Thread: IA father of seven sob story....

GUATEMALA, U.S.A.
A husband and father of seven left his family in Guatemala, hoping to find enough work in the States to pull his family up from rural poverty. But the future remains uncertain, not only in America, but also back home.

April Dembosky

Sunday, April 20, 2008
At 6:30am, Tio walks out of his apartment on his way to w... Tio's family sits down in their small house to eat a dinn... On his way to work, Tio buys a tamale for lunch. It's bee... At 6:35 a.m., Tio walks to catch the bus to work for a sm... More...

The smell of tortillas hangs over the parking lot of an East Bay apartment building. The 1950s-era complex-turned-immigrant dormitory is home to about 200 Mexicans and Central Americans. Every evening, a woman passes under the concrete balconies, all crowded with bicycles, calling to men too tired to cook dinner for themselves, "Llega la comida!" Food is here!

Inside a downstairs unit, a 40-year-old man, known to his family and friends as Tio, sits at the kitchen table, eating the $5 meat, beans and rice meal from the Styrofoam box. He drinks from a half-gallon jug of Tampico Citrus Punch. The three other kitchen chairs are turned upside down on the table.

Before Tio got home from work, one of his six housemates mopped the floor. The stove and countertops are spotless. This is possibly the cleanest kitchen ever lived in by seven men.

Tio's housemates are his nephews and neighbors from his rural village in central Guatemala. They all call him Tio, the Spanish word for uncle, and he refers to most of them as his cousins - whatever their blood ties at home, here they are family. Like most Latino immigrants, Tio chose his U.S. destination based on where folks from his community had already settled.

While his wife and seven children back in Guatemala struggle to redefine their family while its patriarch is away, Tio's new all-male household is his only support system for navigating a foreign country that prefers he had stayed home.

The seven men share three bedrooms, the clean kitchen and a living room furnished with a garage-sale couch, television and two 20-year old vacuum cleaners.

Five calendars from a nearby Mexican supermarket hang at different levels around the room.

Tio has lived and worked in the East Bay for almost two years. He left his wife two days before she gave birth to their seventh child, a boy. Tio is matter of fact about the timing.

"When the coyote says it's time to go, you go," he says. He made the trip in 23 days, crossing into Mexico from western Guatemala and riding most of the way in different cars and vans. At the U.S. border, he and eight others stayed crouched on the floor of the van, mile after mile through Arizona.

"Crossing into the United States was the first time in my life I ever broke the law," he says. And the last. "They know who we are," he says of the local police. "As long as we don't commit a crime, they leave us alone."
Guatemala

Cristina, Tio's wife, lives with her seven children in a two-room wood house. The eight of them share four beds. They rent a small plot of land, where they farm corn and beans. The land yields only one harvest a year, so they still scrape to buy enough food.

"We have nothing," says 21-year-old Hermalinda, the oldest child. She helps her mother make the family's three meals a day - coffee and corn tortillas, with salt or tomatoes if they have them. They wash the house, take care of the younger kids and pick coffee beans when the work is available.

"Everything changed when my father left," says Hermalinda. "When he was here, we all obeyed him." A cow moos in the distance, a rooster crows outside the door. Hermalinda begins to cry. "We lost a lot when he left."

"Of course we're sad," says Cristina, shushing the baby in her lap. "I'm not happy that he's there. But when he's here, we don't eat. There's no food because he earns so little, only 30 or 35 Quetzales ($4) a day."

Though Tio says he doesn't live in fear of deportation, his family does. Tio still owes hefty fees for his smuggling into the United States. "If the police get him and send him back," Cristina says, "he'll never earn enough money to pay the debt."

So far, the remittances Tio has been sending home - between $200 and $400 a month - aren't quite what the family expected.

"We are the same as when he left," says Hermalinda. "We see families of other immigrants who have been gone two years start to build houses and buy their own land. We are waiting for the opportunity to improve our lives."
California

Tio explains to his family that work is not as regular in the United States as he thought it would be. Plus he has to pay his share of the $1,350 rent, and food is expensive - $5 for lunch, $5 for dinner. When he first arrived in California, he faced the daily grind of a day laborer: lining up on the street corners and outside the local grocery, hoping an employer would pick his face out of dozens in the crowd.

