I’ll Never Forget: Adapting to the U.S. from El Salvador

Mario Sanchez Interview
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[00:00:00] Jocelyn Martinez: Alright so we got the recording up and going. Hello, thank you so much for taking the time to be in this interview. Um, for starters, can you just go ahead and introduce yourself, your name, where you’re from, and maybe just like what you do or where you are located now.

[00:00:22] Mario Sanchez: Hi, my name is Mario Adan Sanchez. I’m from Guatemala. I was raised in El Salvador from age, um, two to seven. I left El Salvador in 1992, around May, let’s say, May. I came into the United States around October 2nd or 3rd of ’92. Uh, we came from, uh, Salvador. My dad actually flew back to Guatemala because my great grandma had passed away. And he picked us up from, uh, – me and both of my sisters. He picked us up from my great grandma’s house in El Salvador in San Miguel, where we were raised from, I was raised from the age of 2 to 7. Uh, I live in Manassas, Virginia. I’m, on disability due to kidney failure. I do construction jobs on the side. Um, and I live with my wife and my kids. .

[00:01:37] Jocelyn Martinez: Um, so since you did, um, migrate so young, are you able to recount anything about the situation in El Salvador when you left, or anything that motivated, um, your migration to the United States?

[00:01:54] Mario Sanchez: Yes. So in 1991, it was a Salvador Civil War in El Salvador and the guerilla had come and taken part of, like, refuge in San Miguel, some of the houses area there. And there was a military that had come as well. And my grandma had a house which is called a maison, which is like a big house that has rooms, like, like an inn right, but it was all for family basically.

And when soldiers came they came into the property. And they told my grandma, you know, they will give us protection if we give them shelter and food. So my grandma agreed to that, and they took care of us until the Civil War ended. And then they left. Um, I lived in El Salvador with my great grandma, my two sisters, and, um, we lived with her.

And, uh, basically my parents migrated here in ’86, ’87, I think. They migrated into the United States. Um, and they lived here until the day that my dad decided to go back for his grandma’s funeral. And when he was there, he decided that he wanted us to come with him. And he went to the house. Uh, I will never forget when he got to, you know, they call it el porton. It’s like a big metal door, you know? So it’s like a, like a gate. That is in front of the main door that people go through. And I remember him knocking on the door. I came to the door, looked at him, looked at the big picture, like a five foot picture we had in the back wall, all the way on top of him and my mom.

And when I looked back and I was like, it’s my dad, and instead of opening the door, I ran to my grandma and tell her “My dad’s here. My dad’s here.” Nobody believed me.

[00:04:00] Mario Sanchez: And then he came in, you know, hugs, everything. And he told my grandma, he was picking us up, bringing us to the United States with him, you know. He didn’t want to, he didn’t want us not to remember him or remember my parents as it had been five years already.

They always kept in contact. Um, so my grandma was in a little bit, like, in high life. Let’s say like a little bit up there. So, we had maids that, you know, like maids to take care of the house. And I had my personal maid who, basically, it was like, let’s call it a babysitter, who took care of me, woke me up in the morning, made me breakfast, shower, took me to school.

She was there after I got out of school to come back, you know, and we lived a different life. Over there, you wake up in the morning, there’s people knocking on your door. “Oh, hi, would you like milk? Would you like tamales?” At eight o’clock in the morning, you know, selling, selling food, like breakfast. And, you know, we always ate. Whatever my grandma bought, we ate it.

And then, um, you know, when we migrated here, it was totally different, different scenario. We migrated here, I remember when we, uh, lived in California for the first two months, I think it was, uh, we lived there with my aunt. We stayed in a one bedroom, uh, one bedroom in her house. And it was, for five of us in one bedroom and we didn’t have the money to come all the way over here.

So we stopped in California and my dad got a job, got some money and to bring us, fly us from California to Virginia, to JFK. But in the process of him bringing us from Salvador here, it took three tries. Uh, we went through Mexico. We moved to Guatemala first and we stayed at my grandma’s, you know, got ready, got dressed, got everything we needed for the – for the travels and we left, I never forget. We went and we were right at the border of Mexico and United States and the border patrol stopped us. Uh, he told my dad, you know, “Everybody got to get off the bus if you don’t have papers.” He ended up getting both of my sisters, my aunt and my dad. Well, my dad had, he was, he was good to go.

