by Jennifer Patino–

While in detention at Butler County Jail in Ohio, Yanelli Hernandez attempted suicide twice.

Instead of being released while her case was pending, she was detained for nine grueling months, which kept her from receiving the comprehensive treatment and family support that she so desperately needed.

Joaquin Luna, a student who would have benefited if the DREAM Act was passed, took his own life last November. Hernandez’s situation, similar to that of Luna’s,  sparked an outcry from immigrant rights activists who launched a campaign on her behalf.

They even started a campaign to reach out to undocumented immigrants who are facing mental health challenges.

“For ten years we have been forced to wait for the Dream Act, and as a result, we have lost many Dream Act students to suicide,” Mohammad Abdollahi, a co-founder of DreamActivist.org said in a message to supporters.

Despite four thousand telephone calls to ICE Director John Morton and seven thousand signatures on a petition asking that she be allowed to remain with her family, Yanelli Hernandez is now alone in Mexico.

While the Obama administration is working on reducing the wait time for families separated while applying for residency by a harsh ten-year penalty for immigration violations, this does nothing to help those who don’t already have a path to citizenship.

It does even less to address the medical needs of those in detention who, like Hernandez, are not free to seek help from their doctors and families when they need it most.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, hoping to woo the Latino vote before the Florida primary, expressed support for a stripped version of the DREAM Act that restricts the path to citizenship to those who join the armed forces.

Aside from being completely unnecessary since military service is already a path to citizenship, this militarized DREAM Act could send a dangerous message to at-risk immigrants that they won’t matter until they’ve put themselves in harm’s way.

For a decade now, the DREAM Act has been used as a tool to galvanize the Latino voting block. One begins to wonder whether there is anything that could take its place as a campaign issue if the legislation were to ever pass.

For far too long now, we’ve been talking about the big dreams that these bright young men and women have for their future and how we could benefit from them as a country. But that’s all we’ve done—talk. Especially around election time.

And what does Yanelli Hernandez dream of now?

“I hope that one day I’ll be able to be with all of you again,” she wrote to her mother while awaiting deportation.

Politicians can’t keep using these young people’s fragile hopes as campaign strategies without having it exact a terrible toll.

After Hernandez was deported, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance created Undocuhealth.org to help immigrants like her who, disheartened by their challenges, have contemplated taking drastic action.

Stories like those of Joaquin Luna and Yanelli Hernandez show that the time for talking, dreaming, and talking about dreaming is definitely over.

What we need is for both parties to come together and enact comprehensive immigration reform to help those who are struggling—both in our detention centers and in the shadows.

Hilda Solis and Susana Martinez

Unstoppable Change
Things have changed.  Mama and Papa have long retired, and when Mama’s not helping look after the grandchildren she’s planning how to get Papa to go on that South American cruise <>  she’s always dreamed of.  She sees how well her sons and daughters are doing, and she expects her grandchildren will do even better, or at least they will if she has her way; and when she watches the television news it’s evident to her that not only have Latino men begun to take their proper place in the mainstream of American society, but that Latina women are in step with them.  They no longer need a man’s voice to speak the words, and to legitimize their ideas, because they are now more than capable of speaking for themselves, and translating their ideas into action.  She sees Latina women involved in all aspects of business and civic life, and perhaps most importantly for her grandchildren’s future, she sees them becoming increasingly involved in politics on both sides of the aisle, and in trying to shape what American society should look like.

Hilda Solis
Perhaps most prominent amongst them in the past few years has been Hilda Solis, who joined President Obama’s cabinet as Secretary when he came to office in 2009.  Not that she was unknown before that, having served two years as a California assemblywoman, before serving six as a State Senator, being the first Latina woman elected to that office.  In 2000 she moved into national view when she took the trip to Washington as Congresswoman for California’s 31st congressional, and remained in the House until the call came from the President–Elect in 2008.

Recently Solis has been front and center in promoting Obama’s proposed Jobs Act which aims to improve employment prospects by reducing payroll tax for small businesses and 160 million workers, and give tax credits for employing veterans; maintain numbers in teaching, police and for fire fighters; invest in infrastructure projects, and reform and extend unemployment insurance.  Unsurprisingly in an election year, the proposals are a matter of contention between Democrats and Republicans, but Solis has been notable in her advocacy for the Jobs Act and for the benefits she believes it will bring to business as well as job seekers and essential public sector workers.

Solis has drawn much flack over the years from her conservative opponents, but has skilfully ignored most of it.  At only fifty four years of age it seems unlikely that a woman with so many achievements behind her is likely to stop soon, and she perhaps has even greater ambitions for her future political career.

Susana Martinez
In that if nothing else she has something in common with Republican Susana Martinez, Governor of New Mexico, who has faced equally hostile criticism from liberals, particularly over her stand on illegal immigration.  Elected as Governor in 2010, she is not only the first female occupant of that office in her state, but the first Latina woman to win a gubernatorial election for either party in the whole of the United States.

As the granddaughter of ‘illegal’ immigrants, Martinez stance on the subject is perhaps unexpected, but she has been consistent in arguing that they have no rights to remain and no place in American life.  Since becoming Governor she has signed an executive order requiring police and state officials to check the immigration status of criminal suspects, and made unsuccessful efforts to repeal legislation that allows undocumented immigrants to acquire the same driving license as citizens in the state.

In a state that is considered strongly Democrat, and which gave a 15 point advantage to Obama in the last Presidential election, some argue that Martinez won the race to be Governor not because of her own efforts, but largely because her Democratic opponent was tainted by his association with former Governor Bill Richardson, who was under investigation for improper business dealings.  However, since her election her polling figures have remained impressive.  As late as last December it was reported that as well as the near universal support of Republicans in the state, she also elicited a positive reaction with 32% of Democratic voters and had a 48/38 lead amongst independents.  Although New Mexico only carries five Electoral College votes, with the Martinez’s ability to capture wide spread appeal it is perhaps not surprising that she is being spoken of as a potential Vice-Presidential candidate for 2012.

Making Mama Proud
Certainly these are two Latina politicians to watch out for in the future, but there are many others already snapping at their heels.  Meanwhile Mama continues to keep one keen eye on the cruise brochures and the other on the progress of the next generation of Latina women.

Rose window at Chartres Cathedral

by Yoly Zentella–

About 200 children, nine tightly robbed, black habited nuns, eight bright but austere classrooms divided in half, separating the sexes, and at each desk, a bottle of blue-black fountain pen ink: this was the stage of the urban New York City working class Roman Catholic school, circa 1960s, I attended.

Our nuns, stern and stoic as they were , with only one among them being known to smile, were custodians of this small, immaculate, marble floored, parochial school occupying two stories. Children – Irish, Italian, and a sprinkling of assorted Latinos – ages 6-14 attended daily, quietly, so that only the black, swaying, rosary beads, hanging from the nun’s belted waist to her ankle, could be heard as she glided down the hall.
There was one classroom for each grade. In those days there were no special services; every student worked hard in class. If you didn’t pass you repeated the grade. There were rarely behavior problems.

