Juan in El Cenizo, Texas: "Looking At The Rio Grande"
TEENAGE DIARIES
Produced by: Joe Richman
All Things Considered (NPR)
7/5/96


LINDA WERTHEIMER, Host: This is All Things Considered. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
NOAH ADAMS, Host: And I'm Noah Adams. Some of the poorest communities in the United States are the so-called "colonias" along the US border with Mexico. Most of the people who live there are Mexican immigrants. Juan is a 19 year old who lives in a colonia just outside Laredo, Texas. He and his family - 10 brothers and sisters, plus his mother and father - live in a small trailer home. Though his father is a legal resident of the US. Juan and the other members of his family are not. Four years ago they crossed the Rio Grande and entered the country illegally. Juan attended high school here, and this spring received his diploma.

As part of our series, Teenage Diaries, producer Joe Richman has been giving tape recorders to young people around the country so they can document their lives. This is Juan's diary.

[music]

JUAN: Prondo, prondo. Testing. Uno, dos, tres. Okay. Here I am, my name is Juan. How you all doing? [hums along with music] Oh, I love that music.
Well, I'm just sort of looking here. I walk around my house. I'm passing the living room. [knock, knock] Here's the table. And there's my dad and my mom, sitting in the kitchen.
MOTHER: [speaking Spanish in background] Juan gordo, gordo, gordo.
JUAN: [laughs] Well, my mom is just, we are kidding about - something maybe you don't know because my nickname here is 'gordo' which means fat. Since I was born fat. And that's my nickname. And even though I'm not fat anymore, they will call me that for the rest of my life.

[walking around]

1ST BROTHER: What's up.
2ND BROTHER: What's up.
JUAN: [laugh] Here are all my brothers. Sitting on my bed looking at my fat-assed brother, my dumb-ass cousin, and my sister. [laughs] You can hear I love them very much.

[brothers and sisters tease Juan, laugh]

JUAN: My family lives in a trailer house. We're seven brothers and three sisters. And this trailer house, I think it's about fifty feet long. It's a big trailer house, but for twelve people, we feel crowded here. We got three bedrooms. But, you know, when the night comes we all sleep wherever. Sleep on the floor, kitchen, wherever man. And where I live is called El Cenizo. This is a small little town. About half a block down is located the Rio Grande river. [laugh] And, sometimes it's funny. You see we came all the way from Zacatecas - about eighteen hours - just to come three hundred feet into the United States.

[music comes up, then fades out]

[geese honking]

JUAN: What's up. This is me again. Just here at the backyard of my house. You say you wanna, kinda know a little about my life, and... What's going on right now here in my house is that we're having some problems. And I'm just feeling bad. You see, my dad is working. Right now he's got this job that only pays around one-sixty a week. I mean, come on, what is one-sixty a week for a big family like us? [sigh] This is kind of hard to say, but... sometimes we don't even have food on the table. Like, I haven't eaten anything, I mean, I went straight to the kitchen and try to look for something to eat and I open the refrigerator and it's empty and, [sigh] man, I just hate this situation, man.
It's hard for me because I have already finished high school and I got my diploma and I'm just hanging around, you know. [sniff] I would cry but, if I cry I will be more hungry. [sniff] I wish I could do something.

[walking away]

[splash]

JUAN: There goes, that's one. That was one of my rocks. [quiet laugh]
[another splash, bird sounds]Rio Grande. The famous Rio Grande. I can actually touch the water.
[splashes hand around in water, duck quacks in background] It's pretty amazing. Like, looking down there at the other end of the water, you know. And imagine me, you know, I'm Mexican, and I'm just looking at my country right now - and I'm here in the US. It's, like, kind of amazing. Like my father once used to say: "Look, there's Mexico". [pause, quiet laugh] Well, it was just a little joke, you know.

[rock splash, sound of people coming closer]

JUAN: Oh, here. There's people coming. I'm gonna see what's up. [people coming closer, whistle, shout] Oh man, look at that. [sigh] It's a dead body. Dead body going down the river. Man, look at that. Floating in the water, going down the river. Face down. [breathing hard] I've never seen a dead body - well, I have seen dead bodies, but not going down the river, you know. [breathing hard] Now I'm just thinking what's gonna happen to that man's family. Cause I'm sure he was Mexican. He looked Mexican. He looked pretty young. And I'm sure that he was just like I, try to come across and get to good job and send some money to his family. It's pretty sad. [breathing hard] I came down the river to talk about life, about hope, about the dream of a better - of the future. And what I found, was dead body. [pause] I hate that river. I hate it, man.

[walking away, bird sounds fade]

[music on radio]

JUAN: [humming with music] Well, right now I'm in the back of my house, in the backyard. This is a clear - beautiful, clear night. Man, you should see this moon. It's big, shiny, beautiful moon. So I was just walking outside. And I came back come, and I started thinking about some things. And at this moment, I realize something: that I'm not a kid anymore, and I wanna be acting like a man. So, since I got nothing left here - you know, I got no place to work here and I need to help my family - I have decided that I'll be going to Denver, Colorado. My brother's living there right now, and he told me that he was trying to find a job for us and that we will find a job there. I mean right now, that's the only way I have - going up to Denver. Time is not gonna wait for me. I gotta get things going.

[music fades]

[sound of bus station]

JUAN: Well, I'm here at the Greyhound bus station. Just want to say goodbye. This is Claudia. Yeah, bye. Adios. Adios Carla. Adios. Just gonna go for my momma.
MOTHER: [in Spanish] Goodbye, and go with God.
JUAN: Gracias, mom. This is my little brother again, just wanna say 'bye'
LITTLE BROTHER: Bye
JUAN: [laugh] OK. It's time to go.

[gets on bus]

JUAN: Well, this is it.

[bus pulls away]

JUAN: Four years ago, I came to the United States for the first time. In some way, I feel proud of myself because, I mean, I come from Mexico and I have achieved, you know, my high school diploma - something that a lot of kids that were born here, they were not able to do it. And that's why I see myself kind of special, you know. And that's one of the things that always keeps me going. Because I feel like I can do almost anything.

[bus sound for while, begins to fade]

[music begins to fade in]

NOAH ADAMS, Host: Juan wrote and recorded the audio diary you just heard. It was produced by Joe Richman as part of our Teenage Diaries series.
And there's a postscript. Today Juan is living in Denver, sharing an apartment with his brother and fourteen other people. He's found a factory job. Says he wants to save enough money to buy a pickup truck and drive it back home to Texas. He also hopes to become a legal resident.

[music plays for while, then fades]




© 1996, Joe Richmam