Fighting for home

Central Americans living in Worcester protest their immigration status. The story of why Guatemalans and Salvadorans fled their war-torn homelands more than a decade ago and now have to fight the US government for amnesty.

by Kristen Lombardi

Washington DC. Demonstrators, thousands of them, converge in front of the Capitol building from up and down the East Coast -- from New Jersey, Maryland, the Carolinas, even Florida. Some of them climb onto friends' shoulders. They raise their fists in solidarity. Others wave hand-held American, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan flags, or wrap themselves in larger flags, or tie bandannas that read EL SALVADOR and GUATEMALA around their heads.

Their attention is drawn to a petite, yet powerful woman named Rosa Abraham, who climbs the Capitol steps, leans into a microphone and shouts, "Viva los Estados Unidos!"

"Viva," the crowd replies. Viva! Viva! Viva!

It is the sound of Central American immigrants waking up to activism.

Abraham has led fellow Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants living in and around Worcester to America's heart to protest changes in US immigration law, changes that prohibit Salvadorans and Guatemalans -- refugees from cruel, civil wars waged in the 1980s -- from getting "green cards," or permanent legal status. Further restrictions passed in a 1997 law known as NACARA (see "The politics of asylum," page 11) increase the chance of deportation for these Central Americans, regardless of the fact that they've resided in this country for nearly two decades.

The deportation threat is real enough to Worcester-based Salvadorans and Guatemalans -- a silent, isolated group whose plight is virtually unknown among the city's general population -- to prompt a few dozen to visit the country's capital today. For them, deportation is not an option. Though the conflicts that pushed them out of their countries have ended, El Salvador and Guatemala are still poor countries with high unemployment and crime. The minimal progress made in rebuilding after years of war was reversed last year, when Hurricane Mitch decimated the region, killing hundreds and displacing thousands more.

And so the city's Salvadorans and Guatemalans are packed amid the 2000-strong crowd, waving their flags, chanting their slogans. The late-March demonstration caps a week of lobbying for new legislation called HR 36, which would give people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti the same permanent protection Nicaraguans now enjoy. NACARA ensures that Nicaraguans have the right to stay in the US.

A sprightly Abraham, still on-stage, tells people in Spanish that what they ultimately want is a green card.

"Green card," people shout back.

On the surface, the march may be about amnesty. But after their struggle to come to this country, fleeing a political violence the US helped perpetuate, Salvadorans and Guatemalans have continued to struggle for legal status here, where a climate helps foster the mistreatment and scapegoating of immigrants. Theirs, then, is a deeper fight for the one thing on which America's supposed to be founded: the right to basic justice and fairness.

The politics of asylum For Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in Worcester, the Central American and Caribbean Refugee Adjustment Act of 1999, known by its bill number, HR 36, is the closest thing to peace-of-mind the United States has ever tried to give them. Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) has sponsored the legislation, which, basically, would correct the disparate treatment built into the 1997 NACARA law. NACARA, or the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, grants Nicaraguans, but not other Central Americans, the right to stay in the US as permanent legal residents. This is exactly what Salvadorans and Guatemalans have desired for a decade. NACARA won support, primarily, for foreign policy reasons: the US opposed the Communist government in Nicaragua's war; it supported the governments in El Salvador's and Guatemala's wars. There are, in addition, political considerations: several Republicans, in particular Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who represents a Miami congressional district heavily populated by Nicaraguans, crafted a back-room deal enabling 150,000 Nicaraguans (along with Cubans) to apply for their "green cards." But NACARA is unduly tough on Salvadorans and Guatemalans, especially since they fled political violence in their countries rivaling that in Nicaragua. Rather than amnesty, Salvadorans and Guatemalans had been offered temporary protection from deportation in 1990, with the possibility of permanent status after residing here a consecutive seven years -- if they maintained a clear record, and if they could prove they would suffer "extreme hardship" by being deported. Now that NACARA gives Nicaraguans automatic residency, Salvadorans and Guatemalans -- specifically, 250,000 of them -- are left to fight deportation proceedings as lone individuals before pursuing permanent residency. Those who are denied asylum (their claims are pending) must then present cases for what's called "suspension of deportation." Not only is this process expensive, advocates argue, but it doesn't guarantee that they'll be permitted to become permanent residents. Even more discouraging is the fact that Salvadorans and Guatemalans have hardly succeeded in their cases so far. Between 1989 and 1997, for instance, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) approved a mere 39 percent of these refugees' applications for suspension of deportation. The only positive aspect of NACARA is that it restores the limited, temporary benefits Salvadorans and Guatemalans had lost with enactment of the landmark, draconian 1996 immigration law, which overhauled immigration procedures and included many onerous provisions, such as stricter border checks, as well as income-requirements for US sponsors. Ultimately, the '96 law, authored by Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who's been described as a "Cold War dinosaur," sped up the deportation of millions of immigrants and refugees. Since he heads the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee, Smith helped broker the NACARA deal. Nicaraguans, he claims, represent "special cases" because they're from the only Central American country aligning itself with the US to fight the "spread of communism." Even though HR 36 would allow nationals of El Salvador and Guatemala (as well as Honduras and Haiti) to have the same protections as Nicaraguans, advocates anticipate fierce resistance from Smith. But a somewhat promising fact is that Republicans like Diaz-Balart are now recognizing NACARA's damaging effects. To deport hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans isn't simply impractical, it's also unpopular -- especially since it would tear up families and communities that have contributed to American society for years. Besides, advocates add, deporting Salvadorans and Guatemalans would just de-stabilize Central America's economy, considering that these refugees keep the area afloat by sending money to family members back home -- $1.5 billion to El Salvador and $700 million to Guatemala. Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Worcester), one of 78 HR 36 cosponsors, sums up his support best: "There comes a time when you have to ask, `What is the right thing?' And this is," he says. "It is time for our government to wrap up its involvement in this region by doing something positive." -- KL

