By Janette Ibal
"From Bullets to Books"
Imagine standing in an airport in the only country you have ever called home and holding a one way ticket to the United States. Leaving behind the only people you have ever known as your friends and family to live with strangers you must now call your parents. This is the terrifying event that would change my life forever. My name is Julio G and I am a 26 year old male originally from El Salvador. I lived in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, in the outskirts of the city. We lived in small communities known as “Colonias”, where everyone in the neighborhood knew each other and had similar economic status.
From the time I was born to about the age of five, I lived an extremely unstable lifestyle. My father was in the military and that slowly forced the relationship between my parents to end shortly after I was born. My mother was a cook in the fancier restaurants of El Salvador, but most restaurants were closed during the civil war, making her unemployed and a single parent. There were three boys, one older and one younger than I, that my mother would find herself supporting all alone. My mother realized the only way she would be able to provide for her children would be for her to come to the United States and send us whatever amount of money she was able to save. The hardest part came next, figuring out who would become responsible for my brothers and I. Most of my mother’s family was murdered in the years of the civil war and she knew it would be too much of a burden to leave the three of us together with one family being that the families in the area were not wealthy enough to accommodate any more children. My brothers were left under the care of family and I was left to move in with a family friend.
When my mother came to the United States, and left me with the woman I now call grandma, I was only about five years old. I had little memory of my father and was too young to understand why my mother had left us. In my eyes, my mother figure became the woman that fed me and provided shelter. My grandmother had seven children who were all in their twenties by the time I was adopted, making me her baby and giving me all of her attention. It was not long before these people became the only ones I recognized as family. In only a matter of time, I went from feeling alone to having aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, and most importantly a stable environment.
My grandmother owned a five bedroom house and was always inviting people to come into the home and fill the rooms. At any point in time, there would be a minimum of eight to ten people living in the home. Being that our home was located in the city, many of my adoptive cousins, who lived in the country, would come live in our home while they prepared themselves for the transition of moving to the United States. My grandmother was a hard worker and instilled those values in whoever stayed at the house long enough. Everyone who lived in the home would contribute to the maintenance and bills of the house.
My grandmother owned a store and would use it as a restaurant as well when she would cook and sell the food to the community. Fortunately, my mother continued to send money to her monthly for whatever necessity I might have. My grandmother was very giving and would give the cooked food away to the neighbors if they did not have money or food to eat. The consistent income from the United States was enough to reassure her that I would always have everything I would need.
My schooling started off a bit rocky. I skipped kindergarten because my mom was moving from place to place and did not enroll me in school. Once I was living with my grandmother, she enrolled me in the community’s public school, which is where most of the poor community attended. The education was that of the lowest level in the area and the school was not in good condition. The students were very mixed, just like our Colonia. There were many Indigenous people- mainly of Mayan decent; there was a large black population, and other poor Salvadorians. The school required that we wear uniforms, so there was no discrimination towards any ethnicity based on their traditional clothing. We all went to school and we were all equal students. Unfortunately, my grandmother was not satisfied with the level of education being provided at the public school, and being that we were not wealthy enough to afford the private school, I had no other option than to move to the military school.
When I first started at the military school, I was shocked to see how different it really was from the public school I had become accustomed to. I went from a very poor school, with no structure, to a very strict formal education. At the military school there was no room for fooling around or picking on each other because of the fear everyone had towards the instructors. My hours of attending school also changed drastically. The public school’s hours would only be Monday through Friday from around 7AM to about noon, when we would be allowed to go home for lunch and were not required to return. However, now at the military school, the normal lectures and standard education would be from 7AM to about noon, the same as the public school, but then we would have to do mandatory military training after lunch. The younger students would begin with basic training like marching and the exercises would increase with age. The military believed whoever attended the school was being prepared to become a soldier. They wanted us all to aspire to be the next generation of soldiers.
The United States also aided in making the military school seem more appealing and vice-versa. The food given at the school was U.S. packaged and had American flags printed on the wrapper. The school also provided free health care and dental check-ups at the expense of the U.S. The United States was portrayed as a positive influence on the country for taking care and providing for the children in the schools. I had thought I would continue my education at the military school and go on to choose my profession from there.
I had just turned fifteen, and it was the middle of October when my life changed drastically. I was supposed to be studying for my finals at the military school when my mother arrived in El Salvador. It had been ten years since I last saw her and I was in complete shock. She told me that I would be moving to the United States with her as soon as we could sort out the paperwork through the embassy. My mother had left El Salvador through political asylum, but in the process of filing for residency she met and married an American citizen. My mother was now a resident and was able to file residency applications for my two brothers and me.
By this point, I had lost all interest in school and was focused on my big move to America, so I dropped out of the military school. I had been so caught off guard by my mother’s arrival that I did not think to say good-bye to any of my classmates or neighborhood friends. The process took several months to complete so I had no idea when we would be leaving or where we would arrive. We ended up leaving just after Christmas and that would be the last time I saw anyone from El Salvador again.
We moved to Oakland, California where my mother had already been living with her spouse. He was a Mexican man, the first I had ever met. In El Salvador, I had only heard stories about Mexican people; they were horrible tales of how badly my people were treated when in Mexico, trying to cross into America. I had never felt so depressed or confused in my life. I was stuck in a home with a Mexican man, whom I was taught to be cautious of, as well as brothers I hadn’t lived with since I was five and a mother that had just taken me away from everything I ever knew. I was trapped in a home with complete strangers. Ironically, I felt as if I lost my freedom when I moved to the United States, land of the free.
Over time I was able to adapt myself to the American lifestyle. Once enrolled in school, I met many friends of Latin descent who I could relate to and hang out with. This is one of the many reasons I believe Oakland was an ideal city to move to. The schools are very interracial and I was able to fit in quickly. My older brother also made it easier for me to focus on school and obtain excellent grades. Throughout his entire education in El Salvador all the way through his schooling in the United States, he also maintained good grades and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. In El Salvador I was an average student, but once I took interest in school here in the U.S. I began to see my potential.
My stepfather’s brother was attending Stanford while I was in high school. His nieces and nephews were also in college and higher education was seen as the norm for their family. Now that I had become a member of their family I knew that a college degree would be expected of me. By this time, my brother had turned 18 and was sent to adult school and was told he could not complete high school. I knew I had to be the first to graduate from a university out of my siblings. I ended up attending UC Davis and graduated with a double major in Political Science and Philosophy.
Now that I look back on what my life would have been, I have no regrets. The friends that I stayed in contact with from El Salvador graduated from the military school and became soldiers. El Salvador is one of the only countries that aided the United States during the war in Iraq by sending troops; my friends were part of the group sent over. I feel I would have become another soldier if I would have stayed. I would not be aware of what actually happened in my country if it weren’t for my education here in the U.S.