An American Tragedy
Samira Cardenas wants one last thing before she dies.
by Doron Taussig


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Published: May 30, 2007





Photo By: Michael T. Regan

1/22/07

Dear Jesus,

Your mother: SAMIRA CARDENAS has been diagnosed with lung, liver and adrenal cancer and is seriously ill. My wife and I invite you to come visit with us here, in Bethlehem, PA, in order to be with your mother ... We have sent a similar letter to your sister MARIA FERNAND[A] MORALES and hope you will be in touch with her soon. We ask that you would present this letter to the American consulate in Tegucigalpa ASAP where you will apply for a B1/B2 visa. We hope to see you soon as does your mother. We will be seeking humanitarian parole as well

Sincerely Yours, X _________

The Rio Grande, known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo del Norte, has served as the border between Mexico and the western side of Texas since 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War. Originating in Colorado, it flows southeast almost 2,000 miles before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. It is a relatively weak river, despite its immodest name, and there are points where crossing by raft takes just a few minutes. Slaves from Texas used to flee across it in search of a better life.

On this raft, on this dark night in late 2003, about a dozen people are piled uncomfortably, limb upon limb, trying to cross the Rio in the other direction. There are intermittent bouts of shouting in Spanish — "My legs are crushed!" — followed by shushes — "Do you want to get caught?" Most of the travelers don't know one another. It's too cold on the water for these souls to be condemned. But Samira Cardenas could be forgiven for wondering what grim fate she's accepted.

Having already left her two elder children behind in Honduras, 30-year-old Samira had, before boarding the raft, turned her 6-year-old daughter, Alejandra, over to smugglers who promised to drive her across the border, pretending she was their own. When the raft comes ashore, Samira will have to dive into the dirt and then crawl, crawl, crawl; after a few hours, God willing, she'll reunite with Alejandra, and they'll spend the next several days hiding in the hot desert sun and running through the cold desert night.

Leaving Honduras and traveling through Mexico, Samira, Alejandra, Samira's sister and their friend Erlan had assumed the guise of tourists — taking pictures, carrying luggage. This was, they believed, the best way to avoid detection, even if it made the trip more expensive. But after they came to the border towns, where anyone can tell you how to get across, and hired the coyotes, that pretense was dropped. The coyotes were actually very pleasant — they were just businessmen, charging about $1,000 per person for safe passage. But there were no more amenities, no more disguises. It was almost as if, in transitioning from legal to illegal, they had to learn how to disappear.

This wasn't the first time Samira came to America. A decade prior, as a recent graduate of a nursing program, she'd gotten a scholarship to take a course in nutrition at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She'd traveled to the U.S. by plane, and, though she didn't speak English, felt comfortable amongst the fast food restaurants she recognized from home. She and her classmates even celebrated her 21st birthday with a big party.

In retrospect, the idea behind the program seems almost darkly comedic. Samira and her fellow students were supposed to study in the developed world, then return and use their knowledge to improve conditions in their home country. But teaching nutrition in a place where many struggle to afford food — well, it's like that old adage about teaching a man to fish, except he doesn't live near water. No wonder that, 10 years later, Samira finds herself here, on the Rio Grande.

She grew up in a hurry, giving birth to her first son, Jesus, at age 18, and shortly thereafter moving to a small Honduran city called Gracias, Lempira ("Soy de Gracias — Y Que?" reads one bumper sticker: "I'm from Gracias — So What?"). Partly, she was moving to care for a sick aunt, and partly to get away from Jesus' father, who, she says, had been both disingenuous about his intention to marry her and abusive. Prior to that, she spent her childhood bouncing back and forth among various uncles and a deeply Catholic grandmother. Her parents had separated when she was little, and, she often felt, had divorced her in the process.

Even as a kid, Samira had been something of an idealist, dreaming of working as an attorney representing victims of sexual abuse. She ended up becoming a nurse, and after studying in the U.S., landed a job as an outreach worker for an aid organization — the type that ran advertisements on television, asking viewers for donations. She'd ride her motorcycle into the most rural outposts of her region, sometimes parking it and trekking into the jungle to recruit families to their programs. While she was there, she'd give vaccinations and teach people about things like family planning, hygiene and nutrition. On the weekends, she went dancing and made friends with Americans who had come to her country through the Peace Corps.


Though she loved the job, money was always tight. In most places, someone with Samira's education would be middle class, but Honduras is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and the middle class doesn't really exist there. There are the rich — who, Samira says, would be lower middle class here — and there's everyone else.

