Thread: More of Us are Coming

The last quote in this piece will make your blood boil...


2 Families, 2 Very Different Cultures and the Little Girl Between Them

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By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: May 12, 2005

LEBANON, Tenn., May 10 - For 11-year-old Linda Berrera Cano, life changed with the stroke of a judge's pen. Lifted out of a crowded trailer where meals might consist of nothing but tortillas, she now lives in a brick ranch house with a basketball hoop in the driveway, a swimming pool in the backyard, and her own twin bed and wooden vanity.
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Christopher Berkey for The New York Times

Linda Berrera Cano, an 11-year-old at the center of a custody battle, in her foster home in Tennessee.

She has not seen her mother, an illiterate factory worker from Mexico who speaks only the indigenous language Mixtecan, in over a year. Instead, she calls Emily and Warren Patterson her mommy and daddy, as in, "Look, Mommy, I can do the monkey bars."

Now the courts will decide whether to cut Linda off from her life with the Pattersons or from her Mixtec family, in a custody trial that begins on Thursday.

Linda says her family hit her and for a time kept her out of school to take care of younger siblings. Lawyers for her mother, Felipa Berrera, say their client is guilty of nothing more than being a poor immigrant, unable to defend herself because she lacked an interpreter in court at a first custody proceeding last year.

Ms. Berrera's situation drew wide attention and considerable outrage in October when a county judge in this town near Nashville ordered her to learn English or run the risk of "losing any connection - legally, morally and physically - with her daughter forever." But the case is far more nuanced than that stark command suggests, raising questions of cultural misunderstanding, good intentions and bad communication in a place that, like much of the South, is struggling to absorb rapid demographic change.

In largely white Lebanon, the number of Hispanics has more than doubled in the last four years, to 1,500 from about 700, according to one survey. At least a third of those are Mixtecs, who come from a poor area of central Mexico and whose language and culture keep them isolated here in the United States, even from other Hispanics. The learning curve for clinics, schools and courts here in Wilson County has been steep.

"When I look at my high school annual from 1991," said Yancy Belcher, a lawyer appointed to represent Ms. Berrera, "we didn't even have anyone whose last name ended in a vowel."

In Mixtec villages, said Enerido Santiago, who has started a tiny Mixtec church in Lebanon, people live in thatched huts, and compulsory education is unheard of. A boy of 12 is an adult, ready to work. Girls take on family responsibilities early.

Once in the United States, Mixtecs rely even more heavily on their children. They need them not just as babysitters but as interpreters - emissaries to the outside world. When Mixtec parents visit Southside Elementary, Linda's school, a pupil is summoned from class to translate.

In March 2004, one of Linda's teachers went to court asking for emergency custody, saying she was being neglected. In Tennessee, any person can take suspicions of child neglect or abuse directly to court, and Judge Barry Tatum granted the teacher's request.

Linda went to live first with the teacher, then with the Pattersons, who have two children and want to adopt Linda. Emily Patterson is a guidance counselor at Southside; Warren is a software engineer.

Danny Hill, the school principal, said he had been told not to discuss the case. "Pretty much all I can say about it is in her present situation, she's doing awesome," Mr. Hill said of Linda. "It's been an absolutely dramatic change."

Mr. Hill acknowledged that Southside had a lot to learn - why, for instance, some Mixtecs, with families that are often large, send only one or two of their children to school.

Alexis Andino and his wife, Edith, who together started Lebanon's first Spanish-language church, said the Berrera case had made Mixtec mothers afraid but had also impressed on them the importance of children's school attendance.

"We need to learn the language, it's true," Mr. Andino said of Hispanic immigrants generally. "We need to learn the rules, it's true."

"But at the same time," he added, "the locals need to know: more of us are coming."

Oh, thats right the laws are just for the citizens...