Collective commitment

The Amezcua family poses for a family photo at Mayra’s college graduation in May 2013. From left to right: Tomas Amezcua, Concepcion Santa Rosa, Tommy Amezcua, Mayra Amezcua, Angelica Amezcua and Susana Amezcua. (Photo courtesy of the Amezcua family)

Tomas Amezcua and Concepcion Santa Rosa were crossing El Cerro, the border, on their way to the United States. Concepcion did this once already before she was married, but this time, she was three months pregnant. She and her husband wanted the baby growing in her womb to be born in the U.S. with hopes that the child would have an opportunity at a better life.

Fearful that she might harm her baby, Concepcion refused to drink any of the natural, dirty water along the way. There were gallons of clean water placed along their path, but those were off limits as well — they were a trick. Drink those, and Border Patrol would know people were crossing. They would find them.

Tomas and Concepcion stumbled upon some water near a herd of cattle. Tomas swished his hands through the water in an attempt to clear the dirt away and finally quench his thirst.

“¿Quieres tomar agua? Do you want some?” he asked his wife as he lifted mouthfuls of water to his lips.

“No,” she refused. Her throat was burning with thirst, too, but she had to think of the baby.

“Maybe we should just stay here and let immigration get us,” he said.

They were both exhausted.

“No,” Concepcion repeated firmly — a foreshadow of her nature as the warrior of her future family. “Let’s just go a little bit more.”

That same kind of determination would be evident in the life trajectory of the daughter to be born: Angelica Amezcua.

Angelica was born in the United States on April 5, 1988. After receiving their own legal resident documents through the amnesty of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Tomas, Concepcion and their newborn baby returned to their hometown in Jalisco, Mexico. Jalisco was their home, after all — nearly all of Tomas and Concepcion’s families were there.

Map of Jalisco

“I believe because (me and my siblings) were really young, everything in Mexico was marvelous,” Angelica, now 27, said. “It was great; we would always play with our friends in the street. … It’s not that we didn’t have toys, but in a way, our happiness was not based on the most beautiful toys we had — our happiness was based on how creative we could be.”

When they were young, they used trash to build imaginary worlds.

Tomas and Concepcion instilled in their children the importance of education from when they were very young in Mexico. One night, when the light went out, Concepcion held a candle and insisted Angelica and her siblings do their homework.

Concepcion returned to the United States whenever she was about to give birth to one of her children so that all of them, like Angelica, would be U.S. citizens and have opportunities far beyond that of their parents. But after some time, Concepcion would always return to Jalisco, where she, Angelica and Angelica’s two sisters — Mayra, now 24, and Susana, now 22 — stayed until Angelica was 11 and finished with the sixth grade.

Because Tomas was often working as a farm laborer in the United States to send money back to his family in Jalisco, Angelica said her parents thought it was time for them to be together.

Motivated to have their children learn English and have successful educations and futures, Tomas and Concepcion moved to Fillmore, California in 2000.

“They didn’t want us to be apart anymore because we were getting older, so we were more aware about a lot of things,” she said.

The documents, which Concepcion and Tomas had worked so hard for all of their children to have, made it easy to immigrate and unnecessary for any of them to cross illegally. However, documentation is only one obstacle in an immigrants’ transition to life in the United States.

“It was really hard,” Angelica said. “I didn’t know the language; it was a new environment.”

When they first arrived, they moved in with some of Concepcion’s family on Hume Drive in Fillmore. Angelica’s grandparents, aunts and uncles lived in a single-family house. Angelica, her parents and her siblings were only able to rent one of the bedrooms for the five of them to live and sleep together.

“There were other families in the other rooms,” Angelica said. “My grandma couldn’t really pay for rent, so to be able to help herself economically, she rented the garage for other people. You do whatever you can to be able to survive.”

About 12 people lived in the home, with another five people in the garage.

School was a whole other level of difficulty. When she came here, Angelica didn’t know a word of English.

Thankfully, there were assistants at Fillmore Middle School who helped students who didn’t know English. Angelica showed one of them her schedule on her first day.

“No está en esta clase,” the assistant told her. “You’re not in this class. You have to go to another class.”

Angelica went to Mrs. Shefferly’s classroom. “¿Sabes algo en ingles? Do you know anything in English?” Mrs. Shefferly asked her.

“Sí. I know how to count from 1 to 100.”

“I guess I started counting,” Angelica said, “but I don’t know if I actually counted in English. I just remember that I told her that.”