At 22, Samira had her second child, Maria Fernanda, and a few years later, her third, Alejandra, by a man named Marvin, with whom she became infatuated, and married. He persuaded her to move out to a small village, where he had relatives who worked on a coffee plantation. Coffee is one of Honduras' two meaningful exports (the other is bananas), and they believed there was reliable money in the industry — although, looking back, Samira would realize she must have been in love to do something so stupid.

As soon as she arrived on the plantation, she knew something was amiss. The way the men there looked at the women just didn't seem right — she didn't think it would be safe for Maria Fernanda. After a few weeks, she sent her two elder children back to civilization in Gracis, to live with relatives. But Samira was married now, and that was a serious commitment. She stayed on, preparing meals for the coffee pickers, serving as an unofficial pharmacist, and hating every minute. Fortunately, it lasted only about a year. One day, Marvin came to her and said he wasn't making enough money, and was moving to the U.S. for a while, to work. Samira returned to Gracias to wait for him; she was still living there when a young woman from the plantation came knocking at her door, holding a newborn baby and claiming Marvin was the father. She asked Samira for money.

Samira looked at the baby, who shared all of Marvin's features. She told the woman that the child was not Samira's responsibility.

The next time Marvin called from Maryland, where he was laying sewer pipes, he denied everything. Samira didn't believe him — she suspected the baby was his real reason for leaving. But he was still her husband. For the next couple of years, he sent her money while she worked as a nurse and patiently awaited his return. Months of loneliness turned into years of single motherhood. Marvin began offering excuses for his absence, and finally, Samira accepted that her husband wasn't coming home.

Now close to 30, Samira realized that if she were going to have a financial foundation, she would have to build it herself. Her life in Honduras wasn't sustainable for someone who aspired to be middle class and educate her children: About 80 percent of the $130 she made per month was going toward rent in her one-story home. Numerous friends and relatives of hers had gone to the U.S. and made money the typical Honduran could never dream of; she herself had been to Tucson, and witnessed the abundance of America. So Samira hatched a plan: She would borrow money from her grandmother to make the trip. She would work for a few years in the U.S., save up, then come back, build a house (this, she figured, would cost about $20,000) and send her children to college. After that, she could go back to working as a nurse, and live out the rest of her days with her family in her beautiful, tropical homeland.

There were just two matters to resolve. First, legality. Samira and her fellow travelers — her sister and a handsome young man she'd befriended named Erlan — would have preferred to migrate lawfully. But when they applied for visas, they were rejected. The potential benefits of illegal migration, they decided, outweighed the risks of getting caught, and ethical reservations about violating the oft-broken rules of a ridiculously wealthy country loomed small in their minds. They decided to go the hard way.

More wrenching was the matter of Samira's two older children. Jesus, 12, and Maria Fernanda, 8, couldn't come with her. When she sat them down to explain her plans, her heart was in pieces: She'd be leaving the kids with relatives, the same arrangement she had hated when her parents split. On one level, the children understood — they knew many people with friends and relatives in the U.S. But on another level, their mother was leaving the country. There could be no visits, and she wouldn't return for years. And what if something happened? What if they never saw her again?

The story of America's changing working class is narrated in the architecture of Bethlehem, a 73,000-person city about 60 miles north of Philadelphia. In the midst of the town, demanding attention like a coffin in a funeral parlor, is the old Bethlehem Steel plant, which closed in 1995 and now sits unchanged but for the accumulation of rust — as though everyone dropped their tools one day and never looked back. A few blocks and one NAFTA agreement away are the headquarters of the Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations of the Lehigh Valley. Concilio, as it's called, is housed in an old church, and provides social services to the region's growing number of Latino immigrants.

According to Sis-Obed Torres Cordero, Concilio's executive director, there's an urban legend that the first Hispanics were brought to the Lehigh Valley back in the 1920s, to work in the steel plant. The bulk of the population, though, migrated in the last decade and a half, primarily from Mexico and Colombia. The men frequently work in construction and landscaping; the women, in the service sector. Often the immigrants make just $8 or $9 an hour, though Bob Hessel, a volunteer with Concilio, says several employers have told him that cost is not the real incentive for hiring immigrants.


"When I take a Mexican, he doesn't want to take a break every 15 minutes," Hessel was told. "It's not cheap labor, it's quality labor."

This competition for jobs, as well as a changing culture and drug problems, have raised some of the usual tensions. Torres Cordero keeps a sign in his office, which he pulled down off a highway: "No Illegal Immigrants," it reads. "Post a Sign Today." And the district attorney in Northampton County, John Morganelli, has poured resources into prosecuting unlawful residents for things like using false Social Security numbers. The feds have been cooperating with him more recently, conducting raids on factories that send tremors of fear through the immigrant community.