On an unusually dank, dark night, just 12 hours before the DC demonstration, a smaller crowd gathers in a dimly lit car lot at the Massachusetts Turnpike Millbury exit. They wait for a bus to take them to the center of democracy. Close to 35 men and women, ranging in age from early 20s to late 50s, mill about, speaking animatedly in Spanish, their faces flush with anticipation.

Rosa Abraham, the Worcester manager of Centro Presente, a Cambridge-based organization providing legal services to Central Americans, stands in the swarm, shaking hands, thanking the Salvadorans and Guatemalans from Worcester, Westborough, and Marlborough for taking time now to fight for what they've wanted for the past decade.

"We're going to Washington because we want amnesty for Salvadorans and Guatemalans," she reminds the crowd as the bus arrives.

Members nod, then file on board. An older man with slick, black curls and a raspy voice calls out, "Amnestia," setting off a rumble of laughter, one that barely subsides throughout the eight-hour journey.

That Abraham, a 36-year-old Salvadoran immigrant (her maiden name is Gutierrez), would be leading a band of compatriots to the most American of cities is the result of a twist of fate she never imagined as a child. Born the oldest of eight children in San Salvador, El Salvador, she grew up in a strict, pious Protestant household and led a quiet, insular life revolving around church, school, and family. "It was like growing up in a crystal ball," Abraham recalls. "I was in my own little world."

But it was a world soon shattered by violence and unrest. By 1980, civil war had transformed San Salvador's bustling, urban landscape into an oppressive environment, where government-imposed curfews kept civilians off the streets, and military forces ran activists out of town. At age 17, a devout Abraham remained true to her faith by staying away from politics and concentrating instead on her studies -- until she heard rumors of her best friend, also named Rosa, joining the guerrilla movement.

One day, that very friend vanished. She reappeared several months later at school looking haggard, defeated; her long, black hair had been chopped and dyed blond. "The army tortured her," Abraham recounts. "They electrocuted her, raped her. They said they'd kill her if she went back to the guerrillas." Weeks passed; Abraham's friend lived in constant fear, and rightfully so. One Friday evening, while watching Charlie's Angels on television, she was abducted again -- this time, her body was found dumped along a road, shot through each eye, a symbolic silencing of the horror she'd witnessed.

Abraham's parents, dreading their daughter would be in danger, decided to leave. And so, with nothing but a few clothes, the family boarded a bus for Guatemala City, Guatemala, where Abraham's photographer father had a business. That was September 1980, and, save for a brief trip to get a student visa, it was the last time Abraham set foot in her homeland.

---

In the '80s, when more than 500,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans arrived in the US seeking refuge from the ghastly, brutal atrocities characterizing both civil wars -- wars in which massive executions were so standard that, in El Salvador, 50,000 people, including nuns and priests, were murdered. In Guatemala, the slaughter ofcivilians resulted in 405 razed villages. It rose to genocidal levels against the Mayan Indians.

---

Instead, she embarked on a long journey that, after five years, brought her to Worcester. In 1985, she followed an uncle, one of a few relatives in this country, to Worcester State College and enrolled in the foreign-languages program. Upon graduation, in 1989, she took a job as a WSC library aide, a position she held for nine years.

