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With fresh paint and
lush landscaping, the Courtyard Apartments in Santa Ana looks like countless
other Orange County complexes.
What sets this Spurgeon Street
building apart are the hopes and fears of hundreds of Hispanic immigrants
who have settled here — the first stop on their uncertain journey toward
prosperity and the American dream.
People such as Florina Montoya,
who struggles to make ends meet on her husband’s $ 220 weekly earnings.
One day, she hopes to return to her native El Salvador and buy a house.
Or Yolanda Espinoza, a Mexican immigrant who rises by 4 a.m. to get to
her job at a tortilla factory by 6. She fears for her son Jesus, 14, as
he grows up amid gangs and drugs. Or Juan Guerrero, 13, a Sierra Middle
School eighth-grader who carries a 3.7 grade-point average and hopes someday
to be a doctor.
“I want to be somebody,” he
says. “I’m going to go to college and make my parents proud. ”
Their experiences provide
a window on immigration in the ’90s, an era destined to be remembered
in California for voters’ overwhelming approval of Proposition 187, a
measure meant to deny public services to illegal immigrants.
The lives of Montoya, Espinoza
and the others speak to the changing face of Orange County — in particular,
one small, vibrant slice of central Santa Ana, a 10-block area around
Spurgeon and 15th streets, in the shadow of the Civic Center.
By various estimates, at least
half the 7,000 people who live in this densely populated neighborhood
are illegal immigrants, reflecting the dramatic demographic shifts that
have changed the face of Southern California over the past 25 years.
In 1970, the area was more
than 90 percent white, census figures show. A decade later, Hispanic residents
constituted only about 30 percent of the population. Today, they make
up 86 percent — a virtual reversal of the ethnic makeup of two decades
ago. Most of the immigrants live in rented homes and work at jobs that
pay about $ 250 a week — or $ 13,000 a year.
The median family income
for the neighborhood is $ 22,366, less than half that of Orange County
as a whole. But despite low wages and an uncertain future, hope abounds
at the Courtyard Apartments and in the surrounding enclave of well-kept
bungalows and boarded-up old houses, storefront churches and overcrowded
schools. Florina Montoya hopes for a change of fortune. She likens coming
to America to buying a lottery ticket.
“Most people do not win anything,
but a few will strike it rich,” she says, smashing a spoon into a pan
of simmering beans. “You play anyway, because at least you have hope.
”
THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL
The neighborhood around the
Courtyard Apartments is one of the most densely populated in Orange County.
It has the county’s highest concentration of Hispanics. It is a place
where door-to-door vendors hawk tamales and Mexican sweet bread, where
hallways smell of fried pork “carnitas” and goat stew “birria. ” A place
where Spanish is more necessary than English, and where the fear of gangs
and gunfire traps most people inside their homes after dark.
Most of the 72 units at the
Courtyard Apartments house six people or more, in crowded conditions borne
of economic necessity. Rents run $550 a month for one bedroom, $750 for
two — a stretch for most residents.
Many leave their apartments
at dawn and return after dark, spending their days as gardeners, laborers,
maids, factory workers, baby sitters, cooks and busboys. Many live on
the precipice of poverty, forced to share their space — and their rent
— with friends or relatives.
“As long as they don’t cause
problems for me, they can have a few extra people in their apartments,”
says Mayela Valerin, 35, a Costa Rican immigrant who manages the Courtyard
Apartments. “Because I’m an immigrant, too, I know that the only way a
lot of them can make their rents is by getting some extra people to help
out”
Mayela, the mother of a 4-year-old
girl, considered moving out in October when a bullet pierced her second-story
apartment window. No one was home, but the mere sight of the bullet hole
was shocking. She decided to stay when the building owners installed bulletproof
glass in her windows. But the danger lingers in her mind.
“I feel like I’m risking
my life every day,” she says. For others in the building, money problems
are the greatest concern. Florina Montoya and her husband, Jose Antonio
Valencia, 29, have struggled to stay afloat financially since marrying
in 1991. Undocumented and from the same Mexico City suburb, they met at
a dance shortly after she arrived in this country four years ago. They
have two children, Emanuel, 2, and Jose Antonio Jr., born Sept. 19.
Jose Antonio works 10 to 12
hours a day at a factory, where he was hired using someone else’s Social
Security number — he bought the document from a friend six years ago
for $300.
“It’s been a great investment,”
he says of the spotless card, which he keeps in a desk drawer next to
his Mexican passport. “I would have never been able to work without it.
”
Even so, times are hard. In
September, they borrowed $300 from Florina’s brother to pay the $ 500
rent on their apartment, which is filled with family pictures and used
furniture collected from relatives and thrift stores. In October, they
paid it by selling Jose Antonio’s prized 1978 Camaro for $ 350.
