My memories of my childhood in Puerto Rico are beautiful in their own way. I was born Jose Ortiz in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico in the late 1950’s. My family lived in Demensio Canales, the most notorious and violent housing project in Puerto Rico. The projects were full of crime and drugs, and very organized. No police dared or were allowed to enter Canales, it was a ruff place to grow up. When I was young, my mother’s uncle became the mayor of Toa Baja city. In Toa Baja city, there had been a large private development happening. The Levitts, two white American brothers from New York, had decided to make a state of the art new town and development in Toa Baja. They constructed three and four bedroom homes in three different sections to form a town. The neighborhood was constructed to be very community orientated, and there was a side walk that ran behind all of the homes, where you could easily walk to anyone’s house, parks and recreation areas. All of the electricity poles were underground, and at this time in Puerto Rico this development, and the technology that went with it was very sophisticated. My parents were able to get a loan, and purchase a three bedroom house in this community that was then named Levittown, after the brothers. They purchased the house in June of 1962 for $12500, they were the second family to buy a home in Levittown, so you see my family has been in Levittown since it was created. It was a big change for us to go from Canales housing project, to this brand new beautifully developed community, but it was a welcomed change. As my family grew to eight children, with my mom and dad, we just kept adding on bedrooms as the family grew.
With the development of Levittown, a new elementary school was also created to accommodate all of the new children. My mother became the first custodian of the elementary school. My father earned his money as a Black Jack dealer in the hotels in San Juan, and then he became a chef in the casino restaurant. Between the two of them, we did OK financially, we were not rich, we were not poor.
My child hood consisted of going to school every day, and then staying to help my mom clean up after school. After that I went to Baseball practice. Baseball was my life, and I was very good at it. I wanted to play professional baseball, that was my dream. I would play baseball until the late night, and then come home.
In elementary school classes were taught in Spanish. We did have one English class also, and you had to pass it to graduate. History was a mix of Puerto Rican and American history. School was like this near the metro cities like San Juan, but deep in the country in the campo, no one spoke English, no one learned American history. My most vivid memory of elementary school was in 1963 when JFK was assassinated. They took us all out of class, and packed us in to the hallway. The principal put the TV from his office in the hall way, and all of us just stood there in silence watching the news. I will never forget that, all of us standing in our grey pants and white shirt uniforms, watching the president of the United States getting killed, as they replayed it over and over.
I continued playing baseball, and at fourteen my team traveled to the Dominican Republic for a tournament. I will never forget this trip because it really showed me how privileged we were in Puerto Rico. We had poverty in Puerto Rico, but the poverty in the Dominican Republic was far more severe. Our team had brand new uniforms and equipment, and the Dominican teams wore used shoes that were the wrong size, they had no equipment, but man, could they play. One of the greatest privileges of my life was meeting those Dominican players, their lives were so hard, and they were such good, real people. I came back from this trip very different; it changed the way I looked at life.
My mom and dad never came to watch me play baseball, but I continued, dedicated. When I was ten years old my mother remarried to a man named Pedro. My mother had married young, and her marriage was not working, so they went their separate ways. My father stayed a part of my life, but he became a preacher, and to spend time with him was to hear him preach. All of us got along though and sometimes we went to the beach, my mom, Pedro and my father and his new wife, there were no hard feelings.
Pedro became like a father to me and he came to my games, took me fishing, and really spent time and encouraged me to pursue my dreams of becoming a professional base ball player, he took me everywhere with him. I was playing semi pro AA baseball for Catano city at fifteen years old . I was also the half manager of a little league team I that was like the Bad News Bears. This is important to tell you because this was the time I really began to enjoy working with youth. I continued coaching little league because I really enjoyed it, I helped keep a lot of kids out of trouble, and it was such a good feeling, I’ll never forget it.
When I was sixteen I was offered $25,000 to play professional baseball with the Montreal Expos. At this same time, Pedro, my stepfather died, unexpectedly of a heart attack in front of us, and I went into a deep depression. I stayed awake all night, I didn’t want to sleep with the light off, and I had horrible nightmares. I became afraid of death, like it was chasing me too. I didn’t leave my room, I didn’t play baseball. This went on for months until I finally had a dream where Pedro and I talked in the clouds and he assured me he was OK and I had nothing to fear. With all this chaos in my life at that time, I never followed up with the Montreal Expos, and the offer to go pro, never came again. But this part of my life really changed me, I was never the same.
My sister had become an X-ray Technician, and I decided to become an X-ray technician also. I was studying for this in San Juan. I supported myself and paid for school thanks to the economy of the street.
