The Fabens Bridge to America

To begin the blog, I have to take you back,  way back to my own family's story of migration...

Cruz, Jesus, and Jose

Jose de la Luz Olivas and Cruz Estrada immigrated to Tornillo, Texas (USA) from Sausillo, Chihuahua (Mexico) during the Mexican revolutionary war.  Jose was a farmer and Cruz was a homemaker.  According to their daughter, Mona, he was very strict, very short and very dark skinned.  Her mother was tall, pretty, light skinned and a saint.  Mona always said that she looked like more like her father than her mother.

Mona had several brothers and sisters. Her first brother and his wife had several children.  One became a nun in Mexico, but later left the order and married.  She eventually moved to Fabens, Texas and had nine children.  One died in his early 20s after being electrocuted during a storm.  Another mysteriously disappeared during the Mexican revolution while tending to sheep in the mountains.  Many suspected that soldiers took his life.

Mona was young when the soldiers came.  She would talk about seeing a man’s body hung from trees in the town’s center while walking to school. She and her older brother walked to school each day until she decided that it was too dangerous.  It was because of this, that she stopped attending school before finishing second grade. 

A third brother of hers died in a car accident.  He was traveling with his wife and child in Fabens.  The only one to survive the accident was the baby boy, Jesus, of only a few months.

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Mona’s brothers had gone to the United States to find work as farmhands.  Soon after they left, her father, Jose, decided that he would move to the U.S. to be with his sons.  He sold the family’s animals and left.  He brought Mona with him, entrusting her with the money collected from the animal sales.  Only ten at the time, her father thought that, she would be the least suspect of having money if they encountered robbers.  They traveled in a horse drawn wagon and crossed the boarder at Fabens.

Her father had a letter of reference which stated that he was a good worker and an honest man.  With this, he found a job and settled in Tornillo.  Jose eventually became a supervisor of the farm, and they all lived together while the rest of the family stayed in Mexico.  The car accident that took Jess’s parents forced Jess to join Jose and Mona in America. The accident instantly killed both of his parents, yet he survived it all with only a broken limb.

About ten years later, Jose decided to go back to Mexico after the death of his wife at age 63.  She became ill with a fatal case of pneumonia and died.  Jose took Jess back to Mexico with him, leaving Mona in the United States.  It was not too long before word got back to Mona that her father had died of a heart attack in Mexico.  Mona was unable attend his funeral since she did not have proper immigration papers.

After Jose’s death, Jess decided to return to the U.S.  He didn't feel like he belonged in Mexico.  At sixteen, he moved to Arizona but remained in touch with Mona and the U.S. family.  Mona thought very highly of him all throughout her life.  The feelings were mutual as evidenced by the fact that they always kept in touch up until his death.

Mona married Pie on June 5, 1910.  They had three daughters, Alice, Mary, Maria Elena, and Franky, from a previous marriage.  Mona was a homemaker, but when cotton season came, she was a cotton picker.  She was good and fast at picking cotton, and she earned twelve cents per pound of cotton.

A small pickup truck would come early in the morning to pick her up and it would bring her back in the afternoon.  When not in school, her children would go with her.  Running through the rows of cotton, they would entertain themselves, and  pick a little cotton every now and then.

Sometimes we would have small bags tied to our waists to help.  I would always wander away and she would yell, stay close so I can see you!  She always talked in Spanish.  Spanish was my first language.  When I started school, I did not know English.  It was difficult but eventually we picked up on the English language.  My daddy was well-liked by everyone who met him.  He was very kind and gentle.  He was good to his wife and he was a very hard worker.  He was an honest and very decent man.

Pie, Mona's husband, was born in Villahumada, Mexico.  He was very tall, maybe six feet she recalls.  His mother died when he was very young and from that point, a sobrina (niece) raised him until the age of thirteen.  He would call her mom until she married and left with her husband.  He moved around a lot, staying here and there with relatives until he decided to come to the United States.

He started working when he moved here at age thirteen.  One season, when working on a farm, he got very sick.  The owners took him in and nursed him back to health.  It was there that he met Mona.  She lived on the farm and had a small business cooking lunch for the farm hands.  Her previous marriage fell apart, and she was doing her best to make a living for her and her son.  To make a long story short, Pie ate frequently at Mona’s restaurant.  He fell in love with her, married her and helped take care of her son.  They eventually had three daughters of their own.  Decades later, I came into the picture.

Migration, like so many U.S. citizens is in my blood.  It is in the blood of the I-Kiribati people, whom this blog is about.  And I am pretty sure it is in your blood too.  Our past connects us to the present which will connect us to our future.  It is the migration of the individual which ultimately connects to others, creating at the very least a shared history and collective future.