Speaker 1: Hi listeners, just a quick heads up out of the
Speaker 1: shadows tell stories of people fleeing and living in sometimes
Speaker 1: violent environments. There's a photo of my dad standing on
Speaker 1: the rooftop of a building in Los Angeles. He's wearing
Speaker 1: a baseball tea and crisp dark jeans with sharp creases.
Speaker 1: He has his thumbs in his pockets, and he's staring
Speaker 1: at the camera with dark shades. On the background is
Speaker 1: a city skate of eighties l A, where he spent
Speaker 1: his wild teenage years. It's honestly one of the coolest
Speaker 1: pictures I've ever seen of my dad. He looks rebellious, fearless.
Speaker 1: It's like he's on top of the world. After leaving
Speaker 1: in a fifteen, l A became his second home. He
Speaker 1: had a girl fast, but he still kept a sense
Speaker 1: of adventure. When I was growing up, he got so
Speaker 1: excited talking about his childhood and Las Deliciastan it sounded idyllic.
Speaker 1: That's where he climbed tall mango trees to pick the
Speaker 1: juiciest ones, where he swam against the tides of the
Speaker 1: flowing rivers. In his colonna, where he helped harvest and
Speaker 1: cultivate coffee with his bare hands. He was also kind
Speaker 1: of mischievous, like when he used the slingshot to kill
Speaker 1: iguanas to roast and eat them. He loved to tell
Speaker 1: tall tales about the elaborate pranks he pulled on his friends.
Speaker 1: Recalling these stories always filled him with childlike joy. But
Speaker 1: that place, it's just a memory now because my dad
Speaker 1: hasn't been back to a Santrador since the nineties, before
Speaker 1: I was even born. I always hope to see the
Speaker 1: paradise he described. He promised me and my whole family
Speaker 1: that he would show us one day. That day has
Speaker 1: yet to come. When I interviewed my dad for this podcast,
Speaker 1: I accidentally revealed something that I don't think he ever
Speaker 1: really thought about. See, my mom is Mexican, and most
Speaker 1: of the culture I inherited, like food, music, and traditions,
Speaker 1: came from my mom. She learned to make bussas, pan guomboyo,
Speaker 1: and salvitamalis to expose us to a piece of my
Speaker 1: dad's culture. So when I told him that culturally I
Speaker 1: identified more with my Mexican side, I caught him off guard.
Speaker 1: I could see the frustration move across his face. I
Speaker 1: think I wounded him. He didn't necessarily avoid introducing me
Speaker 1: to his culture. I just think he was guarded. It
Speaker 1: took me a long time to understand the cultural shame
Speaker 1: associated with being Central American in this country. It was
Speaker 1: dangerous to be Salvadoran when he was growing up. To survive,
Speaker 1: he traded climbing mango trees for climbing tall building thousands
Speaker 1: of miles from home. He had to shed who he
Speaker 1: was and become a new person in America. It was
Speaker 1: easier that way. Growing up path Salvie and Mexican was
Speaker 1: a little confusing. I felt like I didn't know a
Speaker 1: part of myself. My dad's stories gave us an idealized
Speaker 1: version of polished to focus on the good parts. I
Speaker 1: think he was doing it to shield us from the
Speaker 1: brutality of the Civil War or how unwelcome he felt
Speaker 1: being Central American in the US. But interviewing my dad
Speaker 1: for this podcast, I was able to witness his real
Speaker 1: feelings about leaving home, growing up in our own country,
Speaker 1: and how he was forced to hide parts of himself
Speaker 1: from his family from me. I'm Karen Garcia and I'm
Speaker 1: a child of eighty six and this is Out of
Speaker 1: the Shadows, a podcast about the legacy of the Amnesty
Speaker 1: Bill known as Urka. Immigrants and their children have long
Speaker 1: lived in the shadows of America. Their destinies aren't just
Speaker 1: shaped by where they come from, but by their particular
Speaker 1: place in history. In the lives of millions of immigrants
Speaker 1: and their children were changed by one lucky stroke of
Speaker 1: a pen by an unlikely allied President, Ronald Reagan. This
Speaker 1: podcast examines the ripple effects the bill had on first
Speaker 1: generation kids of immigrants, who are navigating intergenerational mobility and
Speaker 1: transforming the cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival,
Speaker 1: and of course hope. My dad goes by many names.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know his name was us until I
Speaker 1: was eight. Chungo is what they called him in the States.
