Greetings from the American Southeast, Norf Kakalacki! (North Carolina, a state where many toothless “Good ’ol Boys” continue to proudly fly the Confederate flag as a symbol of “heritage”) After two-thousand miles traveled, I arrived at Holden Beach yesterday afternoon to find my two American families thoroughly enjoying the peace and tranquility of the Atlantic Ocean.
As I mentioned in my post last week, through circumstance and luck, in 2000 I found myself sharing a three-bedroom house with ten “illegal” or “undocumented” immigrants from the Mexican states of Guanajuato, Guerrero and Jalisco. The experience was life-changing, and put me on the migrant trail for good.
I have not visited the Carolinas since I left for Arizona in 2003. So before I shared a seat on the Greyhound with an extremely brave 19-year-old U.S. Marine heading for Camp Lejune, I took the opportunity to stop in Raleigh and spend some time with the founding members of the “Mafia del Bucksport Lane.”
When the “amigos” first came to Raleigh in late 1999, they were true trail blazers and were among the first Hispanic immigrants to set up shop in the city. At the time, I was in school at North Carolina State University and worked as a short-order-cook at a local breakfast restaurant where my co-workers were mostly African-Americans.
Our paths crossed only because “El Nano‘s” cousin convinced him to leave California and head east to a place where there supposedly were plenty of well-paying jobs and little competition for them. During this time, work was so plentiful, in fact, that one could quit their job in the morning, and find at least two new ones before the day ended.
The City of Raleigh and the State of North Carolina were completely unaware that they had been marked as a good place for immigrants to start new lives, and were thus unprepared. There were no public services, bilingual translators or Hispanic media. I discovered over this past weekend that all of this has changed drastically in the five years since I left.
But the biggest difference I saw in Raleigh is the presence of women and children; a sign that the “raizes” planted by El Nano and his fellow male founders have taken hold, and are currently supporting a flourishing Hispanic community in North Carolina.
Allegedly, there is a movement beginning to gain traction in the Carolinas which is expected to create an anti-immigrant climate similar to that of Arizona and Oklahoma. But based on what I saw at the local swap-meet, a baptismal party and the wedding of one the founding members of the “Mafia del Bucksport Lane” to a white woman (together, they are already raising a child), their worst fears have already been realized. Immigrants have built new lives and a strong centralized community in the Carolinas. Many, through their children, can now speak English. Unified by circumstance, they will ride out the anti-immigrant storm and patiently wait for a compromise at the federal level which will give them a chance to earn their “papeles.”
I will soon post “mini-profiles” of all my friends, but since, like an amateur, I left the cable for my camera in Phoenix I cannot post any pictures, at the moment. It will have to wait.
