Juan (name changed) was born in Lourdes Colon, El Salvador in 1980. He didn’t finish school because he had a child and had to work. He delivered Coca Cola, but he didn’t get paid much. He left El Salvador with a coyote in 2004. Juan’s journey took twenty eight days walking and driving. He came to United States to work ... Read More »
Diego (name changed) was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1980. He worked as a merchant. He unloaded the goods from the trucks. He earned good pay on it but he decided to come to the United States because he had some problems with dangerous people. These people were looking for him. In the city where he lived there were ... Read More »
My father has always been an active man, always eager to learn something new and prepared for whatever was to come. Rogelio Sotelo was born on July 27, 1973 in the town of Jamay, Jalisco, into a middle class family of five girls and four boys. As a young child, through elementary school, he would wake up every morning and ... Read More »
Arturo Gonzalez was born in 2001, in Michoacan, Mexico. Growing up, he did not have many family members to help raise him. All he had was his mother and father, both living in separate homes far from each other. The only other family that he had previously immigrated to America and lived in California. The only member of his family ... Read More »
I was the only woman out of eleven men. Anything awful could have happened, but it didn’t because one of the main coyotes (person who helps others migrate) was my relative. The trip took four to five days. These days were some of the worst days of my life. I was just a little girl who was living her life. ... Read More »
The story of Veronica Rodriguez and her immigration to the U.S. starts in Abatzingan, Mexico. Veronica described her childhood saying “it was kinda rough, we had many hard times.” She lived in a small house with her mother, father, three sisters and four brothers. Veronica came from generations of poverty-stricken families and told of how hard her father worked to ... Read More »
“One of the reasons why I appreciate this school and why I would do anything for this school is because they changed my life. They made my American dream.” Ernesto Cruz is the girls’ soccer coach and campus supervisor at Palo Alto High School. Cruz has been at this school since 2004. Cruz was born in El Salvador. He grew ... Read More »
Click & listen to the story as read by Ramon’s granddaughter, Jamie Garcia-Villareal, a resident of Palo Alto. I wouldn’t say I had it easy, but then again, no one here really did. I was born and raised in Aguililla, Michoacan, Mexico on July 20, 1929. You see, growing up then, no one really had any money. Michoacan was filled ... Read More »
I was a kid who never knew what the U.S. was, what future was waiting for me here, what courage I was able to obtain, and what blessed life I would end up living. So I walked, ran, and hid to reach my brighter future here in the U.S. I was born on October 11, 1954 on a ranch in ... Read More »
We were 7 children in total and we lived with my mom and dad. My childhood was very sad because the children in El Salvador didn’t know the difference between living like an adult and a child, because we had to work like adults. I didn’t really have a childhood because I had to work so hard for a long ... Read More »