Speaker 1: They didn't call him us or Chewi, but Jesse that's
Speaker 1: what my mom called him. My dad migrated from Rador
Speaker 1: to this country in ninety nine, about a year before
Speaker 1: the Civil War started, and it was by pure luck
Speaker 1: that he managed to escape that violence. Julio, If you
Speaker 1: ask him why he came, he'll tell you a bunch
Speaker 1: of different reasons. One of those was that his family
Speaker 1: was too poor to pay for school books, but he
Speaker 1: heard from a cousin who was in the police force
Speaker 1: that the government was forced to enlisting kids into the military.
Speaker 1: Daniel and la policia. You may say, um, jo let
Speaker 1: me say I think we star can say as you
Speaker 1: have a completely this his face. He was only fifteen
Speaker 1: when his cousin advised that it would be best to
Speaker 1: disappear and leave in Savador, because when the military sets
Speaker 1: stuff like that, they're not bluffing. See okay, says those
Speaker 1: condo complain. So he came up with a plan. I
Speaker 1: have to stop for a second and say that, to
Speaker 1: this day, it's still one of the wildest things my
Speaker 1: dad has ever told me. His plan was just to leave.
Speaker 1: He didn't leave a note, he didn't say any goodbyes.
Speaker 1: He just left. I guess it would be weird to say,
Speaker 1: hey mom Um, I'm scared for my life and I'm
Speaker 1: leaving forever. No, you can't stop me. What he did say, though,
Speaker 1: is the wild part. Hey mom, I'm going to the river.
Speaker 1: Words that live in infamy in my house. There's a
Speaker 1: lot to impact in that simple phrase. More than anything,
Speaker 1: it says a lot about my dad and how bullish
Speaker 1: he can be. Once he's made up his mind, no
Speaker 1: one can stop him, and sometimes Rio becomes the abridged
Speaker 1: version of his migration story. There's another element to this story,
Speaker 1: his sense of adventures. He was a kid who didn't
Speaker 1: let the looming threat of war stop him from seeing
Speaker 1: the world. So he convinced a friend to tag along,
Speaker 1: and off they went to see the metaphorical river. First,
Speaker 1: they made their way through Gatemala, working odd jobs as
Speaker 1: day labors for a few days, then went NORTHWRD to Mexico.
Speaker 1: Eventually they hopped on a cargo train into the capital,
Speaker 1: Mexico City. That train is now infamously known as Lavestia
Speaker 1: the Beast, and it's how many Central Americans travel to
Speaker 1: the border. Tempo, it's a temple. No, it's I didn't
Speaker 1: have that reputation yet, and my dad says it wasn't
Speaker 1: as dangerous as it is now. In Mexico City, he
Speaker 1: was able to survive by begging for food and the
Speaker 1: kindness of strangers. He met a couple who offered him
Speaker 1: work and a place to sleep. Remember how comediaempo you.
Speaker 1: On his journey, my dad heard about the wondrous things
Speaker 1: that awaited everybody in the United States. He heard that
Speaker 1: you can make money just by sweeping. It must be paradise,
Speaker 1: he thought, in a guilty and yeah, barriendos los Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: assume is here. Whenever he was asked, he used to
Speaker 1: say he was Mexican, keeping his identity close to his
Speaker 1: chest just in case. They left Mexico City and made
Speaker 1: their way to Tijuana on a cargo train with little
Speaker 1: more than a gallon of juice and a gallon of milk.
