Posted on 11/10/2002 9:17:07 AM PST by Pa' fuera
Radio drama takes story line from lives of Mexican immigrants
Program details harsh realities
By S. Lynne Walker COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
November 10, 2002
MEXICO CITY – Enrique Romero still remembers the night his story began.
Alone in his office, he kept thinking about the tragedies and the abuses of undocumented workers he'd witnessed in his job at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Finally, he picked up a pen and began pouring his feelings onto blank sheets of paper.
Two years later, Romero had written a book and it has so captured the imagination of his readers that it has been scripted into a serialized drama for Spanish-speaking radio audiences in Mexican and U.S. communities where migration is common.
His message to Mexicans isn't that they should stay home.
Instead, he wants to prepare them for the dangers of crossing the border and for the harsh reality of living underground in America. He wants them to know they have rights in the United States and that they must obey U.S. laws.
Romero's book – "Tortillas Duras: Ni Pa' Frijoles Alcanza" or "Hard Tortillas: Not Even Enough for Beans" – was born of his own feeling of helplessness as he watched Mexicans endure hardships in the United States that nobody said anything about before they left home.
"I don't think 'Tortillas Duras' has the ability to stop immigration," said Romero, 44, who is now the Mexican consul in the Guatemala border town of Tecun Uman. "But at least it says, 'If you are going to the United States, things are really like this.' "
Romero's story has been scripted by the Mexican government into a radio drama that will reach millions of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Written in the style of popular radio soap operas, or radionovelas, the story began last week in several Mexican states. Soon, it will be aired in Baja California.
California's Spanish-language public radio network, Radio Bilingue, plans to broadcast the novela on five stations, including one in El Centro.
"This goes along with our mission of informing farm workers about their rights," said Guadalupe Carrasco, Radio Bilingue's regional manager in the San Joaquin Valley. "If it informs people and empowers them, then it is definitely something we want to do."
For Romero, radio offers a way to reach the Mexicans most likely to migrate – people who don't have enough money to buy a book or who don't even know how to read.
It gives him a chance to make one crucial point: "If we go, then let's go knowing what we're getting into."
On the radio Radio has long been a part of Mexican life. Before televisions became affordable, radio was the only link between rural Mexico and the rest of the world. Housewives listened to radionovelas in the mornings as they did their chores. In the afternoons, families gathered around their radios to hear the adventures of superheroes.
Today, many of the stories are driven by social issues. At Radio Bilingue, novelas have focused on obesity, the dangers of smoking during pregnancy, on taking precautions to avoid contracting HIV.
"People really like the message when it comes in the form of a voice that's familiar, like a relative or a neighbor," Carrasco said. "When the message is delivered in the first person, it sounds genuine."
The quest for realism prompted "Tortillas Duras" producer Olga Durón to travel to California, where she recorded sounds for the radionovela in the Latino neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
With Romero at her side, Durón went to cantinas and pool halls frequented by Mexican migrants. She spoke with a Roman Catholic priest who works with the migrant community. She went to Calle Alvarado, where false documents are offered for sale. She went to street corners where day laborers congregate and recorded their shouts as Americans drove by to offer work.
"It would have been impossible to re-create the ambience in a studio in Mexico City," said Durón, who works for the Radio Education division of Mexico's National Council on Culture and the Arts. "They speak Spanglish in Los Angeles, not Spanish or English. The music they play in cantinas is not the same as here. Our objective was to show the real lives of Mexican migrants in the United States."
The radionovela, with 30 chapters lasting 27 minutes each, gives migrants valuable information about the documents they're entitled to while in the United States. It talks about the friendships that develop as people from different states and regions in Mexico find themselves neighbors north of the border.
But it also speaks to the loneliness of being far from home, about how much migrants miss their families and even their favorite foods. The saddest moment is there, too: when a migrant's lifeless body is shipped home.
Romero has never forgotten the first time he called a mother to tell her about the tragedy that had befallen her son in Los Angeles. The young man was from Michoacan, Romero's native state.
"Señora Martínez?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Do you have a son named Luis?"
"Yes. He called me last night. He's getting ready to come home for Christmas."
"I'm sorry to tell you that he won't be coming home. He's dead."
Romero paused for a moment as he remembered.
"There are other Mexicans who have been cremated, who were never identified," he said. "Their wives and children are still waiting for them to come home at Christmas."
A lucky one Romero considers himself one of the lucky ones. He came to America legally when he was 11 years old. Because his father had been born in the United States, he was able to bring Romero and his nine siblings to the San Fernando Valley. But with only a first-grade education, he had to work hard to support his family.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Romero met many of the people who would become characters in his novel. At 19, he left the United States to earn a bachelor's degree in international relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. When he joined Mexico's foreign service, he was sent back to Los Angeles, to the Mexican Consulate.
His memories of those later years in Southern California are painful.
"Sending bodies home, sending children home, repatriating sick people, visits to prisons," he said. "It never ends. It made me mad that the problem is never solved. It still makes me mad."
In his 479-page book, Romero wrote about the problems that migrants face in the United States. But he also wrote about the myths of prosperity that migrants create when they go back home.
"They bring nice clothes; they drive new cars. All year in the United States, they've probably eaten beans and cactus to save money so they can go back in December and say, 'Look what I've done,' " he said, slipping between Spanish and English.
Romero insists he's not a novelist, or even a writer. He couldn't find a publisher for his book so he paid to have it printed himself.
He also points out that he isn't a scholar. His book has no statistics, no numbers. "With time, you understand that undocumented workers are much more than that."
He is, however, that rare person who has lived a full life on both sides of the border. By sharing what he has learned – on radio and in print – he hopes to help people understand "the rich flavor and the unpleasant taste of life as an undocumented worker."
I can think of a sadder moment: When the migrant kills an innocent victim or molests a child, then jumps the border. They forgot to include those instances in their little survey on illegal life in the US.
Cognitive dissonance strikes again. They aren't obeying the laws by crossing the border in the first place!!!
It's time to impose a 20% federal tax on all money transferred to Mexico (or, for that matter, anywhere). If we can't deport them, let's bankrupt them! Let's get some of this under the table cheap labor money into the Treasury.
Same people, new Orwellian language.
Yes, I'm an idiot.
It is but luckily many illegals never went to school in Mexico. I even know one who asked me if it was true that some states in the US once belonged to Mexico ---he actually didn't know that. Of course I told him exactly what did happen.
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