“Such a beautiful car, so
cheap,” Florina laments. She has friends who cheat the government to get
food stamps, welfare and disability payments, even though they are in
this country illegally. But she says the only government benefits her
family accepts are medical services for the children.
“Americans have it all wrong,”
she says. “We are decent people. We do not want to steal from them. We
want to work for them. ”
AT THE POINT OF NO RETURN
The building’s sweet-bread
vendor, Lourdes Cruz, 28, hears the bullets and sees the gang members.
She feels discriminated against because of her nationality and her inability
to speak English. Still, she would rather be here than in Mexico.
“Even with very little here,
I have more than I would have over there,” says the Guadalajara native,
who moved to Santa Ana four years ago.
She walks through her one-bedroom
apartment, pointing out all the things she would not have in Mexico: the
stereo, hot and cold running water, an electric stove, toys for her two
children, meat in her freezer, a telephone, air-conditioning and heating.
Add to that, access to education and the best medical care in the world.
“There’s no doubt about it,”
she says. “Being poor over here is like being middle class over there.”
What about Prop. 187? Does
it make her want to go back?
“Are you crazy? ” she asks.
“If they want me to leave, they are going to have to kick me out. But
I don’t think they will, because they realize that it’s people like me
who are shedding their sweat to build up California. ”
SACRIFICING FOR THE FUTURE
The buzz of a vacuum cleaner
fills the hallway outside Florina’s apartment as janitor Luis Navarro,
41, goes about his work. “Don Luis,” as the neighbors refer to him, is
loved and respected by all the tenants.
He is a friendly man, a Mexican
immigrant who enjoys chatting for hours and knows just about everyone
in the building.
“I am like a video camera.
I see everything that happens in this place,” he says, smiling. His keen
eyes have caught drug dealers and gang members, as well as youthful pranksters
who get their kicks setting off fire alarms.
His complaints to the building
manager have prompted the eviction of countless troublemakers. In the
past five years, Don Luis figures, he has gone through hundreds of gallons
of paint to cover graffiti. Last year, he waged war on a tagger known
as “The Foul One,” whose moniker was sprayed on hallways, stairs, emergency-exit
signs, light fixtures, mailboxes, the elevator and security gates.
“Every day, I wake up, and
all I do for two hours is paint over the Foul One,” he says. “I’m so sick
of it, at night I have dreams about catching him.”
The Foul One, it turned out,
was a scrawny sixth-grader named Hugo who got nabbed by police after he
tagged the car of a young rival’s mother. Don Luis lives in a two-bedroom
apartment with his wife, Maria, 34, and four children: twins Abraham and
Ana, 12, Maria Luisa, 11, and Lidia Fabiola, 9.
They share the apartment with
Don Luis’ cousin Manuel, 23, who is single and works as a busboy at a
Newport Beach restaurant. At night, Manuel and Abraham share a bedroom,
and the three girls sleep in the living room on makeshift beds of sofa
cushions.
“It’s really very difficult
to find any privacy,” Maria says. “But it’s the way we must live if we
want to afford a two-bedroom place.”
Despite the crowded conditions
and lack of privacy, Don Luis and Maria have high hopes for their children.
They pray they will study and — even after long workdays — spend time
with them on their homework.
“Please, try harder,” Maria
implores Lidia Fabiola. “We like to see only A’s and B’s. We know that
you can do better.”
A COMMUNITY’S CLOSENESS
On a cold night in the fall,
Irene Carrera, 32, knocks on Don Luis’ door, worried about her infant
daughter, Betty.
“I’m sorry to bother you,
Don Luis,” she says, cradling her only child in her arms, alarmed by the
big red circles on the baby’s cheeks. “I needed some help trying to figure
out what these marks are on my daughter’s face. Is she going to be OK?”
Not to worry, Maria assures
her. The marks are nothing but a rash caused by the cold or a fabric that
has irritated her skin. Irene sighs with relief.
“That is why I like living
here,” she says. “Neighbors help each other.”
The friendly atmosphere is
one reason many Courtyard residents are happy to live where they do, despite
meager incomes and mounting worries about crime.
Don Luis knows that life here
is faster, more dangerous and more expensive than in his hometown in Mexico.
Crime there was nearly nonexistent. But so were the opportunities for
his children to go to school and become professionals.
“Our hearts are in Mexico,
but our bodies are in the U.S.,” he says. “This is the only way to survive.
”
Staff writer Jeordan Legon
immigrated from Cuba with his family in 1979. He lived for most of last
year in the Courtyard Apartments in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood
near 15th and Spurgeon streets in Santa Ana.
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