But, they stopped us and he was our parent. He wouldn’t leave us there. And they took him to a jail in Mexico where we stayed over overnight in a cell where the men are in the cell, the womens are in the same cell. And then, uh, the kids, we stayed like on the side outside of the, the cell on the floor waiting for basically the buses to transport us back into Guatemala.

[00:07:00] Mario Sanchez: So we went back to Guatemala. Uh, you know, my dad was like, okay, we gotta try it again. Went again. Second time, same thing happened. We went through the river, like in a little, uh, those blow up tubes, tubes, tires. And I remember we went across the first river. Got there and you know, people knew my dad from when he came and he crossed the border, so they tried to help him as much as they could. Um, and then we got on the taxi, you know, he was like, we got a taxi, let’s get in the taxi and we’re going to drive by. Same thing happened. They stopped the taxi, everybody got off, got sent back. So the third time, you know, money was running out already.

So, third time, it was like, this is the one we got to make it. So the way my dad did it is there was a guy in Mexico that had legal papers. And he went and he asked the guy for help. The guy had kids, a wife and everything, the same age, about the same age. And my dad was driving a little pickup truck with chickens in the back and show the papers and he came across to San Ysidro in California.

In Los Angeles, California, we came in and I remember we went into this house, mansion, right in the border where we landed, mansions. We went in and there was rooms everywhere and there was people in each room. And, you know, you were waiting there until your family paid the rest of the money to get you out.

If not, they will send you back or worse things happen. So we were there for one night. Second night, uh, second night somebody sent the money and you know, they put us in a car, drove us to, uh, basically an interstate. Just dropped us off until the car picked us up and we waited there for a while. You know, so it was three tries.

Um, I remember one of the tries that we went, uh, the coyote, right. The guy, that brought us here, uh, we were like right by the border, uh, by the Rio Grande, right in front of it. And, um, we were driving and like, you know, border patrol got behind him. I remember my dad was laying in the back of the bed. My sister was in the back of the bed. My aunt was in the back of the bed. I was in the back of the bed and my other sister was in the front cause she was too small and I never forget this. They had like 10 people stacked in the back of a pickup truck, with pieces of plywood on top, okay, and when the siren came, we just heard the radio. On the radio they said, “okay, everybody hold.” The guy came in the mountains, threw the keys out the window, let the truck go downhill with everybody in it. Uh, somehow one of the person, ladies that was in front was able to brake the truck when we were going over down before we hit the tree. We all got out and I remember the old man that was in the back with us. He, uh, the truck bouncing up and down, he was like about 50 years old. He had a laceration across his face from the plywood that was going up and down. As soon as we got down, they got everybody out of the trucks, you know, under the shade, under the trees. And as soon as the helicopters stopped going by, everything, they said, “Okay, you guys got 10 minutes to find the keys to this truck.”

We found the keys, we got to the border, and, you know, that’s when my dad decided to, you know, take things into his own hands, and call his friends to help him out. And. That’s how, you know, we made it to the United States.

Our first lesson in California was with my aunt. She was, been here long, and they told her that while we were there, she had to teach us at least the basics to get on a plane. So we had to, uh, learn ABCs, 123s, hi, good morning, good night, how are you? And, you know, enough. So they, when we were in a plane, they would think that we were good, you know, that we were here. And then, uh, after two months, I think it was on October 3rd, you know, my dad had the flights, my mom was pregnant waiting for us here.

So, in Arlington, they lived in Arlington, Virginia, in a one bedroom apartment. My dad and my mom lived there and my grandpa. So when my dad left, my mom was alone with my grandpa in the house. And, um, my mom, because the money got – started spending a lot of money in the trip that, uh, all the money they had had already gone. They were, they didn’t have any more funds, you know. They paid the coyotes, uh, two times.