Speaker 1: On that lonely, bumpy ride, he thought about his mom
Speaker 1: and what she must be thinking when perimente is a
Speaker 1: moment and a moment. Yeah so it it the way
Speaker 1: he rationalized it, and all of his fifteen year old
Speaker 1: wisdom was now. His family had one less mouth to
Speaker 1: feed out of. The shadows will be right back now,
Speaker 1: back to the show. The train ride from Mexico City
Speaker 1: lasted about a month, and once they got to Tijuana,
Speaker 1: they tried to cross the river not once, not twice,
Speaker 1: but three times. The first two times without a coyote,
Speaker 1: they got caught and sent back to Mexico. This is
Speaker 1: where costs playing as Mexican came in handy. They waited
Speaker 1: a few weeks across the third time. They used the
Speaker 1: money from panhandling to hire a coyote and it was
Speaker 1: pretty smooth sailing from there. After crossing into Sunny Serro,
Speaker 1: he made his way to Sunny Los Angeles, where he
Speaker 1: met my mom a year later. They had their first
Speaker 1: kid two years later and named her Sandy, after the
Speaker 1: Olivia Newton John character in Greece, the first movie my
Speaker 1: dad watched when he came to the States. The influx
Speaker 1: of Salvadoran's really started to grow in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: when the region was further destabilized by a civil war.
Speaker 1: Many landed in l A, making them one of the
Speaker 1: largest Latino demographics in the city, but Salvadorian start the
Speaker 1: second most largest growing Latino demographic across the country. The
Speaker 1: state of California is home to more Salvadoran Americans than
Speaker 1: anywhere else the remit instance, and the economic power between
Speaker 1: California and salvador is very real and very tied together.
Speaker 1: That's in the Caio. She is a California assembly member
Speaker 1: and a Salvadoran child of eight six assemblywoman for the
Speaker 1: Northeast and East Los Angeles. Like my dad, she also
Speaker 1: had to grow up quickly. She distinctly remembers what crossing
Speaker 1: felt like, down to what she was wearing in night
Speaker 1: five eight six, crossed over with a coyote from Tijuana
Speaker 1: to sanny See Little to San Diego and ended up
Speaker 1: in Boil Heights. I was five years old, and I
Speaker 1: remember wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt with little red sleeves
Speaker 1: back in the day, which was the style, and my
Speaker 1: hair was in pigtails, and I remember being told to
Speaker 1: be very quiet while we crossed the border. The violence
Speaker 1: forced her and her family to leave. My family lost
Speaker 1: everything during the Civil War, like a lot of families did,
Speaker 1: and it was a matter of you try to survive
Speaker 1: and live in a country ats in turmoil, or you
Speaker 1: try to relocate your family for their own safety, for
Speaker 1: yourself and and it was a really tough choice. It
Speaker 1: was a choice that many Central Americans faced. If you
Speaker 1: lived indor Ga, Nicaragua, you could stay in your home
Speaker 1: and live in fear of dying or leave. Compared to
Speaker 1: the Mexican experience with immigration, Central Americans are an entirely
Speaker 1: different category. They're not recognized as people seeking economic opportunities
Speaker 1: or political refugees, but have characteristics of both well and
Speaker 1: Whatatemala and Al Salvador. The United States had allies in
Speaker 1: the government. Here's cal l a professor of Latin American studies, Alejandro.
Speaker 1: They were authoritarian dictators, sometimes military autocrats, right, that the
Speaker 1: United States supported financially and ideologically. So when the United
Speaker 1: States is supporting their homies in those countries, they can't
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the people that are fleeing and coming to
Speaker 1: the United States saying that your homies are killing me, right,
Speaker 1: They can't say, oh, yeah, you're right, because that would
Speaker 1: implicate the United States in the genocidal violence that was
Speaker 1: occurring in places like what the Milan. My dad very
Speaker 1: narrowly escaped the horrors of that war. A few years
Speaker 1: after he arrived in l A, he caught a phone
Speaker 1: call that the military had palmed schools in his town.