Abraham shunned any talk of politics, particularly of the devastating war in El Salvador. But then, while working at the library, she met a WSC student, a Salvadoran who had yet to be granted permanent immigration status, even though he'd applied for asylum years ago. Abraham listened as he told how his family suffered during the war, how he tried to better his life, and how afraid he was of being deported before obtaining the one thing that truly mattered: his business degree. The student sounded so desperate, so distraught that Abraham was brought to tears.

"I felt guilty for neglecting my people," she says, ticking off a list of offenses: she hung out with Americans; she married an American; her son Nicholas, now five, did not speak Spanish.

The encounter prompted Abraham to call Centro Presente in Cambridge, an organization focused on the needs of Central Americans. There she trained as a volunteer, learning complexities of US immigration law and the legal steps of being granted asylum, naturalization, and of obtaining a visa. She also learned the value of political action, and thus launched a fledgling Worcester grassroots group, Central American Association (CAA), to draw attention to immigration issues.

Today, Abraham is a prominent leader in the community, a small spark plug of a woman whose obsidian eyes moisten when she discusses the plight of Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the US -- how many live in a legal limbo that simply exacerbates haunting memories of war-torn countries. As Abraham talks of the nightmares, anxieties, and the depression plaguing her countrymen, her hands curl into fists, her moon-shaped cheeks blush. This passion for fellow Salvadorans and Guatemalans, as well as a desire to see them at peace, is exactly what keeps her returning to Washington -- even if the odds are discouraging.

"We've lobbied for permanent solutions for my people for three years and we're still going," Abraham says. She later adds, "My people have sad eyes. Even when smiling, their eyes are sad. . . . I want to take away the sadness, if only for one person."

A high-noon sun now shines upon the thousands of DC demonstrators standing, shoulder-to-shoulder, some swaying to the steady cadence of their latest chant: USA! USA! USA! In the past hour, orator after orator has ascended the Capitol steps to address the crowd, nearly all opening with the same rallying cry.

"Que queremos?" one man asks, commanding center stage.

"Residencia," the crowd shouts back.

This speaker, a stout, mustachioed, energetic man, tells people in Spanish that he's a Guatemalan immigrant residing in Florida. His colleagues, he says, traveled 18 hours by bus just to be here. As he continues, his face gets redder, his voice gets tighter, so by the time he urges spectators to stop hiding and instead air their concerns, his sentences pour out.

Then the speaker evokes "los ninos," or the children. As soon as he utters those words, another man with a sizable video camera leans my way and whispers a translation: "He asks about the children born in this country. They are American citizens. What is going to happen to the children, he asks, when their parents are deported?"

Earlier, this man, Victor Guerrero, a 29-year-old Salvadoran refugee who came to Worcester a decade ago, relayed his migration tale while stopped at McDonald's somewhere in New York. "I witnessed a terrible crime," he said, his round, gentle face pinched by pain. At age 17, Guerrero had walked out of his family's home in San Vicente, El Salvador, one night to find an army death squad circled around a villager, who kneeled and begged for mercy. High-pitched cries were snuffed by gun fire. A mortified Guerrero locked eyes with a menacing soldier. "He pointed at me to say, `You're next if you talk.'"

The incident left him consumed with terror, convinced the army would hunt him down. After two years watching his back, Guerrero said good-bye to his family and fled his country.

His encounter still torments him today, manifesting itself in such severe depression that he takes prescribed medication, which also helps offset his fear of his precarious, temporary immigration status. After all, Guerrero, who works at a West Bolyston Street gasket factory, has managed to attain a rather normal life: he met his wife, a Columbian immigrant, in Worcester; they have a one-year-old daughter, Stephanie. That, at any moment, US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) might deny him amnesty and then deport him looms overhead.

"For three years, I've tried to figure out what is going to happen to me and my family," Guerrero said. He's grown so impatient with the uncertainty, with the deportation threat, that he's joined CAA (he's now its president) and has rallied in Washington at least four times. "I will keep coming," he promised, "to put on pressure because I cannot stand another day in limbo."

As he adjusts his video camera, Guerrero is visibly moved by the speaker's pleas for "los ninos," so much so he tugs at my elbow, re-emphasizing his predicament. "This is what I tried to explain," he says. "My wife is a permanent resident; my daughter is American. If I get deported, my whole family will be destroyed. . . . This is why I'm here."

Suddenly, the crowd erupts into applause, perhaps reminding Guerrero of his task at hand. He hoists the camera onto his shoulder and then rushes toward the microphone, readying for the next speaker. From his perched vantage point, Guerrero can look beyond the masses to a cluster of Salvadorans and Guatemalans holding a large, rectangular banner that reads, "Central Americans deserve equal justice. MASSACHUSETTS supports HR 36."

