Second Chance
What was it like when you came to the United States? What was different?
When I got here I didn’t know what I was coming here for. I simply had the intention of bettering myself economically. Maybe get a house or some kind of property. Just speaking in a material sense of properties. I just thought I’d get here, get a house, and go back to Mexico. I’d save up my money and have a certain amount of money and go back to start a business. But I got here and I did buy a business back home but it wasn’t that big, but I did save up enough money to do something else. As for the house I didn’t get to finish it. I never went through with it completely. I was only here two years and they were my first two years and I thought in two years I have to do whatever I can to save up.
So I got here and those two years I worked and I never imagined that I could do more, that I could earn more. All I ended up doing was working at a restaurant and I spent quite some time working there. I would earn a minimum wage. I didn’t know that I could make more money. I never thought I could make like fifteen to sixteen dollars an hour and I was only making about eleven an hour. Also, in those two years I would study, I went to school since I had the evenings free. That’s how I lived my life, simply. Work, school, home. I got bored of it so I decided that I would go back to Mexico. With what I had earned and with what I had back home I thought I could make it.
I didn’t know Mexico had changed so much from the last time I left. When I left, for example, a soda cost five pesos (about 50 cents at the time) and when I got back it was about twelve (about a dollar). What I thought was enough was barely enough to survive. It was nothing. I tried to go back for a while. I worked at a workshop for carpentry. The pay was minimum about 800 pesos a week which if I were to stay here it would only be about eighty dollars a week. You start to think to yourself, “The money I make here in a week I would make over there in a day.”
The economic situation was different and so my mind had changed completely. I didn’t want to stay in Mexico anymore. Besides that you get used to living here. Over there in Mexico you have to turn on your gas and buy your gas seperatly in order to take a shower. Over there that would be a waste of gas. Here the gas just comes to you monthly for like about thirty dollars and over there the gas comes to you in about 1,500 pesos (about 150 dollars). If I lived over there two weeks of work would basically go to just gas. But since I was still able to go back to my parents house they saved a room or two for me just in case I ever decided to come back. So I had a place to stay. We would share everything, gas, electricity, food. We’d just all have to contribute to a certain spot. In that case it wasn’t hard to pay for the essentials. But with the job I had I knew I wasn’t going to stay there for long. I was thinking of searching for more. I was there for about six months and out of those six months I only worked one. I thought, well, what else am I going to do?
I wanted to travel and spend time with my family not work my whole life. For five months I didn’t work at all. I went to Cuerna Vaca since I had family over there and yeah it was nice and all, but I didn’t have anything concrete over there. Nothing to rely on. So I placed a date for myself because I wanted to leave as soon as possible in about a three month span. There was situations where my family asked me to stay. Like events and stuff for family. That’s what held me back. What really kept me back was the Baptism of one of my nephews. It was in April somewhere in the end of April. Once it was over that same day I said goodbye to my family since my whole family had gone to celebrate. I told them I wanted to come back to the U.S. I just wasn’t comfortable the way the economic situation was working half way to death and not making enough.
From those 800 pesos a week that I had saved, let’s say I wanted to go out to a club or whatever you want, just for entertainment, I had to take out from my savings in order to do anything. Like clothes or shoes or going out to eat at like a taqueria or something plus the cost of energy and gas. It just wasn’t enough. The only difference between Mexico and the U.S. that really takes a lot out of what you make is the rent money. The rent is mandatory it’s different because it’s not required in Mexico. So maybe what I worked in a week I’d have to use for rent and bills which include like gas and cable and internet and just things I didn’t have back home. It’s a luxury in Mexico. Here I could just go and buy a computer and the money wouldn’t affect me. I would still have money left over. You think to yourself what am I going to do back home when I have everything here? Everyone thinks about it this way, why would you go slave yourself over there when you can have it all here?
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