Speaker 1: Yok Those America Midas spoiler. I would h w Colonia,
Speaker 1: um um oh Martine La yeah, La Colonia. You're looking.
Speaker 1: His schoolmates were bombed, he says, their bodies found in pieces.
Speaker 1: Many others disappeared, never to be heard from again. Their
Speaker 1: names were Suyapa, Natural and Martin. Hearing my dad retelling
Speaker 1: these events and such painful detail was surreal. It was
Speaker 1: like as he was saying the words, he was grappling
Speaker 1: with his mortality, as if it had just hit him
Speaker 1: that he could have been one of those kids. If
Speaker 1: my dad hadn't listened to his cousin, he would have
Speaker 1: been another tragic death caught in a military bombing. So
Speaker 1: will cause Central Americans to start coming to the US.
Speaker 1: After World War Two, Central America experienced rapid modernization and industrialization,
Speaker 1: which was fueled by foreign investment, and the region has
Speaker 1: a history of money and power being held by wealthy
Speaker 1: elites or oligarchs. This aggressive industrialization displaced impoverished Campesinos and
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples. Any form of protests or organizing was met
Speaker 1: with government suppression and in tens of thousands of cases death.
Speaker 1: People were kidnapped out of their homes, tortured, and murdered
Speaker 1: by death squads. Sympathy of your resistance groups swelled and
Speaker 1: death tools mounted, leaving citizens little choice but to join
Speaker 1: the resistance and fight, or abandoned their homes. The seventies
Speaker 1: marked a long decade of government assassinations of progressive priests, journalists,
Speaker 1: and anyone pleading for basic human rights. Large scale massacres
Speaker 1: took place in Guatemala in that same period. Bodies of
Speaker 1: victims were piled in mass graves, left in ditches, or
Speaker 1: dumped on the side of the road. In Nicaragua, the
Speaker 1: Sandinistas replaced a dictatorship with the socialist government, and the
Speaker 1: US didn't like that because it was fighting the Cold
Speaker 1: War against communism. In America's eyes, the Sandinista victory started
Speaker 1: to feel a lot like the Cuban Revolution. They feared
Speaker 1: that Central American countries would be infected with ideas communism.
Speaker 1: The US government invested billions to stop the spread, especially
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Once Ronald Reagan was elected president, his
Speaker 1: administration supported the right wing contras who opposed the elected
Speaker 1: Sandinistas and Nicaragua, all while funneling arms and money to
Speaker 1: the Salvadoran government fighting its own citizen rebellion. Some of
Speaker 1: that financial support came through congressional funding, but not all
Speaker 1: of it. In Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials secretly provided aid
Speaker 1: to the contrast by selling arms to Iran against its
Speaker 1: own embargo. In Guatemala, Reagan's people continued to supply weapons
Speaker 1: and training to the Guatemalan army, covertly supporting acts of
Speaker 1: genocide against indigenous people. Since I have been so closely
Speaker 1: associated with the cause of the Contras, the big question
Speaker 1: during the hearings was whether I knew of the diversion.
Speaker 1: I was aware of the resistance was receiving funds directly
Speaker 1: from third countries and from private efforts, and I endorsed
Speaker 1: those endeavors wholeheartedly. But let me put this in capital letters.