We received a simple but well-rounded education, prayer book Latin, Gregorian chant – sung at High Mass and special feast days – catechism theology and Catholic art lessons on Roman, Medieval and Renaissance church symbolism. How we would astonish the upper classes at the out-of-our-league Metropolitan Art Museum when we would stand before the paintings during a class trip or on brief, unsupervised juvenile jaunts, analyzing aloud the symbolism in the Flemish or Italian triptychs! Working class children should be prepared for work in the factories, industry, service, not to view paintings as if they were art connoisseurs on holiday on the south of France. The upper classes bought expensive art books to learn that a palm in the hand of St. Lucy meant martyrdom. They attended museum lectures to learn what the dedicated but often impatient and perpetually annoyed looking nuns, grand-daughters of Irish immigrants, taught us.

The school was small, and I knew every inch of it by heart, with each inch being much like the other. But there was one corner of the school, tucked away in the tiny principal’s office, that was special. It housed a cardboard box, a parallel to the box that the cabaret, scantily clad, cigarette girl carried, securely held by a band around her neck. She would  coquettishly ask the tuxedoed men drinking cocktails, “cigars, cigarettes?” A pretty standard scene in black and white movies, circa 1940s!  Instead, the box in the office kept antidotes to sin, the weapons of repentance – religious articles for sale, among which were a variety of crisp, new, often gold-edged Holy Pictures. My contrasting  boxes would most likely be considered by the nuns to be sacrilegious, sinful, or both. Better to keep my observations private!

Weekly, a well-behaved student was picked to take the box from classroom to classroom, silently hawking, among other objects, beautiful 2 x 4 replicas of scenes from the past – joy, ecstasy, insight, conversion, eyes looking to heaven, and martyrdom. I was never chosen for this task; the nuns knew better. I might have taken the opportunity to flirt with a boy or two, or give away rosaries, the plastic ones, at least. Charity! While I didn’t really want to be a hawker, I did relish being near the pictures that didn’t speak, that begged to be accepted in their frozen state. I was intrigued by their fragmented stories,  much as I was by the mural that spanned three of the inside walls of the main church, the mother of the Catholic school.

It was a mural of larger than life saints, a parade of doctors of the church, martyrs, preachers, mystics, all crowned with halos except one, and curiously all White, except one, a female, Native American, Blessed Kateri. I always thought she and I resembled each other. The saints were separated by gender, males to the left, females to the right, each animated, theatrically posed, each holding a symbol in their hands or against their breasts -a prayer book, a palm, a wheel, a crucifix, roses – depending on their particular roles in the story of the church and the century.
The figures were splendid oil paintings – prominent above the sanctuary – soft colors and gold-edged halos, all in procession toward the absolving Lamb of God. They also were not offering any clues about themselves, not even of the nuances of their spirituality, the frailty of their convictions, or their personal perceptions of the potential conflict between church and state. They revealed only what we had learned during religious instruction, which was standard and shallow at best.

As Catholic school children we learned a more simplified version of the lives of the saints, most likely based on Jacobus’ hagiographical accounts. But one also had to have spent summers pouring over library books of myths and legends to connect the saints to archetypes. Perhaps this was my fascination with that pious parade that I could not keep my eyes off of when we, the class, were in the mother church for special feast days or  for confession. I so wanted to have that mural in my bedroom where I could scrutinize the saints for signs of private thoughts.
As I could not have the mural, the Holy Pictures would have to do. I became a young, working class collector, storing them in my daily missal, thinking of the saints’ significant moments, during mass – the holy remembrance of the last supper which had been reduced to a series of clicks by the nuns – signaling to us when to kneel, stand or sit.  Catholic conditioning! As absolute silence was demanded, I reviewed my growing collection and fantasized.

Saint Lucy by Domenico Beccafumi

The saints had taken my adolescent interest, much as the archetypal fairy tale characters had as a child. I had been fortunate that the local public library, eight blocks away, had a good collection of  world fairy tales which I poured over during the summer, when you could check out  ten books at a time. Such immersion had become a pastime in my solitary room, unless I was at my paternal grandmother’s, whose penchant was for Mayan myths and Strauss waltzes played on her ancient piano.

Fairy tales, myths, hagiography, later the symbolism of the Tarot, Jung’s work on dreams, an interest in Medieval and Renaissance history, costume, music, and Mexican spirituality with its particular concept of death, created a mix that sometimes collided, but slowly transformed into an identifiable potpourri of persistent underlying thought.

One category of sainthood appeared prominent in the Catholic school setting – the martyr. Used as a teaching tool in discussions of faith and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, martyrdom  appeared as the juxtaposition to the eternal torment of hell, where death was not even a possibility. Martyrdom carried with it the badge of courage and holiness, of modesty and virtuous faith. Yet, through these stories, we, the children, were also exposed to horrific tortures and death, glossed over by the romantic triumph of death and canonization. Looking back at these descriptions one could say that the nuns were unknowingly preparing us to cope with the real world – of Southern lynchings, of historical anecdotes on mob violence toward Mexicans and Chinese in the 19th century  and reports on 21st century human rights abuses in Iraq. Tales of martyrdom pierced the protective coating of innocence that children came into the world with. By age 12, if we lived in a state of family violence, such accounts reinforced the idea of  physical punishment by parents and nuns, standardizing discipline for many during this era, like David Copperfield’s harsh treatment by both step-father and schoolmaster.

Christo Crucificado by Diego Velazquez

The pain of others appears to be a consistent subject of curiosity. The British spectacle of brutal executions from early times to the 19th century, spanned from the carefully designed execution of royal traitors, with members of the council, the clergy, and servants-in-waiting attending, to the public scenes of mayhem as traitors of lesser social status were drawn and quartered, to the burning of  heretic Catholics and Jesuits. Even during the age of Humanism in England, Thomas Moore, author of Utopia, portrayed as kindly and just, in A Man for All Seasons, relentlessly pursued heretics. For Catholics, the Roman centuries of early faith were backdrops for martyrs, descendants of the crucified  Christ, whose death pallor was caught so well by Velazquez’ in his Christ on the Cross (1632).

Churches in Mexico and Central America, territories that have sustained centuries of conquest, uprisings, and repression with gross violations of human rights have incorporated their historical and collective suffering to those of the crucified Christ, with statues often displaying signs of torture and finally death. Such portrayals are unlike the Euro-American and European Christ figures that seem relatively unharmed while crucified, perhaps displaying a quiet, private reserved suffering, very different from the Mexican and Central American public display of emotion and pain, reflections of a brutal cultural birth and history.

In this part of the world, the figures of Christ, the Virgin, and saints are dressed in native made clothing and cloaks. These life-like statues exist quietly in their niches, surrounded by flowers, candles, tiny rolled up petitions, and copper symbols of parts of the body that need healing, some perhaps already healed. Some figures are rumored to have nocturnal lives, slipping out to perform miracles, and returning to their places, soiled and torn.

In earlier European centuries, to a lesser degree today, the church had become the instrument of the monarchy and the state. During the English Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance, the abbeys kept the faith alive through their vast, sometimes questionable, relic collection, while the suffering of the martyrs continued to be a reminder that such a state, as in the case of the common man, was a path to heaven. Were these ideas usurped by the authorities to control the population?

Martyrdom, as depicted by holy pictures and embedded in relics, has existed within the spectrum of victimization, occupying an earlier space in time, contrasted by  a more contemporary one, within this disturbing continuum. Within the latter component were the sacrificed lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, regarded by some as Cold War martyrs;  their execution described as a “legal lynching” by John-Paul Sartre (Reinholz, 2009).   Different times, similar challenges to authority.

