SALINAS, Calif. —The beautiful grandmother Marina Ocampo has burst into tears, waving off the camera.
This is not the first time I have unintentionally made someone cry. Last week it was the Rev. Joseph Leon in San Jose, recalling a man who has been working in this country for eight years but is not sure, now that he’s ready to go back to Mexico, how his wife who he has been supporting all these years will receive him.
This time, it was the simple question: Why are we here?
I never know what I’m going to get when I ask this question. Some people, like Tim Weste, the San Antonio evangelical I talked to earlier this month, haven’t really thought about it. Some, like Jim Oldread, the homeless man I interviewed last year in Boston, say we’re here to “do good,” to help other people.
At first, Ocampo thinks I am asking why she is here in America.
She came to this country some 50 years ago with her late husband Jose, a man she married when she was 16 and loved until the day he died. Judging by the numerous photographs of the couple and their children around her home, the collage her son made that has a photo of him as a young man and a cut-out heart “El Corazon,” and how often Ocampo talks fondly of him in casual conversation, she still loves him.
But what I am really asking is why she thinks God put her here on earth.
The answer, for her, is simple but powerful. I am here, she says, “to help my people.”
Ocampo is in charge of migrant outreach for the Monterey Diocese. It is a job her husband once held, a job that when he died she didn’t think she had the strength or desire to do alone. She oversees volunteers who bring spiritual direction and help meet the practical needs of those in migrant camps, apartments and homes within the area covered by the Diocese. She helps solve community-wide problems, such as involving grandparents and family members in interfaith initiatives to reduce youth violence. She lobbies to bring priests out of their churches and into the field to give mass in makeshift churches in the migrant camps. She listens.
Five years, her husband had said. They would live in the United States for five years, and then they’d go back to the small Mexican village she was born in. Instead, they became part of the community. He worked in construction. She concentrated on raising their children, who are all grown and working professionals now, with marriages of their own, and grandchildren.
But she remembers what it was like back then, when she first came here, a new bride who didn’t speak the language. She remembers how afraid she was to raise children in this new foreign culture with its Hollywood morals. How confusing everything was. How difficult.
God helped her then. God helps her now.
And so this is why she is here, to help others like her and Jose -- and the young couple who showed up earlier that morning with news that they were losing their house in the mortgage crisis.
Sometimes she fights for justice, for priests, or for practical resources. Other times she just listens. But, she would say, it is all God’s work.
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Comments (2)
i hope You are Scottish and You have relations with the Queen of England
to Prince Charles please
Lady Diana was Your wife and Churchill was Your foundation. i am more aerobic than Jamie Leeves of Frasier in Seattle. energy of LAdy Diana was next to me while i was writing to You.
please accept my excitement and apologies for You and Your Grand Kingdom have the idea and vision for today and tomorrow in England.
mine was just a psychic togetherness with the landlady of this hearth i am standing on.
to Holland please
in stead of Muhammed, i invite them to study on Ahmet prophet and the central asian tulip for the roots and the coat that are on you, whether irritates or soothes the hollanders of mills and cheese, during this Jupiter Uranus Mercury merry mass and beginning. Muhammed is different today than Ahmet prophet, the hebrew of Abraham.
thanks in advance.
March 28, 2008 5:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on March 28, 2008 17:01
Overpopulation, congestion, urban sprawl, pollution, environmental damage, crime, diminishing resources, Diseases, lack of affordable housing, depressed wages, underground economic, fraudulent documents, identity thief, tax invasion, soaring crime rate, increased tax burdens, overcrowded schools, uneducated children, overcrowded prisons, inadequate health care, the balkanization of our communities and a large and growing population with loyally to other Nations, the overall decline in our quality of life are the result of unconstrained illegal immigration! America cannot accept the worlds population of other Nations Criminals, Undesirables and Uneducated Peons. Too many people chasing too few resources is not sound economic, social or cultural policy. This is not racism but pragmatism & common sense! Every industrialized nation has taken steps to end illegal immigration and to limit legal immigration to only that which is prudent, demonstrably necessary, and above all other concerns, in the best interest of their native population. Its insane to suggest that America should not do likewise!
The illegal invasion can only be understood by the corrupting influence on politicians of money for cheap labor for the Republicans or the Welfare votes for the Democrats that makes them dishonor their Oath of Office, the US Constitution against Invasion, and Enforcement of our Immigration Laws!
March 25, 2008 8:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on March 25, 2008 08:48