he had come with us because he had gotten permission from his work to do this work as well. And it was actually both of us that were out, and we left and I was just like freaking out because I was thinking we didn't leave enough food, you know? And again, people are resilient, but it just didn't sit well because we couldn't get back to the ministries in time. And I called her and she was thinking about doing another delivery with her group the next day. But I ended up driving by a firehouse and I was like, "Oh, gosh, maybe they at least have water and we could go drop off the water." And I got out and I said, "Hey, are you all familiar with this with this camp of farm workers? We really wanted to bring -- do you have extra water, just bring over to them?" And they were like, "Oh, my gosh;" they knew about this group, but they also didn't realize they were still there. So was again, speaking of this isolation, I mean, it's just this incredible isolation that farmworkers experience when they're here on their contract, it's really not safe. So they were the sweetest group of women. They said, "You know what, we actually have all this hot food we're serving, and how many plates do you need?" And I was like, "You know, like I think we need like a hundred plates." And so they said, "Don't worry about it. We're going to put their plates together right now. We're going to go deliver them." And I can't even remember if we delivered them. Who knows? I think they just went over and they said, "We'll deliver them hot food tomorrow and Sunday," or something like that. And I was like, oh, so just grateful. And obviously, I don't know how when maybe the food wasn't perfect. It wasn't maybe the most culturally appropriate food. I mean, but it was something and it was just a really great experience. But coming back, we realized that other route we took to get in was closed. So, we had to drive all the way up Highway 40 and then cut in and go through Jacksonville. Again, what would take 45 minutes from the office to get home took us 3 hours. And it was a group of us, two different vehicles doing that. And then we waited, and the next day I think some of the groups that were on the other side of the flooding kept delivering. And it finally subsided where we could get in through at least one route, and we kept delivering food and water and working with the local shelters. It was an overwhelming experience because we were seeing how unprepared we were and how vulnerable farmworkers are during a disaster like this and how bad the flooding is in that area. So, it was a mess.
Sophie Therber [00:47:44] Wow, that's really incredible. I mean, I was honestly at the edge of my seat when you were talking about, like, all the road closures and having to make all of these backup plans and change what you were doing, and all of these different people, like the Episcopal Farmworkers Ministry and the local shelters and the woman with the hot food coming together at the last minute, basically, to address these issues. So. That's really incredible to hear about.
Natalie Rivera [00:48:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a definitely a group community effort.
Sophie Therber [00:48:16] And just hearing you talk about the devastation, you were saying the conditions were almost apocalyptic, the isolation that farm workers are experiencing and just how vulnerable they are. What stands out to you, if you had to pick just a couple, the biggest challenges in addressing this issue for the communities that you were working with?
Natalie Rivera [00:48:39] Yeah, so after that experience, we were obviously like, "We need to set up protocols, we need to do more when something like this happens again." It was even, I do remember even one instance we had gone back, we were even all back in the office and Red Cross came in and they said, "We have all these cleaning supplies, can you give us some locations?" And I was like, I can't give you -- I'm remembering how it went, but I gave them some neighborhoods. I didn't want to give exact addresses because we can't do that. But I said, "You can go into this neighborhood and this neighborhood and just drive." Because that's really what they would do anyway. They would just go to neighborhoods and drive around and drop off supplies. So I did that. And then the next day I got a phone call from the Red Cross, a different person, and they said, "Hey, I heard you're really good contact for doing, like figuring out where to go. Can you give me some locations?" And I was like, "I literally just did that yesterday." And it was just frustrating because I know this stuff is going to happen, but it just wasn't efficient and a lot of different things. And I didn't feel like we were in the right place where we could just respond. After that happened, we started thinking about what we had capacity for and what we needed to really raise up to our community for filling in the holes. You have emergency management, but you also realize, like not a lot of communication goes out in Spanish, and maybe not everyone has access to that. And what's crazier is obviously now a couple of years later, doing this Internet project, realizing a huge hole in the whole thing was that farmworker's, a lot of times don't have Internet or don't have cell phone signal to even get the message. That's really just bizarre. Now, in this position, that's something I've talked about a lot, is how it helps with emergency communication. And many of the farms I talked to said the same thing. They said this is this is crucial because during Florence, we weren't able to communicate as well as or more immediately, they would have to go out. You have to go out to the farm and out to the camp, a lot of times, to know what workers need. Obviously, the farms know a little more because they're their employees. So there obviously should be a better sense of responsibility there. If you ever interview anyone else, Melissa Bailey out on another area with Kinston Community Health Center, played a role or received communication for a group of farm workers