Extreme suffering, and often death, is the price that one pays for challenging and resisting authority, any authority – the tribe, government, the church, parents. History and literature are replete with examples – religious, political and historical figures -  archetypes for ideas and causes. There exist newspaper reports of child abuse and infanticide cases – because a child asked too many questions, cried incessantly, required attention, or otherwise overwhelmed an already emotionally distraught mother – the child should have known better. History tells us of the ambitious Thomas Wyatt, who opted for rebellion at a time of perilous, pre-Elizabethan plots. Wyatt should have known the price for treason; he should have treaded lightly, waiting for better times.

Christ and the martyrs, so closely connected to politics and treason, took part in the war of ideas, pushing and pulling on the dilemma – the survival of the idea or of the believer. This was the stuff of history, of my history that began in the still fresh shadow of World War II.
During the 1950s, NYC was home to refugees and survivors of the European holocaust. Riverside Drive Park, a favorite haunt of my father and I, had one memorial plaque to those who died at the hands of the Nazis. One day we, I about age 8, went on one of our park walks, during which time we contemplated the river and watched the barges slowly drift south on the Hudson. That day we engaged on a discussion of survival when coming to that familiar memorial plaque, and reading it again, my dad may have remarked, to perhaps my comments or questions with, “ I would have lied about my race to save my skin.”  I remember my indignation, arguing with him, questioning his reasoning.  The naiveté of my sweet, quiet dad. Did he really think it would be so easy to lie and remain safe? He underestimated the Nazis, their finely tuned policy of extermination, the requirement of papers, birth certificates, of documents tracing back for several generations, hunting for any trace of Jewishness – a meticulousness underlined by a German psychological fear of engulfment and annihilation, of starvation and humiliation by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, essentially designed to bring Germany to its knees. A desperate grasp at survival.

My thoughts at the time about his remark have remained with me: “What a coward, lying about his roots in order to survive – to save himself.”  A war of ideas between father and daughter!  Decades later, having studied and witnessed the historical and political process of social movements – religious and secular, right and left, I can appreciate his reasoning – not about the realities of fascism because, speaking respectfully,  he lacked a historical foundation, but about survival – the universal human preoccupation with escaping, resisting, attacking, manipulating, lying low, strategies for physical and ideological longevity. Each of us picks our own battles according to values and needs. As a Mexican man with a family his goal was to protect himself and us, in this way preserving his culture. I learned so much from him. I am so much my father’s daughter!

And my dad was a survivor. He had survived poverty, migration from Mexico, a perhaps distant mother, the alcoholism of his father; emotional abuse. He had lived in  Louisiana as an adolescent when Jim Crow was still part of everyday life, lived through New York union strikes – to join or not to join – the Depression, McCarthyism, The Cold War, an unfinished education, a monotonous factory job, the deaths of his parents and brother, and a marriage to a beautiful but emotionally challenging woman. He had been deemed exempt from WW II.  He survived it all, with bearing and serenity; he had been speaking from experience and personal strategy.  He died at age 96.

Holocausts have not only had martyrs; but also those who fought back, fled, lied, and hid.  My father was neither a hero nor a martyr, but one who lived a quiet, retiring, resigned existence, reading his books and waiting with patience for the story of life to pass. Who was the naive and innocent regarding survival? The father or the daughter ? I have refined his strategy.

St. Stephen by Giotto

It is a Catholic school, a hot, sweltering May afternoon. We had been assigned to write and present a composition, in our best script, on our favorite saint. Most of the students in the class picked a martyr. There were as many portrayals of St. Lucy as there were stories about her martyrdom in the 4th century AD.  I chose St. Stephen , stoned to death around 35 AD. I got an A for my efforts; I suspect the high grade was a reward by our Sister for being the only one in the class to have chosen the official forerunner of martyrdom, after Christ. As I waited my turn to present, sweating from the heat – we girls were made to wear our plaid woolen uniforms throughout the school year, to the end of June – I thought how much fun it would be to act out these martyr lives and deaths in a school play, much like the passion plays in the Middle Ages, usually taken from the liturgy, and very popular with the illiterate crowds.  I thought, perhaps I should suggest it. My turn came and went. The play was only a fantasy.  Decades later, I read that the Golden Legend had been stunningly adopted by choreographer Christopher Williams, into a 3 hour dance composition -  performed in May of 2009 in Chelsea – portraying the lives of a number of male saints.  This was a counterpart to the 11 female saint stories, Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, also created by Williams and performed in 2005.

The key to the success of these performances seems to be Williams’ skill for the fantastic – reminiscent of Medieval drama, for dance movement, for the use of Church symbolism, and for staging saintly, sometimes naked figures, coming alive on the stage in “short dance – plays” . Perhaps here, in these creations, decades after my Holy Picture fascination, one could catch a glimpse of, perhaps interpret, the thoughts of some of those frozen-in-expression mural figures. Williams’ portrayal of St. Laurence suggests that “he alone didn’t believe it [his death for the faith] could happen to him.” Was this a glimpse of an optimistic personality, of a thought-out plan for survival, or a personal perspective of politics at that time?

Martyrdom continues to attract our attention. Even for the non-believer, the concept of religious and political martyrs, archetypes of victimization, perhaps of perpetrators, past and present, is a point from which ideas and debates radiate – ethics, morality, loyalty, patriotism, law, justice, revenge, faith, survival. Controversy begins with officially approved or leaked reports on atrocities, newspaper features of child abuse, and innocent holy pictures airbrushed free of bloodstains.  For me, it took a modest neighborhood library, a working class Catholic school and a conversation with a quiet father to cultivate a personal narrative on suffering and survival, to understand the manner in which faith in the unseen and ancestral experiences can emerge from a mix of disparate elements. Perhaps now, the saints and martyrs will share with me what they once would not.

By Felisha Flores–

Paco was rummaging through the old dresser to clean everything out.  Lipsticks, clothes, magazines, even an empty can of spray paint were among its contents.  Most peculiar was a folded piece of paper that fell out from in between the pages of one of his old Lowrider magazines.  It was addressed to Roja in Lisa’s writing:

Mi Amiga, Mi Amor, Roja,

I am writing this letter to you because you are gone, and I miss you.  I know you will be back soon, but I realized this is the first time in our lives, since the first day of kindergarten when we met, that we have been away from each other.  Except for the day you missed school back in fourth grade to go to your tio’s funeral.  I pretended like I was sick and went to the nurse’s office first thing in the morning.

She sent me back after an hour because nothing was wrong with me, but I went back on my own again during lunch.  I had to, I had no one else to sit with or talk to.  I never told you that because I wanted you to think I was like Laura; tough.  Well I’m not like my sister at all.  She leaves people and never looks back.  She doesn’t even care about me or my brothers anymore.

Speaking of brothers, Paco misses you more than I do. I didn’t think it was possible but all he does is mope around the house and clean his stupid truck.  There are a lot of things I’ve never told you.  So I’ll go ahead and tell you some now since I’m never going to give you this letter anyway.

Remember when I first saw you?  I wanted to be you.  You looked so clean in your dress and braided hair.  You were so pretty even then, even for a five year old.  I wanted to claim you first as my friend before anybody else did.  I knew you were going to be something great.  Something everyone else would want, and I’d be able to say you were mine.

