User:Tealights

Despite the fact that I am a natural born American citizen and have spent the majority of my life living in the United States, my views are still strongly influenced by my Hispanic and Catholic background. My siblings and I are the first generation of my family to be born here, while the rest of our family has been born in Colombia where most of them reside today.

Both my mother’s and my father’s side of the family can trace their ancestry back to Spain. On my father’s side of the family, it was his grandfather that came over to Colombia. He had been a gambler at the horse tracks, and had accumulated a substantial debt. In order to avoid his debtors, he migrated to Colombia where he met and eventually married his wife. His wife was of a mixed black-Amerindian descent. Her mother had been an indigenous native to Colombia, the preferred term for them being pueblos indígenas, whose people had been conquered by the Spanish during the colonization of Colombia by the Spanish settlers that first began to arrive after 1524. Her father had been freed African slave. The Spanish had imported slaves from Africa to Colombia to replace the indigenous work force for the Spanish settlers. These slaves were freed when Colombia had abolished slavery in 1849.

Together, my great grandfather and his wife had four children, including my grandfather. My grandfather attended school, but did not go on to university level studies; instead he became a police officer. He met and married my grandmother. They had three boys, including my father. Unfortunately, my grandfather died while still on the police force when my father was still a very young boy. It was during one of several violent periods in Colombia’s history. Up to 300,000 people died during this period, which has been called “La Violencia” (The Violence). This period of violence and unrest ignited in the late 1940’s through 1950’s when a popular Liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated. It was only one of the several civil wars that would be caused by the bitter rivalry of the two main political parties of Colombia: the Conservatives and the Liberals. Eventually, “La Violencia” was ended by the proposed National Front, where the two political parties attempted to rule the country jointly.

My grandmother later remarried and had three more children. My father grew up in very difficult times, and extreme poverty. Despite all these obstacles, he managed to attend school regularly and after high school obtained some college education. After a year, he was forced to leave his studies to help support his family. He was an editor at a local newspaper, and being very adept in languages, became an English teacher.

In the late 1960’s, he was able to obtain a visa to go to New York right in the middle of the Hippie revolution; which being a person of conservative morals, he did not enjoy this very much. He arrived in New York City and lived there for several years while he worked in several odd jobs he could find. He was able to obtain his residency and move to Long Island. There he was a firefighter for a short while before he got a job at a local manufacturing plant. He eventually married and had three children. This marriage ended, and he was unable to obtain the custody of my siblings. He then met my mother, had two daughters, and they lived in New York together for a short time before my mother went to Colombia to run a pharmacy business that they had both bought.

My mother’s great grandparents also emigrated from Spain a little after 1860. This was a time of political and social instability for Spain. It was after the Seven Years War that had caused widespread economic recession. It was during this time that Spain lost all of its colonies except for Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. They came in search of new opportunities they could not find in Spain and to settle near already established friends and relatives. This couple later had three children, including my mother’s grandmother. My great grandmother’s mother died, and her father remarried and had three more children. My great grandmother was the headmistress of a local secondary school, and it was in this form that she was able to afford to send her children and help many of her relatives to attend school. Unlike the school system in the United States, the public schooling had to be paid for by the families. It is difficult for many poor people to afford to send their children to most schools because of the expense. This was especially true in the past when families often had a large of amount of children to care for with few economic means of support.

My great grandmother married and had four children. My grandfather issued license plates for cars. He met my grandmother and had my mother. However, my grandmother disappeared and no one knows, or will admit knowing, what happened to her. My grandfather left my mother to be cared for by my great-grandmother. He later married and had four other children. My mother grew up living with her grandmother and some of her cousins. She was able to afford going to school because of her grandmother’s position. In her final year of secondary school, she won a scholarship from the Colombian government to continue on with her education in college. She studied in another town, almost three hours away, and eventually graduated with a degree in teaching for the subjects of Biology and Chemistry.

She obtained a government teaching post at an all girl high school run by Catholic nuns. The educational system was set up very differently from the American school system. Schools were run privately, but teachers had to be certified by the government in order to teach in many of them. Some of the teachers were hired on contract by the schools, while others were given government-backed tenure in the schools. These positions were the most sought after because they came with benefits, better salaries, and a pension plan. Also it was more difficult to be dismissed or fired if the government paid you. The church heavily influenced the educational system, and growing up many students attended mass every morning as required by the schools. Roman Catholicism was Colombia’s official religion until 1991 when the Constitution mandated a separation of church and state.

Despite this, the Roman Catholic Church still has a powerful influence in Colombia. Over 80 percent of the population is Catholic, and the Church still enjoys special privileges with the Colombia government. To the people, the local parishes are the centers of community of their area. These churches provide assistance to the poor, educate many children in tax-exempt schools, and are the places of socialization for many in the community. My family has carried their religious background to this country as well, and these practices have been passed onto the new generation here in America.

My mother had visited the United States many times under a visitor’s visa, but she did not officially make the decision to move there permanently until whenever it was she came. She saw coming here as an opportunity to get ahead and possibly continue her studies. She spent a six years living on her own until she met my father. After the pharmacy was sold, she came back the United States with my sister and I and we settled to live with my father in Florida. We moved into a condominium, which was a neighborhood consisting of primarily retirees and some young families.

Through the years, the composition of the neighborhood has changed dramatically. As more and more people began moving to suburbia, there have been fewer people staying longer in one house. More lower income families that relied on government assistance began moving in. This coincided with the migration of the middle and upper class families to more northern regions to Florida, away from the densely populated cities of South Florida. Drugs and crime have become a real issue in the area. The parents that work all day and many children spend most of their time playing in the street. They later grow up and end up getting in trouble or just becoming major nuisances.

My siblings and I have gone to public schools all our lives. Despite all the failings that public school system has been said to have, I have found it effective in my socialization and education. The schools I have attended have never been very well to do, but they contain a very diverse group of students that has contributed to my understanding of different cultures and different backgrounds. Less than half of the students at these schools have been Caucasian, with everyone else being a wide variety of ethnicities and races. My family has put an emphasis on education, and I was very successful academically. This is partly due to the fact that they are teachers, and partly due to the way Colombian society approaches education. Education is seen a privilege and teaching is seen as a respected profession from adults as well as students. For those who do study obedience is emphasized, along with dedication and scholarship. My parents have always encouraged their children to excel in studies especially since in the United States everyone is given the opportunity to study for free.

I graduated as the valedictorian of my class and decided to continue my studies to the university level. My parents could not afford to send me, so I applied to a state school where my scholarships would last me longer. I am majoring in Microbiology and Cell Science at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the University of Florida. After graduation, I plan to continue on to medical school. As a young child, I did not have any form of health insurance. Instead, I was taken to a free clinic for Hispanic immigrants whenever I needed to see a doctor. Since the second grade, I have aspired to become a doctor and continue help charity that has helped so many children stay healthy despite the continual cycle of poverty they live in even though their families have settled here in the United States.

Apart from this, who knows where I’ll find myself in the future? Certainly, none of my ancestors could have predicted how they could have been swept along by the events and social changes that occurred during their lifetimes. The best I can do is make my own way onward towards the future and to not forget to look back on those who have come before. Without them (and their crazy influences), I would not be where I am today.