The group, Guerrero's companions, represents a mere fraction of the 9000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans (documented, anyway) now residing in the state. The majority center in East Boston, Chelsea, and Somerville, but Worcester has become the community's Central Mass core. As many as 500 Salvadoran families have settled in the city, another 400 Guatemalan families call Westborough or Marlborough home. This community, in general, consists of people like Guerrero and Abraham, young men and women who fled their countries during the '80s, when more than 500,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans arrived in the US seeking refuge from the ghastly, brutal atrocities characterizing both civil wars -- wars in which massive executions were so standard that, in El Salvador, 50,000 people, including nuns and priests, were murdered. In Guatemala, the slaughter of civilians resulted in 405 razed villages. It rose to genocidal levels against the Mayan Indians.

As Holy Cross professor Aldo Lauria-Santiago, a Central American expert, explains in a separate interview, "There is no doubt the massive flows were started by repression and human-rights abuses. The best thing these people could do was to get out."

Perhaps due to the violent circumstances that brought them here -- or, more aptly, a desire to forget those conditions -- Salvadorans and Guatemalans, as a group, remain hidden from Worcester's community-at-large. "My community," Abraham says, "is very dormant." But if those on the Washington trip are any example, Salvadorans and Guatemalans exhibit a lively, jovial disposition. Hardly a moment passes without someone offering a joke, without the sound of laughter. "We call the smile `the ultimate inspiration,'" one Salvadoran immigrant tells me. "So our people smile and laugh every day, all day."

But these immigrants are purposeful folk, adhering to an extremely vigorous work ethic even by American standards. It's not uncommon for Salvadorans and Guatemalans to hold four minimum-wage jobs at once, toiling up to 120 hours per week in laundromats, factories, and restaurants -- so they earn enough money to support themselves, as well as family members back home.

As Abraham puts it, "Work, work, work is my people's mantra."

Yet this strong sense of duty has its downside. The CAA, for instance, boasts a scant nine core members after years of outreach -- largely because Salvadorans and Guatemalans don't have spare time. Or they're reluctant to leave work to lobby. Or they're fearful of political action, especially since, in their countries, participating in protests could have gotten them killed.

But there are signs that such attitudes are changing. Lately, CAA meetings have attracted up to 60 people, most growing more anxious about their futures -- so much so, 15 new recruits attended this Washington trip, a record number. There's also a general excitement over Centro Presente's new Worcester office, not simply because clients won't have to drive to Cambridge any longer. While long aided by organizations like Catholic Diocese of Worcester and Centro Las Americas, which serves the general Hispanic population, Salvadorans and Guatemalans view the Centro Presente office here as a symbol, a place to call their own.

"Centro Presente gives people from El Salvador and Guatemala an identity," Abraham says. "We are very proud of it."

For Salvadoran advocates like Oscar Chacon, who heads Centro Presente, it's been a lengthy, convoluted fight for amnesty -- a fight dating back to the '80s, when INS officials first demonstrated a discrimination against Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Back then, INS routinely granted asylum to Nicaraguans fleeing political persecution. The Reagan administration went so far as to freeze regular procedures, thereby offering Nicaraguans blanket immunity. Meanwhile, 97 percent of Salvadorans and Guatemalans were denied asylum and instead granted temporary protection from deportation.

"Their presence here was an inconvenience," explains Chacon, also coordinator for the Salvadoran-American National Network (SANN) -- a coalition of 18 groups from places like San Francisco, New York, and Illinois -- which organized the Washington march. "The US couldn't justify inconsistencies between the massive influx of refugees and its foreign policy toward El Salvador and Guatemala."

In Guatemala's and El Salvador's civil wars, the US aligned itself with the governments, even though they were limited democracies, at best. Meanwhile, the US sided against the Nicaraguan Communist regime, helping the Sandinista insurgents in the war there. Foreign policy, then, called for Nicaraguans who crossed into this country to be treated as political refugees, while Salvadorans and Guatemalans were simply considered economic ones -- a classification Lauria-Santiago describes as "a complete joke."

But a necessary one, he adds, because otherwise "the US would have had to recognize the repressive governments."

More important, it would have had to recognize its role in the wars -- a role that's been revealed only recently. The United Nations Truth Commission, for example, found US-trained troops responsible for 95 percent of 22,000 human-rights violations in El Salvador, while US-trained units carried out 93 percent of 200,000 killings in Guatemala. The US also funneled countless dollars into the wars, spending $6 billion over 12 years on military aid for El Salvador alone.