that actually really did get flooded in. And there was this whole miscommunication that happened. And, you know, the grower didn't evacuate the workers, and they literally got flooded in. And you can Google this and see pictures of farm workers like waist deep evacuating the camp. We didn't see that in our area, but I know Melissa Bailey could talk more about that and what happened. And so that's when we realize this is far from over. Farmworkers are vulnerable. They're already vulnerable. We already see just so many, you know, there's a lot of power dynamics, and it's not very normal for an employer to have that much power or responsibility for their workers or the nature of our H-2A contracts puts a lot of responsibility on the grower to make sure the workers are safe. And if the grower isn't fulfilling their role and doing that, the farmworkers are one hundred percent vulnerable. And if the infrastructure isn't there, Internet and cell phone service and money to buy a cell phone. And if that's not there, then that's a whole ‘nother issue. And farms need to have evacuation plans for their workers. So a lot of it was we knew, and thinking about what we could do as an outreach program, we knew a lot of it was beyond our capacity in our scope and even our funding. So we did apply for some funding from some grants that came out right after Florence. And the first one we did, we wanted to do, kind of, an assessment and do interviews with farm workers to see what we could do and what was needed. We were able to hire someone to really focus on that project. And they interviewed with farm workers. And some of the things we learned about was like, you know, even just they were going to like the vehicle that was there and charging their phones. And so we realized maybe battery-powered chargers would be important and flashlights. And so if they did stay in their house, like if there was a low flood risk then and they weren't in a flood zone, then at least they could have different forms of power. And we tried to think about education we could do. We also set protocols for our outreach team for what to do. And we were trying to explore -- and to this day, it was so funny. I just saw Angie yesterday, or two days ago, who took over my position there. And she's like, "We're still trying to figure out this mass texting thing," because the database that they use, it's so outdated, it just doesn't allow for that. So that's something that we've just been exploring. Also met with some of the county emergency management directors to kind of talk more about farmworkers and how they can be included in their plans. And we hit a lot of walls with that because there was turnover. We would make one relationship and then that person would leave and we would ask for one thing, and they would say that it was. Like Code Red, "Oh, yes, it's in Spanish." Well, after further, you know, because we were like, we can show farmworkers how to sign up for Code Red. That's an infrastructure that exists. You don't need to create and recreate the wheel. But when we realized it's actually not in Spanish, you could sign up. And if your phone's in Spanish, like the instructions, things will come. But if that particular message is being sent out in English, it doesn't translate it the way that it's inputted. So, we discovered a lot of issues, but I felt like we didn't resolve. I felt like we weren't really able to resolve those issues in the end. And I think to this day it's still a problem. And then COVID, and then the pandemic happened and that exposed even more. I mean, it just exposed all the cracks in the system.
Sophie Therber [00:55:25] Were there any ways, specifically with Internet accessibility and communication and just having access to messaging in Spanish, that any lessons that you and your organization have learned from your time dealing with the hurricanes that have carried over and applied to the way that you're addressing the pandemic?
Natalie Rivera [00:55:46] Yes, so when I first started, I wanted to incorporate, you know, okay, farmworkers have Internet, let's also look at systems that provide emergency communication and I started exploring that as part of my role and realized that, again, I just continue to realize that all the county systems really have a challenge when messages are inputted into their mass texting system that they aren't going through in Spanish. I mean, again, I didn't explore every single one. But, you know, we learn that some groups do Facebook and they will post bilingual messages, but maybe the county doesn't have access to someone that's translating the documents. So they're only posting in English. So I didn't do -- there needs to be a more official study done on this, but it's...yeah, there needs to be something more done because I feel like, it just wasn't, I just feel like it's still not resolved at all. I mean, I think if we had another -- and we were talking about it last year, like, freaking out because, you know, this pandemic's coming, but how can we prepare our sites better? Because it's now working for the four NC Farmworker Health Program. It's like even their capacity with their specific funding isn't completely filling that gap, either there is some onus on our emergency management, you know, on our emergency management programs within the state and within the counties to really look at this and dive deeper, that we have a huge population of Spanish speakers and, or monolingual Spanish speakers. And we're not -- I don't think we're filling the gap, but, you know. I don't know. I don't know what to do. Episcopal Farmworker Ministries, I talked to Lariza a while back about this, and they did get a mass texting system, but it's very local to their area. And she said it to me again. She was like, "We need something that statewide or at least the county, because we can't keep --" you know, they relay the messages through their system. But it's just unfortunate that that system at the county level couldn't just be inclusive of everyone, that they have to replicate it so that it does work. Yeah.
