In order to better understand my passion for working with the Hispanic community, I must first provide a little background on where I come from and how I came to be where I am. The following childhood story is a simple but important part of how I came to be who I am today.
When I was a third grader in Natividad Elementary in Salinas, California, my teacher asked me and my fellow classmates to write and draw about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Most kids dream and write about becoming police officers, doctors, teachers or professional athletes. I wrote about being a part of a selected group that worked under the sun every day in extremely difficult working conditions; I wrote about becoming a strawberry picker. After all, my grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, and older cousins were all part of this humble group of brown people, so why not me?
“My heroes were out in the fields, picking strawberries to feed their families, making just enough money to live to fight another day.”
My hometown was different than most towns or mid-size cities in Michigan because Salinas is well known for its agriculture and is commonly referred to as the Salad Bowl of the world . The smell of rich, green lettuce and red, freshly picked strawberries could be smelled from the low-income apartment complex where I grew up. My parents could not afford cable television; therefore having a fictional hero was out of the question. After playing cops and robbers with my friends outside of the projects, I would sit by a broken down fence and watch over the great Salinas agriculture fields where beautiful brown people worked long hours under the California rays. My heroes were out in the fields, picking strawberries to feed their families, making just enough money to live to fight another day.
By Salvador Lopez
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