Remember when we got into that fight at the car show and you dented Paco’s fender trying to protect me from the other Cholas?  I never told you I saw him rubbing the dent the next day and shaking his head while smiling.  At that moment I knew that no matter what you did, Paco would never be angry with you…
Paco didn’t finish reading the rest of the letter.  His eyes were blurred from the water starting to surface in them.  That last sentence stung.  It hurt to think about the way he treated Roja last time he saw her.  If Lisa was there to witness it, she would have taken back those words and Paco would probably have a black eye from her or something worse.

Paco realized Lisa must have written the letter when Roja was in Europe with her grandparents a few summers back.  Because Lisa was right, they were never apart.  He laughed inside himself wondering how she did it.  How could she remain a constant fixture at Lisa’s side yet a devoted girlfriend to him?  Brother and sister living in the same house must have helped out.

Yet nobody became jealous of the other or demanded anything of one another.  Except for the time Laura came back for Lisa’s quinceanera and was obviously jealous that everyone else lived their lives harmoniously without her.

“Paco!  Tienes hambre?”

He heard Laura shouting from the kitchen at him.  “No!”  He answered back quickly before she came to find him.  He quickly put the letter in the back pocket of his jeans, knowing it would end up in between the pages of another magazine, hidden somewhere in one of his old drawers.  Maybe one day he’d find the courage to read the rest of it.

By the time I was 16 my hair was a mess, brittle, split ends. I was told that the remedy lay in a bottle of good conditioner; but the damage from my adolescent penchant for big hair stemmed from an urgent expression of independence, a drive to establish an adolescent identity separate from that of my family. Conditioner could not help me there.

Not that I wanted to disown my cultural legacy of language, traditions, our foods, religion and ritual. I just wanted to have another dimension that would be connected to my private self, my friends, music, emotions and secrets – to own something else besides what I already had as a first generation, brown adolescent of Mexican descent growing up in a working class Manhattan neighborhood. I wanted to be me, not a shadow of my family, in particular of my mother.

Our New York City neighborhood, where we were the only Mexicans amidst Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican and Dominican families, was encircled and marginalized by the world of the affluent other. We rarely saw them, except when we journeyed to Central or Riverside Parks to ride bikes, watch the river, walk, picnic or take quick, juvenile, romantic romps far from home’s watchful eye. My tight, well connected neighborhood existed in its own working class space. Although I had no sense of social class at that time, I felt that there was a difference between us multicultural barrio kids and them, with whom we rarely associated. They lived in towers, I, in a humble, but secure and immaculate five floor walk up railroad flat, as did most of my friends–although some had their own bedrooms.

Growing up in a quasi-traditional Mexican, Catholic, Spanish speaking family, we were governed by curfews and rules, by strictness, correctness and morality. Attending the neighborhood Catholic school, manned by Irish nuns, added to an already controlled life such as mine. The factor of sin, as described by the black-habited sisters, included a built-in equation which went something like,  five venial sins equal one mortal sin. For an adolescent the fives piled up quickly. Warnings of hell, synonymous to mortal sin, was a much used admonishment tool.

We wore uniforms – Catholic school grey and blue woolen jumpers, blue ties, sweaters, knee socks, and white blouses. The jumpers had to be below the knee, an agony for most of the girls; but after school and on weekends we changed to other uniforms: short skirts, Angel or Dr. Kildare blouses, black stoc

kings, lots of black eyeliner and big hair. We were little, fragile, sheltered, wanna be gang girls.

My very small allowance was spent on hair spray, shampoo, conditioner and combs, lots of plastic ones until I discovered metal ones with small teeth, perfect for teasing hair. I teased a small amount during school days. Anything over an inch would be subject to getting the bubble gum you were chewing pressed into your hair by the stern nun hovering over you. After school, the height was between you and the comb.

Big hair was a time consuming process: washing, conditioning, curling your hair with plastic rollers, end papers and curling gel that smelled like candy, spraying the rolled hair, letting it dry naturally. If you were among the higher status working class you had a hair dryer, but we didn’t. After it dried the rollers were taken out and each section was teased. The hair on the crown of your head was crucial – much serious teasing, up and down until seven inches was reduced to three inch tangled sections, this going on until you had formed a sort of dome on your head. The front portion of hair was teased moderately and smoothed over the dome. The rest of the hair on the back and sides could be swept up into a French twist or left loose.

The job completed and black eyeliner in place, a look in the mirror – I looked great – similar to what you would now call a chola, but at that time the word did not exist for me. Perhaps the closest parallel to this look was the 1940s pachucas, of which I did know of from the Mexican cinema – and, perhaps, it was this similarity that my mother violently objected to, to the perceived immorality that our adolescent dress suggested, or, perhaps it was to the otherness we represented living on our working class island surrounded by the affluent. The gang girl, the chola and the pachuca were three symbols of female rebelliousness and defiance, linked to the deviant uneducated, semi-poor. As working class Mexican immigrants my parents had a need to appear respectable. I was not helping their cause.

From 1961 to 1963, life as I had known it changed.  After countless arguments on the concept of independence, my mother dragged me to her Dominican friend who reluctantly cut it off – the hair and my quest for independence. I sat in her at-home beauty parlor chair and cried bitterly.  The friend avoided looking at me, trying to remain friends with my mom; yet I caught glances of apology and guilt on her face. So it was off. I could still tease it but the height would be minimal. Combed in another style, I had to admit it looked pretty chic.

In 1963 I was graduating from 8th grade and on my way to high school. I chose a public one and spoiled the annual 100% batting average of the 8th graders going to Catholic school. The tall, stern, nun admonished me. I was a traitor; I would surely go to hell. I didn’t care.
A public school sans religiosity and a subway ride away to Chelsea would bring a semblance of freedom from a rigid home.

Suddenly my hair did not matter anymore; the world had opened up for me and I could fly, for a few hours at least. With my shorter, less developed chic cut, high school freedom provided room for reflection – making very clear to me the impact of restrictive moms, nuns and neighborhoods to one’s budding independence.

The end of this era led to a new chapter, where teased hair was replaced by  intellect. Literature, art, history, politics and social consciousness now contributed to my evolving identity; twisting, turning, detouring, adding, discarding and synthesizing the past and present as I struggled to find my place within my culture, my family, my class, my place among the others, and the world. The once aspiring chola would continue to live in working class barrios, comfortably reading Zola and Hardy.

At a recent dance I saw a woman with heavy black eyeliner and big hair. I had to remark to her that her look had brought back memories of my own days. I didn’t tell her what big hair still represented to me, the painful conflict with my mother, my interlude with Catholic nuns, the dormant issue of class, and the path to independence.

Jobs, education and healthcare — in that order — were ranked the top three important issues by Latina moms online in a new survey released today by the web site Mamiverse. The Mamiverse Study of Online Latina Moms and New Media, done in partnership with the research firm MediaFix, surveyed more than 1,000 English-dominant/bilingual online Latina moms ages 25-to-59, who had at least one child between 3 and 18 years of age.

Rounding out the top five issues were immigration and national security. While the survey did reveal the top five pressing political issues for Latina moms online — after all, it is an election year — the survey also provided a snapshot of Latina moms that shatters most stereotypical assumptions.

It’s safe to say that today’s Latina moms are a little more tech-savvy than their peers, have seized technology to help them in almost every aspect of their daily lives — from shopping to helping their kids find information to researching for the best sources to make informative choices about products, services and entertainment options for them and their families.