Speaker 1: I did not know about the diversion of funds. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I didn't know there were excess funds. Things heated up
Speaker 1: with the assassination of Bishop Oscar Rometro Frometo, spoke out
Speaker 1: against the death squad slaughters and fought for the rights
Speaker 1: of poor Salvadoran people. He was publicly shot while saying
Speaker 1: mass in the Savadoran army killed more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: civilians in the town of venost These events represented the
Speaker 1: Salvadoran government's forceful retaliation against anyone pleading for human rights,
Speaker 1: all underwritten by the US. In a slick spokesman for
Speaker 1: anti communist resistance in Central America, was elected president with
Speaker 1: full support of the Reagan administration. It's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: to welcome President Duarty, a close friend the United States
Speaker 1: will continue to working with President Duarty to build peace, prosperity,
Speaker 1: and freedom in his own land and to bring stability
Speaker 1: throughout Central America. It's been a great pleasure to exchange
Speaker 1: views with him today. In what thea a civil war
Speaker 1: began percolating in the sixties and lasted over thirty years,
Speaker 1: devastating the country. I believe the number is the famous
Speaker 1: number is eight of the people who were killed during
Speaker 1: the US backed and supported civil war in Gatemala were
Speaker 1: indigenous people. More than half a million indigenous people were
Speaker 1: killed de plassified. US documents show that the CIA collaborated
Speaker 1: in training pro government troops to target, torture and eliminate
Speaker 1: civilian dissidents. Right, those numbers are are are absurd. You
Speaker 1: know the result is was a genocide. When everybody's favorite
Speaker 1: President Ronald Reagan comes into office, he just starts rolling
Speaker 1: over and forking over mad money to the Watermelond military
Speaker 1: and the Watermelond government. The US government under Regan led
Speaker 1: to seven point nine million dollars in military funding, despite
Speaker 1: the mounting reports of human rights violations. Margarita Valencia fled
Speaker 1: Guatemala for the United States. In her plan was to
Speaker 1: use a borrowed green card to cross, but her odyssey
Speaker 1: veered off course when she landed in a Tijuana jail
Speaker 1: cell Inmala and I don't there are two ways to cross,
Speaker 1: she says, one by plane and the other by bus,
Speaker 1: which was longer and more dangerous. She flew to Tijuana
Speaker 1: and she tried to cross that day, pero the sae no.
Speaker 1: Sadly they were caught. She had to spend the night
Speaker 1: in jail, where she told people she was Mexican, but
Speaker 1: someone cut on don't isn't American guy? And then Aligasna.
Speaker 1: She recalls the cell being packed and full of children.
Speaker 1: There wasn't even a place to sit dar Ea Guando Embarrassed.
Speaker 1: One of the guards came and asked for a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks in exchange for letting her go, So she paid
Speaker 1: and she was free. After that, she just waited in
Speaker 1: a hotel until the coyotes helped her cross the border.
Speaker 1: She remembers a visceral image being on the other side.
Speaker 1: Ela had just rained, she says, so the gusts of
Speaker 1: wind were so powerful that they stretched out a giant
Speaker 1: American flag. She took the billowing flag as a symbol,
Speaker 1: saying welcome. Three years later, she raised enough money to
Speaker 1: bring her children to the US. She used money from
Speaker 1: a gundina, which is like a money lending agreement where
Speaker 1: each person agrees to pitch in the same amount of
Speaker 1: money and you take turns receiving it. It's like the
Speaker 1: Latino version of crowdfunding. Using those funds, she was able
Speaker 1: to pay to cross her kids. Her son, Elmer Roldan,
Speaker 1: an education advocate, remembers how desensitized everyone was to the
Speaker 1: war in Guatemala. The war is something that was so normalized.
Speaker 1: For Elmer, the sudden loss of his mother is still
Speaker 1: palpable today. I remember the day my mom left. I
Speaker 1: remember her saying words to me and kneeling and being emotional,
Speaker 1: and me understanding that I wasn't going to see her
Speaker 1: for a long time. I didn't understand that that long
Speaker 1: time would mean three years. Elmer, his cousin, and his
Speaker 1: niece all journeyed together to cross the border. I remember
Speaker 1: once being inside of a trunk for Lord knows how long.
