Evaluating the Consequences of These Days The Pain of Forced Separation & Abandonment
By Elia Esparza
I haven’t used my Latinowood blog to post personal messages in a long time. But since it’s my birthday, a pivotal digit in my accumulation of years on this earth, I figured it’s time to share some thoughts.
Over six decades ago, my mom went into labor at the San Diego Zoo, located in the Balboa Park area of San Diego. My poor Mexican mother was in shock, more embarrassed than in pain especially when two Navy medics came to her aid. Suffice to say, I was born and transported to the Balboa Naval Hospital across the street. I seem to be crashing through life ever since—nothing ever easy or a slam-dunk. And, Murphy’s Law always seems to be glaring its meddling head into my life. So for whatever reasons, I’ve had to work extra hard at just about everything. Was it circumstances of my childhood or just plain poor choices? Probably a little of both and I won’t turn this into a pity-party. I take responsibility for things I could have changed and didn’t. The book will come one day. For today there is something I have to share because it relates to the horrors of separating children from their mothers, fathers.
Ever since Donald J. Trump was elected president (or stole the presidency) depending on whom you ask, my stress psyche has been at an all time crazy and out of control. But, nothing has gotten to me like the images of children being forcefully removed from the arms of their mothers, their fathers. These images have crushed me. Trump’s no-tolerance policy, is really code for “no asylum nor immigration for people from shithole countries.” Trump’s family-separation policy is galling. A disgrace.
Last night, I forced myself to sleep in tears and in my dream, I went back in time to my earliest memory as a three year old little girl. A little backstory as to how I got to toddler years.
In the early 1950’s, my mother refused to marry the man her mother had chosen for her and instead ran away in the middle of the night. She ended up at the 16th of September festivities, where she ran into the man who would become my father, Arturo Esparza. He and my mom had never been boyfriend and girlfriend. They were just friends. Acquaintances. He liked her but she was in love with another boy named Bernardo. That’s who she wanted to marry. She knew that Bernardo, nor his family would ever go against my rich and powerful grandmother’s wishes, and she related all this to Arturo. She and Arturo walked and talked for hours. My mother poured her heart out and by the end of the night, he offered to marry her that very night.
And so it was. My mother, with one spontaneous, irrational decision had created a new life for herself. It could have had a storybook ending but unfortunately, it didn’t. According to my maternal side of the family’s account, when I was 11 months old and her newborn son, Arturo abandoned us. My mother and aunts told me the reasons and it dealt with pretty much my paternal grandmother not happy about her son’s choice in wife. But out of respect for my beloved paternal cousins, I won’t go into this because, frankly, no one really knows the truth as to why my father left us.
Elia Esparza with her brother Jose, who is I year younger
But he was gone. That was a reality and not knowing what to do, my mother turned to her father, my beloved grandfather, Lino Alcararz. He was a kind, forgiving and a generous man—my material grandmother, not so much. It was Papa Lino who brought my mom and her two babies (I was 11 months and my brother was a newborn) back home. My grandmother was forced to accept us but she was hell bent on making my mother’s life a living hell for her “mistake” of running off and not marrying the man she had chosen. My grandmother turned into a bitter, vengeful woman. I know this because I recall her treatment of my mother. I don’t know if she was always this way, but family tale says she was bitter from age 15, with deep seeded mommy-issues of her own. Again, folks, that’s another story.
My earliest memory I have buried resurrected in last night’s dream… a reminder as to why I am so devastated with our government separating, literally abusively tearing children away from their parent’s arms.