And the last time it was like, he took matters into his own and brought us here. Once we hit California, there was no money for plane tickets. So my dad had to work two months to get enough money to buy flights for us to get to here. And, you know, we got here and it was, uh, it’s a different life back home.

I had in El Salvador, I had everything, you know. They did, uh, the carnivals. We went dancing, uh, you know. We had somebody do our laundry. Somebody cooked for us. Somebody cleaned the house. You know, when I got here, it was like a one bedroom apartment. And basically because I was the only boy at the time, uh, my mom and, uh, two girls stayed in the room with my dad. I stayed in the living room with my grandpa because it was a one bedroom apartment. And then when my brother was born in December 16th of ’92, um, the people in the area… the owners of the apartment… leasing office, found out that a lot of people were there and they moved us to a two bedroom, three bedroom apartment, like a block down. It was on the third floor. So we stayed there from ’92 to ’94, I think we stayed there. And then my dad decided to move us to a different apartment because there was more space and there wasn’t that many stairs.

My first experience in elementary school, I was in second grade when I came here. I didn’t speak no English. Um, they put me in the ESL class and I’ll never forget. I got to the class and you know, you see people are Spanish and I try to talk to them, you know, hi, how you doing? in Spanish. “Como estas? Mi nombre es Mario.” Kids back then, they were… if they were born here, they were like, “Oh, I don’t speak Spanish.” You know? So the only way for you to make friends was when they took you to the ESL class and you find out who spoke Spanish.

And it was not only Spanish people in ESL class. There were Jamaicans, Africans, biracial, everything was there. And the teacher only spoke a little bit of Spanish and no more languages. So it was mostly teaching kids how to read without them knowing what you’re reading, you know what I mean? And, um, we, I was there, uh, thank God, you know, I learned fast. So I was an ESL only for one year. I got, the second year, I got sent to regular classes. Um, uh, you know, and I was, you still had like one period that you went, like one class that you went to yourself instead of going the whole day. You went for one class and I remember in, um, ’93, uh, I was in, uh, second grade and I needed to go to the bathroom. I didn’t know how to tell the teacher I need to go to the bathroom. And there was no Spanish speaking teacher at the moment. And I was peeing on myself. And I told one of the kids that I knew spoke Spanish, “Tell her I need to go to the bathroom.” And he said no, and I didn’t want to pee on myself. So I saw the trash bin and I peed in the trash bin. And then the teacher came in, saw me doing that. And the kids were laughing at me, you know, all the kids who were in the class were laughing at me. And I got mad and I, you know, started an argument and a fight. Remember I got sent to the office, first time ever, I was in front of the office. Uh, you know, and they told me I couldn’t do that, this and that. It was like, oh!, I couldn’t adapt to, to, you know, cause I didn’t understand anything. It was like, they’re punishing me for doing something that I didn’t know how to tell them, you know. And it was just same thing during lunch, breakfast. Back then it was breakfast, go to breakfast. I didn’t know you had to pay. Just walk to the line, get food and, you know, that was it. Uh, always, like, people back then, it’s not like now that you go to, let’s say elementary school and you don’t speak English and there’s always somebody there, a teacher, there’s more teachers to speak Spanish – in the span – in the communities now that will help those kids. Back then, there wasn’t that. It was all Americans. Uh, mostly old, uh, you know, people from here, American people that were in schools, the school.

The whole school system was just like America. There was barely any Latino teachers back in the day, you know. And it was hard growing up, you know, because you couldn’t make friends outside of your apartment because there wasn’t a lot of Latinos in the area. And if they were, they were like, uh, Latinos that were born here and they didn’t like talking with Latinos. Like, you know, they… they were picky.

You know, so we had to fight through that, like try to make conversations, you know, try to break that barrier. Back in the day, recess… recess or the break that we had in elementary school, it was for you to go and make friends, try to make friends, talk to people, talk to kids, you know.