Speaker 1: It felt like an eternity. It could have been thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: but you know, when you're nine years old, everything feels
Speaker 1: like forever. But two days into their journey, they were
Speaker 1: robbed of everything. I remember the military stopping the buzz
Speaker 1: and two soldiers getting in and basically telling people, you
Speaker 1: give us all your money now or owls, we take
Speaker 1: you in. Right And the military was feared, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it. It goes back to the earlier topic
Speaker 1: of the war, right Like, everybody knew you don't mess
Speaker 1: with the military because they were killers, right Like, that's
Speaker 1: what they did, right Like, they were trained to do
Speaker 1: one thing, and that was to kill, and so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think twice about giving them your money if they
Speaker 1: asked for it. They had no one to turn to
Speaker 1: for help. They had to sleep with pigs, suffering the smells.
Speaker 1: And at that time, I guess the still a law
Speaker 1: that if you were a miner, you could be crossed
Speaker 1: into the US with the with a birth certificate. And
Speaker 1: it was like maybe six am. My, you know, my
Speaker 1: aunt and uncle went. They picked me up, They gave
Speaker 1: me my cousin's clothes and then put me in the
Speaker 1: back of an astro van. We crossed the border, and
Speaker 1: I remember falling asleep on the journey here and then
Speaker 1: waking up and ban around the city. Fortunately, once they
Speaker 1: got to the border, they were able to cross without
Speaker 1: any more pitfalls. It's one thing to cross and leave
Speaker 1: your home, but it's an entirely different thing existing as
Speaker 1: a Central American in the US. Out of the Shadows
Speaker 1: will be right back now, back to the show. Growing
Speaker 1: up here, Elmer felt pressured to erase is true heritage.
Speaker 1: I understood that later on, but at the time, as
Speaker 1: a child, all it felt like was Mexican hegemony is
Speaker 1: being forced upon me, and my own Central American identity
Speaker 1: isn't welcomed in that because unless I'm willing to fully
Speaker 1: identify as Mexican and let go of my roots, then
Speaker 1: I don't really fit into Matcha and fit into um
Speaker 1: whatever is being created over here south Central. It was
Speaker 1: just easier to you know, to gravitate towards Black culture
Speaker 1: than it was to gravitate towards Mexican culture. At the time,
Speaker 1: he wasn't alone Grian Guatemalan in South Central, Alejandro noticed
Speaker 1: that Central Americans were treated differently. I remember specifically that
Speaker 1: the reason that a lot of the Latino kids would
Speaker 1: bully him is because he was from O Salvador, and
Speaker 1: I remember that being a lesson for me as a
Speaker 1: kid to be like Yo, this is what a moling thing,
Speaker 1: and this whole thing that like how my mom talks
Speaker 1: and how my family talks. We gotta keep that stuff
Speaker 1: in the house, you know. That stuff don't don't belong
Speaker 1: out here, because these Mexicans they're mean. The social threat
Speaker 1: of being Central American was deepened by the larger political
Speaker 1: context driven by Reagan administration rhetoric. The first kind of
Speaker 1: interpretations and introductions of Central Americans to the United States
Speaker 1: on television, to the popular American media was through Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan's presentation of how dangerous we were right as communists
Speaker 1: and leftists, you know, leftist socialists right like, who were
Speaker 1: seeking to overthrow democracy in Central America, and that we
Speaker 1: were so close to the United States. Right. So the
Speaker 1: figure is already imprinted in the national imagination of US
Speaker 1: as threats right like and then communist stress at the
Speaker 1: at the height of the Cold War. My dad has
Speaker 1: sus was one of those he doesn't like to talk
Speaker 1: about his first few years in the States. He was
Speaker 1: a teenager with out any parental supervision, forced to grow
Speaker 1: up in a country that didn't see him as a kid,
Speaker 1: but as a threat. It was a normal Friday night
Speaker 1: my dad had just finished a long shift working in
Speaker 1: a sweatshop making jeans. His friends invited him out and
Speaker 1: they were going to meet up at a friend's house
Speaker 1: in Koreatown. But this friend was taking a while. Five
Speaker 1: minutes turns to ten minutes, and he still won't come out.
Speaker 1: They noticed an empty parked car with the windows rolled down,
Speaker 1: and my dad's friends dared him to haunt the horn.