My grandmother demanded my mother go to San Diego and start working. Back in those days, it was easy to go back and forth across the border if you had a Visa. Her older sister, Dora got her a job at the laundry mat where she worked. My mother worked weekdays and came home to Tijuana every Friday night. My grandmother forced my mother to hand over almost all her paycheck because she was “not a free babysitting service”. And, many Friday nights, when my mother would work double shifts, she would come home late or the next day. On those occasions, which were often, my grandmother would have the audacity to drop my brother and me off at a local Tijuana orphanage. Because, if my grandmother was not paid at 7PM promptly on Friday nights, she’d remove us from her home. No freebies, not for my mother. What made it more sad is that my grandparents were pretty well off. Charging my mom was to make her life that much more difficult. Of course, as soon as my grandfather would find out, he’d go and take us out. A massive fight would ensue with his wife. And, during the times my grandfather was ill and in the hospital, my grandmother would literally leave us overnight or longer at the orphanage. This happened often, from baby to toddler, maybe up to 4 1/2 years old.
Writer Elia Esparza with her mother Olivia
The moment I’d see my mother come home, I’d run into her arms and cling on for dear life. I’d cry and beg her not to leave. But come Sunday nights, my mother had to return to her job. I’d throw a tantrum like only toddlers can. In my dream, I recalled these heartbreaking scenes. I would cry until I couldn’t breathe anymore, and a couple of times, nearly passed out. I clung to my mother’s dress, sweater or skirt, whatever. Several times I was sedated so she could leave me sleeping. This was a harmful cycle repeated often until my brother Joe was 4 and I was 5 years old. My mother had met a man who would become our stepfather and he had rented a house for us to live under one roof in San Diego—in Logan Heights. Once again, my mother out of desperation made another swift decision because all she could think of was getting me and my brother out of the hands of our unloving grandmother… and thus a new life waited for all of us. I sigh. Again, that’s a whole other story. It didn’t help that my grandfather died when I was only five years old. So in my mother’s mind, she had made the right decision to get married and never again have to endure her mother’s wrath without her father’s protection.
Recalling my own personal horrors of being torn away from my mother is seared deeply into my soul. I’ve forgiven a lot of people in my life but I’ve never forgiven my maternal grandmother. My deceased grandfather has come to me at pivotal times in my life, and this morning when I opened my eyes, my Papa Lino was standing at my door, wearing his brown fedora. He was as dashing as always, a well-dressed man who was once a police officer, then a judge, and who once owned the Tijuana gray taxi company. He is the only positive male role model I’ve ever had, and here he was waiting for me as I woke from my sad dream. Papa Lino stood tall looked straight at me and suddenly my storm calmed. My savior, once again. I feel confident he is up there with the angels keeping an eye out for these children who are unjustly being persecuted.
As a flawed adult, as a scarred toddler from separation trauma, and who often was dropped off at an orphanage with a bunch of strangers, I ask my friends, family, and colleagues, not to turn a blind eye to this.
Today, my birthday, I mourn for the child within me, and I know why there are no childhood photos of me smiling. None. No Baby giggling. No happy little girl hitting a piñata, although there is one photo of me on the first day of Kindergarten where I’m beaming. I loved school from day one. It was my great escape. It is my sincere wish that this humanitarian crisis ends and is resolved before more children are hurt or even die. And to those who will never get reunited with their parents, I hope only good people adopt them. As we now know, there are a lot of bad, hateful, bigoted, racist Americans who want to do us “from shithole countries” a lot of harm. We have to send them back to where they crawled out of.
I’d like to ask all of us to do what my dear friend and colleague, Diana Martinez, Editor-in-Chief of the San Fernando Sun and Sol, told me when she stated how we can’t wait for the November elections.
Do it all Elia. It cannot wait for a vote – there are companies benefiting right now from building these cages and businesses making money from these heinous crimes against all of us. Write editorials, protest, call, organize, and support legislation to fight back. It all must be done. Arm chair activists can share information and hopefully do more by getting out of comfort zones to do everything possible.”
What’s happening on the border is cruel, and the entire world is watching.
On my birthday, I wish us all, strength, tolerance, and forgiveness. Let us remember, Bishop Curry’s powerful sermon about the “redemptive power of love.”
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