However, most of my time was spent with my neighbor, Wiesel. He was very involved with politics in Puerto Rico at this time and wrote for the El Mundo newspaper. I had been mentored by Wiesel since I was fourteen. This was really when I began to get involved politically and develop my political consciousness. Wiesel introduced me to Ruben Berrios, a strong leader of the P.I.P- Partido Independista de Puerto Rico, when I was fourteen. Ruben and the PIP took over a house on my block as an office, and center for meetings and organizing. It became a headquarters for the P.I.P. Committee; I became very involved with them, and was always in the street passing out flyers, trying to recruit new people to meetings and to join the independence movement.
The P.I.P was trying to be recognized as a real political party in Puerto Rico, but the government would not recognize us, and they fought against us. Our colors were green and white. The PIP had gotten the US military out of Culebra, and Ruben was trying to get the party established enough so he could be elected governor and make some real changes. Berrios and other important leaders of the movement began meeting at the PIP headquarters on my block, it was very low key and dangerous at the time. The movement was trying to regroup, and figure out new strategies.
El Mundo was a very important newspaper; it was very political and very powerful. In the mid seventies, a white family from the USA bought the El Mundo newspaper, and it was no longer a newspaper of the people. After the purchase the new owners had a very fancy gala to introduce the new face of El Mundo. We went and protested the event, there were about nine hundred of us outside the gates, beating on the sides of the Limousines as they entered carrying celebrities. We were outside drumming congas, shouting, protesting, it was a big deal, we were demanding the boycott of the news paper.
The next day my face, with Weisel, was all over the news. My face, with all the other Independistas was on the front page and on TV. About three weeks later my mother handed me an airplane ticket. I asked her, “What is this?” She told me, “ This is the best money I ever spent in my life. You are going to Kentucky to see your brother for a few weeks.” I always knew she sent me away because she feared for my safety, as people in the independence movement were being kidnapped and killed. No matter how I felt, I did as my mother asked.
It wasn’t until later that I found out that FBI agents had come to my mother’s house and threatened her and my family. They told her I would have to cooperate with them, or they would throw me in jail or worse. They said they could make things very difficult for my family if I didn’t start working for them. Knowing this was not an option, and fearing for my life, my mother sent me out of Puerto Rico. Weisel showed me my FBI file, many years later on a trip back to Puerto Rico. He was the one who explained to me everything that happened with the FBI and my mother, and that she had saved my life by sending me away. I lived many years never knowing the details of my sudden departure from Puerto Rico, I was sixteen.
When I arrived in Kentucky, my brother and his wife picked me up from the airport. They took me to their home, and for a few weeks I only stayed in the house, babysitting my nephew. Then my brother found out I had taken the test for the army back in Puerto Rico, and suggested I enlist. I didn’t really want to, but my brother assured me that if I enlisted, they would place me in medical training where I could finish my X-ray tech training and they would pay for everything. My brother took me to the recruiting office, and I didn’t understand anything, I didn’t speak any English. My brother did all my transactions for me. The day before I was to turn myself in to the army, the recruiter told us there was no room in medical training, but I could do M.O.S and after basic training I could do medical school; that was their promise to me.
I was sent to Fort Briss, Texas. The first time I met my drill sergeant I had a big Afro and an attitude , from that point on, he had it in for me. He cussed me out and made me cut off my afro. My memories of basic training are of always getting in trouble and being on the ground doing pushups, I hated it. I didn’t understand English well enough to understand orders, but they didn’t care, they expected me to learn it on my own and catch up. Every time I messed up I would have to do pushups, by the end of each day I had done 500 to 700 pushups. I had been offered a chance to learn English in the English School, but if I had done that I wouldn’t get to go home to Puerto Rico for Christmas. I was so homesick for Puerto Rico, and when Christmas came, they denied my request to go home and visit anyway, so I might as well have gone to the English school, all those pushups for nothing.
After I graduated from Basic Training I went to Artillery School, which is when I met Shari my future wife. She was working in the cafeteria as a civilian and we began seeing each other. We communicated with a dictionary, she was Philipina- American, and spoke no Spanish. She helped me to learn English and I fell in love with her right away. What I didn’t know was her older brother was my sergeant. I found out when I went to pick her up and he opened the door. After that night her brother gave me all the heavy duty work, and tried to discourage me from seeing Shari. But we wouldn’t stop seeing each other, so he got even more upset, and threw Shari out of the house. I had to arrange for her to stay with my Puerto Rican friend , Lieutenant Santos.
I wanted to return to Puerto Rico with Shari. I wanted to go home and get out of the army because I felt I had been lied to. They had promised me after basic training I could finish my X-ray Technician training, but they had lied. When I asked them about my medical training, they laughed at me and told me I was being sent to Greece. I felt betrayed by the army and by my brother. So I told the U.S. army, “Kiss my black Puerto Rican ass!” , and I went a –wall.
