by Mirta Ojito
At a local dance a few months later he met his neighbor Ana, whom he had previously ignored because she was a year younger. In his absence, Ana had blossomed. They fell in love and Espinoza thought his fate was sealed. He would marry Ana, work as a shoemaker, eventually open his own factory, and build a home for the family he hoped to have one day. Three and a half years later, in August 1973, Espinoza and Ana married in a Roman Catholic ceremony. The reception lasted until four the next morning.
The year the Espinozas wed, Ecuador had been ruled for a year by a military junta that remained in power until 1979. Though less fierce than other military governments in South America—notably Argentina and Chile—Ecuador’s junta failed to deliver the economic progress and stability it had promised the people. Ecuadorians were used to ineffective and volatile governments since gaining their independence from Spain in 1822, but for people like Espinoza whose livelihood depended on their work and on the vagaries of the US dollar that determined the value of the ever-fluctuating sucre, one government mirrored the other.
Yet in 1979 there was cause to rejoice as the country found its economic footing with a worldwide demand for oil—one of the natural resources Ecuador is blessed with—and democracy returned with the election of a young, popular president, Jaime Roldós Aguilera, who stood up to the United States and quickly gained a regional reputation as a champion of human rights. As if the country were cursed with chronic instability, Roldós died in a plane crash less than two years into his term. Upon Roldós’s death, his vice president and constitutional successor, Osvaldo Hurtado, became president and immediately faced an economic crisis precipitated by the sudden end of the petroleum boom.1
Espinoza and his wife, who in the six years of their marriage had established a shoemaking factory at home, began to feel the impact of the crisis when the shop owners who used to pay for their shoes with cash started delaying payment. Every time Espinoza traveled to Quito or Guayaquil with a shipment of shoes, he returned with a check that he was told he couldn’t cash for two or three months. If he didn’t like the arrangement, the shop owners would tell him, he could take his shoes elsewhere; there would always be another shoemaker willing to take their worthless checks. So Espinoza turned to loan sharks, chulqueros in the local argot, to keep his business afloat.
By the time Espinoza realized he was losing his business, he was in debt for three hundred thousand sucres, about $30,000, and he was dangerously close to losing his home because he had offered it as collateral for the high-interest loans. It wasn’t easy for Espinoza to find another job; all he knew was how to make shoes. In Ecuador, though relatively poor by US standards, he was considered a middle-class man, and middle-class men, by culture and tradition, didn’t lose their businesses to start anew washing dishes or working in a factory. There was only one solution and it came to him suddenly one day as he was returning from Guayaquil with yet another worthless check he would have to turn over to the chulqueros.
I’m going to the United States, he told Ana as soon as he walked in their small, modest home by the side of the main road. There, he explained, he could reinvent himself, doing whatever was necessary to support his family and get out of debt. In the United States, practically all immigrants were expected to start at the bottom. Espinoza had no fear of starting at the bottom, as long as it was not at home.
How would you manage to go? Ana asked, surprised at his sudden declaration. We have no money, no bank account, she insisted.
True enough. But Espinoza had a plan. He had a cousin who had enough money to have a healthy bank account. Back then, bank statements were rudimentary and didn’t include the client’s name. Espinoza asked his cousin for his latest bank statement, and, armed with that, and wearing his black suit with the same tie and shirt he would later use to leave his country, he took a regional bus to Guayaquil, the largest and most populous city in Ecuador and the site of the US consulate. From the bus station, he went straight to the consulate and waited in line, along with about one hundred other people who, like him, were seeking travel visas.
His chances were not great. In 1981, the US government granted just 690 “temporary visitor for business” visas to Ecuadorians, fewer by far than the number of visas extended to Bolivians, Brazilians, Chileans, Colombians, Peruvians, and Venezuelans.2
When his time came, Espinoza was sweating under his black suit. Embarrassed at the moisture he could feel under his arms, he kept the jacket on and—with a smile that exuded a confidence he didn’t feel—walked into the main office. A pretty blonde American secretary greeted him with a smile. Espinoza flirted a little, not so much because he desperately wanted a visa but because it was his nature to be flirtatious.
The secretary helped him fill out the application, which he had left incomplete; he had been afraid to make a mistake. Then the hard part came. Why are you traveling to the United States? she asked.
Espinoza had prepared for such questions.
I’m going to Miami. I want to buy new machines for my shoe business, he said, showing her his graduation certificate from a shoemaker’s school in Gualaceo.
That and the bank account must have impressed the secretary, who whispered, Come back at three.
What for? asked Espinoza, who was sure he needed to see the consul before his visa could be granted.
To pick up your papers, she said enigmatically and called the next person in line.
Espinoza didn’t ask any more questions. It was mid-morning and he had the equivalent of one dollar in his pocket, not enough for breakfast or lunch, not even a soda. He stopped at a café and asked for a glass of water. Then he took a long walk around the port city, which was warm and humid, with the temperature hovering around eighty, typical for a summer day. To kill time, he walked toward el malecón, the promenade along the Guayas River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean. He entertained himself by looking at the dark waters and thinking about what he would do once he arrived in the United States. Not once did he contemplate not getting the visa.
