Member-only story
How El Paso has made my Hispanic family feel like a target.
The world is not nearly the same as it was when I was a little girl, yet some things haven’t changed at all. When I was about 11 years old and my family decided to move from our lovely little home in Coamo, Puerto Rico, I was devastated. I loved my home, my island, our food. I was scared to go, and although they didn’t want to admit it at the time so were my parents. My mother’s English has always been somewhat fair, but my father who grew up in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the US when he was a teenager was not so lucky. My grandparents couldn’t speak a word.
My English wasn’t horrible since we did learn a bit in school, but I did have a heavy accent and was placed in ESL classes for the first couple of years in school. My little brother was the luckiest since he was too little to even speak at the time. He had no idea what was going on. Things were rough in the beginning, we went from everyday tropical weather and about 30 minutes from the beach, to the horrifying cold and the bad driving of Massachusetts. At the time I never understood, what was the big deal? Why did we leave Puerto Rico? My father would look at me and say ,
“ There are more opportunities here for us, things in Puerto Rico aren’t easy anymore. We have to embrace this new country with open arms. Give it time you will like it. “
