My Mother's Journey
- Jessica Martinez
- UNITED STATES
- 17
My name is Jessica Martinez, I am 17 years old and currently in my last year of high school. I have a daughter named Crystal who is a year old, she’s changed our family for the better. I live with my mother who is forty-three and my aunt in a very peaceful neighborhood. My Family is from Guatemala City, Guatemala. My moms name is Maribel she was the first person in our family to emigrate from her country to the United States.
When my mom decided to come to the United States, she was twenty and lived with my grandma, her two sisters and brother in a small house that had dirt floors and was mostly made out of wood. My Grandma who passed away on November 18, 2006, almost 2 years ago, would make and sell tortillas and my mom also helped. She decided to come to the U.S. because she wanted a better life for herself and to help her mom so she didn’t have to work as much also to buy her a house.
My mom’s journey started when she hired a smuggler which would help her get to Mexico by taking a bus. After 5 days she arrived to Tijuana, that night she walked all night through the mountains. It was raining and each step she took would make her get stuck in the mud. While walking she took a step and her foot went in a hole, she didn’t notice it was there and stepped right in it and hurt her foot. When her walk was over a car took her and the other migrants to what she says, was a fancy house and at night a truck would pick her up and drive her to Los Angeles. In the truck they had to lie on their backs and were covered with plastics which were weighed down with rocks. During the ride the rocks and the people suddenly jumped. She didn’t know exactly what was going on until her trip was over someone told her that the truck was about to go over a cliff. When she arrived in Los Angeles every migrant called their family or friends to pick them up but my mom didn’t know anyone, the smuggler told her she could stay with one of his relatives and she accepted.
My mom had her ups and down, she didn’t have a job and finally someone told her a sewing factory needed people so she got a job there. She didn’t have enough experience and some times she didn’t have money for food or to even take the bus to work. Finally someone told her there was a lady who was pregnant and needed someone to take care her babies so my mom took the job and started earning 80 dollars a week and she though it was a lot of money because she finally had enough to send to her mom. Through out the years life started getting better for her and she could help my grandma out even more then before. Now my mom, my daughter and I are living a really good life.