Yet, with as much technology as Latina moms online use —

75% of those surveyed own or use a laptop, with nearly 50% also owning or using a Smartphone.
Almost 20% own or use a tablet. By comparison, 11% of general market owns a tablet, according to the Pew Research Center and The Economist Group.

the biggest concern for almost 50 percent of Latina moms online, and which has been a source of frustration for every Latina mother who has watched as her children integrate into a world dominated by video games, hanging out at the mall, and DVRing shows like the Kardashians and Jersey Shore, is how to keep the Latino culture still relevant in their children’s lives.

This is one issue where the solution may not be found online.

This article is dedicated to future educator Ms. Dulce Padilla and her family with all my best intentions, respect, and hope.  And to families everywhere who struggle to survive the aftermath of violence.

Many of us have heard or seen the stories about violence from the perpetrator’s view in books like Once a King, Always a King or in TV shows like The Sopranos.  Rob Lowe is preparing to star in a made-for-TV-movie about Drew Peterson and his wives’ deaths.  Many of us will watch and live entertained for the evening.  But families who survive the violence must continue living knowing, “Someone killed a person I love.”

Gloria Padilla

For 20-year-old Pilsen resident Dulce Padilla, this thought is something she lives with every day.  When she was in 4th grade, her brother Adrián was killed due to gang violence.  The thought intensifies, sadly, because when she was in 9th grade, her sister Gloria was murdered and, to this day, the Padilla family does not know why.

Her Brother

According to a March 2002 Sun-Times article, at 2:15 a.m. on Saturday, March 16, Adrián Padilla, 20, was gunned down in the 2100 block of West 18th.

“When that stuff happens, you don’t find out fast.  Everybody had different stories.  I was shocked.  I cried for about a week but I don’t remember it affecting me,” said Dulce, who was eleven at the time.

When she recalls her brother’s death, Dulce says, “I remember it was at a party.  Somebody said this guy was selling drugs and he wasn’t supposed to.  Somebody else said, ‘No, he was in another gang.’  This other guy died the same day with him and another guy got injured but he didn’t want to say anything.”

Eventually Dulce had to see her brother lifeless.  “I remember,” she says, “when we had to go identify the body and I was like, ‘Let’s go! I want to see him.’”  As if evoking her childhood curiosity, Dulce speaks about the incident in detail.

“I remember, first, you go into a room and they have a TV in the corner.  First, they show you the face.  I saw it and I was like, ‘Ohhh.’”  She looked around for others’ reactions and saw that “everyone was crying.  Adrián’s girlfriend’s step dad was one of the chiefs in the gang.  He had a really good friendship with him.  He ran outside of the room and he was in a corner crying, crying, crying.  I was like, ‘He’s gonna die.’  Then they were going to take my brother’s body out of the box and my dad said, ‘No, you’re not going to see him.  Go outside.’ ”

What Dulce did see as she grew up were the consequences of her brother’s gang involvement.  “He was always a rebel.  I would say, ‘Mom where you going?’  ‘To find Adrián!’  The cops would always be at my house,” she recalls as, symbolically, police sirens start to sound outside.  “My mom would tell the cops he’s been gone for this long or I don’t know where he’s at.”

Dulce grew up in a family of four older sisters and two older brothers.  “We were living in a three-bedroom house,” she explains.  This is the same Pilsen home she lives in today.  To help with sleeping arrangements, the Padillas put a mattress in the living room at night.  This is where Dulce slept, on “a colchón in the sala.”One night, she remembers, “It was probably 11 o’clock at night.  My brother left to drop off his girlfriend.  He had gone walking.  He was with my cousin, too.”  Dulce’s short sentences begin to expand as the memory awakens.  “My mom,” Dulce continues, “opens the front door and says, ‘Ay, Adrián.  Ay, Adrián.’”  The tone Dulce uses captures—not any surprise in her mother’s voice—but her disappointment.

“He had a white jacket and it was all full of blood.  My mom took him to the bathroom and cleaned him up.  I was so scared to check it out.”  Dulce knew to stay away from moments like this.  “My mom,” she explains, “would have been like, ‘Vete para allá.  ¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?’ ”
Dulce would never have been able to answer her mother’s question and explain what she, a little girl, was doing there, watching a mother clean the blood off a young man’s face.

But Dulce did know the dangers of her neighborhood.  Despite this, she would hang out with gangbangers at Ruiz Elementary School.  She assumes a devious expression as she recalls their conversations: “They would say, ‘Yesterday I was with my boyfriend and we did this and this.’  I would say, ‘Wow.  Cooool.’  But in the back of my mind I thought, ‘They’re crazy.’”  As it’s always been and probably always will be, “It was cooler to hang out with the bad kids than with the nerds.  You would get more respect,” Dulce states as truth.

Perhaps it was Adrián’s experiences that helped her make good decisions despite bad influences. Once, in eighth grade, when she started acting up in class, Dulce’s teacher warned her and asked her, “Do you want to go to the office?”  Dulce said no.  She changed her behavior but still
sat with the gangbangers at lunch.

Perhaps it was Dulce’s academic achievement that prevented her from getting into more trouble.  She was smart.  In second grade, she was a math genius when it came to competitions on the board.  “One after another, I would beat them,” Dulce says with the pride a gangbanger might show if she were talking about beating up kids.  “They were three-digit addition problems.”

Her Sister

Dulce’s academic progress continued. In the fall of 2006, she started her freshman year at one of the city’s high-achieving selective-enrollment high schools—Jones College Prep.  Despite its diversity and the fact that over 50% of the students came from low-income families like Dulce’s, approximately only twenty-five Latino students enrolled in her freshman class of about 150 students.  Dulce was the only one from Ruiz.

In classes, Dulce didn’t feel smart anymore.  She remembers, “As soon as I saw the white faces, I was like,   ‘They’re super smart.’ ”  She listened to her white classmates, mostly affluent, and thought, “Oh.  White people.”  The intimidation came from the way the white students spoke up.
“A lot of them sounded more proper,” Dulce explains.  “They would always be the ones with their hands raised.”

Dulce remained silent many times in her Survey Literature class.  “I didn’t know how to think like that,” she adds.  “I wasn’t exposed to that kind of thinking, like analyzing.  They were reading between the lines.”  Dulce then realized her elementary literacy education had mostly been focused on “right-there questions.”  She would have to read a book and then be handed questions by the teacher.  She was not prepared to write literary analysis essays.  She struggled and admits, “I gave up in all of my classes freshman year because I thought, ‘I’m not going to get a good grade, so I am not even going to try.’ ”

She met Tania Orozco from the Southeast Side and realized Tania, too, was struggling.  “I started liking Jones,” Dulce says comfortingly.  “I started gaining more friends.”

But in January of her freshman year came her oldest sister’s death.  Gloria Padilla, 28, was a 2000 University of Chicago graduate.  She had worked as a case manager with the Lawndale Christian Health Center and, after her two children were born, Padilla joined Mary Kay.  The U of C magazine announcement of her death said, “Survivors include her parents, three sisters, a son, and a daughter.”  One living brother and one sister were excluded.

According to a Sun-Times article, “Padilla died from stab wounds to her neck, an autopsy revealed.  The secondary cause of death was strangulation.”  The article also mentioned that “Chicago Police said they were questioning a ‘person of interest,’ and that Padilla had filed a criminal sexual assault report against a current boyfriend in December.”

