My Life as a Mexican American
The Story
Monica Hernandez
University of Phoenix, Axia College
ETH 125
Jenna Schulte
December 10, 2009
My Story
Mi nombre es Maria Consuelo Diaz-Martinez. I am the younger of two siblings. My family of four, come from a state in the central-eastern region of Mexico named Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla(Puebla), which means Free and Sovereign State of Puebla. Even as small as it may look on a map, there are approximately five million people who occupy my state. My family migrated to the land of opportunity when I was six and has been here ever since. It has been a difficult, but worthwhile journey, to say the least.
Because Puebla is located in the central-eastern region of Mexico, we had to travel 1400 miles to reach the United States border. This trip was very difficult for us, we did not have money to fly, so the four of us made the trip in my family’s small car. Like many Mexicans, we migrated to the United States in search of a better life. In Puebla, my father and mother were both Migrant Workers, tending fields wherever the need arose. However, this was not the life either of them wished for my brother and I. They wanted to be able to provide us with a better education than we could receive at public schools in Mexico. So we moved to Los Angeles carrying with us only what could fit in the trunk of our family car.
The Journey
It was 1968, the four of us piled into the small family car. My brother and I stared as we waived to our friends and family as we drove away. It was a sad and happy day, full of tears. My parents saved all that they had earned for five years. They tried to prepare us for our great migration to our new homeland by instilling in us the belief that the value of family far out-weighed the value of worldly possessions. Because my parents weren’t exactly in a higher level of employment, we didn’t have much anyway, so it wasn’t as difficult to leave a few items behind. Besides, we had...