Um, back in ’92, I remember, uh, when I was in third grade, uh, we used to go, we used to walk about three, four miles to go to school in the winter. I was new to this country. I didn’t know about snow. I didn’t know about the cold weather. I’m wearing a windbreaker in the winter when it was snowing outside and, you know, we had to walk, we had to walk. We didn’t have the luxury. All those Latinos that are here, come here, have of going in the buses, you know. We had to walk. Snow. There was no, “Oh, we got a snow break.” We had to walk through the snow. And when you don’t know what it is, you play with it and you get home frozen, you know. You’re like an icicle, you know. But we had that freedom to go out and play with different kids.

It was just the language barrier that affected it. And there was a lot of programs that they had for, for the Spanish community. But, since my parents didn’t speak English, they didn’t have the resources to take us here, like, “Oh, we’re going to put you in a program to play football, play soccer.” Like they didn’t know what that was. It was just like, okay, you got to go to school to become somebody and just keep going to school. You know, they didn’t understand the language. We, we, we, like people of my age that came during the nineties to ’90- to 2000, sometimes their parents didn’t speak no English.

They couldn’t help them with their homework. You go with the English – you couldn’t – you go with the English homework that you gotta write a paragraph, or uh, you know, you don’t know what you were doing. You don’t know how to. They tell you read this book, you don’t know how to read the book. You didn’t speak the language. Then you have to write a report, couldn’t ask your parents for help. The school, teachers, helped you for 10 minutes or whatever, and then it was like, “okay, here, I already showed you, keep doing it yourself.” So, so, it’s a lot that, um, has changed. In the school districts, in the communities, now you see more Latino people in the community. You see a lot of, uh, Latino restaurants, different.

I remember, I’ll never forget, when I was back home in El Salvador, every Sunday we went to Misa, Catholic Church. Went to Catholic Church every Sunday. We went there and, you know, they gave you dos colones, one for a drink and one for a snack. That was it. And after church, go and get your snack and you ate that.

[00:21:00] Mario Sanchez: When I came to the States, My parents didn’t go to church, uh, ’92, they didn’t go to church until ’93, I started going to church, uh, Pentecostal church, not a Catholic church. So everything was different, you know, everything that I had learned back home, basically, I no longer followed it here. You know, it was like, we went to… started going to church in, uh, June of ’93. Started going to church and, you know, things started changing.

Uh, starting going to church. My dad, my dad used to have long hair. You know, he used to smoke a lot. And when he started going to church, everything changed. He became a different person, let’s say. And for us, going after church, let’s say, going to McDonald’s was like going to Olive Garden. Going to Burger King was like going to, um, you know, fancy restaurant. There was no “We’re going to go here, eat here, McDonald’s every day.” or eat this, you know, it was like you eat what we have at home and that’s it. And nowadays, you could go with the same amount of money you spend on a McDonald’s meal to a Latino restaurant, get some pupusas, you know, get una yuca con chicharron, horchata, you know. The stuff that back then it was here, but it was limited. There wasn’t as many as it is now. And I remember my mom didn’t drive. The only one who drove was my dad. So we went out to eat a place that was 20 minutes away. We had to walk. So from where we live to El Pollo a la Brasa was like 30 minute walk. If we wanted to go to eat Pollo a la Brasa, we had to walk the whole way over there. You know, it wasn’t, “let’s get in the car and let’s drive over there.” Like, we gotta walk. Get a bus, you know, and I never did that back home. I never did that. It was like, you know, my grandma called somebody, “oh, come pick us up.” We go here and, you know, go to the hospital, go to church. Wherever we went, we always had a car. Then we come here, it’s like, we have to walk. You gotta wash your own socks. I remember first week, you know, in the United States, it’s like, I have to wash my own socks. There’s no… my mom only did laundry once a week cause she had to carry it from the third floor to the first floor to another building.

So it was like, you want clean socks, wash them by hand. Back home I didn’t do that. Everything was done for me. So adapting to being in the States was a big change, big change. You know, nowadays I’m, I’m grateful that I am in this country because if I would have stayed back home with my health issues at age 21, I probably wouldn’t be here. I probably wouldn’t have made it. And United States has, you know, something that helps you, help you. You go to the hospital, you got healthcare. Back home, even to this day, if you go to the hospital, they’ll let you in. But if you need medicine, you gotta pay out of pocket. There, nurses checking on you, you gotta pay. Anything that you need healthcarewise, there’s a hospital, public hospital, but everything is paid out of pocket. And it’s, it’s a big difference.