But, as is usually the case with these things, dramatic moments make headlines; everyday life is more mundane.

Samira had not planned to come to Bethlehem. After stopping briefly in Houston, she'd gone to Miami to stay with an aunt. But Erlan, who'd gone all the way to New York, heard there was work in the Lehigh Valley, and the two decided to meet there.

They quickly found that they liked it. Samira was happy not to live in a big-city barrio, and both she and Erlan found work — he in masonry, she at a Taco Bell, a hotel and finally as a cook in a steakhouse. It wasn't fulfilling like nursing, but, she thought, at least she was good at it. More important, money came faster than it had before: Samira paid her debts, sent money to her children, and still had some left over to save.

That she was illegal didn't much bother her. Samira considered herself a good citizen who worked hard, paid taxes and, with the exception of fabricating a Social Security number for work, followed the law. And she felt accepted in the community. In fact, Alejandra was fast becoming Americano. Enrolled at Lincoln Elementary, the little girl picked up English and absorbed the local youth culture quickly.

Of course, Samira missed her other children terribly, and speaking to them on the phone every weekend reminded her how painful her absence must have been. The immigrant life is hard, but she found solace in community, eventually joining an immigrant women's book club. Together, the group read The Four Agreements, a book of Toltec wisdom by Mexican writer Miguel Ruiz. From the moment of our birth, Ruiz argues, we make agreements with the world, most of which are harmful. We must break out of these, and focus on keeping just four beneficial agreements:

• Be impeccable with your word.

• Don't take anything personally.

• Don't make assumptions.

• Always do your best.

The final agreement rang particularly true. Over time, Samira and Erlan had fallen in love, and with Alejandra, had become like a family, living in a cozy two-story attached home a few minutes away from the old steel plant. In a few years, they would rejoin Jesus and Maria Fernanda with enough money to live comfortably. Samira was doing her best, and in America, it seemed, this actually resulted in a better life.

It was a strange sensation, the weakness. Samira had always been strong — not just in the youthful sense of hiking through the jungle, but in the adult manner of working until 2 a.m., then rising five hours later to take Alejandra to school. So in June 2005, when she began feeling fatigued and experiencing pain in her upper abdomen, she figured, with no insurance, she had better just power through.

Then one day at work, she collapsed.


She was taken to Easton Hospital, where she was initially diagnosed with kidney stones. But a subsequent visit to a specialist yielded a much grimmer result: Samira had adrenal carcinoma, a one-in-2-million cancer (99.5 percent of tumors found in the adrenal glands are benign) with a poor prognosis (the five-year survival rate is approximately 25 percent). Upon hearing the news, she nearly fainted.

There was some chance, she was told, that surgery could solve the problem. Samira's savings had been decimated by her initial doctor's visits, but in Pennsylvania, emergency care is covered for all residents, even illegals. In July 2005, she had a right adrenalectomy, and before long was back at work, with just the occasional abdominal pang. A little over a year later, however, a routine screening showed the cancer returning — and with the surgical option off the table, the prognosis was much worse. There were treatments the doctors could try, but the cancer was so rare, they didn't know whether any would work. Samira might have just a few months left.

Samira heard this, and she felt like everything— her hopes, her plans, her good intentions and hard work — just "dropped." Not long ago, she'd anticipated a bright future; now, her life seemed as worthless as a losing lottery ticket. She was not going to return home, buy a house, and send her kids to college, or even see them again. She was just going to die.

Her faith enabled her to regain her composure. Samira didn't know if she thought God would reward her trust by saving her. But she did believe in His ability to perform miracles. And that gave her hope. She began to steel herself for her new treatment, whatever it would be.

Then, on Dec. 22, 2006, God intervened — in a very unexpected way. Samira had been using contraceptives ever since Alejandra was born. But during a visit to a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania, she learned, to her astonishment, that she was pregnant for a fourth time.

Her doctors said they couldn't perform chemotherapy, or any treatment, on a pregnant woman, because of the damage it would do to the fetus. If Samira wanted treatment, she'd have to get an abortion. Trouble was, Samira didn't believe in abortions — her Catholic grandmother had made sure of that. "I'm a nurse," she told people. "I save lives, I don't take them." That she might not live to deliver the child made no difference.

One physician guessed that, without treatment, Samira had about five months.

"You know what this means?" he asked her.

