Viviendo en EEUU

María Elena Guardado PART THREE

My family and I came here to the United States after that horrible experience in which we were mugged. I felt a lot of relief for myself and for my daughters who were still very young then. My husband was as supportive as he could be, and it was not long after our move that he began working again for the computer company.

I think I spent a lot of time isolating myself from everybody. I was less afraid after that very scary incident in Mexico DF, but now I had new problems. First of all, I could not speak English too well. I studied it at Monterrey Tech, I could understand a good bit of what i read, but to speak it. That was trouble.

I started taking classes for English at a local community college and classes in psychology as well. It only took a couple of years for me to start understanding English pretty well. My husband would also speak a lot of English because of his job and it made it so much easier for me to understand.

I really didn't know what to expect when I came to the United States, but I did not expect to become a housewife. However, for about seven years, I stayed at home, took care of the girls, read furiously and then decided it was time for me to start working.

I cannot say that I am too impressed with the jobs I have held here in the United States. Having a degree from México is so close to not having anything at all. I worked in the financial sector, handling loans and things like that.

I still travel back to México occasionaly, but I am very much removed from the business management and HR areas.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a conference held by LULAC and by the local Catholic charity that was providing a culture and history of the state of Tamaulipas. I decided to go because it had been a very long time since I immersed myself back into my own culture. That, and my maiden name is Matamoros. I'm glad I went, too, because at first I thought it was going to be like a musical cultural event or a folkloric type conference. Speaking of which, there is a singer Rigo Tovar, who wrote a song about Matamoros, and years later the city of Matamoros made a statue of him and put it in the town square. (He totally did not deserve it because he had such an awful voice!)

But I'm glad I went because the conference was a lot more educational and emotional than I thought it would be. There was a big discussion on the pollution in Matamoros, and I always knew it existed. I've only been there once in my life, but let me tell you that town has got to be among the ugliest I've ever laid eyes on! I say this in good faith, seriously for those of you who've never been to México and want to see beauty you have to go pretty far south like Guadalajara, Jalisco or San Luis Potosí, where I was born, or around the Guanajuato, Cuernavaca areas. All of those are so beautiful.

But the little conference was great! No Rigo Tovar, and a lot of good information about the city, the relationship to American business. I was reminded of what I used to do for Sam's Club México. There was a discussion on NAFTA that was pretty helpful and I met a lot of good women there, too, who are from Matamoros or who neighbor it. After the conference I spoke to LULAC about working with them for future presentations and I pretty much gave them my resume on the spot. I think I can get on board with a lot of this stuff and it will help me get back in touch with my countrymen. I see Mexican women all the time in stores, at business offices, on the street, but it has been so long since I've spoken to them.

I need to find out more about NAFTA, because if it what i understood at the conference is only half-true, then it explains quite a bit about how ugly Matamoros is, and about the system I used to participate in.