By two thirty that afternoon, Espinoza was back at the consulate.
You are early, the secretary teased him, before handing him his passport back.
Now what? he asked.
Now you get your ticket. Your visa has been approved, she said.
Espinoza had to work hard to contain his elation. After all, a businessman like him should be used to getting his way, including a travel visa to the United States. He shook her hand, said thank you, walked out of the consulate, and went straight to the bus station for the five-hour trip home. On the bus, he tried to get his thoughts organized and make plans for the future, but he didn’t get very far because his only plan was to find a job the moment he arrived in New York.
When he got home, his wife was waiting for him. At the sight of her expectant face, the tears that he had been holding back for hours could no longer be contained.
So you are going to leave me alone with the girls after all, she said, but there was no bitterness in her comment for she too understood that this was the only choice they had left.
When Espinoza uncovered his eyes, the plane was about to land at John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, and all that he could see ahead of him was the seemingly endless runway. It was almost midnight, and the pilot made a perfect landing. Because he was a man in need of good luck and reassurance, he took the soft landing as a good sign and immediately felt lighter, ready to face the future, optimistic even.
At the baggage carousel, he grabbed his large suitcase, which contained only two pairs of pants, three shirts, and two pairs of shoes. His wife’s cousin, David, met him at the airport and took him to the home he shared with his wife and five-year-old son in Jersey City, New Jersey. By then it was the early hours of Sunday, August 16, 1981, and Espinoza felt he had been born anew.
He didn’t know how to speak English. He didn’t know anybody except a smattering of friends and relatives who had come only months or a few years before him and could guide him a little. He rested for t
wo days, and on Tuesday, accompanied by David, he set out to find a job in Manhattan. They had been told that the factories near the Avenue of the Americas, south of Thirty-fourth Street, were hiring.
As they drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, Espinoza found it endless and futuristic. In the cities he had traveled to in his country, Quito and Guayaquil, there were no underground tunnels connecting the mainland to an island. When they emerged, another surprise awaited: smoke was rising from the streets in midtown Manhattan. Espinoza didn’t say anything, but wondered who could possibly be cooking underground? It took him a while to learn that the smoke billowing from the innards of the city was steam from a heating system.
Espinoza found a job in the first place he asked for one: a shoe factory on Twenty-first Street and Avenue of the Americas, where he would sew ballet slippers eight hours a day for $200 a week. Given that his workday started at eight in the morning and ended at four, Espinoza thought he could add a second shift to his schedule, and he found another job two blocks away, on Twenty-third Street, doing the same work. He toiled eight hours there, from 4:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., for $185 a week. Then he headed to the Port Authority and took a bus to Jersey City, where he would collapse into bed at one thirty and rise five hours later to head back to work. At the end of the week, Espinoza could barely focus his eyes. Whenever he looked up from his labor, he would see dots—like small black insects—fluttering around on the edges of his vision. He would have to close his eyes for a moment before he could refocus on the shoe at hand. He feared he would go blind.
He kept at it because it pleased him enormously to chip away at his debt and send money home to take care of his family, and because he felt comfortable in his new job, surrounded by recent arrivals, just like him, but from the Dominican Republic. He could speak Spanish with his coworkers during their lunch breaks and express longing for his family, which they understood. There were about fifty thousand Ecuadorians in New York then, so few that they were hardly noticeable in the city.3 The majority of Hispanics were from Puerto Rico, who are born US citizens and therefore not considered immigrants.
Three months into his punishing routine, Espinoza was called into the manager’s office at his second job and told his hours and his pay would be reduced. The season was over, and the demand for their shoes had plummeted. Espinoza began looking for another job.
A relative of David, his wife’s cousin, told him that in Bay Shore, Long Island, a fine restaurant called Captain Bill’s was looking for workers. Espinoza went to the waterfront restaurant the following Sunday and got a job washing enormous pots encrusted with tomato sauce. The pots were so big he had to rinse them on the floor with a hose. The pay was about the same as in the city, but food was included. To Espinoza, that seemed like a raise. He quit his jobs and moved to Bay Shore with another friend, who had rented a two-bedroom apartment. After a year washing dishes and pots, he was promoted to making salads. At first Espinoza struggled with the language. Someone would ask for an onion and he would hand him a tomato, but in time words such as “chicken,” “salad,” “cheese,” and “dressing” became part of his vocabulary.
Two years later, in 1984, a friend mentioned that he had found a job at a restaurant called South Shore, in the Long Island town of Patchogue. Espinoza had never heard of it but was ready for a new job, especially one that came with a $40-per-week raise. Where he lived was less important than how much he made.
When Espinoza arrived in Patchogue, he and his friend Galo Vázquez discovered they were the first Ecuadorians to move to the village, where a little over eleven thousand people lived then in an area of 2.2 square miles. Espinoza liked Patchogue. It seemed peaceful, pretty, and safe, a good place to raise the family he desperately wanted to get back. He rented an apartment in a twelve-unit building at 5 Lake Street, just off Main Street, and, because he was always fixing things, the owner made him superintendent.