Uh, I, um, thing I had to show my kids since I was, uh, since they were growing up. It’s, uh, teach you guys that, you know, not to forget your culture. Your mom teach you guys how to cook, you know, how to dance, you know, teach you got the rhythm of El Salvador, you know, by you guys, uh, she used to go buy you guys fruit. So you guys eat at home, you know, nances, uh, or jocotes, mangos verdes, this, you know, things that weren’t accessible as much when we came here. That they are now, you know. There’s a distributor that brings stuff to the States from El Salvador and sells it in different markets.

[00:25:27] Jocelyn Martinez: So, um, so having that experience, well, in that time, because I know as you grow up and you reflect and your perspective shifts from when you were a kid to how you see things now as an adult with your worldview expanding. Could you, do you think that there’s… that you have a different perspective on assimilation now versus then in the sense of, um, your feelings about learning the language and immersing yourself more in like, quote unquote, “American culture”, um, how has your relationship been with that?

[00:26:24] Mario Sanchez: So first thing is. Uh, we as immigrants, we got to realize that this country. It’s a free country. So it’s supposed to be, America is supposed to be freedom. So we came from a place where we were persecuted. People were dying. We had gangs going after kids, trying to get them into their gangs. Military, guerilla, trying to get kids to join them, right?

So, Most of the people around my age when they fled Salvador, it was because, uh, they didn’t want their kids to end up in the gangs and the guerrillas, end up dead, end up shot, you know. They moved them here to have a better life. And our parents in the, in the 80s, in the 80s and 90s, our parents worked hard to bring us here.

For us to give… get… have a better future. So, you know, nowadays we see that, you know, we as immigrants, we have rights. You know, back then it was like, the cops coming, don’t say nothing. They could deport you. They could ask for your papers, you know, it was always, you had to know what you do, be afraid of what you do because you could end up getting deported. You know what I mean? Nowadays we have the freedom that if something is wrong and somebody discriminates against us as Latinos, we have that, that, “okay, you’re discriminating me. Let me call police,” you know, “You’re being racial.” We didn’t have that, but we didn’t have that racial standard that, Oh, we’re, you know, we’re all equal.

It wasn’t, we weren’t equal, you know. American people, they were, they were it. They were the ones that told us what to do. The ones that were citizens in the United States, born here, they told us what to do. You know, I remember when I came in ’93, my mom had to go and file for us to get a work permit, a work permit. Asylum, they call it asylum. Asylum to get, to stay in the States, you know. And she did that. She paid a lot of money to, uh, lawyers to try to get us to stay in the States, you know.

And then from ’93, my parents were here in 1987 and they got their green card in 19- in 2004. That’s exactly when they got the green card. And at that time, if you were under the age of 21, and not married, You could still get your green card with your parents. Okay. And I got my green card, thank God, by the skin of my teeth.

Um, I had… my sister didn’t get her green card because she got married. My other sister got her green card. Then the day of the court for them to get the green card in, uh, you know, immigration, uh, I didn’t… I didn’t get a letter. I was married. So I thought I wasn’t going to get a green card and the judge wouldn’t let- go with the case until I showed up, I showed up and thank God. The judge gave us the green card. All of us. Gave us a green card. You know, I think if I wouldn’t have had a green card and I would have done something, I would have been deported and I wouldn’t have been here to be speaking to you. You know, it’s like we, we Latinos, for me, my perspective in United States is we’re in a land that is not ours. It’s not theirs. It’s everybody’s.

So we have to try to adapt to the law, not the rules, the laws of the United States. Follow the constitution. So that way, you know, the, the first amendments, you know, so we, we have, we know our rights, you know. We got freedom of speech, just like anyone else. You could speak your mind and nobody could say anything to you. You know, we got freedom to assemble. You could go and make a little group of Latinos. You know, and just chill. It’s freedom. We got that freedom. Where it’s not for us to be persecuted or, “They’re Spanish, let’s go and uh, check them,” you know, “just because, just because there’s a group there, let’s go check them.”