Despite the challenges that faced her, especially in those first few years, Angelica’s parents encouraged her to keep pushing forward. Eventually, Angelica and her siblings ended up graduating from high school and attending California State University, Northridge (CSUN). It was neither an easy nor straightforward path, but Angelica said her parents were relentless in their emphasis on the importance of education.

“Since we were in Mexico, my mom was always a strong advocate of us getting a good education,” Angelica said. “She would always be involved, and then she just did everything she could to help us out.”

Tomas also made sure his children understood the importance of an education.

One day, he took Angelica to work to pick lemons with him. It was exhausting work, especially for a 16-year-old, hauling heavy bags of lemons. At the end of the day, he handed her $20.

“Just $20 for the whole day?” Angelica complained. “I’m so exhausted!”

“You know,” he told his daughter, “I didn’t bring you here to work. I brought you here for you to realize how hard it is if you don’t have an education.”

Throughout her time in middle school and high school, Tomas and Concepcion couldn’t afford to rent an apartment, so they would rent a bedroom in various houses in Fillmore. Whenever the city government found out so many people were living in one home, they asked Angelica’s family to move instead of citing them.

Being together was a deep bonding experience since all of the family members were going through similar trials and challenges of adjustment to the United States. Her brother, Tommy, now 12, was born in their first house on Hume Drive, which brought the family much joy. They would frequently laugh and play together.

They would joke, for example, that they had three floors — the top bunk was the third floor, the bottom bunk was the second floor, and the mattress they pulled out from underneath was the first floor.

“Where’s Susie?” someone would ask.

“She’s on the third floor,” someone else would respond, as Susana poked her head out from the top bunk.

However, it also proved difficult to find privacy, especially when Angelica started taking more difficult classes at Fillmore High School.

By the time she began her freshman year of high school, Angelica had been learning English for about three years and had improved significantly, though she said that even today, she continues to learn a lot. One of her teachers in particular, Mrs. Curiel, pushed her to take more difficult classes. At first, it was just honors geometry, but from there, she encouraged Angelica to take other honors and Advanced Placement courses.

“That’s when my education became more rigorous,” Angelica said. “I had to spend a lot more time doing homework. I remember that I had to stay up late, and even though my parents were already asleep, they would allow me to keep the light on so that I could continue to do my homework.”

Despite the fact that she repeatedly overcame the obstacles that stood in her way, not everyone believed in her. One of Angelica’s high school counselors discouraged Angelica from pursuing college — the same month that she applied.

“You’re not capable of going to college,” he told her. “Just go to community college. You’re not going to be able to succeed.”

Angelica did not let his words discourage her.

“I’m not going to give up,” Angelica said she thought to herself. “I have the support of my mom, I have the support of my dad, I have the support of the counselors who help me.”

Angelica acknowledged that he probably assumed she would not succeed because of her foreign accent, since her grades on paper were perfectly fine. Angelica graduated as one of the valedictorians of her class in 2006. Her three best friends also graduated with the highest honors — Luz Figueroa and Evelyn Villalvazo were also valedictorians, and Juliana Cruz was the salutatorian.

“It was a big achievement,” Angelica said. “In total, there were 10 valedictorians, and there was one salutatorian … So it wasn’t like I did it, it was we did it. It was an achievement that all of us were really happy about. All of us came here not knowing English and not knowing anything about school. It was something amazing.”

Angelica was accepted into Cal State Northridge and University of California, Santa Barbara. But she decided to go to CSUN to be close to her family.

Another high school counselor, Jesus Flores, also pushed her toward CSUN because he was an alumnus. To this day, Angelica collaborates with Flores to inform and encourage more students from Fillmore about higher education options.

“Even though CSUN was my option B, it has been the best decision I have ever made, and I have been there for nine years,” Angelica said. “I finished my undergrad, and now I am completing my master’s there. I have really created a bond and a community there. … Things just work out. I always say I’m really blessed to have all of these opportunities.”

Since she started there in fall 2006 as an undergrad, CSUN has become an integral part of the Amezcua family. Both of Angelica’s sisters went there, and Concepcion and Tomas are involved. Concepcion, for example, helped organize 26 students to attend a weekend youth conference so that the students could get information about attending college.

Angelica’s best friends, Evelyn, Juliana and Luz, also got into CSUN. When they were first preparing to attend, the four of them called the Education Opportunity Program (EOP) every afternoon for a month, asking if the program had a place for them. EOP is a program for first-generation students from low-income families to help them prepare for college.

They didn’t accept their spots until they were sure that all four got in, then they participated in the program together during the summer before they started at CSUN. It gave them a chance to take classes over summer, meet professors in advance, and learn how to study and write essays.

