Education give you the tools to survive

Education give you the tools to survive

Belem Antunez

Belem Antunez

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My father was a bracero emigrant, through him my mother and brother get into the United States. at that time I was attending forth grade at Toribio Benavente Elementary school, the years in the school Fabens Grade School where difficult for my brother and me, I was only a teenager and my brother was three years younger then me, In the school I had to bear the language barriers, When I used to asked my apparently friend, in the school Can you help me? in this poem? She will said, sure I help you, but only to put the wrong words in the poem to make the others mack at me, Like my horse went to drink water and I was eating his food, things like that, to make every one laugh. Of course except the teacher, which I appreciated that. but at that time I was so Innocent, I mean If someone said,one thing I don't have the malicious to think differently. I only stood in that school two years, my father keep saying that taking care of us it was too expensive, my mother used to go to Juarez,Chih to take care of my others brothers and sisters who where fifteen in total.
During that time I have to find the way to find me a job, nobody wanted to hire a 16 years old girl. I end up working as a farm worker wish was a hard work, I have to wake up so earlier in order to be in time for the buses that arrived to El Paso Texas just across the border from Juarez and El Paso those buses take us to Canutillo, To New Mexico, to Fabens, Texas We used to be around 3:00A.M. with our lunch and a second pair of shoes and extra clothes, I have to wear long sleeves and gloves, a big hat for the sun and a lot of strength to work and to support the heat,When the foreman where asking the boss at the end of the day, " are we going to pay her like the rest of the workers? "He said of course! she worked the same as the rest of the farm workers and even more" I used to clean the borders of the lakes, that, the weeds almost rising us for being so high and hard to see the canal, Also we were working withe the short azadon,were you have to bend yourself the whole time in other to clean and separated the lettuce and live space for the plant to grow, also in pick up the onions, or tomatoes. For only nine dollars a day. My mother used to be called the guerita for having a fair skin and working in the sun make her skin so red.