You know, it’s, it’s, we gotta let the young ones know. You know, we have to teach them there is laws that they gotta follow and some laws are being broken, you know, by the people in authority. You know, they got a badge and they tell us, “oh, you can’t do this. You can’t do that.” It’s not a law but: “We’re telling you not to do it.” you know. And that’s what we got to teach our kids that we as immigrants, we have rights, you know, we have rights.

Everybody here got right. No matter immigrants or not, everybody has rights. You know, and I’m for if you come to a new country and you want to keep doing the things that you do in your country and by law, they’re not allowed, they shouldn’t be done because you’re causing problem for not only yourself, but for the Latino community as one. Doesn’t matter where you’re from, if you come to the United States and you don’t follow the law and cause problems, everybody’s going to look at, “Oh, they come to do this, they come to do that.” you know, which isn’t right.

[00:32:29] Jocelyn Martinez: Thank you for that perspective. Um, so you said you were, you were younger than 21 when you got your green card and you got here when you were 17. So, within those,

[00:32:44] Mario Sanchez: I got here when I was seven. Yeah, I was seven when I got here and I got my green card. And, uh, 18, I think it was 18, 2004.

[00:32:58] Jocelyn Martinez: Um, before you obtained your green card compared to now, what kind of opportunities at the time were available to immigrants and kids that were your age ?

[00:33:14] Mario Sanchez: So let’s say

[00:33:17] Jocelyn Martinez: with your, with that legal status?

[00:33:19] Mario Sanchez: Okay. With the, with the, with just a work permit, okay, with just a work permit, we had the same opportunities as everybody else in the States with the green, with the work permit it means that you’re legal to be in the States. You’re legal to serve your country, to serve the United States of America with the green, with the work permit, you’re legal to do that. You’re legal to get a driver’s license. Uh, you’re legal to buy a house. You got your social security. We get the same opportunities as anybody else with the green card. Okay. You could go to school. If you finish high school with the work permit and you want to go to college, you could go to college with the work permit, you know, you can.

With the green card, the only difference with the green card is that a work permit, you got to renew it once a year. If you fail to renew your work permit in certain time, I think it’s like a year or two, they could void it and you can’t renew it no more. And you have to go sent back home and wait 10 years for you to come back.

Green card, you got to renew it every 10 years. And you could- with the work permit, you can’t fly out of this country. You could roam any states in the United States, even Hawaii and Puerto Rico, but you can’t go back home. You don’t have that right. You’ve got a work permit. You got a permit to work in the United States. That’s it. And everything else, like serve your country and everything else. But you can’t leave the country. If you leave the United States with a, with a work permit. You can’t get in the plane and buy a ticket and say, “I’m gonna fly back.” ‘Cause you gotta work permit. Your work permit void if you fly and you don’t get, you gotta get a letter, a permit to fly to your country. And it has to be like certain amount of time. If you pass that time frame, you could get denied access to the United States again. With the green card, you can fly anytime you want. You got money? You wanna go to El Salvador? Go to El Salvador. You wanna go to Guatemala? Go to Guatemala. You wanna go to Japan? You go to Japan. You gotta, you, you got that freedom with the green card. The only difference is, with the work permit, you could do a lot of things, right? You could serve your country. You could get jobs. You could go to college. With the green card, you do the same thing. You go to college, go to get all that, but you can’t vote. Work permit you can’t vote. Green card you can’t vote. You don’t have that right to vote because you’re not a citizen or naturalized citizen of the United States. Once you get the citizenship, you could vote. You could go out of the country for six months, seven months. It- come back, you know, with a work- with a green card, you could only go for… the most is six months.

And if you’re not back by six months, they could deny you access because you stay, you, you stayed out of the country for longer than you were supposed to, you know. And they do that for a reason. So let’s say, people say “I’m fleeing my country.” right? You’re fleeing your country, but yet you want to go every year to go to a country that you fled with the work permit. You know, now it’s not like before. Before they had all the gangs or the military going around. And yeah, if you went back and, you know, they found that you were there and you were wanted by the, the gangs or anything, they’ll lock you up quickly. Now you could go to El Salvador and roam it freely, you know, that’s the big difference now. If you want to go visit your country, it has changed. Not only the United States has changed, but your country has changed.