Speaker 1: Always looking for an opportunity to make his friends laugh.
Speaker 1: My dad agrees, just as it hanks the horn that
Speaker 1: he's shouting from a nosy neighbor, not wanting to get caught.
Speaker 1: My dad and his friend's book it just as they
Speaker 1: started running. The cops cool. They didn't see him as
Speaker 1: a kid playing a dumb joke. They saw a brown
Speaker 1: kid running away from a potential grand theft auto, a thug,
Speaker 1: a gang member. They shouted at him with guns drawn,
Speaker 1: put him and all his friends and handcuffs and took
Speaker 1: them in at the station. He was scared and alone,
Speaker 1: desperately trying to tell the cops that he was a miner,
Speaker 1: he was in the wrong place. The cops didn't care. Instead,
Speaker 1: they jammed a baton in his stomach, knocking the air
Speaker 1: out of his lungs. My dad had never so alone.
Speaker 1: His parents were so na thousands of miles away. While
Speaker 1: he was alone, gasping for air in a jail cell,
Speaker 1: he was assigned a public defender who only spoke broken Spanish,
Speaker 1: advising him to plead guilty so he could be released.
Speaker 1: He had no one to call, no one to turn
Speaker 1: to for help, no one to even post bail for him.
Speaker 1: It was his only choice. If I plead guilty, I
Speaker 1: can leave, he thought, not considering how that would impact
Speaker 1: his future. He didn't know that he was signing away
Speaker 1: his freedom. The irony is my dad didn't even know
Speaker 1: how to drive. But that arrest resulted in a felony
Speaker 1: that he forcibly pleaded guilty too. That felony still haunts
Speaker 1: him today, like a shameful shadow, following him wherever he goes.
Speaker 1: By the time IRKA came around a few years later,
Speaker 1: that felony, well, it automatically disqualified him. He heard that
Speaker 1: if you were a felon, you couldn't apply. He was
Speaker 1: scared that if he did, he would be deported. The
Speaker 1: struggle for a lot of Central Americans to get IRKA
Speaker 1: was real. You remember Margarita, the Guatemalan refugee, well, she
Speaker 1: didn't get IRKA either. In fact, she didn't get her
Speaker 1: legal status until almost a decade later, when she could
Speaker 1: finally come out of the shadows. Mistis. She felt really
Speaker 1: happy and calm, she says. The first thing she did
Speaker 1: buy a ticket to go back to Guatemala. But there
Speaker 1: were Central Americans who applied for IRKA and got it,
Speaker 1: like Sonja Escobar who came from Servador. Oh, I can't
Speaker 1: believe in myself. I was, I was grateful. I was crying.
Speaker 1: I was. I remember, I want to meet President Ringer.
Speaker 1: I want to go see him. She was so moved
Speaker 1: by it that she and her co workers sent Reagan
Speaker 1: a personal letter what he did to them and signed him.
Speaker 1: We make a letter. I remember, we make a letter
Speaker 1: and we all signed the letter and send it to him.
Speaker 1: We didn't know he received it, but we were so grateful.
Speaker 1: That was It was just the best thing in the
Speaker 1: right time. I wish they can do it again for
Speaker 1: so many people like me. But there were multiple realities
Speaker 1: for Central Americans under IRKA. My dad couldn't apply for
Speaker 1: the American Dream because of some ship he did as
Speaker 1: a kid. He went from a starry eyed adventurer, hopeful
Speaker 1: and excited to watch American movies, listen to rock and roll,
Speaker 1: and hang out with friends, to being on the outside
Speaker 1: looking in the illusions of a new paradise that he
Speaker 1: heard of on his journey started to crumble. It was
Speaker 1: like he was in a gilded cage, never allowed to leave,
Speaker 1: stuck in a continuous purgatory of being undocumented, never allowed
Speaker 1: to show his children where he was born, only sharing
Speaker 1: glowing memories of his youth. The promise my dad made
Speaker 1: to his kids about showing them as avallor never came true.