Unlike her brother’s death, Dulce remembers everything.  By her senior year, she had gotten over the intimidation of white voices and writing struggles.  She wrote about the incident in an AP English Language essay:

[“I hurried to do the last problem of the Geometry assignment when the house phone’s ring caught me by surprise. ‘Hello?’ I answered.  ‘Let me speak with your mom or your dad! But hurry, hurry it’s an emergency!’  Edgar’s, my brother-in-law at the time, voice on the other side of the speaker urged.  I didn’t think twice about what his panicking voice asked for and I quickly handed over the phone to my mom. A few seconds later I saw her face come into a confused shock and her eyes become watery. ‘What are you talking about? Calm down . . . What are you talking about?!  I can’t understand you, you need to calm down! How did that happen?! Okay.’

My mom hung up the phone and she walked toward me. With a confused, devastated face she said, ‘Call your dad at work.  Edgar is saying that Gloria is dead.’

‘What?!  How?!’ I asked in disbelief.

‘I don’t know what’s going on.  He was crying too much while he talked to me.  He wants your dad over by Gloria’s apartment as soon as possible’"]

Dulce  waited for a phone call, for some clarification.  She stared out the window wanting to see  something, know something.  “It seemed so
empty and still outside more than the usual winter night,” Dulce writes.  “The bright yellow light from the lamp posts lit the dark road.  It was very quiet, as if the only person living on Earth that night was me.”

Dulce waited in silence.  Her superior memory engraving everything she heard and said.  She finally gained the nerve to ask, “Mom, what happened? What did Edgar tell you?”

“Edgar says he found Gloria dead in her apartment.”

“How? How did she–”

“But you know how Edgar is.  He exaggerates.”

Dulce knew her mother “was a strong woman.  She knew better than to cry over a mistake, or just something she had not yet accepted.”  Dulce still waited.

[“The phone rang once more; it didn’t even finish ringing one time when my mom picked it up. ‘What took you so long? Where are you? . . . Are you sure? What did they tell you? How did it happen? Who did it?’ ” My mom threw desperate questions at my dad who was on ?the other line; tears ran down her face. The rest of the night was still very confusing, and I fell asleep for a few hours.”]

When Dulce awoke, she realized it was true.  Gloria did die.  Someone killed another person she loved.  At the funeral, which was in a very warm funeral home on a very cold night, a small poster with just a few pictures of Gloria welcomed mourners.  It looked like an art project a kid was forced to make.

Dulce’s father stood at the foot of the casket nodding, shaking hands, standing guard.  Whatever implosions were happening inside him, Dulce’s father didn’t flinch.  Dulce’s mother sat in the first row looking at the coffin, looking at the people.  Dulce’s best friend Tania from the Southeast Side sat nearby.

Dulce ignored everyone, everyone but Gloria’s lifeless body.   Gloria’s body rested, her hair was combed and loose, a scarf wrapped around her neck.  Dulce stood with her back to the mourners’ and caressed her oldest sister’s head.  The littlest sister shook her head no, no over and over and whispered something only Gloria’s spirit could hear.   Gloria’s husband, whom she was divorcing, paid his respects and spoke.  Edgar found Gloria’s body when he was dropping off their kids.

Her Struggle

Dulce missed school for a few days and returned around semester finals.  As soon as she entered Jones, someone swooped her into a counselor’s office.  She just cried and cried.  Dulce also dealt with the uncomfortable expressions of sympathy from students she didn’t even know.  Once, a student she never talked to walked up to her in the hallway and said how sorry she was.  Dulce thought, perhaps offended, “I don’t know you.”  Dulce didn’t want sympathy.  She wanted time.

In the winter of her senior year, a few months after Dulce wrote about Gloria’s death, Dulce could no longer get along with her mother and moved to the north side with one of her sisters.  In addition to the classic mother-daughter struggle many Latinas face, Dulce and her mother continued living with the consequences of two violent family deaths.  Dulce and her mother stopped talking to each other.

After Gloria died, Dulce saw how her mother “had to put a mask on to tell everyone, ‘I’m strong.  I’m going to get through this.’  Her daughter died,” Dulce emphasizes.  “No one knows who killed her.  Gloria used to keep all of us sisters together.  What now—now that she’s gone?”
Dulce doesn’t know the answer to this question and she didn’t know how to end her essay either.  The essay stops the moment she wakes up the following morning after the two phone calls and realizes Gloria did die.  “I felt as if someone had literally just stabbed my heart and left a deep, bleeding wound.”  Dulce wrote one more sentence and placed the final period.

Dr. Enrique González, a clinical psychologist, explains the dissonance that occurs when a family member’s death does not fit with a person’s schema, what he or she expects from the world.  After the violent, unexpected death, surviving family members begin to question the world and the goodness around them.  If they are religious, they doubt God.

“The commonly known stages of grief,” Dr. González explains, “are still valid.”  Denial begins.  He reminds us that “different family members may use different aspects of denial.  There’s also an age component.  Younger family members will move on quicker because they look forward to new parts of their life.  For older members, the losses are harder because the violent death is a reminder of previous sad events.”

For the cycle to complete, the survivor must reach resolution by accepting the death.  “This can be aided,” according to Dr. González, “by getting professional or spiritual guidance so survivors can move beyond questioning why it happened.  Family members need to be helped toward problem solving and forgiveness so they can move on with their lives the way we would when we are faced by any change.”

Many survivors will say that at the time of their family member’s murder, they felt alone, picked on, victimized.  But Dr. González emphasizes that the resolution stage can help the survivors “understand that the violence was not solely directed at one murder victim.  This violence is part of a bigger problem that is affecting more people.”  The risk in not getting to this point is that the survivors may become desensitized to violence.

For Dr. González, this is a major concern.  “People should not become accustomed to violence and say, ‘That’s just the way it is in my neighborhood.’  They need to maintain the understanding that violence is not normal.”

For a while after Gloria’s death, Latino communities began conversations about violence against women.  One and a half months after Gloria’s death, officials from the Chicago Foundation for Women and Mujeres Latinas en Acción hosted a forum at?the West Side Technical Institute to discuss a rise in crimes against women in Back of the Yards and Little Village.

This school year, students will continue, unfortunately, to face violence.  And teachers can help students through the grief stages.  Dr. Gonzalez suggests “providing age-appropriate activities so students can work through their denial or anger.  Writing or art are good options.  The most important thing,” Dr. Gonzalez stresses, “is to let them share it with you.”

Another option to help students affected by violence is to connect them and their families with the Illinois Attorney General’s Crime Victim Services Division.  The Illinois Crime Victim Compensation Program, for example, can provide innocent victims and their families with up?to $27,000 in financial assistance for expenses accrued as a result of a violent crime. Applications, of course, require time, paperwork, and guidance.

Her Future

Dulce Padilla survived high school, earned a highly competitive teaching scholarship from the Golden Apple Foundation, and enrolled at DePaul University to become an elementary-school teacher.  Gloria was killed over four years ago, Adrián almost ten.  Dulce is entering her sophomore year at DePaul, looking for an apartment outside of the city, driving a silver 2000 Chevy Cavalier she bought with her summer internship money, and working as a cashier.  But time is stopped.

“We don’t go on,” she explains with the sadness as strong as physical pain.  “Time goes on but my heart is still stuck in that day.  Every day.  We still haven’t figured out what happened.  I don’t see Gloria’s kids, which is probably good because if I saw them, I couldn’t do anything for them and the fact that they don’t have their mother.  I’m not over it.  My mom is the same way.  We’re all the same way.  My brother’s friends—they cried for a month, but we still live through it.”