I couldn’t afford two tickets home, so I sent Shari first where she would be safe with my family in Puerto Rico. I sent a photo of Shari to my family so they would recognize her at the airport. I told my mom about my plans to desert, and that I would be there soon. I remained hiding in the house of the Lieutenant Santos. I had to figure out how to get out of the United States, without being recognized. The Lieutenant leant me civilian clothes so they wouldn’t recognize me. But when I got to the airport I ran into my drill sergeant from basic training, and I thought it was over for me. But my sergeant told me, “Ortiz, good luck.” And he let me go. When I got to Puerto Rico, Shari was there waiting with my family, but she was miserable. She didn’t speak Spanish and she was homesick for her family in Oakland.
My neighbor convinced me to turn myself in to the army after deserting so Shari and I wouldn’t be on the run forever. So I turned myself into Ft. Buchannan in Puerto Rico, and they immediately put me in handcuffs for deserting the US Army. They flew me to Florida to a Navy Base, where I was kept in a cell for five days. Then they put me in a bus to North Carolina. I arrived at Fort Bragg as a prisoner. Two days later a female captain came in to talk to me in my jail cell. She said she had read my file, and I was to be released, with honorable discharge, because I turned myself in. I was transported to a final military base in South Carolina, and when they told me I could go home, but I didn’t even know where I was. I called my mom and she bought me a ticket home, but it took me seventeen hours to get to Puerto Rico from South Carolina, I arrived in San Juan the day before Christmas. We spent the holidays with my family but Shari was homesick, and depressed. So we packed up and went to live with her family in Oakland, California.
We moved into her parents house in East Oakland, and right away her father stereotyped me, and hated me because I was black. I felt very alone in this house, they all spoke Tagalong, and I only spoke Spanish. The only one who talked to me was Shari’s grandpa, he spoke Spanish. I remember crying at this time, and looking down at Oakland from the top of 73rd avenue feeling so lonely, and so sad. Shari was pregnant at the time, and after fighting with her father, who was angry she was having a baby with a Black man, we were kicked out, with only the clothes on our backs. Shari had a long coat, I had only a T-shirt, we had five dollars in our pocket. We took the bus down Foothill Blvd to the lake, and we slept together, her and I, using her coat as a blanket, on a park bench in Lake Merritt. When the sun came up we were both so cold, and she was seven months pregnant. So we went to a coffee shop, and spent our last three dollars on coffee and doughnuts, where it was warm. In the morning we called her mom to come and pick us up, and I decided I really had to find a way for us to be independent away from her family, and find a way to support her and my unborn son. Her mom drove us to a vacant house Shari’s aunt owned on Seminary. This was our first place together.
Everywhere I went they treated me with prejudice. When I went to DMV to get my ID they asked me for my green card. I told them I was a US citizen, they never believed me, and sometimes they laughed. They had to go research that Puerto Ricans were in fact citizens. Everywhere I went they treated me badly. For one year I only ate cheeseburgers and fries, because that was the only thing I knew how to order. I still spoke hardly any English. One day my mother and law, an immigrant from the Philippines said to me, “You must learn English, or you will never succeed here. You must learn it.” So I decided to really study the language.
I learned English not in a classroom like you might think. I learned English on AC Transit. The bus was my classroom, the people of Oakland my teachers. I would listen to all the conversations around me. Of course I learned the bad words first. But I would talk to people on the bus, I didn’t care if I said words wrong, I was determined to try and learn. The only English I knew coming to Oakland was military English, “yes sir, left right, drill sergeant”, things like that, I didn’t know how to have a conversation. So each day I got on the bus and learned more. I would go home and my wife would teach me from the dictionary, she was patient and a good instructor. Without her, I would have never learned. She always encouraged me, and she is a wonderful wife and mother.
People would make fun of me when I tried to speak English. I would go to a restaurant and try and order, and they would act like they didn’t understand me, just to make me say the same words over and over, so they could laugh at me. So I decided to use my language barrier to my advantage. When I did wrong, I would just say, sorry I didn’t understand you, and that way I always looked like I knew what I was doing, but just struggled with miscommunication.
I really felt for the other immigrants I knew in Oakland. They had it so much harder than me. At least I had a social security number and citizenship. They had to face all the same discrimination, while living in fear of the migra. Other Latino immigrants didn’t like me; they didn’t understand how I could just have citizenship and an ID and everything. They were jealous of my advantage, as if I had asked for it.
However I used my advantage to get a job with the City. I took a test to do printing and scored 98.9% on the test. I got my first steady job with the city and I worked hard. At this time I helped co-found a Lowrider Car Club in Oakland. We wanted to end the stereotype of Lowriders being low class criminals who only sold drugs and were violent. So as a club we made a serious effort to clean up the community, taking away graffiti, and feeding the homeless in our neighborhood. I think my strong commitment to the community came from Puerto Rico. Eventually we got the attention of the media as a club of Latinos, immigrants, and non immigrants, who helped the community. We gained respect and support of police, and eventually they stopped writing us tickets and harassing us all the time, OPD respected us, and we showed them respect as well. We really broke a barrier.