Inflation in Ecuador had made it possible for him to pay his debt to the chulquero faster than he would have otherwise, but he was still supporting his family while spending about $300 a month in phone calls, at $1.50 a minute. From the moment Espinoza arrived, he had developed a system that allowed him to speak with his wife and children at least once a month. Since his wife didn’t have a telephone at home and no one in Bullcay or nearby Gualaceo had one they could use, the family traveled to a relative’s house in Cuenca, about seventeen miles away, to use the phone. In letters that Espinoza wrote frequently, he would alert them to the day and time of his call. For the family, that was a sacred appointment.
From early in the morning, Ana would remind the girls that today they would get to talk with their father. They would wash and dress and leave the house hours before the appointed time: better to be careful and early than risk an accident or traffic jam that would jeopardize their window of opportunity for the call. They would board the bus or catch a ride and arrive at least an hour early. On the phone Espinoza would tell his family about his life, his work, and how much he loved them and missed them, and the girls would mostly listen and cry.
In his letters and during the calls, Espinoza told them also about how jobs were plentiful and well paid. He would mention that schools were free and that all children were expected to graduate and go on to college, and how in the town where he lived there were playgrounds and safe beaches nearby and clean streets with orderly traffic. Ana would relay the stories to their friends and relatives and they would spread the word.
Before Christmas of 1984, Ana arrived in New York from Ecuador with a visitor’s visa, leaving the girls behind for a year and four months. In February 1986, Espinoza returned home to get his daughters, now twelve, ten, and eight. By then Espinoza had become a legal US resident—he benefited from a 1986 amnesty that legalized about three million undocumented immigrants. With his family finally together, Espinoza felt he was working for their future and not merely for survival. For the first time in his life he was able to save money, and he began feeling more ambitious about his job prospects. Though he was still making salads, Espinoza was also observing the chef. His attentiveness would serve him well. Four years later, a job as an assistant chef opened up in the kitchen of a local country club. Espinoza took it and brought his wife along. They would stay for fourteen years.
While the Espinozas were busily working at the country club, Gualaceños started arriving in Patchogue, following the lead of those, like Espinoza, who had encouraged them to come. It didn’t take much to convince them. Ecuador, always a tumultuous country plagued by natural disasters, difficult to govern, and even more difficult to keep afloat economically, was hemorrhaging its most entrepreneurial citizens—mostly men—to the American dream at an unprecedented rate.
The Azuay province of Ecuador, where Gualaceo is located, had had a business relationship with New York since the first half of the twentieth century because of the incorrectly named Panama hat, that handwoven, blindingly white straw hat popularized in the movies of the time. But when demand for the hat decreased in the 1950s and 1960s, the Ecuadorian economy suffered, particularly for two groups: the businessmen who exported the hats and the peasants who made them. Both groups, taking advantage of the established business patterns and relationships they had formed over the years, began to slowly migrate to the city they were somewhat familiar with: New York.4
That first wave of migrants was nothing compared with what was to come. In the 1980s and 1990s a migration fever seized the country. Crippled by a mounting debt crisis, Ecuador began to export people instead of hats. Unable to find jobs at home or elsewhere in their own country, thousands of Ecuadorians left for New York in whatever way it was possible: either legally, with a visa, or illegally, by crossing the border surreptitiously or buying fake visas. Everyone seemed to be migrating north or knew someone who had already left on the perilous and costly journey.
In a 1990 survey conducted by the University of Cuenca, 45.5 percent of the respondents reported having at least one family member living in the United
States. By 1991 the New York Department of City Planning estimated that there were approximately one hundred thousand Ecuadorian migrants in the New York City area (this figure did not account for undocumented immigrants, which would likely have doubled that number).5 The Azuayan branch of the Central Bank estimated that remittances from migrants abroad amounted to $120 million in 1991, equivalent to sixteen years of straw-hat exports.6
Espinoza himself helped at least twenty Gualaceños find jobs. On one day alone he placed seven men in a flower shop. At times it seemed as if every Gualaceño who came to Long Island went to see him first. As a building superintendent, he either had a space to rent or knew who had it and was willing to rent to newly arrived immigrants, often men who shared a room.
In this way, Espinoza quickly became what those who study migration patterns have called a “pioneer migrant”—immigrants who have a “decisive influence on later migrants,” who are guided not by job ads or recruiting agents but “by spontaneous individual and family decisions, usually based on the presence in certain places of kin and friends who can provide shelter and assistance,” as Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut note in their classic Immigrant America: A Portrait.7 After a group settles in a certain place, an enclave is established and others from the same town or nationality follow. “Migration is a network-driven process, and the operation of kin and friendship ties is nowhere more effective than in guiding new arrivals toward preexisting ethnic communities,” Portes and Rumbaut wrote.8 Once this process is well established, the authors conclude, “migration becomes self-perpetuating through the operation of ethnic networks.” In theory, they explain, “this process may continue indefinitely.”