Meet Rolando Arrieta
Latino staffers at NPR share their family stories of perseverance, sacrifice, and hard work to achieve the American Dream. These stories are defined by universal values of pride, hope, and an endless determination to help shape the new American landscape.
On his way north from El Callao, Peru, my grandfather settled in Panamá to work for the racially segregated Panamá Canal Company. As an Afro-Latino, he earned a “Silver-Roll” wage and lived in segregated housing for West Indian Blacks who migrated to Panamá to help dig the ditch. He married and raised a family there, still believing life in the segregated United States would be much better. So he persuaded his sons to join the U.S. Army as an “easy” gateway into America. The U.S. military had opened recruitment to Panamanians at a critical time of the Vietnam War.
When he was 18, my father signed up and fought on the front lines of Vietnam for a country he knew very little about. He married my mom, who gave birth to her four children in U.S. military hospitals — yes, an easy peasy way to U.S. citizenship! But my dad fell gravely ill soon after his war duty and was able to remain in his home country and raise his children there. He died from lung disease at 42.
When he was 18, my father signed up and fought on the front lines of Vietnam for a country he knew very little about.
A widowed single mom, my mother got a job as a copy editor at a Panamanian daily newspaper and raised four kids in her home country, Panamá City.
When I was 19, I moved to the El Paso/Las Cruces area to go to college on a veteran dependent’s tuition program. I’ve lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for most of my adult life.