We continued our community work reaching out to a gang in our neighborhood in Oakland. We tried to teach them to be smart, to see past the life. At that time the hostility between the police and community, was very high. At this time Oakland implemented community policing in an effort to bridge the gap, their main offices were at Eastmont mall. I went and told the clique we had been working with that the police were talking bad on them, that they were worthless, and couldn’t even play sports and that if they were to play a game of softball against the police, the police would smash them. Their response was to accept the challenge to play the police. But the truth was the police had never said this, it was a lie I had constructed. I told the same lie to the police and we had a game arranged in the hills, softball between police and gangsters. I paid for the uniforms for the homeboys with my own money, white T-shirts and their neighborhood printed on the back.
When I arrived with them to the park, the police were there waiting. Instead of having them play each other, I mixed up the teams, and had them play together. The Channel 2 news came, and it was all over the media, police and gang members, playing softball. The second game we played that day was police vs. civilians, and the boys beat the police. A few weeks later at Halloween, a white cop who was mad about losing, he ran over two of the young men from the gang that played that day, breaking the legs of one boy throwing him ten feet in the air. When the boy landed on the hood of the patrol car, the police man stood him up and made him walk to the back of the police car, as he hollered in pain. The community, who was all out trick or treating, threw bottles at the patrol car as it drove away. The other boy who had been hit, lay unconscious in the street.
The community went crazy demanding accountability and criminal charges for the officer. I had to order a town hall meeting with the mayor, chief of police and city council members. 500 people showed, and the chief of police promised a result to the investigation within 30 days. 30 days later, the officer was fired. The City Manager recognized my efforts in this situation and was impressed I had done all this in my spare time, while printing for the city. He promoted me to the Park and Recreations Department, to do outreach and run programs that would keep kids off the street. I worked in this position for twenty five years. I made a Lowrider Police car in 1994, followed by a Fire Department Lowrider to try and bridge the gap between Law enforcement and the community. As the father of four boys, I have a responsibility to improve their chances to succeed in life by being there for them, and improving our community. I have had many successful programs while working for the City, and have been recognized and honored by city and state governments around the country.
However all this time, I was very active in advocating for those Latino immigrants, who didn’t have a voice because they were here illegally, or feared the government. With the help of a good lawyer, I began suing slum landlords who only rented to immigrants. I brought the media and exposed children playing in rotting garbage, showed them the plumbing that would pump human feces into bathtubs. The rat infested filthy apartments were all over the news. I used my privilege of being an American Citizen to help my Latino people. We got a lot of people into better living conditions, and to this day people still call me to help them do paperwork, and fight slum landlords. I did this mainly for Latino immigrants, but I did this with all people being forced to live in conditions not even fit for animals. I used my connections in the City to help those who didn’t have a voice.
When people disrespect Latinos, immigrants or not, I get mad, I take it personally. I think the US policies toward immigration are ridiculous, the government needs to stop punishing the people the United States needs to survive. These undocumented immigrants, they come, they do all the work. The work no one else can do, for cheap. If all the immigrants left, we would collapse, the USA would be paralyzed. They need to just let people come in and work , and give them citizenship. They are here anyway, and when you pass laws to make something illegal, it creates opportunities for more criminal things to happen. Why are they going after the people we need to make this economy function? They pay taxes, but the government targets them. All Latino immigrants should have the same advantage I did. If more Latino immigrants had my advantages, they would be more people contributing to society as I did, instead of living in fear.
I have worked for the City for over 25 years, all the time working with youth. I have now moved on to work in the Community Colleges trying to recruit and help Latino students. I have four boys, a grandson and a daughter in laws. I am proud of my family. Within a few years I want to retire, and return to Puerto Rico. I want to help my community back home. I want to enjoy my family and explore my island. Maybe in my early fifties I am retiring a little early, but I want to enjoy my life before I die. It is the plan of the USA to work people till they are almost dead, but not me.
As far as Puerto Rico today, I feel we must never become a state, look what happened to Hawaii. We must never let this happen, but I feel we should remain as we are. The USA ruined Puerto Rico, they took control, and made us lazy by offering us welfare, and they stole a huge part of who we are when they took our land, and built on top of it. We were farmers, we are connected to our land since the Tainos. Now we are a people on colonized land, but we won’t give up our fight. We have not assimilated. We are Puerto Rican, not American. We are a proud people, our culture is strong. After being colonized by the Spanish, then America, we have kept our traditions, and our spirit will not be broken; we are survivors. I am proud of what I have done in Oakland, I am proud of my struggle and my determination to succeed. I plan on returning to Puerto Rico, and living out the rest of my days on my beautiful island.