There’s none of that, uh, “I got to look behind my back everywhere I go because there’s a lot of gang members. There’s a lot of guerrilla around” You know. There’s not that. So if you go, it’s okay to go, you know, as long as you have the legal right to get back in the United States, if you don’t have the right to get back in the United States, why go?

And I understand people miss their culture. They miss the food. They miss, you know, the siestas, the breaks over there you know. One thing I loved about El Salvador was El Mercado. El Mercado. We went and it was like a market. It’s called a market. It’s like a flea market, right? The middle of the city, you go and they have everything: food, clothes, whatever you wanted, you found it there. Anything you needed, you find it in Mercado de El salvador. The beaches were great back then, El Cuco.

[00:38:42] Jocelyn Martinez: Speaking of the cultural aspect, um, I wanted to touch back on when you mentioned when you first arrived, you came in through California. Um, and I know that in the United States, different ethnicities tend to locate in different parts of, um, in different states, you know. In Northern Virginia, it’s very Salvadorian, Bolivian and Mexico. Now, like it’s, um, you know, we always hear mostly Mexican and in Texas, also very Mexican. What was, um, California like Latino wise when you first got there?

[00:39:20] Mario Sanchez: So Latino wise, California for the three months I was there. It was mostly Salvadorans. Salvadorans, Hondurans, Nicaragua. Okay, they were the main base in that area. Why was that? Because when they fled, when they fled El Salvador, it was closer to get to the borders of California than go across five states, 10 states over. So people basically came and made their home closest to the border: Texas, Arizona, you know, Nevada, places like that, and California. But most of the Latino community, Salvadoran community, they stuck together.

They stuck together because they started seeing the discrimination that they were having with other people. So what people know as gangs now, like MS-13, 18th street, those weren’t gangs back in the day. Those were like clubs to help protect them from the cops, from the racial, you know, from – like, like the black Panthers, let’s say in a way. To protect, you know, they protect the black people. Uh, Mara Salvatrucha was protecting and, and, and 18th Street, protecting the communities, their country, people from their country that are being harassed by other cops, other ethnicities. You know? So, yeah. In California, even up to this day, California, uh, it’s, uh, it’s California and um, San Francisco. San Francisco, California is the area that there’s more Salvadorian people.

You know, you go to the street and there’s vendors, like, like you see back home. People selling in like little chozitas, like little, uh, little market, you know, like tents, you’ll see tents. You know, places with tents all over the place, selling Salvadoran cuisine, you know, pupusas and Hondurans, you know, Catrachos there. They’re all like in one area selling their food, like if they were back home. You know, selling fruits, selling flowers. I never forget that there was like a market, uh, market, but it was like outside the market, there were vendors selling flowers, people rolling their carts with tamales, “Quiere tamales, quiere atol de elote?”

So that was back in California. When we came to Virginia, right, we came to Virginia and we lived in Arlington. Back then, the only store that sold, uh, groceries from El Salvador or other countries was World Market. I think it was called World Market. I think that’s what it’s called, but it’s in DC. You went every Saturday & Sunday, you drove around there and that thing was packed.

Like people had to make lines with their carts to get in and that’s where they went to buy everything. Arroz, frijoles, horchata, uh, nances. Uh, everything that was, you know, like cola champagne, este, like the sodas from over there. Like, you know, what is it? Maranon, uh, la, there was like a cherry soda that was popular back then that they only sold it there. And everybody that lived in, um, Maryland, DC and, um, in, uh, Virginia, like the area around, uh, the DMV area. Everybody went to the market. So it was always packed, you know? And you know, I, it’s like nowadays you want to go get something like, let’s say some horchata if they don’t have it at Giant, you got Global Foods, you know. They’ll have it. If there’s not a Global Food, there’s a H-Mart that sells Latino, you know, different countries, food and stuff, but now we have access to that. Back then we didn’t, you know?