Some days there was work, some days there wasn't.

But several months ago, he got lucky and scored a regular gig, cutting slabs of granite into kitchen countertops and gravestones.

"The difference between Guatemala and here is that here we work with machines," he says. "In Guatemala we use machetes and hatchets." He prefers to work with his hands, but is hesitant to state a preference for this, or for anything. "You have to do the work that comes to you, so your family can eat and survive."

So every morning at 7 a.m., Tio pulls the hood of his navy sweatshirt over his head and leaves for work. He walks by the cars in the parking lot, past 20 minutes' worth of suburban homes and Taco Bells, to his bus stop.

The turquoise and orange striped bus carries him 20 minutes more.

He picks up two tamales and a Coke at the Mexican grocery, then walks the last 20 minutes to work, where he stands operating a strange machine for 10 hours a day, often seven days a week. If he gets Sunday morning off, he goes to church and prays that he will earn enough money to make the journey worth it.

"My goal is to build a house, a cement house," he says, "and own my own land."
Guatemala

In Guatemala, Hermalinda sings in her church choir every week. She and her mother thank God for delivering Tio to the United States safely, and hope God will continue to bless him.

"If the people in the United States understood the story of every immigrant, they would hold their hand to their heart and think," says Hermalinda. "An immigrant is not there to do bad things. They're there to earn just a little money so their family can get out of the situation they're in."

Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

I didn't have a thing to do with Tio making his wife pregnant 7 times.

Don't have children if you can't feed them.

Dixie

"If the people in the United States understood the story of every immigrant, they would hold their hand to their heart and think," says Hermalinda. "An immigrant is not there to do bad things. They're there to earn just a little money so their family can get out of the situation they're in."

If these illegal aliens would think, they are stealing from us and our children, we also need to support our children in OUR country!

Originally Posted by Dixie

I didn't have a thing to do with Tio making his wife pregnant 7 times.

Don't have children if you can't feed them.

Dixie

I completely agree with you but they use the excuse of their catholic faith that looks badly on them if they use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy...The catholic church doesn't care because more people means more money for them...I keep wondering what nuns need with a brand new f-150 truck, it boggled my mind when I saw them driving it a little over a month ago...It all comes down to money and using cheap labor and uneducated people to take it...I don't care about his strife I care about my kids and the second rate education they are receiving, the inability to have health care, and putting a roof over their head while trying to finish school myself when school costs are rising as are gas prices...

What kind of man has seven children that he can't support?

Originally Posted by USA_born

What kind of man has seven children that he can't support?

Free labor , but then they don't want to grow their own food or work the farm. They'd rather have cash to build a bigger house and buy more consumables.

4 of us live in a small 100+ year old house with ONE bathroom and both my husband and I work and let me tell you, it's still a struggle to pay the bills, gas, various insurances and have enough money left over for food. But then we make "too much" money to qualify for any assistance.

So far, the remittances Tio has been sending home - between $200 and $400 a month - aren't quite what the family expected.

"We are the same as when he left," says Hermalinda. "We see families of other immigrants who have been gone two years start to build houses and buy their own land. We are waiting for the opportunity to improve our lives."

Not all is what it's cracked up to be. I suspect a lot of these people are not doing much better than if they had stayed at home.

So far, the remittances Tio has been sending home - between $200 and $400 a month - aren't quite what the family expected.

"We are the same as when he left," says Hermalinda. "We see families of other immigrants who have been gone two years start to build houses and buy their own land. We are waiting for the opportunity to improve our lives."

Unrealistic expectations..............

My question is, when they build these houses, etc., what happens? It seems that someone has to stay in the U.S. forever to keep up the lifestyle that has been built. Do they plan on ever going home? What's the point?

So far, the remittances Tio has been sending home - between $200 and $400 a month - aren't quite what the family expected.

sorry if it is not ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!