Speaker 1: He missed growing up with his siblings and friends, and
Speaker 1: missed his parents funerals. He's still in that cage today,
Speaker 1: still undocumented. So when I think about the shame my
Speaker 1: dad feels associated with being Central American, I understand it.
Speaker 1: My dad came to this country because of men like Reagan,
Speaker 1: who further destabilized and tore apart Central America, then denied
Speaker 1: people like my father a chance to build a future here.
Speaker 1: Urica was a blessing for my mom, who was able
Speaker 1: to apply and get amnesty, but accursed from my dad.
Speaker 1: A reminder that he's still in the cage inside Paradise.
Speaker 1: When my mom applied and got her green card, it
Speaker 1: felt like a weight had been lifted. I felt freer.
Speaker 1: She says, like there was more security here, but she
Speaker 1: knows how lucky she was. A few years later, she
Speaker 1: was able to become a citizen, something that she could
Speaker 1: never have imagined in her why eldest streams. She was
Speaker 1: able to go back to Mexico and visit her family.
Speaker 1: She was able to attend my grandparents funerals and grieve
Speaker 1: with their siblings and their childhood home. My dad, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, never got to say goodbye to his parents.
Speaker 1: As kids, my siblings and I naively thought that my
Speaker 1: dad kept us from knowing him and where he came from.
Speaker 1: But looking at the photo of my dad on the rooftop,
Speaker 1: I still see the kid in him, the one who
Speaker 1: swam in rivers and climb mango trees and scaled tall buildings.
Speaker 1: Even if he had to leave those parts of himself
Speaker 1: in Osa, He's still full of adventure. Now. When I
Speaker 1: hear my dad say that he wanted to adventure, I
Speaker 1: believe him. It's like he's focusing on the rosy parts
Speaker 1: of his youth, because no matter what, they can never
Speaker 1: take that away from him. And someday soon, when my
Speaker 1: dad is ready and able to go back to it, Sador,
Speaker 1: We'll go to the river, except this time not to escape,
Speaker 1: but together as a family's coming. Next time I'm Out
Speaker 1: of the Shadows, we look at the immediate and long
Speaker 1: term impacts of Urka. If you love this podcast, please
Speaker 1: help us get the word out by following, rating, reviewing,
Speaker 1: and sharing it with your friends. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Caesar Hernandez and me Karen Garcia. I also guest
Speaker 1: hosted the episode. It's also written, edited, hosted, an executive
Speaker 1: produced by Patti Rodriguez and Eric Galindo. It's produced by Betticrdanas,
Speaker 1: Karen Lopez and Gabby Watts. It's sound design, mixed and
Speaker 1: mastered by Jesse nice Longer. Our studio engineer is Clay Hillenburg.
Speaker 1: Out of the Shadows is a production of Seeing Me,
Speaker 1: Other Productions and School of Humans in partnership with I
Speaker 1: Hearts Michael Tura Podcast Network. The podcast has also executive
Speaker 1: produced by Giselle Bantes, Virginian Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Chad Crowley.
Speaker 1: Our marketing and our team is led by Jasmine Mehea.
Speaker 1: Original music by a Arenas, and if you loved his
Speaker 1: cover of Los Caminos La viva this podcast theme song,
Speaker 1: you can live in to it on all music platforms.
Speaker 1: Historical audio for Out of the Shadows comes from the
Speaker 1: Reagan Presidential Library and the National Archives. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Ian Vargas, Alex and Ali, Caitlin Becker, gob Chavran, Daisy Church,
Speaker 1: Angel Lopez Glendo, Julianna Gamis, Ryan Gordon, Brian Matheson, Claudia Marti, Corna,
Speaker 1: Oscar Ramirez, John Rodriguez, Juan Rodriguez, Joshua Sandoval, Eric Sclar,
Speaker 1: Tony Sorrentino, and Megan tan