Essay One

Hayley Wheeler

Mrs. Fonseca

CAS 115 9:30-10:45am

16 September 2013

The Difficulties of Immigration for Central Americans

            Central Americans immigrated to the United States to get away from the hardship going on in their homeland, yet they were also faced many difficulties once they arrived. They left their homes because of strife and hardship there, yet they find themselves in other troubling situations as they come to America. They encounter language barriers, and with their lack of knowledge of the U.S. education system, many do not do well in school, which makes it even more difficult to get a job. In Arredondo’s  “Silent Words”, Manuel is an example of an immigrant from Central America who struggles to get past his barriers. In “ Central American-Americans? Latino and Latin American Subjectivities”, the author gives great examples of how these immigrants had trouble fitting in and getting accustomed to the U.S. culture that surrounded them. It is also sad that the Central Americans were influenced to come to the U.S. of all places because the U.S. is what made their homeland such an awful place to be.

Central Americans came to the United States to escape the horrible living situations going on in their homeland. The many Central Americans in the United States is the “result of the wars fought in the 1980, when about three to four million people fled from the nightmare of violence and massacres to the apparent safety of the United States” (185).  Many Salvadoran immigrants “left El Salvador to escape the strife of the U.S.-

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funded death squads and warlords that were ruling the country” (1). The 1980 Refugee Act is also another reason why Central American immigrants came to the United States. This act ‘declared anyone eligible for political asylum who had suffered persecution or who had a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion’ (1).

Central Americans faced many barriers that kept them from connecting to the U.S. society. In “Central American”, the author explains how the immigrants feel as if they are “invisible” because they have trouble connecting to the U.S. culture. They set themselves apart since they do not know how to integrate themselves into society. Their culture was extremely hard to keep in this new world, and when they tried to keep their culture, it only separated them more from the U.S. society. In “Silent Words”, Manuel explains his frustrations of how he wants to keep farming as he used to, yet everyone around him wants him to work in the city and give up his culture. His wife tries to change him everyday, asking him to become a city worker. Manuel did not grow up working in a city though. He is not educated in the workings of other jobs. All he knows is how to farm. That is what he grew up doing, and that is all he is knowledgeable about. Rukavina writes that most of the Guatemalan immigrants “were not from cities or towns, such as the more cosmopolitan Salvadorans, but rather from the highlands, where they had been peasants” (1). They sometimes were put into a position where the jobs that they knew how to do were unavailable because of the setting they were in. This relates to Manuel in “Silent Words” in the way that he did not want to move to the city because all he had

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knowledge of was how to farm. Going from rural to urban life would be a great shock to anyone.

Rukavina then goes on to explain how Central American immigrants “knew none or very little English, which made their living condition that much harder” (1). In “Silent Words”, Manuel also faces language barriers. He talks about how he does not always fully pronounce the English words correctly. Arias then expresses the sad fact that before the Central American immigrants “fled their homes, before their villages were razed by vindictive local armies, Central American subjects were already invisible in the eyes of their own Western-looking elites, simply because they were…peasants, indigenous peoples, or women” (188). They were faced with racism because they were different. The United States needed to grow up and realized that different does not mean wrong, it just means different or varying. Just because something different or unknown can be strange, it does not mean it is bad! Arias explains how it is sad that the United States has “a Central American population that is largely disconnected emotionally from the source of its own identity and whose forced exile is built on anguish” (189). These immigrants most likely have horrible memories of war and how their families were torn apart, but then some pretend “the horror never happened, pretending that the group is another people, seeing its suffering as a source of shame” (189).

Another troublesome fact that the Central Americans all face is that their children who have grown up in the United States do not understand what their parents went

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through to get where they are. Their children will also never fully know the culture that their parents once lived in and followed. This can be frustrating for many parents, like Manuel in “Silent Words”. He tries to teach his children of his past culture and he has hope that they will carry on his stories and traditions, yet they are so wrapped up in the American culture, that they do not understand his teachings. Manuel soon calls his children “alien children” because they are so different from him in culture that it is as if they are not form the same world at all. It must have been so hard for the Central American immigrants to keep their culture and there were probably many characteristics of their culture that faded away due to the difficulty in keeping it. The United States culture must have been overwhelming and the Central American immigrants probably had no choice but to in many ways just follow our customs and traditions. In “Central American-Americans”, it is said that a group of Central American immigrant have a celebration once a year in honor of their culture. It is sad that they only celebrate their culture only once every year! This proves the hardship in keeping traditions of a culture. Arias explains in his “Central American-Americans” that “the way in which Central Americans were forced to parody ethnic stereotypes of Mexicans not only prevented their emergence and recognition, but served to undermine their identity, and contributed to the discrediting of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans as well” (199).

In conclusion, it is evident that the Central American immigrants went through a lot before and after they entered the United States. They fled their homes because of war, poverty, and strife, and then they came to the United States only to find language barriers,

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culture shock, racism, and the hardship of finding a job. It is a shame that the Central Americans immigrated to the United States because they are the ones who created the problems in their homeland in the first place.

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Works Cited

Arredondo, Inés, and Cynthia Steele. “Silent Words.” Underground River and Other                     Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1996. 30-37. Print.

Arias, Arturo. “Central American-Americans? Latino and Latin American Subjectivities.” Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America. Minneapolis:               University of Minnesota, 2007. 184-200. Print.

Rukavina, Jason, and Cyril Cordor. “Central American Immigration and the U.S.    Experience.” Central American Immigration and the U.S. Experience. University       of Michigan, 24 Dec. 2004. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.