It was a big decision for me to come to the United States.
     When I was seven years old, I started working in the sugar cane fields, and at eight years old I had to drop out of school. I worked sunrise to sunset, and it was a very dirty job: planting, weeding, fertilizing, burning, and cutting the sugar cane. Later, my mom taught me how to grow corn and beans. I had a really good relationship with my mom. She was very strong and a hard worker, getting up at 5 a.m. each day to make tortillas for the four of us who worked in the fields. We worked so hard six days a week so we could make money for food. The only fun I had was when my friends and I would go swimming in the cool river next to my house. The reason I had to work so hard and why I couldn’t go to school was that my father used to drink a bottle of tequila almost every day. Because of this, we didn’t have any money for food. We used to steal corn and chickens from my grandma’s house because almost every weekend, my father disappeared with the small amount of money that he had.
     My father used to come home each night, around 1 or 2 in the morning, and my mother had to get up to cook food for him. She had to go outside and make the fire and cook fried eggs and refried beans for him. When she brought the food to my father, he threw the food at her, complaining that it took so long. My father used to be very violent, often hitting her, me, and my brothers and sisters. He also yelled at all of us and we were very afraid of him.
     Years later, when I turned 15, and some of my brothers and sisters were in their twenties, we tried to scare my father to stop him from hitting and terrorizing us. One night, because we heard my younger sister and brother crying and screaming inside, we kicked down the door to my parents’ room. After that, we all told my father that he could never hit my mom again, and if he did, we would tell the police. My father got scared after hearing that because the one thing that scared him was jail.
     When I was 17, my grandmother gave me a piece of land so I could build my own house. I wanted to be away from my father. In order to build my own house, I had to work hard to save money little by little. I raised pigs and sold them to buy the bricks, sand, cement, and metal doors and windows for my house. By the time I was 21, I had saved enough money to buy the tile for the floor, the last thing I needed to finish my house. I moved in when I was 22. I was very proud of my house where I had planted a big rose garden with 100 beautiful rosebushes. Of course I had to buy one rosebush at a time because I still didn’t have much money. Even though everyone in the village, especially my grandma, was impressed by my garden, my father didn’t like it. He said that only women should have a flower garden.
     I built my house right next to my grandma’s house, and my bedroom window was connected to her kitchen. Sometimes my grandmother would call for me early in the morning and ask, “Are you awake?” When I answered, she invited me to come over to her kitchen for a big glass of hot chocolate served with a special meal: a corn sope filled with refried beans, sour cream and jalapeños. I enjoyed these times with my grandma, and also when I helped her with her flower garden. I really miss my grandma who died at age 84 in January of 1999.
     When I was 24, after 2 years of living in my own house, my father was still giving me a hard time. He kept asking me why I didn’t get married since it was usually only people who were getting married who built their own houses. He was also still harassing my mom by calling her names and threatening her. I realized that I hated him, and that’s when I told my mom that it was time for me to move to the United States. My mother was very sad but agreed that it was the best thing for me to do. When I talked to my father about it, my father said, “You are crazy! What are you going to do there?” I told him, “I am tired of working in the fields every day. I want to have a better life. I don’t want to be here and die doing the same thing.”
     I was scared to come to the U. S. because I knew that a lot of people die when they try to cross the border.
     The next morning, I woke up early and I went to my father’s room. I asked him again for his permission to leave. He told me, “If it’s what you want, go.” I was so excited when he said yes. When I told my mom, she was very sad and upset, and she started crying because she didn’t want me to go. I was the only person in the house who worked and helped the family. When I told my favorite sister Nena, she started crying too. But I had to leave.
     On October 29, 1987, I bought a bus ticket from Guadalajara to Tijuana. I traveled with my cousin, my uncle and another friend. It seemed like the bus ride took forever, and I started to feel like maybe I had made the wrong choice to leave.
     When we arrived in Tijuana, the police asked us a lot of questions. I told the police that we were going to visit a cousin in Tijuana. We stayed with the cousin for three days while it was raining, then we crossed the border.
     It was scary, and I felt like I was in a movie, running away from the helicopters overhead. We were nervous while we were hiding, but my cousin made me laugh when he jumped in the bushes. Fortunately, nothing bad happened to us. The scary thing was that the “coyotes,” who we paid to help us, hid my cousin and me in the trunk of their Volkswagen Bug for 45 minutes in San Diego while they waited to go through customs. After I had crossed the border we spent the night in a garage where the coyotes hid us. We were only given cold tortillas and cold soup to eat. It was terrible, but the next morning, somebody picked the three of us up and brought us to Santa Cruz, California. It was a long trip.
     I had two brothers in Santa Cruz who had paid $500 for the coyotes. I started looking for work immediately so I could pay my brothers back. I started out living in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with two brothers and ten other cousins and uncles.
     After just a few days, I got a temporary job rearranging furniture in the rooms in a hotel near the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk. After that, when I was outside the apartment talking with some people who had lived in Santa Cruz for a while, a middle-aged man said he needed someone to paint his house and to help with his garden. I volunteered to go because I didn’t have a job at that time. Fortunately, the man spoke Spanish, and since I spoke no English, I was able to communicate with him. I painted his whole house outside, fixed his garden and refinished doors and cabinets. I knew how to refinish cabinets because I had taken a three-month carpentry course in Mexico.
     The man was very happy with my work, and after I was done with the house, he wanted me to go and work in some fields he owned in the San Joaquin Valley. He grew garlic, lettuce and alfalfa. At that time, I had no green card and I told him that I didn’t think I could work there without the documents. I asked him if maybe he could help me get a green card since I was his employee. At first he said no, but when I told him that I didn’t want to risk going there and being caught by Immigration, he said maybe I could talk with his son who was the person in charge of the workers in the fields.
     I decided to go meet his son with my sister-in-law and her husband, my older brother. They gave me a ride since I had no way to get there. When I met the man, he was very nice and he said that his father had told him that I was a really good worker. He said he would help me get a green card. He said that his Spanish wasn’t really good, but that he would try to talk to me in Spanish. My sister-in-law told him that she spoke English, and they all talked in English for almost an hour. I didn’t understand anything! I was so frustrated because I didn’t know what was going on. Finally he asked me to send my address, fingerprints and two photographs to him, and this is how I started the process of getting my green card.
     Six months later I got my green card and then two years later, when I was 27, I got a permanent resident card. Five years later, I applied for my citizenship, and now I am a citizen of the United States.
     I have been working hard, sometimes 16 hours a day, but now I have only one job so I can study more English. I am now head sushi chef in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco and I can speak English.
     I am glad that I made the decision to move away from my town because I have almost everything that I always wanted, and I can help my parents by sending them money.