Stephanie Ortigoza
Mexican Immigrant Dreams to Return to His Homeland
Every afternoon, Ignacio Hernandez sits on his black rolling chair by his window and watches the news on his plasma TV sitting atop the small brown furniture that also contains souvenirs his family and friends brought him on their trips. His favorite souvenir is the bobble head of a black cat that sometimes he would touch at times. He keeps portraits of his 10 grandchildren hung on the walls. His telephone sits atop a brown chair because he does not believe he should buy a small table. A colored sheet of red, white and green spreads across his small bed exhibiting the colors of his country’s flag.
Orphaned at a young age, Hernandez’s life was like a roller coaster. His oldest sister took care of him and the other siblings while their father was everywhere, but at home. As Hernandez grew up, he struggled to make ends meet in his hometown Oaxaca, Mexico which caused him to come illegally to the United States. When he arrived to the United States, he encountered the typical issues of many immigrants: the language barrier, getting a green card and supporting the family back home. His desire was to go back to Mexico to live with his family, but fate determined otherwise.
Hernandez was born on July 30, 1934 in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca and lived with his parents and his five older siblings. Although his father came from a wealthy family and his mother was poor, Hernandez lived in a humble home because his father sold most of the lands he inherited from his parents leaving him to become almost penniless after his marriage. His motivation to sell his lands included receiving money to buy himself drinks and spending money on women he flirted with along the way before and after his wife died.
Around his 40s, Hernandez’s father married Hernandez’s mother who was 14. When his mother died at age 44, he became an orphan at age five.
“I did not know her very well,” he said of his mother in Spanish.
All of his childhood he spent his time in el campo, growing a crop of field corn, taking care of cows, milking cows and went to school up to the third grade where he learned how to somewhat read and write. “I did not learn a lot in school. I was embarrassed to go to school at an older age,” he said.
“Some students had notebooks and shoes, and I was poor. Where would I get the money to go to school? I had my sandals all ripped apart and I was living in the hills,” he said.
He moved to Mexico City in 1951 to live with his oldest sister, who worked as a maid for a wealthy family and he assisted her. “This is where I learned how to read and write better,” he said, with one hand on each thigh.
In 1953, he went to Arizona and California and worked picking fruits and vegetables. Then in 1963, he went back to Mexico and continued to follow his same routine as a farmer. He lived in the hills with his wife and three of his children. “Our house was not in good conditions. I lived with my wife and suffered a lot because we did not have the basic necessities to survive,” he said.
Finally, in 1969, he left el campo and headed out to the nearby town of Tezoatlan. There he lived for a few years until he decided to move to the United States and earn money to support his family. “Once the situation changed, I came here to the United States in 1972,” he said.
His trip to New York required a lot of traveling. He crossed the border from Ciudad Juarez with a coyote who was leading a group of illegal immigrants to the airport in San Diego. There, Hernandez took an airplane to Chicago and from there rode the train to New York. In New York, he began to work as a cook and his economic situation became better for him. He worked hard to send money to his family back home.
He has been deported once when he lived in New York. Hernandez’s friend had an argument with a Puerto Rican who called immigration on the illegal immigrants working in the restaurant. Hernandez and the friend were the only ones to be deported back to Mexico.
Hernandez waited a few months to attempt to cross the border again, determined to finally stay in the States.
He adjusted to life in the United States quickly by eating unfamiliar food although he bought Mexican foods such as chiles from a store called Casa Moneo, a Spanish store that sold imported food from Spain.“Although there probably was [tortillas], we didn’t know… [Casa Moneo] also sold lots of Mexican food; I used to go there for beer when it was not widely available. That is where we bought out tomatoes and chiles.”
He lived in various places in New York when he arrived, like in Delancey Street where he resided for three weeks, then moved to El Barrio, then the Upper West Side, then the Bronx and finally to Harlem.
When he lived in El Barrio, Hernandez met his two Puerto Rican neighbors, Maria Mercedes Gutierrez and her sister Cecilia. Despite Hernandez being married in Mexico and his family residing there, Hernandez and Gutierrez got married in1979. Hernandez’s distant relatives who resided in New York knew about Hernandez’s affair and told relatives who lived in Oaxaca where his wife and kids found out about his infidelity.
He, however, did not plan to marry in the United States. “I didn’t think I was going to marry again. I married because I was still illegal and Maria Mercedes wanted to help me fix my papers.”
Although he has lived in New York for a long time, he has never experienced any racism. “I have never suffered from that. Many times people tried to rob me. Gangs were [outside of the building] when I came from work because I worked at night time,” he said.
He added, “One day they were trying to rob me, but they didn’t say anything to me. I came home safe. Two or three times they tried to rob me, but nothing has happened.”
Hernandez lives a simple life and follows the same routine everyday. “He wakes up early in the morning at 5 o’clock and turns on the radio to play Mexican songs. I got used to it. He has a schedule and he follows it,” Gutierrez said.
When asked if they get along with each other, Gutierrez said, “Yes, we get along, but we live our lives separately.” She refers to not spending time with each other mostly because Hernandez spends more time at his family’s households (his children whom he left back in Oaxaca) on the weekends and on holidays although they live together in the same household.
Now 79-year-old Hernandez has retired from his job as a pizza cook and stays at home, watching TV, going to his regular checkups and going outside for long walks. He has seven children living in New York and currently lives with his two youngest daughters and his wife. But, he says, “I plan to go back to Mexico. I plan to stay over there. I don’t plan to die here and be here.”