Since the US refused to admit to the atrocities, it maintained unfair practices against Salvadorans and Guatemalans. This prompted advocates in 1985 to file a federal class-action lawsuit alleging political bias and discrimination by INS and the Reagan administration. The case, known as "ABC" for its title, American Baptist Church vs. Thornburgh, was settled in 1990, when INS agreed to grant "unskilled" visas (which limits job opportunities for these immigrants) and guarantees against deportation of refugees, as well as to establish "new and fair" procedures for adjudicating their asylum claims.

Today, though, there remains a backlog of asylum cases under the settlement, which covers 250,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans, including many in Worcester. "Here it's 1999, and these cases have yet to be heard," Chacon says, asking, "How can we expect the US to review these cases with fairness when the wars are over?"

Matters were made worse in 1997 with the NACARA law, which not only gives Nicaraguans automatic residency, but requires Salvadorans and Guatemalans who are denied asylum to prove why deportation should be suspended. This is an expensive, cumbersome process that hardly guarantees they'll be permitted to become legal residents.

Thus, advocates like Chacon keep fighting for fair access to amnesty.

"We're lobbying to get at least the same protections that Nicaraguans get with NACARA through the new legislation, HR 36," he adds.

In Washington, demonstrators have just walked 17 city blocks and are now settling at Lafayette Park across from the White House. As the afternoon sun fades, so does the crowd's energy; people lounge in the grass and relax to amplified Latin music. A lanky, composed man stands beside me, absorbing the white, colonnaded building's majesty. He clicks his tongue in apparent awe and then confides, "I'm hopeful for something good to happen."

Earlier, Edgar Malariegos, a 57-year-old Guatemalan refugee from Westborough, spelled out how he became a veteran CAA activist, traveling to Boston and Washington to rally, in spite of the fact that he doesn't particularly enjoy politics. "I come here to make a good life but I find it's very difficult," he said. Malariegos, an ABC class member, spends his days juggling three jobs at a laundromat, dry cleaners, and a nursing home, making enough money to support his wife and three sons in Guatemala. It is tough, tedious work -- nothing like his youthful dream to be an engineer -- but it keeps him from thinking about his shattered family.

"I feel I have lost my family," Malariegos said. His asylum case has been pending for nine years. He cannot bring his wife and sons here. He cannot go to Guatemala. "I am trapped," Malariegos shared. "I am free but not free. If I had the amnesty, life would be easier."

Back in Lafayette Park, Malariegos smiles a broad, self-satisfied smile. He's hopeful, he tells me, because he's heard that SANN and other Central American lobbyists succeeded in getting more congressmen to sign on to HR 36, resulting in 78 supporters. (It will need 218 to pass.) He's also heard that march organizers are meeting with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste -- a sure sign, he says, people are listening.

"Yes," he concludes, "I am happy with the event."

His assessment is later echoed by US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Worcester), a bill cosponsor and longtime "friend," as he's called, of Salvadorans and Guatemalans here. McGovern, who views HR 36 as being "about basic fairness and justice," notes that more congressmen are learning details of the wars, and are considering the humanitarian consequences of uprooting immigrants who've lived in this country for years. Even Republicans, such as Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have relinquished any partisan allegiance to support the legislation.

"This is a humanitarian issue, not a partisan one," says McGovern, who first got involved with Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in the '80s. "We've treated these people rotten, and now we have an obligation to reconcile that," he says, adding, "When it's not convenient for the US to help people, we don't. I think that's wrong."

Although McGovern and advocates aim to push HR 36 forward this session, they're aware of challenges ahead. Anti-immigrant sentiments, for one, paint all immigrants as American-job stealers or bilkers of public assistance or contributors to the drug trade. And that resonates with the public, especially in the border states, such as Texas, Florida, and California. Salvadoran and Guatemalan advocates, in addition, continue to struggle to draw immigrants to the cause and thus lack real clout -- an obstacle that Malariegos, still standing in Lafayette Park, laments most. "It is hard to convince our people to come," he says. "They think they'll lose their jobs. But if they don't come and we don't have the residencia, we'll lose everything."

Right then, Rosa Abraham approaches and hears Malariegos's comments. "It is true, it is very hard to organize our people," she agrees. Yet upon further thought, a smile seizes her face and she says, "Today has been a good day."

She reveals her eagerness to return to Worcester and inform other Salvadorans and Guatemalans of the event; as she speaks, I'm reminded of an aside comment that she had uttered when reflecting on the fate of her childhood friend, Rosa: "You know, with the knowledge I have now, I might have been a guerrilla. . . I guess I have become a new kind of guerrilla." A political activist, yes, but in a different country, fighting for a different cause. "My issue," Abraham explains, "is amnesty for my people."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.