She did.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Six months later, in May 2007, Samira's family is gathered in her living room. Some are biological relatives — her sister has come in from Iowa. Others are the surrogate family she built in Bethlehem: Erlan, and a woman from her reading group with her husband, who have become like parents to her (at one point, she told a nurse that the man was her father). There's also Samira's surrogate sister, Marly Gaviria, a legal Colombian immigrant who works as a nurse. The group sits amongst get-well balloons and family photographs, and alternates between weary quiet and jokes intended to lighten the mood.

A few miles away, lying in an incubator in St. Luke's Hospital, is a 3-and-a-half pound baby named Victoria Nazareth. Delivered by Caesarean section just two weeks prior, the child bears not one, but two names that carry great meaning for her mother: Nazareth, in honor of the miracle Samira believes God performed for her, and Victoria, for her triumph in delivering her child.


"I would like to say that the cancer did not win the battle," says Samira, who sits surrounded by her family, legs propped up by a pillow.

The cancer has not surrendered, however. While Samira carried Victoria, the disease spread from her adrenal glands to her lungs and liver. She is visibly weak now: Her hand shakes as she holds it out; her feet swell like overripe fruit. She's about to begin chemotherapy, but doctors aren't sure what effect it will have. They give her somewhere between two months and two years, depending on the effectiveness of the treatment.

With that prognosis in mind, Samira has become consumed by a new battle. Since the cancer was discovered, 12-year-old Maria Fernanda has been asking her mother why she doesn't just come home, not understanding that if Samira were in Honduras, she'd be dead already. And teenage Jesus has grown reluctant even to get on the phone. He wants to work to provide for his mother, and feels helpless, and perhaps ashamed, that he can't.

Samira's wish is to see her two children. According to some around her, she wants to see them before she dies; according to Samira, she wants them to grant her the strength to fight on. Either way, it will be hard. Samira can't travel back to Honduras, and for them to go through standard channels would quite possibly take too long.

There is another option. About a month and a half ago, Samira's situation came to the attention of Concilio, which contacted the Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova University. The staff there decided that the best option in Samira's case was to apply for something called "humanitarian parole." A temporary entry to the U.S., the parole is granted on a case-by-case basis by the Department of Homeland Security, in instances of extraordinary humanitarian need. Between 2000 and 2004, about 22 percent of nearly 7,000 applications for the relief were deemed qualified.

"All my research shows she meets the qualifications," says Sean Sansiveri, a legal intern at Villanova who has worked on Samira's case. He doesn't worry that Samira would be bringing herself to the attention of authorities, because the U.S. generally doesn't deport people in her condition.

Two immigration lawyers independent of the case contacted by City Paper said that, without knowing the specifics, they considered parole unlikely.

"I seriously doubt they're going to grant humanitarian parole to people to join someone who's not authorized to be in the United States," says Richard Steel, of Steel, Rudnick & Ruben.

Still, the ramshackle team of do-gooders surrounding Samira is doing its best to make it happen. Bob Hessel, a volunteer at Concilio, is a big, emotional former accountant who got involved in immigration advocacy after a life-threatening heart attack a few years ago ("My dream was to appear before an immigration judge before I die"). He drafted letters to Jesus and Maria Fernanda on behalf of Samira's book club friends, formally inviting them to the States; along with the application paperwork, they will be on their way soon. He's also been speaking with the staff in U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent's office about helping with the process.

Samira, meanwhile, has been imagining what it would be like to see her kids. She dreams first of grabbing them up, hugging and kissing them; a little later, she'd take them to the beach, and shopping in stores (in dreams, she can afford it). Should she survive, and receive an amnesty that may be coming the way of millions of illegal immigrants, she'd like to become a registered nurse in the U.S., learn to speak English ...

But she's getting ahead of herself. For now, Samira sits in her living room, surrounded by her incomplete family, and does what she can to help her cause: PR work. It's an odd thing for an illegal immigrant, accustomed to avoiding attention. She's twice appeared on Eastern Pennsylvania's Channel 69 News to tell the story of her decision to have Victoria. It's important to her that she communicate a message about her life, and she's settled on an amalgam of hope, religion and pro-life sentiment.

Today, she rifles back through all of her memories. She doesn't seem to understand why anyone would want to know about her, beyond the birth of her miracle baby — she regards her life as a boring story. But she tells it anyway, in hopes that it will help, somehow, to reunite the four children that her immigrant's journey has scattered: the 16-year-old son who wants to care for his sick mother; the 12-year-old daughter who doesn't yet understand how poor she is; the 9-year-old who's at home in one country, but a legal resident of another, and Victoria: tiny, fragile and born prematurely to a terminally ill undocumented immigrant — but an American.

(doron@citypaper.net)


http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/ ... an-tragedy