Annunciation House Newsletter - Winter 2005

GRASS ISN’T GREEN ON EITHER SIDE OF THE FENCE

By JULIE BALTZY

Guadalupe Hernandez comes to the office door crying. Her husband, Carlos, has just hit her and left the house, taking all the money, leaving nothing for her and the kids. “This is not the first time,” she says. Over the course of her seven years with him, a pattern has emerged: an argument culminates in an act of violence against her; Carlos leaves, taking all the money with him, not returning sometimes for months. But this is it, Lupe says. This is the last time. She has resolved to live without him, but now she is afraid that she cannot make it in El Paso as a single, undocumented mother of four.

After swimming through the Rio Grande and walking through the mountains from Juarez to El Paso with her husband and two youngest boys, ages 3 and 1½, several experiences have caused Lupe to reconsider her plans of settling on this side of the border. Filled with somewhat grandiose tales from friends of how much easier life would be in the U.S., Lupe was not prepared for the complications that would arise from trying to live undocumented in a border town like El Paso with her already complicated family life. “I am afraid to leave the house for work,” she tells me. “Border Patrol is everywhere and they could send me back at any time.”

Initially, Lupe’s plan had been for her and her husband to save money for an apartment in El Paso and eventually enroll her children in public schools. But everything changed when her husband hit her again, and she found herself alone. Like many parts of her journey where hope was required, she wanted to believe that her husband’s behavior would change once they crossed to the U.S. and he started working regularly. The newness might have initiated some changes, but she has since been disappointed. “The reality,” she tells me, “is that I love him a lot. It hurts me to do this, to live without him, but I know now that it’s time to let go.”

Not even 21 years old, Lupe is the mother of three children all under age 10. She is due to deliver her fourth child in another few months. Just 13 when she met her husband, and 14 when she had her first baby, family life, marriage and children have been a constant struggle. She tells me that childcare is expensive in Mexico, and that getting hired and keeping a job while pregnant is next to impossible since “nobody wants to hire a pregnant woman.” Although life circumstances have made it difficult for her to be necessarily independent, she knows very well what it is to feel alone, struggling to meet the needs of her family from a pool of very limited resources. To deliver her second baby, she walked across the bridge from Juarez by herself when she started feeling contractions, and made it past the authorities with a friend’s passport on loan for $100. Lupe smiles at my look of alarm as she relays this story, well aware of what a “close call” it all was, but has assimilated the event in her consciousness simply as something she had to do.

I ask her why she chose to take the risk of crossing illegally that time just to deliver her baby and go back to Mexico. She says that it is actually more expensive to give birth in Mexico than it is in the U.S. She tells me that in Juarez it costs $600 even in the most inexpensive hospital, and the family is expected to pay up front. Moreover, if a family doesn’t have the $600, the baby can be kept at the hospital until they pay. This happened to Lupe with her third child. Her husband had no income at the time, so she couldn’t take her baby home until her mother pawned her car to pay the bill.

Being in the U.S. now, Lupe will be able to give birth and take her baby home even if she has no money. Nonetheless, she is still trying to come prepared with the $300 deposit. After trying to work as a domestic in El Paso and only making $20 for nine hours of work, she’s taken matters into her own hands. Now she buys boxes of candy in bulk and sells it in the street, keeping the profits for herself. This is what she explains to me when I ask her how she will get the $300 for her birth. She smiles when the other guests talk about what a good salesperson she is. One of them, Perla, would like to go into business with her once she gets her own apartment, having Lupe sell the burritos she makes.

After Lupe gives birth, she will go back to Mexico where she begins this next stage of life without her husband. Her mother will care for the children while she works. “ When Carlos was working,” she says, “he would give me the money he earned and I would buy food and diapers for the kids. But if we had a fight, he would take all the money and spend it on drinking and drugs.” Even when she was not pregnant and able to maintain regular employment, her husband interfered with her working life. She had a job as a dental assistant in Juarez but her husband didn’t like that she was working for a man. He made jealous scenes at her job, embarrassing her and making it impossible for her to continue. Despite her husband’s behavior, Lupe still left on good terms with her boss and has been told that she can have her job back whenever she wants it. She looks forward to being able to work this time without interference.

With her mother helping with the kids, a steady job and hope that she will not be bothered by her husband, perhaps life will be a little bit easier in Mexico when Lupe returns. But knowing what she knows now, she still wants to come back to the United States in the future. She worries about her children growing up in a dangerous city like Juarez. Especially, she worries about her boys being taken in by gangs. She worries about their education. Once they reach high school age, education becomes expensive and Lupe knows she will need help from the kids to support the family. She is not sure if she will be able to afford high school for the kids if she stays in Mexico, let alone anything further. She and Carlos only finished junior high and elementary school respectively.

When she crosses the border next time, Lupe says she wants to go to Chicago where she has family and doesn’t have to worry so much about border patrol. I am tempted to ask her how she will cross next time but I know she does not have a ready answer. Like everything else, she takes it day by day, utilizing every possible resource to its fullest extent in the hopes of meeting her family’s basic needs.

I see what she has done in the few months she has been staying at Annunciation House. She’s found day care for her children, devised a way to earn money for herself on the border where wages are unreasonably low, and has left a husband who was abusive to her. I am wanting to be hopeful. I am wanting to tell a story that shows how strength and innovation can overcome all hardships, but I hesitate. I see in the struggles of our guests that not all injustices can be overcome by a strong will. Lupe has managed to make ends meet from practically nothing and still, I try to imagine what I would be doing if I’d been born on the Juarez size. Would I be one of the brave ones driven by necessity to risk hunger and thirst in the desert, being jailed and deported, or a life lived underground in the hopes that I might be able to give my children an education or just put some nutritious food on the table? “They’re like night and day,” Lupe tells me. “Juarez and El Paso are only separated by a river and a little bridge, and yet they’re two different worlds.”