Thread: Culture shock a possible factor in killing

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12384283.htm

Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005


TEEN VIOLENCE
Culture shock a possible factor in killing
A teen accused of killing his sister had lived most of his life in El Salvador, away from his U.S.-born siblings and immigrant parents. The family reunited with tragic results.
BY SUSANNAH NESMITH
snesmith@herald.com

Two years ago, Nuvia and Samuel Salazar finally got to meet their son: A 12-year-old they left behind in El Salvador when he was 7 months old.

The couple struggled to make Ronald feel welcomed, but a combination of culture shock, adolescent rebellion and sibling rivalry with a brother and two sisters he didn't know was more than they -- or he -- could handle.

At school, Ronald was thrown out for fighting. At home, he fought with his U.S.-born sisters constantly. He even threatened to kill his family.

On a hot Monday morning last month, say police, Ronald marched into his youngest sister's bedroom and killed her.

''We wanted to complete the family,'' a crushed Nuvia Salazar said the day after Ronald, now almost 15, allegedly cut 11-year-old Marina Estefani's throat. ``Now I've lost two children.''

Experts say the story of the Salazar family is a worst-case scenario, but their experience is all-too-common for immigrant families, who are often separated from their children because of stricter U.S. immigration laws and tightened enforcement over the past decade.

Researchers at Harvard University, in a study of immigrant children in 2001, found that a staggering 96 percent of Central American migrant families are separated when they come to the United States.

Meanwhile, social workers are just beginning to recognize the stress such separations put on children and parents.

''Not only does the child migrate to a new country, which in and of itself is not an easy process, but he migrates to a new family about whom he feels ambivalence,'' said Carola Suarez-Orozco, co-author of the Harvard study and now a professor at New York University. ``Often these jealousies get played out with the siblings. The child who was left behind feels that the siblings that were raised by the parents got everything, from the presence of the parents to all of the goodies of the United States.''

Jose Lagos, head of Honduran Unity, a local activist organization for Central American migrants, blames restrictive immigration laws for breaking up so many immigrant families.

TEMPORARY RESIDENTS

The Salazars are here as temporary legal residents, thanks to a law designed specifically for Central American war refugees. Under the law, however, they cannot leave the country for seven years and cannot bring minor children here until they become permanent legal residents, a process that can take years.

Still, experts and others agree the experience of the Salazar family is the exception and not the rule for most immigrant families.

''The resentment is classic with these families, but the level of violence is not,'' said Suarez-Orozco. ``You wonder if there had been some violence even before he came.''

Nuvia Salazar said she doesn't know what might have caused her son to shatter the family he was supposed to make whole.

She left her first-born during the final months of a 12-year civil war. Like many Salvadoran civilians, she was caught in the middle between right-wing death squads and leftist guerrillas. Nuns were raped. An archbishop was killed. The country was in chaos.

They opted to leave after leftist guerrillas -- angered over Nuvia's refusal to join them -- firebombed the couple's home.

''We thought, whatever we do, one of us was surely going to be killed,'' she said.

So she left her hometown of Santa Ana in northwestern El Salvador and crossed through Mexico to the United States, leaving Ronald behind. The year was 1991.

''I couldn't bring him, the trip was too risky,'' she said.

''That was hard for me,'' she said. ``It was my first child and a child who was wanted. You never want one like you want the first one.''

Her husband, Samuel, came shortly thereafter. The family grew, here adding two girls and a boy. But their first child wasn't forgotten: The Salazars sent money back for Ronald every month, sometimes $100, sometimes more.

''Sometimes we spoke twice a month, sometimes once a month. He didn't call often. He called with emergencies, when he needed money for something,'' she said.

''I only knew him from photos and the telephone,'' she said.

The couple yearned to be reunited, but it wasn't until Ronald was 12 that they could bring him here.

It wasn't easy. Samuel and Nuvia refinanced their modest South Miami Heights house to raise the $6,000 to pay immigrant smugglers to bring him across the border.

''I suffered,'' she said, recalling how hard the trip through the desert was for her. It was harder to think about her son doing it.

''It took him a month to get here,'' she said. ``It was terrible waiting for him.''

It was even worse for Ronald, who wanted to return to El Salvador during the harrowing journey.

''He changed his mind half-way across the desert, but the others told him he couldn't turn back,'' she said.

The Salazars say not long after Ronald arrived he told his parents that he had been in a gang in El Salvador, that he had tried drugs, that he drank alcohol and had sex. He told them he had friends who knew how to make bombs.

''He arrived from there very aggressive,'' Samuel Salazar recalls. ``He always wanted to dominate my girls.''

Nuvia's father, who was raising Ronald in El Salvador, never told her about any problems. Now she wonders what she may have missed.

''My father maybe thought that I would reject him if he told me what was happening,'' she said.

TENSE HOME

The couple says the tension at home worsened with each passing day.

''He never became part of the family,'' Nuvia Salazar said. ``He always wanted to take all the attention. The girls said that when he arrived, their lives changed. Of course, we paid more attention to him, were more affectionate with him. We wanted him to feel welcome.''

Researchers say jealousy can run both ways.

''Here you have a child that feels left behind. There's a lot of jealousy because all the other kids were with the parents, the child feels that the parents deserted him, and even preferred them,'' said Roni Berger, a professor of social work at Adelphia University who works with migrant families.

''And then he has to leave the only family he knew to come to these strangers who from his perspective abandoned him, and to live with the competition who were not abandoned,'' she said. ``There is often a lot of rage and jealousy and feeling of resentment. Very often, when there are new families here, the children left behind feel like second-class citizens.''

Ronald's parents say their young boy became manipulative, playing on their feelings of guilt to get what he wanted.

''He would tell his sisters, ``they have to do this for me or buy this for me because you had them since you were born,''' Nuvia recalled. ``But no matter what we did, he didn't feel part of the family.''

The tension intensified earlier this year when the Salazars said they suspected Ronald was molesting a sibling. Nuvia believes that Marina Estefani never let Ronald touch her.

''I think that's why he killed her,'' she said. ``And she told us about the other things that were happening.''

The Department of Children and Families was called in when Ronald told a school counselor at a program for expelled students that his father beat him. Samuel Salazar acknowledge striking his son on one occasion.

''I told them that I treat him well. He's my son. Because of the war, I had to leave him in Salvador, but I love him,'' he said.

DCF workers closed their case on the family on July 15, after concluding Ronald wasn't in any danger.

The night before Marina Estefani was killed, she and Ronald played Nintendo together on the couch.

''We thought he was better,'' Nuvia Salazar said. ``He even asked for forgiveness.''

''It was unimaginable that the next day he could do what he did,'' she said.

"experience is all-too-common for immigrant families, who are often separated from their children because of stricter U.S. immigration laws and tightened enforcement over the past decade. "

ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THAT WE ARE SEEING MORE AND MORE OF THESE ARTICLES THAT TRY TO LEAD THE READER TO BELIEVE THAT OUR STRICT ENFORCEMENT IS THE PROBLEM AND THAT OPEN BORDERS ARE THE ANSWER?

FEE FI FOE FUM, I SMELL GEORGE BUSH'S PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN DRUM!

W