Documentary gives a face to immigration

Maids clean the hallways every morning, chefs prepare all of the meals, and a driver chauffeurs his residents from place to place. No, this is not the Hilton mansion, but a Boston College residence hall. No longer are these considered luxuries, only available to the rich and famous, but are an everyday part of the life of a BC student. Because of this privilege, it is sometimes difficult to see these workers as anything but their job description. However, many of them have incredible stories of perseverance under impossible situations available to anyone willing to ask.

Susan Legere, GA&S '09, did just that when she decided to create a documentary investigating the lives of three immigrants currently working at BC. The documentary titled Immigrant Reflections: Three Boston College Service Workers Share Their Stories, left many speechless after it aired at the Boston Latino International Film Festival this weekend.

The film, which is now available online at at.bc.edu, closely follows the lives of three BC employees, Vicky, Manny, and Jorge, in their struggle to assimilate into American society. Legere chose to show original photographs of each worker's home towns along with pictures of family members. No longer were these people strangers, but the audience gained a sense of familiarity, an empathetic connection with them. Each worker then went on to share their stories of what it was like growing up so far from where they currently live, a feeling further strengthened in a post-film interview with the filmmaker and subjects.

Vicky was only 2 years old when her mother left her three children behind in a house in Cacao Frontera, Guatemala without indoor plumbing or electricity to immigrate illegally to the United States. "Everything was natural, we had to use light from lanterns and we had no TV," she said.

A previous movie at the festival showed the brutality and suffering a Mexican family underwent while crossing the border into the United States after spending days trapped inside a truck. Upon seeing the film, Vicky's eyes swelled up with tears as she hugged her two children tightly. "That movie shows what my mother experienced. She suffered a lot to bring us here," Vicky said while looking out at the audience. "She went nearly eight days without food during her trip into the U.S. It was very different from the process I experienced in coming to this country."

Vicky, a woman in her mid-20s, described a simple but fulfilling childhood. She was raised by her aunt, and her mother would send the family a monthly allowance from a job she gained as a housekeeper in the United States, though even with the extra money they still lived in poverty.

In 1989, Vicky's life unexpectedly changed. Her mother returned to Guatemala to legally bring her family to Los Angeles. At this time, Vicky was not allowed to say goodbye to anyone except her father, whom she would not see again for the next three years.

When she arrived in the United States, Vicky faced numerous difficulties assimilating. She did not know how to read or write and could not understand a word of English. "My teacher would expect me to know how to read when, really, I couldn't even write my own name, so she would just tell me to turn the paper over and color," she said. It took three years for Vicky to master the language.

When she was 15, Vicky moved to Boston and supported her younger brother on her own. In 2000, Vicky married her high school sweetheart, Chris; the couple has two bilingual children. "I've met a lot of Hispanics who simply forget their Spanish identity and deny their heritage. I don't want that to happen to my kids," Vicky said.

She has been working for BC Dining Services since 2001, recently receiving her GED and studying at the Woods College of Advancing Studies two nights a week to become a registered nurse.

"I love working around the students, but I hate it when students throw their [student] IDs on the table. It makes me feel worthless. We see these students every day and we should be able to build a friendship with them," she said.

Manny, an operations manager at BC, had similar difficulties in America at first. His village in Fogo, Cape Verde, consisting of five houses that had no electricity until 2000, has an economy that centers on local farms; droughts and famine are common. "My parents told me of a drought that hit them in the 1940s where they actually saw dead bodies on the street of people who simply died of hunger," he said.

The combination of a severe two-year drought and the lack of opportunities drove Manny's parents to move to Dorchester, Mass. in 1980. Manny's father worked for a company called century blocks and his mother raised eight children on her own. Manny attended a bilingual elementary school in which the teacher alternated between Cape Verdeian and English.

The racism Manny was forced to experience in the United States came as a great shock to him. In 1974, desegregation bussing was implemented in Boston and its surrounding areas after the racial imbalance law was passed. The law, which required students to be bussed to different schools, caused violent controversy.

Manny remembered protestors throwing rocks at his bus on the way to school. "I would ask my dad, 'What did I do to these people?' and he would respond with, 'Nothing, that's just the way it is here.'"

Manny says he was often criticized for not assimilating into the black community at his school. He explained that Cape Verdians are not African Americans, as they have a different culture and history. He earned a scholarship to UMass Amherst and worked four part-time jobs to put himself through school.

Manny began his career at BC by driving the Newton Bus for numerous years, later being promoted to his current position. He married a woman named Celeste in 2004, and has a daughter named Zalia. In 2007 he purchased his first home.