[00:43:41] Jocelyn Martinez: Yeah. So now that access to your culture items, Guatemala and Salvadoran items, has grown in the United States and in the cities that you live in, at the same time, cause you have kids, as well, um, at the same time, you have kids that were born here and didn’t go through the same experience of having to learn a new language and not having access to those things. How would you say it’s been maintaining your culture? Because in some ways it’s easier since they still have access to the things that you had access to in your home country, but there’s things that are pulling them away from that. How would you, is it harder, is it easier?

[00:44:37] Mario Sanchez: So, so this is the thing that about that. So, each- so my parents when I came to this country, they didn’t speak English right. They didn’t know any English or that, so they try to keep us, teach us the language, like, teach us, uh, teach us not to forget where we come from, okay. Teach us that, you know, you’re in this country, but no matter what, you were born there, and this is your culture, and you gotta embrace it, so don’t forget it. So, when I have my kids, right, we have our kids, my kids, My, my, uh, how you call it? So for me, it was like, I got to teach my kids not to forget the culture, you know, try to teach them that Latino music can’t go away. You know, you could listen to whatever you want, but remember this music comes from where your homeland is – not to forget it. You know, you respect the, uh, the Salvadoran flag, try to celebrate, you know, the, whenever there was like something like, uh, what’s it called? The independencia. It was always like, not a big party. Oh yeah. But let’s go to, they got a little, what is it? Carnival. What do you call it? Festival. You gotta go to the Salvadoran festival, you know. Let’s go to the Latino festival in, in what is it? September or September 15. Let’s go. So that way we don’t forget it, you know. And not only that, uh, my wife’s parents, they were vendors.

They sold food at festivals. So, you know, there’s platano frito, yucca con chicharron, pupusa, you know, arroz con frijoles, casamiento. So, the kids were growing up eating that food from back home, you know, instead of just eating McDonald’s or this and that, you know. They- we didn’t force them to eat it. We- that’s what we had and we had to eat that. So you guys were raised, the kids, some of the kids, right, not everybody, right, your age, but most of the kids were raised eating food from back home because it was what their parents and their grandparents knew how to cook. And that way, you know, you never forget the culture either.

Let’s say somebody your age right now, right? You know how to make pupusas. You want to go to the market and you need to go find horchata. If, if you don’t know how to make it, who are you going to call? Who are you going to call if you don’t know how to make something and you really want to have it because you’ve had it before? You’re going to call your mom. She’ll teach you. Or one of your aunts or somebody that you know knows how to cook. So we embrace that by teaching them that even if, you know, we’re here in this country, we shouldn’t forget where we come from and try to teach our kids, the young ones that are coming after us… after you guys… your kids, that they gotta, you got to teach them the culture so they don’t forget.

[00:48:00] And it keeps living on as it has been for all these years. Because, let’s say, if I was to raise you and didn’t teach you no Spanish, and let’s say you go visit your country and “oh, I don’t speak Spanish.”You know, it’s like… why? If that’s your culture, that’s in your blood. You know, you got to at least know some words to defend yourself when you go somewhere.

And when I was being raised here in the United States, right, in middle school, let’s say, my parents always say: “learn the language. A person who is bilingual is worth two people.” you know. And it’s not, it’s not a lie, you know. Being an interpreter or helping, even just helping somebody out that doesn’t speak a lick of English, you know, you maybe do it to help out.

You help out, you help the community, you know, and that community keeps growing. Like nowadays, you know, maybe a bunch of people migrating here, but there’s an influx of kids being born here that their parents are from Central America, South America, and they come here and they grow up here. And instead of being those kids that I don’t know what they’re saying, teach them the language, you know, so that way they could defend themselves no matter what, or they could help somebody in the near future.

[00:49:46] Jocelyn Martinez: Thank you so much for your time and your answers, they were very, very insightful. Um, yeah, thank you, This was great.

[00:49:54] Mario Sanchez: Anytime. I appreciate it. I like what you’re doing. It’s, uh, something that everybody needs to hear, you know. That we are one in the United States, but we should never forget our culture. We should always embrace our roots.

[00:50:10] Jocelyn Martinez: Thank you for sharing