“That really motivated me,” Angelica said. “Not only did I have that value from my parents, but I also had this strong bond with my friends … I had support at home, and I had support at CSUN.”

For three years, Angelica lived in the dorms, while Evelyn, Juliana and Luz commuted. She would ride back with them every weekend to visit her family.

But college was difficult. In high school, Angelica and her parents weren’t aware of the A-G college requirements, which are the high school class requirements students must fulfill to qualify to attend a University of California or Cal State. Angelica had to spend some time catching up since she took some English as a Second Language (ESL) classes when she was in high school, which didn’t technically qualify her to attend a public California university.

Angelica didn’t know what to study at first, and with EOP, she wasn’t able to declare her major until she was in her third semester.

“I always knew the general thing: I want to help people,” she said. “I took a psychology class, a sociology class, physical therapy, I wanted to major in Spanish. And then a professor told me I would go into Chicana and Chicano Studies.”

Chicana and Chicano Studies aims to further understanding of the experience of Latinos and Chicanos in the United States historically, politically, culturally, linguistically and educationally.

Angelica denied it at first, but after taking her first course in Chicana and Chicano Studies, she fell in love with it because she had experienced her community’s social problems, and it gave her the tools to fight them. She decided to pursue Chicana and Chicano Studies, and ended up double majoring with that and Spanish.

She was able to study abroad in Chile during her final year. Angelica said it was a great experience, but it was also really difficult, especially because she is so close to her family.

“Those were the times when I would cry the most,” she said. “So I would always call my mom crying and crying and crying.”

When she came back, she asked Concepcion, “Mom, how come you never cried when I called?”

“I did,” Concepcion answered. “But you never heard me because I would cry after I clicked with you.”

While she was in Chile, her family applied for a house at the Fillmore Central Station Apartments with the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation, which is a nonprofit that rents affordable housing to low-income farmworker families.

Concepcion was the first to turn in her application when it opened, and they fought to receive the house. Angelica couldn’t believe it when she first saw it. It changed their lives.

The two-story house, one of the biggest in the complex, has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The living room alone is probably about the size of the bedrooms they once occupied as a family.

Though the three sisters live together closer to CSUN, they frequently come home because they love their family and their new home so much. Angelica said she frequently uses her private room as a place to relax and wind down from school.

After completing her Bachelor’s in Chicana and Chicano Studies with Magna Cum Laude and other academic honors, Angelica began a Master’s in Chicana and Chicano Studies at CSUN in fall 2011. She will graduate this year on May 15.

Though she originally planned on taking the next year off, she received an announcement that Arizona State University would offer a new emphasis in the same topic as her Master’s thesis: Heritage language pedagogy.

“They saw that maybe I could be a match with their Ph.D,” she said.

She contacted the director of the ASU program, Cynthia Tompkins, expecting to find out that she was unqualified to participate in the program. But instead, they encouraged her to apply. She ended up being accepted with waved tuition.

So in the fall, she will begin a doctorate in Spanish with emphases in social linguistics and heritage language pedagogy at ASU.

In 2013, Angelica was invited to Washington, D.C. to be one of three motivational speakers at the Rural Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Conference to share her story about how affordable housing impacted her life. Rural LISC works to transform impoverished communities into healthy, economically-stable communities.

“I really enjoyed that experience, first, because my parents went with me. I’ve had the option to travel, but this is the first time that my parents were with me,” Angelica said.

Angelica went there to inform the attendees of the conference that affordable housing is not a free giveaway, but providing one of the most basic needs to people “who are not dirty, who are not lazy,” but who are families that simply want a home.

Angelica said she wants to be a professor in Chicana and Chicano Studies and social linguistics, which is another reason she is pursuing a Ph.D. During her Master’s, she taught supplemental instruction for the incoming freshman English courses. After the professor’s lectures, she led workshops with the students.

“That really convinced me that I want to do that,” Angelica said. “I think that as a professor, you can really help a lot of students to succeed and make an impact in their lives … As a professor, I could help my students. I would be able to help students who are first-generation students and then being able to help them whenever I can to help them overcome whatever obstacles they have. I don’t want to be a savior, but maybe my experience can help them.”

Angelica said she also dreams of buying her parents a house. While they dream of buying their own house, it probably will not ever be feasible, since Tomas works in the fields, and Concepcion is a crossguard, though “she’s not just a regular crossguard,” Angelica said. “At Christmas, people give her presents. She has created that bond with the kids she crosses and with the families.”

Despite her academic successes, Angelica emphasized she has not forgotten her roots, and she has certainly not forgotten her family.

“I believe that everything I’ve accomplished is because I’ve always had that support,” she said.