Local Mexican immigrants proud and thankful for America

Fallbrook residents Ana and Roman immigrated to the United States from Mexico decades ago at different times, but their view of America remains the same, despite its current state – they love it here and consider this their country.

"The first time, I didn't want to come to the United States, I'd just graduated from high school," Roman said. "But my mother brought me and my two other siblings for vacation after graduating. And obviously unbeknownst to me the plan was for us to come in and stay."

Roman cried himself to sleep every night. "I wanted to go back," he said. "I mean, I just got out of high school; I had my girlfriend from Mexico; I had a little rock and roll band, and so I wanted to go back."

He went back to Mexico in 1964. Before that, in 1963, he had gone to night school to learn English.

After going back to Mexico, his mindset changed.

"After I was here in the United States seeing a different way of life, and going back to what was to be my future in Mexico – after no more than four months of being there, I said there's no way that I can live in Mexico, knowing what I have seen in the United States," Roman said. "So I started planning my way to come back."

He had a business in Mexico and got married in 1967.

"I started to go to night school, and I saw I could do practically everything I wanted to do, which was my dream," Roman said. "I wanted to be an architect, or something to do with engineering (in Mexico)."

He saw that the opportunity, however, was bigger for him in the United States.

"I said I'd rather make it here," Roman said. "And I'm glad I did."

For Ana, her story of coming from Mexico to the United States was quite different.

"I was born and raised in Mexico City," Ana said. She'd come to visit the United States with her parents. At one point, her father asked her and her siblings to study in the United States for at least a year.

"We were going to bilingual schools in Mexico, so we were sent to San Francisco to study for one year," Ana said.

Her father was an architect and paid for their tuition.

"It was a lot of money, but it was worth it," she said. It didn't stop at one year – she attended high school, and then went on to study at the University of San Diego, where she earned her degree in communications, with a minor in art history.

After Ana worked hard to get her visa, she became a green card holder, and she was able to open up a business in San Diego.

"We opened an art gallery in La Jolla, me and my siblings and my father helped us, and it was a lot of work," Ana said. "I was creating, painting, unpacking, curating, selling, promoting, you name it."

They opened a second gallery in Los Angeles and closed the gallery in La Jolla.

"We decided to stay in Los Angeles because of the opportunity for our business to promote our artists from Latin America," Ana said.

Roman and Ana first met in February 1996.

"I had a construction company in L.A.," Roman said. "They called me up (and) they wanted to remodel their building." After speaking with Ana's sibling, who was one of the business partners, about the job, he finally met Ana one day at the gallery.

"She was saying it was love at first sight – I'll tell you my part," Roman said. "At that time I'd been divorced for about 12 years and I was engaged to get married to somebody else. She comes in from the back and I'm talking to her sister and I see her – it took me six months to cancel the engagement, and then I asked her out for dinner."

At dinner, he asked her to marry him. They've now been married for almost 23 years; their anniversary is in December.

They used to go back to Mexico for vacations, but they've stopped going for the past six years.

"I knew it was just way too dangerous for me to take my wife and my daughter," Roman said.

"Sometimes there are honest people," Ana said. "There's a lot of hard working people that make an honest business and so forth, but then there's the other side and it's heartbreaking to see what is happening down there."

Even the way business is done in Mexico is different, according to Ana.

"If you didn't have the contacts, if you didn't have a bribe, sometimes you cannot get in, you cannot do things," Ana said. "It has been ingrained in the culture."

Roman added that he believes it goes back a couple 100 years or so.

"You don't have to go to Africa or other places that they said there's a lot of poor people living under certain conditions – that's just across the border," he said. "Anybody can see it."

"Right now in Mexico, the current president had already announced in one of his morning talks that was a couple of months ago that whatever people own will be divided among everybody," Ana said, adding that people don't understand that the current president of Mexico is socialist.

"They're on the brink of becoming communist in Mexico," Ana said. "The churches are closed; the communications have been totally censored.

"Right now there are demonstrations for people standing up for the current president to leave the office of the presidency," she added. "What is happening in Mexico, people here don't know."

Ana believes in legal immigration. "I went through the process; it's doable," she said. "I am totally for our border. You cannot just allow anybody to come in, especially when they don't want to assimilate."

Ana is a proud citizen of the United States and doesn't want her country to change.

"We have a covenant – a covenant based on the constitution and based on the republic with God; (it) is the only country in the world that has that covenant – one nation, under God – the covenant of everybody has the same rights," Ana said. "Those rights are only given in the United States."

In Roman's 50 years of being in the United States, he's never felt racism.

"If there's been any discrimination against me, I have never seen it, or felt it," he said. "I have seen this and heard it many times before that it's the land of opportunity. Of course it is. Back then when I decided to come back here, that's exactly what I felt, that I had the opportunity, and it's been proven all my life."

Roman added that it's just hard work, dedication and being honest.

"I've been stopped by the police literally over 100 times in my life for a ticket, and probably 25 times I've been let go without being given a ticket because I had some sort of explanation of why," he said. "A police officer being rough or disrespectful? I have had that bad experience in Mexico, I can tell you that much." But not in the United States.

For Ana, she believes the rhetoric of racism in the United States has become a way to manipulate and brainwash people to feel something they don't understand.

"What's at stake in our society today, and this is not just in the United States – every country in the world right now is fighting for their liberty – for their independence from the controlled," Ana said.

"We have seen what this beautiful country that we always have admired and wanted to be part of it when we knew exactly what the law of the land was and still is...that this was a nation under God," Roman said. "So why are you trying to ignore it or get rid of it?"

They are both concerned for the United States.

"We are very much concerned that this country will become...like another Venezuela or Cuba; it could even be worse than that because of the power that this country has," Roman said. "The country has a government that they deserve. So if we do not fight for it, if we do not stand up for it, we're going to lose our liberties."

Despite everything going on in the United States today, they don't regret coming here.

"I'm in love with the country, I'm in love with this land," Roman said. "I'm in love obviously with my wife most of all, with all of my children; I couldn't be more blessed. I'm content I made the right choice by choosing the U.S.A. and I was willing to fight for it."

Lexington Howe can be reached by email at [email protected].