The relationship with their father provides some comfort, however, for all of the sisters.  Dulce becomes calm when she describes how he will call them to ask how they are doing and chat.  “I love my dad,” Dulce says caringly.  “He’s a sweetheart, a hard worker.  My mom takes out her anger on him and he doesn’t say anything.  He’s so respectful.”

Among the sisters, there’s tension.  Currently, Dulce is not on speaking terms with two of her sisters and one of them is the sister she lived with last year. “My friends are like my sisters,” Dulce says.  She is still best friends with Tania, who is also studying to be a teacher. She has made more friends through Golden Apple, a few of which have also faced difficult family situations.

“We are all striving toward the same goal—to be a good teacher,” Dulce says undoubtedly.  This strength keeps her focused even if some teachers who don’t enjoy their profession as much try to dissuade her. Dulce’s goal for sophomore year is to get a better GPA.  “I need to manage my time better,” she reminds herself.  “I feel like I slacked off.  My GPA is almost a 3.0 but my goal is 3.2 by the end of the first quarter.”

Change is difficult for Dulce Padilla.  She admits it.  In many ways, Dulce continues to ground herself in the coping strategy she and her family used after Gloria’s death.  In the brief Sun-Times article published two days after her sister’s death, Dulce, the only family member quoted, articulated how her family was coping with “yet another murder in the family.”  Dulce simply said, “We’re trying our best.”

Ray Salazar is an English teacher in Chicago Public Schools whose writing has aired on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio. This piece comes from a post he originally published on his Chicago Now blog, “The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher.

Heidy Goercke’s grandfather was a merchant in Ecuador and her mother had a jewelry store in Germany. So it’s no surprise that she would follow in her family’s footsteps by opening up her own business in Chicago.

Her boutique, the “Zaraz Collection,” in Wicker Park has neatly decorated tables and displays of silver and fashion jewelry, tote bags, clutches, sun glasses, hats and scarves.The boutique’s décor is made up of frames creatively sustaining purses and necklaces on the walls.

Goercke describes her boutique as “simple and elegant” and what makes it different from other boutiques, she said, is that they tailor towards the customer’s needs.

“My mom is very skillful. A lot of merchandise she recreates. For example, some people don’t have their ears pierced so she adds a clip to the long earrings or if we buy an accessory she adds or takes stuff from it to make it look better,” Goercke said.

”Heidi is a great business woman and she always goes above and beyond to please her customers,” said Toni Pullen, a customer at Zaraz Collection of almost two years. Pullen said she has made comparisons at other boutiques and has determined that Goercke’s pieces are unique and affordable.

What also makes Zaraz unique, Goercke said, is her Hispanic and European culture. She said her culture has influenced, to a certain extent, the type of accessories they choose and how she interacts with customers.

Goercke was born in Cuenca, Ecuador to an Ecuadorian mother and half Ecuadorian and German father, but she was mostly raised in Munich, Germany. She said the boutique was named after her mother Sara and opened in December 2009.

“My brother Johannes really liked my mom’s name Sara therefore, we decided to call it Saras but he thought it sounded boring so we named it Zaraz,” Goercke said. Zaraz emerged years after a trip Goercke made to Chicago in 2002 to visit her brothers. Goercke said that trip brought her unexpected opportunities that made her decide to live here.

She said her brothers were business owners and offered her a position as manager of approximately seven accessory stores. Goercke said she also fell in love with the man who is now her husband, Roland.

But in 2009, Goercke said, her brothers decided to sell almost all their stores to move back to Ecuador and that’s when she decided to open her own boutique.

According to Goercke, her store exhibits two different styles of accessories: one that reflects her mother’s style and one that reflects hers.

“My mom likes accessories to be more colorful and things [accessories] that are made of wood, leather, or that look indigenous. I like more modern and slick looks,” Goercke said.

“But I’m warm with customers and I think that comes from the Hispanic side,” Goercke said. So Goercke and her mother have given Zaraz a Hispanic touch in their own way.

Goercke also said she is aware of the current economic situation and that people are currently more cautious about what they spend but she still wanted to open her boutique.

“I am really enjoying this [being the owner of the boutique] because it’s been challenging. The rent in this neighborhood is not cheap. If the economy was better we would be doing even better but we are doing well,” Goercke said.

“If you have a good product for a good price, not necessarily cheap, but good quality, people will buy it. With accessories you can do a lot of things and not always have to buy a new item of clothing” she said.

Griselda Lopez, Goercke’s friend of almost 10 years, said Zaraz has accessories for people of all ages and they have a variety of prices.

“They have high-end stuff and cheap stuff. And, if you’re running around and want something quick then you can find something inexpensive,” Lopez said.

Lopez also said Goercke has a good attitude and personality which is good for her business. She said Goercke has been a great friend and has pushed or steered her in the right direction when she has limited herself in her career as a make-up artist.

“If it wasn’t for Heidy introducing me to some people I would probably not be doing make-up now,” Lopez said.

Goercke said if you follow your heart and are willing to accept new opportunities and challenges you can accomplish your goals and be happy.

UPDATE:

“Zaraz Collection” will be closing at its current location on January 31st, but Goercke said she will continue to sell accessories at her kiosk store “Iguana” at Orland Square Mall. Goercke said she is expecting her second child and would likely experience a time constraint maintaining two businesses and a family. Since there has also been a raise in rent, Goercke said that if she finds an ideal location, she’ll open Zaraz again.

Goercke will continue to sell accessories at her kiosk store “Iguana” at 1000 Orland Square Drive in Orland Square Mall.

Latinos, regardless of immigration status, encounter various barriers to seeking mental health treatment.

These barriers impacting Latinos as a group include affordability, transportation, lack of resources in their community and scarcity of Spanish speaking professionals. A survey shows that in 1999 there were only 29 Latino mental health professionals for every 100,00 Latinos in the U.S., according to the Surgeon General. More recent figures were not available.

Within the disparities faced by the Latino community, undocumented women are especially vulnerable to factors that may lead to mental illness in the first place.

“The clients I have worked with who have been undocumented many times present with anxiety, with depression and many times it’s related to the social stressors around them,” said Dr. Nayeli Chavez, of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, home of the Center for Latino Mental Health.

“The experience of being undocumented presents a lot of challenges for women in particular who come from their countries of origin by themselves and don’t have a support network in the United States,” Dr. Chavez added.

Being undocumented may also make a woman more susceptible to domestic abuse because their status can become a way in which an abusive partner may threaten them, Dr. Chavez said. Undocumented women also are  more likely to suffer all kinds of abuse in the workplace, threats about being deported and being unpaid.

“Sometimes they are discriminated against, they are harassed,” Dr. Chavez said. “All of those things contribute to feelings of isolation, all kind of stressors that are many times linked to mental health difficulties.”

Over the past three years, Illinois has cut a total of $113.7 million, about 15 percent of its overall state mental health funding, hurting community mental health centers. Unfortunately, these are exactly the kinds of centers that Latinos are most likely to turn to when they do decide to seek help. Dr. Chavez said that because of the cuts, the few centers that provide bilingual assistance are cutting those services “in half or sometimes even more.”