Sophie Therber [00:58:20] And you mentioned the need for a study about this, but just in general, if you and your organization to have more supports to address this issue, what would, what would those be and what would that look like?
Natalie Rivera [00:58:34] I mean, I think like if we had a position that was a permanent full-time position, really strategizing and focusing on emergency response for farm workers, and then that person could have a seat at the table on the greater emergency plan statewide, I think that would be ideal. I don't know. It takes a lot to approve a position like that. And while we might have all this additional funding during this pandemic, that isn't going to necessarily continue in the next year or two. So if you don't have continuous funding, I guess it's hard to make a permanent position available because you have to base it off of what you would normally get. So that's kind of my understanding from my office that I'm learning about. So, I could see that. And it would also just be nice if, you know, I'm sure there's other ways around it. If there was sort of an equity person that really had to focus on equity and inclusion at the emergency management, that could just make sure that, because it's not, you know, it's not just farm workers, there's a lot of vulnerable populations that need an eye and support and they need to have a voice as well. So, I'm sure there's lots of ways to go about it. I do think more and more offices are moving towards a focus on equity. And you know, but I think a lot of us, maybe a lot of people may not. It's a concept that I don't know that everyone grasped...It's odd. You'd think so, but I think people like to try to make their own definitions of what equity is, and that's not really how it works. You really need to talk with the community and learn what's needed, what barriers there are and how to break down those barriers. You can't just decide, "well, I think this would make it more equitable," and, you know, anyway.
Sophie Therber [01:00:46] Right. That totally makes sense, and that's a really interesting point. Is there anything else that you would like to add before I stop the recording?
Natalie Rivera [01:00:58] Man. I think, I appreciate the time to talk about this and reflect and it was really interesting connecting what I, you know, the journey that I've been on. So it's kind of funny that that's a piece of this project is a personal journey and then also just farmworker health. Thinking about the project I'm doing now and I guess how much it relates and how much some of my work is sort of influenced by that experience, being in a state of emergency, I mean, and now we are again, in a state of emergency, but it's the whole state. Yeah, I just appreciate it and I think, you know, there was a lot of partners during that time, there's a lot of groups that did a lot of amazing work as well. Farmworker Ministries, I know Kinston Community Health Center was doing a lot in their community. And it's you know, that that's what it takes. Just everybody, everybody coming together. But it I don't think it's been -- I think they're still pretty big gaps, it's surprising after a few years. And now we have the pandemic. So, yeah, that's it. That's all I got, right?
Sophie Therber [01:02:09] Yeah. It is kind of interesting to conceptualize the pandemic in relation to other disasters that you have experienced. So thank you so much for your time and explaining to me your story. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording really quickly.
End of the interview.
Interviewee Journey Coordinates
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R-1003 -- Rivera, Natalie.
Description
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This oral history interview was conducted by Sophie Therber with interviewee Natalie Rivera via Zoom on August 5, 2021. Natalie is from rural North Carolina and has been working with immigrant communities since college. This interview follows her many roles in organizations dedicated to immigrant health and well-being. The main focus of this interview is Natalie’s involvement with the Farmworker Health Program and her experience helping farmworkers mitigate the COVID pandemic and extreme weather, as well as other challenges such as HIV education, Internet access, and emergency-related communication in Spanish. Natalie describes her experience addressing disasters such as COVID and hurricanes, discussing the need to set protocols to address disasters and explains how sometimes immigrant communities do not receive the help that they need in the face of these disasters. She emphasizes the way that communities can come together to accomplish amazing feats in the face of adversity.
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.
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No restrictions. Open to research
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2021-08-05
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R1003_Audio.mp3
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<a href="http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sohp/id/29193">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.</a>