The full impact of the budget cuts on Spanish bilingual services and Latino-focused agencies has not yet been studied. Lack of data on specific Latino/Hispanic issues is a problem in ending healthcare disparity, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. The office released a statement earlier this year saying that under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it will improve data collection on minority groups including questions about primary language.

The Psychological Impact of Fear

Dr. Virginia Quiñonez, also of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology said that when dealing with undocumented immigrants in need of counseling, “one of the things that’s very important for mental health professionals to understand is the reality of people who are undocumented, the fear factor, the fear of being found, of feeling insecure in this country because of the lack of documentation.”

According to Dr. Quiñonez, post-9/11 immigration policy changes and anti-immigrant sentiment have made immigrants wary of seeking help when they may need it most.

In order to combat this fear and the impact it has on treatment, Dr. Quiñonez advocates cultural competency, empathy, and respect.

“I haven’t had to walk across the Arizona desert, but if I can try to understand what that experience is like, then I can help them get to another place that will be better for them,” she said.

Undocumented immigrants underuse social services

Through striving to foster cultural competency among professionals that deal with Latinos, Dr. Quiñonez and Dr. Chavez challenge myths about Latinos in the United States. One of those myths is that Latinos, especially those that are undocumented, overuse social services.

“In fact there are lots of people worried about the underutilization of mental health services among Latinos in general. When you think about immigrants, it’s even less and within immigrants, undocumented [immigrants], it’s almost non-existent,” said Dr. Chavez.

She said that this is because Latinos have a difficult time seeking help from outside sources. They are more likely to seek help from their community, their families, friends, or their religion and it’s only when they have very severe levels of impairment that they seek treatment.

Unfortunately prejudice in the medical field does not limit itself to waiting rooms. “The biggest problem that exists is the prejudice that is part of the larger population and how it’s part of the therapists as well,” Dr. Chavez said.

For those out there who are experiencing symptoms of a mental illness and who are afraid to get help, Dr. Chavez suggests turning to whatever source they trust and looking for an agency that they feel comfortable with. “It’s important that they know that they don’t have to feel sad, they don’t have to feel afraid,” she said. “They can have a better life and help is out there.”

This story was reported by Latina-Voices.com in partnership with Mujeres Latinas en Accion mujereslatinasenaccion.org. They received a Local Reporting Award from Community News Matters, a program of The Chicago Community Trust.

Maria, 42 and Esmeralda, 35 are both undocumented women facing mental health challenges.

Maria has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. She has been hospitalized four times as a result of suicide attempts and post-partum depression. She is currently receiving treatment for herself and previously sought help for her family to deal with the upheavals of her illness.

Esmeralda was recently diagnosed with lupus and she is also facing a serious bout of depression.  Her inability to find work is affecting her sense of self worth and while she is medically addressing the physical effects of lupus, she feels resources to help her with her mental health issues are difficult to find.

“When I started to get sick, the depression came from not being able to dance because my feet hurt too much,” she said. “You learn to live with that, but it’s not fair that because you don’t have papers, you live with depression.”

Their last names have been withheld to protect them and their families from discrimination and legal complications they may face as a result of revealing their status and illness.

Mental health worsened by fear

Maria’s schizophrenia creates a debilitating fear of people that she contends with daily and which has been worsened by fears over her immigration status. Her fears initially kept her from seeking treatment earlier.

“When I got here, I didn’t look for help from anyone for anything, not even for my daughters. People would say that immigration was coming, that they were going to take me,” she said.

She reports having felt intense anxiety at the thought of leaving her children alone after an immigration raid at the bakery where she worked in the early 1990’s. Her shift had just ended and she was not arrested, but she said the terror she felt has never left her.

After the raid, Maria said she would regularly cry before going to work. Her worries over what would happen to her children if she were taken away kept her from sleeping and caused her to have nightmares about immigration.

Maria’s first depression symptoms started in Mexico, where she said the stigma against mental illness meant that her actions were seen as stemming from a character flaw rather than as symptoms of a disorder.  She came to the United States in 1989 thinking that it would help her escape depression, but instead, it got worse.

Isolated from the family she left in Mexico, including a 3-year-old son she saw as her reason for fighting her illness, she said she began to create “things that weren’t there.”

Although Maria was briefly hospitalized for post-partum depression, it wasn’t until her daughters started having problems of their own that she seriously began to get treatment.

While Maria presented with symptoms of schizophrenia before her arrival from Mexico, Esmeralda believes her symptoms only developed over the course of her 14 years in the United States.

This is not uncommon according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, (NAMI). The organization stated there “are higher rates of mental illness among U.S. born and long-term residents than in newly arrived Latino immigrants.”

Furthermore, NAMI concluded “that long-term residence in the United States significantly increased rates in mental disorders.”

“Mental illness, if it goes untreated, doesn’t get better by itself,” said Dr. Nayeli Chavez of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, home of the Center for Latino Mental Health.

It can lead to further impairment and have a negative impact on the family. “When Latina women are not well, the family is not well,” Dr. Chavez said.

The fear undocumented women live with also affects their children, Dr. Chavez said. She said that in her work with the children of undocumented parents, she sees many kids who live in constant fear that “even though they were born in this country and they are U.S. citizens…their parents may be deported.”

Social Stigma surrounding depression

Esmeralda left Mexico with her daughter after divorcing an abusive husband and came to the United States looking to make progress in her life. After getting her G.E.D. and successfully working in sales for a few years, she said she is at a point in her life where she has the skills and experience to get a good job, but is unable to because of her immigration status.

“It’s frustrating, that moment when you say to yourself, ‘Why do they treat me as less because of a paper? I’ve already overcome so many things. I’ve worked so hard. I’m a single mother, I take care of my own costs,” she said.

Esmeralda’s daughter is also undocumented and telling her about her immigration status has been another hardship. Esmeralda said she is determined to make sure that her daughter will have a better future. She said that although she may face injustice and be discriminated against, she doesn’t want to give up.

“I want to be in this country that has given me opportunity. I want to be in this country because this is what my daughter knows. She thinks of it as her country, even if she doesn’t have papers,” she said.

Esmeralda said that many immigrants who come to the United States already bear the burden of leaving behind their family and way of life. She said she feels that the challenges they face, like discrimination of status or race, serve to make that burden heavier.

Still, she reports having felt angry and saddened by the most recent incident of racism she dealt with in the waiting room at her doctor’s office. She said a woman was screaming, that “because of so many Mexicans there, she couldn’t get in earlier.” It upset Esmeralda that although there were many different people in the waiting room, the woman was targeting Mexicans.

The Road to Recovery

Maria and Esmeralda say that a greater availability of mental health resources would help them better their situation, in addition to immigration reform.

Maria is taking regular medication and attending programs at Mujeres Latinas en Acción, which has helped her build a support network. “I’ve never been a burden, I’ve paid for my own insurance…If people like me could get help and be treated like human beings, everything would be so much easier,” she said.

Esmeralda said she plans to seek help for her depression, although she realizes it may be challenging because of financial reasons. Her advice to undocumented women facing mental illness is to remember that if “we’ve already left half our lives wherever we’re from, so that we can make progress in this country, we have to keep going…Know that you can do it. I know I can.”

This story was reported by Latina-Voices.com in partnership with Mujeres Latinas en Accion mujereslatinasenaccion.org. They received a Local Reporting Award from Community News Matters, a program of The Chicago Community Trust.